What is Analyst Relations?
Analyst Relations (AR) is the art and science of leveraging industry analysts, like Gartner, Forrester, and IDC to make a vendor more competitive and successful. Industry analysts make a difference for B2B tech companies.
A big difference.
AR is essential to B2B tech firms and, when done right, improves market positioning, enhances credibility, increases visibility, provides market insights, garners referrals, and so much more.
Read on to understand the value of analyst relations, why it works, and how to leverage it to benefit your firm. If you need help, don’t hesitate to reach out.
Who are Industry Analysts and Why is Analyst Relations so important?
Analysts come in a wide variety, but essentially are industry experts. They are technology researchers who provide market analysis, forecasts, and vendor evaluations for a domain (e.g,, cybersecurity), a vertical industry (healthcare) or a region (Nordics). They use the expertise they gain from that research to provide strategic advice to enterprise buyers, technology vendors, and/or investors. Analysts’ opinions carry significant weight in the technology ecosystem due to their expertise and impartiality. Because of their vast influence on buyers, investors and markets, excellent relations with analysts is essential to vendors.
In performing their role as market experts, analysts typically:
Conduct market research
Evaluate technology vendors and products
Advise enterprise clients on technology purchases
Produce reports and whitepapers
Speak at industry events
Overview of Analyst Firms
Gartner, Forrester, and IDC are the three largest and most influential analyst firms. Most enterprise buyers and vendors are familiar with them, and any AR plan must address the relevant analysts within the Big Three. Each has very broad coverage in the three aspects of coverage: technology domain, industry, and region.
But the landscape includes hundreds of firms beyond Gartner, Forrester, and IDC.
Several dozen are large firms with many analysts that operate similarly to the Big Three, but tend to have narrower coverage. The majority of firms are small outfits with less than five analysts. These boutique firms always specialize. You’ll find them in almost every domain, industry, or region.
Analyst Firms | The Big Three | Mid-sized Firms | Boutiques and Independents |
Examples |
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What are they? | Largest and most well-known analyst relations firms. | Large firms with many analysts and coverage areas | Small firms that focus. Few analysts. |
What is the scope of their work? | Very broad coverage of technology domains. Gartner and IDC have good vertical industry coverage. IDC is strong regionally. Forrester specializes in the customer experience. | Similar models to the Big Three, but fewer analysts and narrower coverage. Many have specialties, like Everest for services. | Small firms with less than 5 analysts. Always specialize in a technology, a geographic region, or a vertical industry. |
Which Vendors Profit from Analyst Relations?
Analyst relations is only relevant to B2B tech vendors. That’s a given. But beyond that, there are several flags that indicate that AR is essential to a vendor’s success.
You need AR if your company:
Sells innovative and disruptive technology. Analysts are eager to hear about such vendors. And they help shape the market for future purchases,
Sells to large enterprises vs. SMBs. Large enterprises are conservative in their buying decisions and consult analysts for validation of vendors.
Offers products at a significant price point. The larger the investment, the more scrutiny goes into the decisions and expert consultation becomes essential, primarily, analysts.
Is in a crowded market. Competition causes lots of news, noise, fluff and confusion. . Analysts cut through the complexity and clarify, simplify and offer neutral expertise.
Is In a well-covered space. While analysts cover most technology domains, there are some that are so niche, there is no coverage.
Setting Goals and Measuring Analyst Relations
What does it mean for a vendor to be more competitive and successful? It depends on the vendor’s business priorities. The typical startup/scaleup we work with is looking to generate revenue, build brand awareness, strengthen messaging, expand into new markets and/or build partnerships.
The right analyst relations program for you addresses those priorities.
Take building brand awareness. Analysts amplify brands through their market research, vendor evaluations, buyer advisory and investor due diligence. They can also be contracted to produce thought leadership papers or run webinars together. Not only does all this provide great visibility, it provides qualified, validated visibility. An enterprise buyer or investor becomes comfortable and confident in the vendor’s legitimacy.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Analyst Relations Goals
Positive evaluations position strength in the market
Insights improve competitive positioning.
Mentions to buyers leads to new revenue opportunities
Introductions to partners opens new doors
Vendor advisory helps with messaging, product roadmap, GTM, and more.
Investor advisory vets vendors in the due diligence process.
