What analyst activities actually help reinforce your brand differentiation vs are expensive and produce little ROI?

It may be a controversial pov, but my perspective is that the analyst community is getting disrupted by DTC user review sites like G2, TrustRadius, and the others. Customer voice is just as powerful as it's ever been, but now, there are increasingly more and more ways to access that customer voice in context of making purchasing decisions.

In 7 years of building Gainsight, I think the only value we had from working with analysts was sponsoring a thought leadership paper with Forrester. It was expensive (~$100K) but allowed us to leverage the brand equity of a trusted brand in the market to validate our category and messaging.

I don't think spending the $50-$100k / year is very helpful for growing companies, but could be more important to prioritize later in a company's lifecycle -- or if you sell direct to CIOs or in regulated industries.

Put that budget towards customer marketing instead.

Analysts will not endorse any vendor directly. Your goal with AR is to help shape their POV about the market, especially if this is a new category and ultimately get well positioned on MQs and Wave reports. Shaping their POV means showing analysts how customers are getting value from this new type of solution and what critical capabilities that are required to be successful. Do this by building a personal relationship with the analysts, sharing insights, connecting them with your customers, and keeping them updated about your roadmap and product innovation. 

Spending more money with analysts won't guarantee a good placement in a Quadrant or Wave. I've seen companies mistakenly spend money on:

- Buying more seats or licenses than they actually need;

- Signing up for datasets or services they won't use frequently;

- Spending too much money on marketing services such as webinars, custom reports, etc.

My general recommendation is to focus your money and efforts on what actually gives you an advantage:

- Schedule frequent inquiries and briefings

- Create a relationship with the analysts by keeping them aware of what's going on with your company and product

- Share customer stories and make introductions where appropriate

- Always have the right people on a call with the analyst (i.e. those with the best knowledge of the area being discussed)

- Be quick in replying to analyst questions, especially if the question is related to a report they are writting

The quality of your interactions with the analysts will count more than the money you spend with them.

The best kept secret in the analyst community is that you can ask for a briefing even if you don't have a seat/license to the analyst firm! And you should be doing this and following my briefing recommendations above. Don't just wait to be asked to brief the analysts for an eval like an MQ or Wave, be proactive! Reach out quarterly at a minimum and schedule update briefings with all the analyst firms who cover your space. The more they hear from you, the more likely they are to mention you on their calls with end-user clients.

Another secret is that they want to talk to your customers! Analysts often only hear from their own end-user clients who, it must be said, are typically laggards! It makes sense, why would they call the analyst for an inquiry unless they didn't know what to do or need info. The analysts want to hear from bleeding-edge customers! They are often willing to take a call with one of your customers who is using your product for an innovative use case. You can broker the introductions but don't expect to be on the calls. Putting your top customers in front of analysts is a great (and free) way to make your case for your product. The customer also doesn't have to have an analyst contract - this is totally free! And sometimes it's a win/win for the customer where the analyst will give them a speaking spot at a conference or do a case study on them. My only suggestion here is to make sure you have a prep call with your customer to ensure that they will be saying positive things about you.

Let's talk about some of the paid things you can do with analysts. Many of them offer ROI or business case reports that you can pay for. They interview 5-10 of your customers, build an ROI model, and write a report. Sometimes they are also willing to do a webinar on the topic. For a company just getting started, this can be very costly but is often key to help provide third-party proof of the value your customers get. Don't be afraid to shop around for this type of asset. Forrester Total Economic Impact reports are the best known but also the most costly. Other firms do them as well and can deliver almost as much cachet for a lot less.

The last thing I want to mention is licensing reports. These can be trend or thought leadership reports or they can be analyst evaluation reports. My feeling on paying for analyst evaluation reports is that you need to be a leader and then you need to have some distance from your competitors. Or if you are new then sometimes it's worth it just to show you are equivalent to the other leaders, your top competitors. If you aren't a leader or of there's too many vendors in the leader area or if you're not new, then often it's not worth licensing these reports as you'll just be giving your competitors free promotion. Trend or thought leadership reports on the other hand are often valuable pipeline generation assets. Many prospects don't have analyst firm licenses/seats themselves but love to see the trends out there. Done with a smart campaign, these can be great marketing assets.

I recommend creating a more high-level analyst stategy that outlines your actual need for analyst partnerships. Once you and your stakeholders are aligned on the need, you need to carefully select analyst partners who will drive the desired results. Do your research. Ask for references. Be critical of their proposals and scope of work. Get involved in the research. Ask questions. Good luck!