| % of deals involving industry analysts | % respondents who said analysts are a major influence on vendor awareness | % respondents who said analysts are a major influence on vendor selection | |
| Cybersecurity | 61% | 74% | 65% |
| Enterprise technology (inc. financial services, healthcare, retail) | 56% | 72% | 71% |
| Telecoms | 45% | 66% | 72% |
We appreciate that isn’t exactly knock your socks off insight! Anyone who’s worked with industry analysts in a meaningful way understands this. What is more confusing is why many technology vendors have no formalised strategy for engaging analysts and leveraging this influence. Investing in analyst relations should be a no-brainer for technology vendors because analysts have such a big impact on buying decisions, so what’s the rub?
Analysts and analyst relations are misunderstood
Securing budget for analyst relations can be challenging. The discipline is often misunderstood and there are certainly challenges around measurement, proving revenue impact and marketing short-termism. Analyst relations and marketing colleagues will no doubt be familiar with all of these challenges, and we are here to support and navigate them together!
Analysts directly impact your bottom line, but it’s hard to measure
Studies of industry analysts’ influence on technology purchasing consistently show that they are one of the biggest influences on buyers. The challenge analyst relations and marketing teams face is so much of analysts’ influence on buyers happens behind closed doors in advisory sessions, making it incredibly difficult to measure. Some analyst relations teams use fairly sophisticated approaches to measure this impact, such win-loss analysis to understand if analysts were involved in customer purchases. This approach is incredibly effective because it allow analyst relations teams put a dollar figure on the revenue they have influenced. However, win-loss analysis is resource-intensive and requires buy-in from sales and customer success teams. Many analyst relations programmes just don’t have the resources to do this. Analyst relations teams can use buyer insight reports, like CCGroup’s, to demonstrate to internal stakeholders industry analysts critical influence on end user technology purchases.
Analyst relations is a strategic long-game
Another challenge that many analyst relations programmes and teams fall prey to is marketing short-termism. This happens when marketing efforts focus too much on quick wins and metrics, pushing the bottom-of-the-funnel, demand-gen-type campaigns. While there is, of course, an important role for these types of marketing activities, an over-focus on them can hurt overall long-term brand and marketing success. Too much focus on short-term gains often means long-term strategic initiatives take a hit. Analyst relations, typically designed for long-term relationship building, doesn’t always have quick wins and metrics to demonstrate its significant impact, so is often one of the budgets that can suffer the most. Analyst relations is inherently a long-game, so when marketing leaders are under pressure to be short-termist, AR programmes can suffer, despite their proven impact across the sales funnel. A balanced approach that values both short-term gains and long-term strategic initiatives is key, and analyst relations is a critical part of this.
Analyst relations is pay-to-play
There is a common misconception that analyst relations is a pay-to-play marketing activity, requiring expensive subscriptions to deliver meaningful impact. Of course subscriptions have benefits, but they are not the be all and end all for effective programmes. Industry analysts need to have the most complete possible understanding of the industries they specialise in to be effective in their roles. It pays for them to understand the vendor landscape, emerging trends and industry disruptors and niche players, so the majority are more than happy to take briefings with all vendors in their space. Well-structured briefing programmes supplemented with 1-to-many activities, including events and newsletters, are highly effective when done strategically. Vendors need to be on analyst radars to capitalise on their deep industry influence, and briefings are an excellent way to break the ice!
Now is the time to scale your AR efforts!
Analyst influence on your buyers is not going away and if you aren’t capitalising on this, many of your competitors certainly are. If you’re looking to scale your programme in 2025, we’d love to talk to you about how we can help! If you’d like to learn more please email [email protected].
