How do you make decisions about when to do research in-house with your staff vs bringing in a consultant?

Having skilled, experience market researchers in-house (whether in PMM or not) certainly makes it easy to take on more projects yourself. No matter how good outside firms are, they'll never be as deep as your team is on company strategy, product portfolio or brand identity. So, all things being equal, it's generally best to bring in a consultant or outside firm for research projects where objectivity and neutrality are particularly helpful. Exploratory brand, messaging, use case and pricing interviews that are blind or semi-blind can be particularly effective when run by an outside firm. An outside firm can also synthesize findings with less bias than internal teams. Another strong reason to go with an outside firm is if your study involves recruiting an interview panel, particularly of senior decision makers, beyond your customer base. Firms and consultants with networks strong enough to fill these types of panels can be expensive but are worth it if your study is structured properly.

My bias is towards conducting in-house research first to establish the foundations and get crisp on the business subjective, research questions, target personas … what we need to learn, who are we targeting, and why. I’ve found that you can get a reasonable distance with a structured approach to customer research and the process can be a good gauge for formulating the research agenda before you bring in an agency and/or purchase industry reports. Your output is only as good as the clear framing of the objectives - you don’t want to send your agency on a wild goose chase!