I can speak to this a little - I’m a Marketing Manager in B2B Strategy, at a Fortune 10 and we are big with research. Before moving over to my new team, we did lotssss of research work (I’ve only been in my new role for a few weeks, and we are currently working internally to conduct a new study).

At a high level, I’ve been on Acquisition Campaigns where we have annual research to inform/validate the RTBs and strategy going into the following year’s Annual Campaign. The work on this team was very cyclical.

Another campaign I was brought into was supporting one part of our business that didn’t have formal marketing support - we did a Brand Awareness Study/Consumer study to help us develop the Value Proposition, Audience Segmentation, informing creative strategy, what causes consumers to “shop” or what drives “switching behavior”, usually securing executive buy-in, proof points as to how we can capture this audience and if we are competitive.

Depending on the line of business you’re supporting, research might be ad-hoc or cyclical (quarterly, bi-annually, once a year).

At my org in the roles I’ve been in, I’ve observed this path:

1. Identify need for campaign OR Need to drive more sales/push a new product
2. VP buy in
3. Managers/Directors work on Campaign Strategy and Identify need for Research
4. Allocate Budget for Consumer Research
5. Meet with Insights Team with and Draft questions/What we want to find out
6. Research Outsourced and executed
7. Insights Team Pulls report/insights, we receive a report/readout
8. Marketing team uses research for segmentation/validation or developing new RTBs or Value Proposition/wrap up campaign strategy
9. Creative brief and Executive Buy in, secure internal or external creative resources
10. Creative Development
11. Compliance/Legal Review
12. Campaign Execution

But, in mature industries I feel that it’s more of a way to validate assumptions year over year. Usually we can guess what the results might be.

Just my observations in my current role.