At Spotlight, one of the many challenges we help AR professionals solve is prioritizing their organization’s key industry analysts. With hundreds of analysts, markets, firms, and evaluative research, it can be difficult to ensure you’re spending your time with the right people. But, how do you know the best core analysts for your business? Spotlight is here to help you identify the right analysts to lead a more insights-driven AR program. 

The Right Analysts For You

In the analyst relations world, we know how many analysts are out there writing impactful market research and providing counsel to buyers on which technologies and agencies to use to solve their challenges. Analysts are covering a myriad of markets and writing to a vast multitude of leaders. The key to finding the right analysts is by first narrowing the field. Use the below three identifiers to simplify your initial list: 

• Most influential in the marketplace
• Most aligned with our prospects and customers
• Most knowledgeable about your specific market, buyers and your competition

Five Ways To Prioritize Your Analyst Roster

Once you’ve narrowed down the list of relevant analysts to your program, you’ll most likely have a large amount of analysts remaining. Spotlight recommends breaking this list down further using a tiered approach. To create a tiered roster, review the below five examples of different objectives and how they can help you make an informed decision on how to best engage with your program’s most relevant analysts. 

• Move The Dot: If your organization is participating or has been featured in a previous evaluative report, your company could be focused on moving their dot placement. In this case, we would recommend engaging more frequently with the research authors to ensure they are most up to date with your organization’s product and strategy. Pro tip: we believe it’s critical to not only engage with the lead author of the evaluative research, but co-authors, as well! 
• Shape the Market: When working to influence trends in a market or create a new area of research, focus on AR influencers in addition to top industry analysts. Smaller analyst firms can offer greater impact by having the flexibility to write about emerging categories that might not be as heavily recognized by the big three. 
• Learn: Lean on the experts. Analysts are responsible for advising vendors on strategy, go-to-market, and product offerings to better guide improvements that meet buyer’s needs. Leverage the analyst community to directly impact your company’s roadmap and initiatives. Pro tip: many analyst firms have separate groups of go-to-market analysts whose job is to help vendors with their strategy.
• Maximizing Visibility: Focus on aligning your company messaging aligned to how the analysts view the world. By working toward winning a larger share of the voice in analyst research for both key and adjacent categories, the more opportunity your organization will have to leverage analyst research as third-party external validation.
• Generate Leads: Analysts are advising buyers on which vendors best fit their needs. By creating relationships with the analysts that are most closely aligned to your target buying centers and keeping them informed on your product and strategy, you can earn analyst referrals.

A Tiered Analyst Model

Now that you’ve narrowed your initial list and tiered the analysts based on your AR program’s key objectives, it’s time to make a plan. Thinking through the cadence of engagements, identifying a strategy for your program, and aligning key speakers for different engagement types are all examples of relevant details to include when crafting your plan. 

Tiering the analysts relevant to your program will ultimately lead to a more efficient and effective approach to analyst relations. You’ll be able to track reporting metrics, capture valuable analyst feedback, and lead a more insights-driven program. Interested to learn more about an insights-driven AR approach? Head to our website to check out our additional resources.