Module 2 workshop: the market research brief

Bring your buyer roles, interviews, personas, competitor map, demand calendar and search research together in a two-page brief that ends in decisions. Follow Lantern & Lane's completed brief step by step, then write your own.

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Module 2 workshop: the market research brief.

Research that stays in a notebook changes nothing.

The market research brief is where your interviews, personas, competitor grid, calendar and search data meet, and where they turn into decisions.

What the brief must do.

A good brief does three things.

It states what you found, with the evidence behind it.

Plan the research sprint.

If you have worked through this module, you already have most of the raw material.

If not, here is a realistic schedule for a small business, using the time each part took Lantern and Lane.

The brief, section by section.

Use these eight headings.

Each section should be a short paragraph or a few bullets.

Worked example: Lantern and Lane's brief.

Here is the studio's brief, condensed.

The figures are illustrative.

Checklist before you call it done.

Every finding names its source and a confidence level.

Every theme has at least one exact quote, without names.

That is the lesson. The worksheet and the quiz are just below this video.

What you will be able to do

• Assemble a two-page market research brief from the evidence gathered across Module 2
• Separate findings from implications and state the confidence behind each finding
• Turn the brief into three marketing decisions and one test with a clear measure

Research that stays in a notebook changes nothing. The market research brief is where your interviews, personas, competitor grid, calendar and search data meet, and where they turn into decisions. It is two pages long, it takes an afternoon to write once the research is done, and it will be the foundation for your positioning, your brand and your offer in the next three modules.

What the brief must do

A good brief does three things. It states what you found, with the evidence behind it. It says how confident you are in each finding. And it ends with decisions, not observations. “Couples worry about family conflict” is a finding. “We will lead our home page with neutrality between families” is a decision. The brief is not finished until the second kind of sentence appears.

The same holds for any vendor. A photographer’s finding might be “corporate clients chose us because we delivered edited headshots within 48 hours”. The decision is “lead the corporate page with turnaround time, and quote it in every proposal”. A venue’s finding might be “planners rarely visit on weekdays”; the decision is “run planner open houses on Saturday mornings in February”.

Keep it to two pages. Long research reports are rarely reread. A short brief, revisited every year, is.

Plan the research sprint

If you have worked through this module, you already have most of the raw material. If not, here is a realistic schedule for a small business, using the time each part took Lantern & Lane.

At Marco’s $50 an hour, 18 hours is $900 of time. Add $175 in interview gift cards and the whole sprint cost about $1,075, less than a single wedding booking in the studio’s niche. Spread it across three or four weeks in a quiet season and it fits inside the create block of the daily marketing hour.

The brief, section by section

Use these eight headings. Each section should be a short paragraph or a few bullets.

1. The question. What did you set out to learn? One or two sentences.
2. Who buys. The roles behind your main bookings: who initiates, decides, pays and influences.
3. What clients told us. The three to five strongest interview themes, how many interviews mentioned each, and one exact quote for each.
4. Personas. Primary, secondary and negative, one or two lines each, with the numbers that justify them.
5. Competition. Where competitors cluster, what they leave open, and the substitute you lose to most.
6. Timing. Inquiry peaks, event peaks, average lead time and the months that matter most for marketing.
7. Search demand. The words clients use, the direction of interest, and any rough forecast.
8. Decisions and tests. Three decisions you are making because of the research, one test with a measure, and the evidence gaps you still need to fill.

Mark each finding with a confidence level: strong when several sources agree, moderate when one good source supports it, and weak when it rests on a single comment or an assumption. Weak findings are allowed. Hiding them is not.

Worked example: Lantern & Lane’s brief

Here is the studio’s brief, condensed. The figures are illustrative.

• The question. Which clients should Lantern & Lane focus on next year, and what would make them choose us?
• Who buys. Couples initiate and decide. In two-tradition weddings, parents often pay a large share and influence strongly, and an elder may judge the ceremony. Corporate parties are initiated by executive assistants and decided by HR leads. Confidence: strong.
• What clients told us. Fear of tension between families, in 5 of 8 interviews: “I needed someone neutral.” Price fog, in both lost-lead interviews: “I assumed you were out of our league.” Reviews did the convincing, for 6 of 8. Speed won the repeat corporate client. Confidence: strong for the first and third, moderate for the others.
• Personas. Primary: the Two-Family Couple, 18 percent of bookings and 30 percent of revenue at about $9,800, the highest fee of any group. Secondary: the Office Organizer, small but rebooks yearly. Negative: a full-planning wedding on a day-of budget. Confidence: strong.
• Competition. 14 planners mapped. Most are general and hide prices; 3 luxury specialists also hide prices. No competitor claims two-tradition weddings. Biggest substitute: venue in-house coordinators. Confidence: moderate.
• Timing. 43 percent of wedding inquiries arrive January to March. Average lead time about eleven months. Corporate inquiries arrive August to October. Confidence: strong.
• Search demand. Clients say “day of coordinator”, not “day-of coordination package”. Interest is rising gently. Rough forecast: about 9 bookings a year from search for that service. Confidence: weak to moderate.

