The first research campaign I managed for a client was… disappointing. A third-party vendor designed the survey and fielded it to their panels. We knew exactly who we wanted to reach. We couldn’t afford to target them precisely. We got responses, and we got leads, but the leads didn’t convert.

The following year, we tried something different. Two organizations we’d worked with throughout the year agreed to co-author our research. Their members were the exact audience we wanted. Their subject matter experts helped us identify industry challenges worth studying, drawn from conversations at their events and in their Slack channels. We fielded to our list and theirs.

We got double the responses and leads that closed. The difference wasn’t methodology or budget, but the organizations willing to put their name on the research.

Vendor panels solve a logistics problem. A research co-author solves two different ones: reach and credibility.…