Marketing teams are struggling to create repeatable workflows for conducting research and creating data-driven content. According to Datalily’s 2026 State of Data-Driven Content Marketing, the lack of personnel responsible for content analytics and the connection between data analytics and content marketing are two of the biggest process challenges B2B marketers are facing. 

This is happening for multiple reasons:

• Data teams are backed up. 
• Content marketers may not know exactly what to do with data that’s presented to them.
• Outsourcing marketing research means you can get the data, but it doesn’t guarantee that there will be marketing-ready insights.

Considering our report uncovered that 50% of B2B SaaS marketing teams now conduct marketing research every month, this is a problem that needs to be fixed.

Let’s break down why traditional marketing research is missing the mark and what teams can do to more effectively gather and share data, featuring insights from Chelsea Carter, Data Scientist at Datalily and Senior Economist for the US Government Accountability Office.

The players on the marketing research team

Here are the key roles on a marketing research team by discipline and their responsibilities:

1. Background research: Content marketing strategists map out the industry and research landscape in the context of the project goals and target audience.
2. Survey design: Survey designers and research analysts develop the survey and manage data collection.
3. Data analysis: Data analysts and market research analysts interpret the data and provide statistical analysis, key insights, and initial data visualizations.
4. Qualitative research: Qualitative researchers manage focus groups and conduct interviews.
5. Quantitative research: Quantitative analysts and data scientists do statistical modeling and data manipulation or cleanup.
6. Content creation: Content writers take the key insights from the data analysis and create short and long-form marketing assets like reports, blog posts, and promotional materials.
7. Design: Marketing designers create branded assets incorporating data visualizations, like PDF reports, web-based reports, landing pages, social posts, animated videos, or promotional materials.
8. Development: Developers build interactive digital content assets for marketing research reports, like microsites, landing pages, or web-based reports.

It’s possible that you may not have these roles in-house; our report discovered that 52% of companies outsource market research and data collection. Most often, they end up partnering with data analytics or business intelligence consultancies, full-service market research firms, or content marketing agencies that specifically have research capabilities.

A traditional structure separates the research stage from the content marketing stage. As a result, these teams can fall into the trap of operating independently, with the data team optimizing for accuracy and statistical significance, and the content team focusing on storytelling and audience engagement. This creates a siloed structure that leads to handoff problems — context gets lost in translation, content teams misinterpret findings, and insights get buried.

What disconnected teams cost you

Our report identified the top three challenges affecting the traditional marketing research process:

Challenge #1: Executing market research is time-consuming (29%)

Research timelines may not align with content calendars, or back-and-forth between teams extends the duration of the project. Either way, good market research takes time, and some teams decide that their time is better spent on other initiatives.

But there are ways to speed up some parts of the process — 65% of those struggling with time to execute found the biggest benefit of AI was its ability to increase content output.

Challenge #2: Market research projects are costly, and teams have a limited budget (22%)

Depending on the methodology, your market research can cost thousands of dollars, and costs will compound if you need to redo any work. Naturally, it can become difficult to justify the ROI of data-driven content marketing research when the impact is unclear.

To help avoid issues down the line, understand the costs of market research up front, compare data providers, and plan ahead to secure your budget in advance.

Challenge #3: There’s no guarantee the research outcomes will be relevant for marketing content (14%)

The research might be answering the wrong questions for content needs, or insights might not be easily translated into audience-facing messaging.

‍Chelsea’s take: “I think data sometimes gets left behind because clients either want to do too much with one project, or because data points don't fit the narrative. In marketing, you're trying to sell something, and if a data point doesn't fit nicely into the narrative, it's potentially scrapped. But that's something you should focus on, because it didn't fit the narrative. Ask questions about why you are seeing this deviation.”

How early (and frequent) cross-team collaboration leads to better content

An ideal marketing research team is made up of data scientists who understand content goals and content strategists who get the inner-workings of data collection.

Chelsea's perspective on trusting your team: “Let the experts be the experts. If you are working with a data scientist and they're telling you something is impossible, or you're not seeing a certain insight because it's not necessarily meaningful, just trust that you have a good team and a knowledgeable expert who is leading that part of the project.”

The reality of sequential workflows is that context gets lost at every handoff. When data and content teams aren’t collaborating throughout the process, there’s a tendency to force findings into predetermined narratives rather than letting the data guide the story naturally.

Chelsea on letting data speak for itself: “The data might not fit a predetermined narrative. There's a point and a goal of market research, and you know what the client wants to do with the final report, but you have to be open to the idea that the data might either be surprising or it might not be as interesting as you thought.”