And the section that matters most:

• Decision one. Make the Two-Family Couple the primary focus of positioning and the home page. Module 3 will write the positioning statement.
• Decision two. Publish starting prices for all three wedding packages before January.
• Decision three. Move corporate outreach to late July and August.
• Test. Publish a starting price on the full-planning page and compare the share of inquiries that reach a consultation for the next three months against the same months last year. Success: a rise from 45 percent to 55 percent or more.
• Evidence gaps. Only one corporate interview. Plan three more in February.

Checklist before you call it done

• Every finding names its source and a confidence level.
• Every theme has at least one exact quote, without names.
• The personas have numbers behind them.
• The competitor section names a gap, not just a list.
• The timing section names the months your marketing must start.
• There are exactly three decisions and at least one test with a number.
• The evidence gaps are listed, with a plan to fill them.
• It fits on two pages.

Date it, save it next to your Module 1 snapshot, and put a reminder in your calendar to update it in twelve months. Then move on to positioning, which starts exactly where decision one leaves off.

In Canada and the GTA

When to write it. The quiet months are the time for research. For most GTA event businesses that means late January to early March for corporate-focused vendors, and the weeks after Thanksgiving or the first half of January for wedding vendors, before the inquiry rush peaks. A children’s entertainer or rental company with a summer peak may find the autumn better. Whatever your rhythm, aim to finish the brief before your next inquiry peak so the decisions are in place when clients start looking.

A brief for a diverse market. If your clients come from many communities, check that your evidence does too. Eight interviews drawn from one neighbourhood or one community can produce a confident brief about the wrong market. Note in the evidence gaps section any client group you did not hear from, especially groups your competitor map suggests are underserved. If interviews took place in more than one language, record which, so the next round can repeat the approach.

Keeping the brief clean

Personal information. The brief should contain no personal information. Under PIPEDA, which generally applies to private-sector businesses in Ontario, personal information is information about an identifiable individual in any form, and that includes a quote someone could recognize when combined with an event date or a venue. Use quotes without names, remove details that would identify a family, and keep the raw interview notes separate and secure. Delete recordings when you said you would. If you share the brief with a business partner, a designer or a marketing consultant, you are then sharing only conclusions, not client data. The OPC’s PIPEDA overview sets out the principles behind this.

Competitor information. Keep the competitor section to public information and what clients volunteered. Record review counts, published prices and headlines as you found them, with the date you checked, because they change. If a venue coordinator shared opinions about other vendors in confidence, leave them out of anything you share.

Decisions that become claims. When the brief turns into marketing, the findings become public statements, and the Competition Act applies. It prohibits representations to the public that are false or misleading in a material respect. “No other planner in Toronto specializes in two-tradition weddings” might be true of the 14 firms you mapped and still be false across the city. Say what you do, “we specialize in weddings that bring two traditions together”, rather than what nobody else does. If you claim a number, such as eleven two-ceremony weddings in two years, keep the records that prove it. The Competition Bureau’s guide to deceptive marketing practices summarizes the rules and the penalties.

Tests that touch your list. If decision three or your test involves emailing past clients or contacts, check consent first. CASL allows implied consent for two years after a purchase and six months after an inquiry. Anyone outside those windows needs express consent before you send them a commercial message. Every message must identify your business and include an unsubscribe mechanism, and you must act on unsubscribes within 10 business days. The fightspam.gc.ca page on consent and message requirements explains the details.

Prices you publish. If the brief leads you to publish starting prices, as it did for Lantern & Lane, those prices must be attainable. Since 2022, a price that cannot be paid because of fixed mandatory fees is treated as misleading, and only charges imposed by law, such as Ontario’s 13 percent HST, may be added on top. Module 5 covers all-in pricing in detail.

This is general information, not legal advice. Check the official sources named here, or ask a lawyer, for your own situation.

Worksheet

Download the worksheet and complete it for your own business, using Lantern & Lane as the model where it helps. Keep it with your marketing plan. It takes about 15 minutes.

Download the worksheet (PDF)