Data and Insights Agency

Insights for storytelling

All great stories begin with a killer insight. Using data and insight is intrinsic to Smoking Gun’s approach, it helps us to lead and strategically advise clients using facts rather than off the cuff  hunches. What else would you expect from a data and insights agency? 

Our approach to gathering data and insight is methodical. It’s catered to the needs of the client and their comms objectives and utilises both qual and quant research methods.

These can be from traditional workshops, focus groups and surveys but we also use technology and tap into the abundance of consumer information available online to build a rounded and robust view.  

One of the methods we use is analysis of Google search data. Another is deep algorithm social listening. This allows us to gather data from across the digital landscape pulling insight from forums, social media platforms and reviews.

How do we do this?

By using two segmentation algorithms, we uncover topics our audience care about and the opinion leaders they respect. We cluster people based on their shared behaviour and how they interact.

This approach allows us to identify key stakeholders in conversations and individuals who connect communities to a topic or brand, it’s not  based on reach, but the position of each stakeholder within a community, who knows them and how committed they are to sharing knowledge. This provides us with invaluable data on who your audience is and how they interact – which brand manager wouldn’t want to know this?

We also use a special algorithm that pinpoints the language that is central to conversations within online communities. We cluster conversations which share the same language and reference points to map key topics that would otherwise remain uncovered.

Researching through Qual LiteTM .

Qualitative research can sometimes be seen as taking too long, costing too much and not telling you anything you didn’t already know.

Qual LiteTM has been specifically designed to counter any of these concerns… it’s quick (with an average 10-day turnaround from initial briefing to final report) and cost-effective as we run 3 groups per evening (the industry standard is 2).

Additionally and importantly, we focus on the “need to know” rather than the “nice to know”, get to the things that matter quickly and always deliver a clear, well thought through client action plan in the context of a workshop-style debrief.

How does this help clients?

This means brands can align content/ messages/ chosen advocates with what is ‘front of mind’ for the target audience – making it more relevant and thus efficient.

Whether you’re trying to explore what makes your audience tick, who influences your audience or what your audience is talking about we can gather robust data and insight that can tell you exactly that.

Want to hear more? Take a look at the  case studies  from this data and insights agency 

Interested in learning about best practice in Insights? Visit the Insights Association for a wealth of resources.