According to our report, the most effective solution to bridging the gap between developing data-driven insights and creating marketing content is to embed data analysts within content teams. Companies that see positive ROI from research campaigns are also most likely to use content marketing agencies with research capabilities, which suggests that incorporating content strategy in the market research process leads to better marketing results.

The benefits of an integrated workflow can be seen in Klaviyo’s Future of Consumer Marketing Report. For this campaign, Klaviyo partnered with Datalily to take a more content and data-driven approach to marketing research and report creation.

To accomplish this, we began with a detailed background analysis that clearly defined the research goals and aligned all the teams that would be involved in the report from the start, like the social, PR, and content teams. This helped us work more efficiently and deliver exactly what Klaviyo was looking for. The report resulted in:

• 10+ top-tier media placements
• 8,000+ global consumers surveyed
• 10+ pieces of derivative content per survey 

3 ways to improve data storytelling in marketing research

When telling data-driven stories, the research process is just as important as the final content outcomes, and good content starts with a strong data foundation.

Process integration tip #1: Involve all teams in the initial strategy who will be using the data

This might include product marketing, PR, content marketing, social, sales, or others. Whoever may have their hand in the final result, send them an invitation to the kickoff call. Otherwise, you may end up forgetting to mention that you want to look at the data by region; so, your research team doesn’t gather that information during survey design, and then you miss out on those key insights.

Chelsea's warning about poor planning: “Keep it focused so that you can really deliver what insights the client is looking for, and not be all over the place. Because at the end of the day, someone is going to be taking your survey, and you want it to be well thought out and targeted, so you can get the insights that you actually want.”

Process integration tip #2: Establish clear handoff points and shared milestones

Define when and how work transitions between teams, like when the research team delivers initial findings, when content teams complete their first draft for an accuracy check, and when final approval is given. Shared milestones could include the number of research findings that make it into the published content, the time it took from research completion to content production, and audience engagement with the data-driven content.

Process integration tip #3: Create templates and workflows that work for both functions

For example, create a research brief that includes data delivery formats that content teams can work with like summary dashboards or annotated datasets, or a content review process that maintains data accuracy, such as having a data analyst fact-check claims before publication.

Tools, tech, and knowing what to measure

The right tools and platforms can help bridge the gap between data and content teams. Think about using:

• Self-serve research tools content teams can use: SurveyMonkey, Typeform, and Google Forms work well for simple surveys, while Qualtrics handles more advanced research. And soon, you can use Flowerplot (sign up for the beta!)
• Data visualization platforms that create marketing-ready assets: Try Tableau, Datawrapper, and Flourish for interactive charts, or Canva for infographics.
• Collaboration tools that keep both teams aligned: Use Notion, Airtable, and Asana for project management, or Slack for ongoing communication.

Chelsea on resource allocation and specialists: “This is all about resource allocation. You could import that data into Excel and manually create a bar graph for all 20 survey questions and their results. But that would take a lot of time. Or if you have a specialist, they can write a script to generate those things for you to save time.”

Expertise limitations

Speaking of Excel, most marketers only have basic familiarity with it, which won’t take you far in market research. The best course of action is to bring in a specialist so you can scale, automate, and conduct complex research analysis.

Consider using AI to help speed up analysis and content creation without sacrificing quality. According to our report, 69% of B2B marketers are using generative AI tools for content marketing, which are helping them improve content ideation and reduce creative bottlenecks. And 57% are using AI data analysis tools, which are helping them analyze attribution, create custom dashboards and reports, and forecast ROI.

Chelsea on investment consideration: “Hiring a specialist might be more expensive, but it will allow you to scale in a way that you're not able to do if you don't have one.”

Measure and grow

When regularly conducting marketing research, track: 

• Which research insights drive content performance
• ROI from data-driven content campaigns 
• Time-to-market for research-backed content 
• Feedback cycles 
• Audience response to data-driven narratives

After conducting market research, turn results into different content formats to make data more engaging and increase reach — but make sure data is accurate across all formats.

‍Chelsea on visualization strategy: “Not everything needs a visualization, so be careful that the visualizations you do include in the final report are either compelling. They're telling a story.”

Start integrating data into your content marketing team

Market research teams are moving from siloed expertise to shared skills. These integrated data-driven content teams are moving faster, creating more compelling content, and getting more value out of their investments. The choice is between continuing with disparate teams and dealing with handoff headaches, or creating a collaborative team structure that turns research into content that resonates.

See how we can work together on your next data-driven research report.