How do you define budget and KPIs for a market research project?

First, I think you need to start at a broader level and look at the overall company and product priorities. If you have a yearly roadmap, marketing themes, then it should inform the types of research you are doing. After that, I think you can break down your research a bit more granularly...

• Does this research tie to a theme, or major product launch/priority for the business this year?

            If not, then pause and consider whether you should be investing in the research. To be clear, there are very
valid cases to do this research, but generally speaking they should not command as much budget or time as
others. 

• What is the goal or intended outcome for your research?

            If you're conducting research for a major upcoming launch, then maybe you're looking to understand themes
for positioning and the launch campaign. Whatever the case -- define this upfront to help set expectations.

With that said, I would dedicated a a good chunk of the budget to research for major launches or campaigns. Let's say you have a $50,000 research budget for the year, with 2 major launches. This is an overly simplified example, but I'd break it down something like this...

• $15,000 - Dedicated to each launch for positioning, campaign support, and data. 
• $10,000 - Overall persona/theme research. If you don't have personas I would increase this number, but especially with the state of the economy now (as of December 2022) and changes to how enterprises are buying software, most PMM teams should be thinking about changes to their buying journey and doing some research along those lines. If you already have all of this figured out, then this money could go to other research, or data for content.
• $7,500 - Vision research. This is important, especially as you plan for next year or changes happen in the market that you want to stay on top of this part of your budget can be leveraged for that. It's ideal if you have a great relationship with executives and your product leader so this research can tie into that.
• $2,500 - Ad hoc research. This is for priorities as they come-up, or research needs throughout the year. This can also be used if one of the above categories slightly overspends can take from this part of the budget a bit.

Again, this is just a simplistic example and every business will be different but it's key to get cross-functional alignment and deeply understand the business priorities and themes before you start defining what your overall research budget is, and the breakdown of individual research projects.

I love mixing a short term win with long term gain. For example, maybe I’m writing a blog or prepping a presentation—I’ll ask for budget to do a quick industry or customer survey to create some good punch points. That’s a short term win. But I’ll add questions into the survey that I know I won’t have time to fully absorb for months when I can do a much broader analysis. Then I’ll update the ICP, help the SDRs with new sequences, reconsider my content roadmap.. etc.

For the analyst firms—I think you need to show you have a proven tactic for success, but let your managers know that it’s an unavoidably long play for most.

For example you can brief Gartner for free, but to really get mindshare—to get them to rethink a solution—you’ll need to initiate lots of inquiries and content reviews—something only customers have access to.