And more…
When you start with business priorities, the AR plan, goals and metrics flow seamlessly. Look at the priority and determine the aspiration.
If the specific goals is brand awareness, the aspiration is to be a known brand, often with specific awareness metrics.
Analyst Relations Metrics
Analysts can help organically, mentioning the vendor in their end user advisory, reports, social media, traditional media, and events.. You can also amplify the analyst’s voice by licensing research, procuring thought leadership papers or ROI studies, or hiring them to speak on webinars or at customer events.
Organic mentions are always a top goal and we set metrics for our clients, such as quantity of coverage, positioning in evaluation reports (such as the Magic Quadrant), sentiment of coverage, share of voice, number of incoming referrals. For licensed research or custom-produced materials, you can measure the number of downloads and follow leads through the funnel. For webinars or events the measures are number of attendees and number of quality leads.
Those are Performance metrics, indicating the outcome of the program. We also use Activity metrics, which tell us that we are having the right engagements with analysts to drive the right outcomes. Number of briefings/inquiries, informal engagements, newsletters and email, etc. We develop engagement plans for Tier 1 analysts, measuring their current perception, beliefs, and actions and establishing a one year vision. Then we plot out a series of engagements to drive that change.. Specific briefings, inquiries, strategy sessions, social media engagement, newsletters, etc.
Identifying the Relevant Analysts and Reports
If you don’t already know the analysts and reports in your industry, conduct a thorough research project to identify them. For our clients, we identify all the analysts who are relevant to specific keywords - both those that include those terms in their biography, and those who write reports and other content containing them.
Once we have a long list, we refine the research to prioritize those that write the most influential reports, the other content that is relevant, and those with the most visibility to the market. This is a complex step that takes into consideration their firm, their personal level of influence, the amount of focus they put on your space.
Analyst relations experts have the tools and know-how to do this for you. It’s possible to do it yourself, but rather tedious. You can search the websites of the top three firms (Gartner, Forrester, IDC), other firms that cover your space, top media outlets, and relevant events.
Delivering Winning Briefings
The heart and soul of a great analyst relations program is the briefing. Briefings are your opportunity to wow an analyst, start a beneficial relationship, and begin to build advocacy.
Briefings are always free, but it is up to the analyst to grant you this time. A strong briefing request promises the analyst valuable information that will benefit their research and market view. The more relevant and tailored your request, the more likely you are to get that briefing.
Great briefing deck
A strong and compelling briefing deck tells your story in a convincing way.
Start with existing material, such as customer or investor decks.
Eliminate general market understanding (they already know this), and all marketing fluff (they hate this).
Make your customer the hero. Talk about the value you’ve delivered.
Include your vision - the “why” of your company and product.
Focus on your differentiators. Talk about why you win.
Cover GTM, including details on your ideal customer profile (ICP)
Always end with a summary slide that captures the key point you want the analyst to remember.
Read more about impactful analyst briefings here.
Train your spokespeople
Your executives and/or subject matter experts need the proper preparation to excel. For our clients, we always provide a tailored one-hour session on AR Best Practices for all spokespeople and other stakeholders. This provides a solid foundation for the analyst relations program.
The session includes AR 101, key elements of the company’s specific AR program, summary of the briefing deck, and the best practices of delivering a briefing. Best practices include addressing questions, handling negativity, and extracting insights from briefings.
How to Build a Mutually-Beneficial Relationship with Industry Analysts
Say you’ve done a great introductory briefing and the analyst is very interested and indicates a desire to learn more and stay in touch. Bravo! Now you have to capitalize on it. Rarely will an analyst write about a vendor, or mention to prospects until a deeper relationship is established.
Provide updates on a regular cadence. Keep the analyst abreast of company developments, product enhancements, customer wins, success stories, new partnerships, etc. These can be done via update briefings, newsletters, PR distribution, or casual emails.
Offer unique insights into market trends. Analysts develop their comprehensive understanding of a market by talking to customers, and vendors doing interesting things. Always offer to talk about trends you are seeing that can expand their perspective.
Share customer stories. Show them the value you are delivering through customer experience. Send them case studies and offer opportunities to speak with a customer directly.
