A clear research brief answers three key questions: what you already know, what you need to learn, and how you plan to use the findings.
Research briefs come in many forms: some include draft questions, some start with a headline, and others begin with a specific objective.
None of these approaches is wrong, but each needs structure before fieldwork can begin. For example, creative teams often say they want to understand attitudes towards cybersecurity among more than 1,000 IT decision-makers. That is a strong starting point, but it is not a complete brief.
TL;DR: Most research briefs say what they’d like to measure. But the perfect research brief also explains why it’s being commissioned, how the results will be used, and who needs to answer your questions. Sharing these extra bits of information helps your research agency deliver insights to meet your objectives.
Answer these questions to write a well-informed B2B research brief:
Q1. What’s driving this research? (plus what you’re hoping not to find)
Q2. What are your research and business objectives?
Q3. Who do you want to target?
Q4. How many respondents do you want to survey?
Q5. Do you have any questions in mind already?
Q6. How will the findings be used?
Q7. Any budget or timeline constraints?
Download the ‘Anatomy of a perfect research brief’ for a breakdown checklist of each one.
Share what you already know
Many creative professionals don’t realise how important this step is. Whenever you’re briefing a research agency, share your assumptions about what the data will show, including what you’re hoping not to find.
Sharing assumptions and context upfront helps design a stronger study, by avoiding any unexpected biases. This also helps to pivot early if your objectives are unlikely to be met, rather than after the fieldwork is done.
You should also share any existing research you’ve run in the past. If you have internal data or a hypothesis you’re working from/building on, share that as well.
This means your research agency isn’t starting from zero, and they’ll use your existing knowledge to design sharper questions rather than duplicate what you’ve already known.
Withholding context and information to avoid influencing the research is a common instinct, but good questionnaire design accounts for existing knowledge and explores fresh angles and new themes.
Clarify what you need to find out
This step involves you sharing your expectations from the research findings. This helps the research team shape the methodology to follow.
In our experience, there are three main ways to clarify what the research needs to achieve:
1. Build on your business and research objectives
Often creative teams share what they want their research to prove and skip what they intend to use the findings for. Our research experts emphasise the importance of sharing the latter. In practice, this means being specific about how the research fits into your wider company strategy.
To name a few here are some ways how creative teams use their research findings to amplify their campaigns:
- Build PR friendly communications
- Create regional reports from global findings
- Inform sales and customer-success conversations
- Share findings at industry conferences and keynotes
All these scenarios change how your research needs to be designed, measured and delivered. It determines how findings are structured in the final report, making it easier for you to apply the findings quickly.
For example, a study built for media coverage will typically include demographic splits because those produce newsworthy comparisons. And a study built as a sales tool might be cut based on company size, sector, or attitudes towards specific issues. When a research agency understands your business objective, they can shape the story in the final report to contribute to your goals.
2. Share your existing questions
If you already have questions that you’d like to focus on, then share them with your research partners. Often research teams will offer advice on how to improve your questionnaire design and even add more questions to it.
One of the biggest drawbacks of having pre-formed questions is having a fixed point of view. That means your research is at risk of confirming things you already know, instead of testing a fresh point of view.
A good agency will push back on questions that are leading or too narrow, but they can only do that if they understand what the research is trying to find out. The issue is often with the format of the questions, but they can easily be fixed.
For example, if you ask respondents to rank five options, then it produces 25 data points across five positions. That’s overwhelming to report and rarely generates a clean headline. But a question that asks respondents to select their top choice, or rate each option independently, gives you something usable and clear.
Sharing your questions early means the agency can flag these issues before fieldwork begins.
3. Decide how many respondents you need
Sometimes creative professionals like to focus on collecting opinions from a large audience, because the larger the respondent pool, the more impressive it sounds. But the real question is if it adds to the credibility of your findings.
Your sample size should follow your objectives, not precede them. In B2B research, a well-recruited sample of 200 decision-makers with the right seniority and domain knowledge will typically outperform a larger group of loosely qualified respondents.
In fact, based on our research of 300 marketers and PR professionals, sample size ranked as the least important factor for research success, selected by 36% of respondents, while data quality came first at 78%.
That said, there are cases where a larger sample is genuinely justified. Especially, if press coverage is one of the objectives, journalists tend to respond better to research conducted at scale. Knowing that context allows the agency to have an honest conversation about whether the cost (and time investment) of a bigger sample is worth it for the specific goal.
The right number of respondents is determined by the subgroups you need to analyse.
As a general guide, 400 respondents allows for roughly eight equal sector breakdowns in B2B research. If your audience is more senior or niche and you need fewer subgroups, 200 is often sufficient.
But these aren’t fixed rules – the right number depends on audience incidence rate, how many ways you need to cut the data, and what the reporting must show.
It’s also worth checking whether your target audience is realistic. Here are two questions to help you identify audience feasibility:
- Do these individuals exist in the numbers you expect?
For example, a sample of C-suite executives from a small pool of unicorn start-ups in a specific sector will be difficult to reach at scale through an online panel. - Will they be able to answer the questions you plan to ask?
For example, a sample of senior IT decision-makers being asked about the inner workings of a department they don’t work in, won’t give you usable data.
Finally, size is only one part of the equation. The distribution of the sample needs to reflect the audience the research is meant to represent, and that differs depending on the type of research you’re running.
For consumer studies, a nationally representative sample means balancing by age, gender and region to mirror the real-world population.
For B2B research, representativeness looks different – the right spread of industries, company sizes and seniority levels matters more than demographic balance. Both require the same principle that the sample should reflect reality instead of what is easiest to reach.
Research timelines and budget
Be upfront about your research budget, and if you’ve addressed the previous questions on objectives, questions and sample size, then your research partner will be able to share feasibility with you.
Keep in mind, skilled research agencies can redesign your research plan to fit a budget without losing the essence of your objectives. That’s why vague answers at this stage leads to proposals missing the mark.
The same applies to timelines. On average, it takes 6–8 weeks for a project to go from questionnaire design → data collection → data analysis → content writing → to delivering a well-designed report. But these scales change based on the scope of the objectives.
If you need findings in under six weeks, say so. A good agency will tell you honestly what’s achievable and where compromises will need to be made without affecting data quality.