Engage in inquiries. Inquiries–two-way questions and discussion– are fabulous relationship builders. Talking with an analyst in this way almost always leads to a deeper level of understanding, respect and trust. Inquiries come as part of subscriptions or other commercial arrangements, and become essential to your long term plan.
Respond promptly to analyst inquiries and requests.
Acing Vendor Evaluations (Gartner Magic Quadrant, Forrester Wave, etc.)
The biggest mistake vendors make competing in these evaluation reports, is to only focus during “report season.” Positioning well in vendor evaluations is a year-round activity.
Meet with the analyst as soon after publication as possible to discuss your placement, strengths and weaknesses and get as complete a picture as you can of what you need to improve to do better next year.
Take action throughout the organization to improve the business, as it fits your strategy.
Plan engagements to improve the analyst perception of products, services, or any other aspect of the business that was criticized. Include briefings, inquiries, and strategy sessions.
During the report season, have a team dedicated to deliverables.
Establish goals and themes.
Project manage the report submission with excellence.
There is so much to it! Make sure you have strong resources in place to lead evaluation reports.
Analyst Relations Subscriptions and Other Investments
To get any real value out of analysts, you must invest time and, eventually, money.
Starting off with analysts doesn’t require financial investment with the firms, but takes focus. You need a dedicated resource to build and manage a program based on your business priorities. This is usually very hard for an individual to do as part of other activities, as analyst relations is a long-term play and the proactive measures you need to take are often non-urgent. This makes it very hard to prioritize, and bringing in an outside expert gives you the focus and expertise it takes.
In addition, you need a bench of well-spoken spokespeople that will deliver compelling briefings. This is not highly time-consuming, but requires preparation and participation in the briefings. Once someone is comfortable and experienced, it’s usually the briefing time (30-60 minutes) and a few minutes to prep.
I encourage emerging vendors to exhaust their “free” briefing opportunities to introduce themselves to the analyst community and get on the radar. But eventually, building a relationship will require more. Analyst relations is not “pay to play.” You can’t spend enough money to get a reputable analyst to say nice things about you. But, AR is “pay for time,” It’s very nuanced. When you buy a subscription, it gives you access to the individual analysts through inquiries. If you use that inquiry time with smarts and sophistication, a beautiful, mutually-beneficial relationship can emerge… and that can lead to advocacy… which can lead to positive evaluations, coverage and mentions to prospects. Read more analyst inquiry tips here.
Another way to invest in analysts is for content, such as thought leadership papers, ROI studies, webinars, and licensed research. These assets get your brand and concepts into the market, with the appeal and validation of a reputable third party. This is impactful demand generation.
Finally, analyst firms hold excellent industry events that attract very high quality audiences. These are excellent sponsorship opportunities that give you both analyst and prospect exposure.
Special topic: Analyst Relations for Category Creation
Many innovative startups deliver products and services that don’t fit into established market categories and see the value in creating a new one. Analysts play a very important role in this endeavor.
First off, understand the major analyst firms’ category definitions and ensure you have exhausted all opportunities to squeeze yourself into a category adjacent to your main value proposition. Often this is an important step to getting market exposure. Showing up on a Gartner Magic Quadrant or Forrester Wave will get you into many conversations, even if you appear as a smaller player.
If you are serious about creating a new category, consider the following:
Analysts consider themselves category creators and generally scoff at vendors’ attempts to do so. Tread carefully.
Use inquiry to discuss your ideas and align the analysts.
Analysts will only consider something a category if there are at least 10-15 players in the space.
They are also far more interested in how a category can assist buyers in understanding a market, than how one can help a vendor promote itself.
Therefore, always talk about the category idea in terms of how it will eliminate confusion and help make good buying decisions.
Provide evidence and use cases to support the category’s validity.
When you get interest, collaborate with analysts on defining category parameters and evaluation criteria.
Summary
Strong Analyst Relations programs are vital to a B2B technology vendor. Understanding and leveraging industry analysts make a huge difference in a vendor’s growth trajectory. Learn how, apply the resources, and go for long-term gains. It will pay off in the visibility, credibility, strategy, and operations of the company. Here’s to your success!
About the Author
Robin Schaffer leads Schaffer AR, an analyst relations agency
supporting B2B tech vendors, especially startups and scaleups.
Robin is a prominent voice in the analyst relations community
and the author of Analysts on Analyst Relations
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