The best financial services thought leadership can shed new light on industry trends and help the market prepare for the challenges of the future. Those firms that do it well can become a go-to source of insight on the issues shaping markets.

However, spending the time and investment to create quality research is only part of the process. In today’s crowded content market and fragmented media landscape, the ability to get research amplified by the right journalists, in the right publications, is more important than ever.

But here’s the snag – dispatching a press release to journalists is no guarantee of publication. Today’s journalists are time-poor, work to tight deadlines and are pelted with a steady stream of press releases, the vast majority of which are rejected after a cursory glance.

So what will make a journalist sit up and take notice of a press release? And what do journalists want from research studies?

Newsworthy hook 

Journalists want a compelling story that readers will find interesting, informative and engaging. But above all, it needs to be newsworthy. And that means it needs to be ‘new’ and deliver fresh insights.

During research design, it’s important to consider how research themes may be linked to major current events – or even seek to get ahead of the news agenda by considering second and third order effects of market-moving events.

At CoreData, we’ve generated media coverage over the years from in-house studies revealing attitudes to geopolitical and macro events, including the Russia-Ukraine war, stagflation and more recently Trump’s tariffs. The key here is to move quickly in identifying the unanswered questions for market participants as events unfold and to execute the research process swiftly. And in this regard, our highly-engaged panel of industry professionals gives us a real edge.

A focus on longer-term industry themes and emerging trends can also be effectively tied into the news agenda, as PGIM have repeatedly shown with their tail risk research and Robeco with their annual climate investment survey.

Research findings should be topical but also released in a timely manner that takes into account the news cycle and important events in the political and economic calendar. For instance, it’s unwise to send anything out on big news days such as government budgets or major regulatory announcements when journalists will be working flat out on breaking stories.

Thought-provoking findings

Research findings which are thought-provoking and stir debate are more likely to get media exposure.

Sometimes this means being bold enough to report the negative findings and risks related to a particular trend, such as the rise of cryptocurrencies or artificial intelligence, as well as discussing the opportunities.

Studies with contrarian or provocative findings that challenge existing assumptions and tackle tough questions are often more impactful than those simply repeating known truths or using an overly-optimistic framing.

But being contrarian isn’t the only way to be thought-provoking. Insights that predict future trends and scenarios can also garner significant attention if there is robust research underpinning them. This is because industry leaders are always seeking informed forward-looking perspectives that can help with long-term planning and decision-making.

Data-driven insights

British mathematician Clive Humby declared in 2006 that “Data is the new oil.” And data can certainly help grease the media machine, particularly in the financial press where numbers are the native language and statistics speak loud and clear.

Strong data is the backbone of robust research findings, providing an evidence-based approach to substantiate the narrative. Data from quantitative research studies lend credibility and authority to a press release, and including key data points within headlines can grab journalists’ attention.

Journalists often include these data points in headlines of published articles, as seen in these pieces based on CoreData findings about US trade policies and UK regulations.   

Credible findings 

While data-led findings are an essential component of press releases, the data must be accurate, credible and reliable. Journalists need to trust the data before they cite it.

As such, survey findings must be backed up and explained by a clear, comprehensive and transparent methodology. This should include the survey’s sample size, who was surveyed (investor types and regions), when they were surveyed and by what means. It can also include the margin of error in the sample for additional clarity.

Attaching the study itself – either as a full whitepaper or snapshot report – lends further credibility and allows journalists to pick out findings not included in the press release.

For sponsored research studies commissioned by asset managers and other providers, it’s important for press releases to contain balanced and objective findings. Research results must be presented in a way that enriches industry knowledge rather than feel like a sales pitch or marketing push. Journalists have built-in radars that swiftly detect anything that sounds remotely salesy or overly-promotional.

The human factor

The finance industry is awash with numbers and number-crunchers. In this landscape of quantification, human interest stories often stand out as they satisfy our innate curiosity about people and their struggles, successes, desires and motivations.

Within the finance industry, as with any industry, people want to understand what their peers are doing and how they are dealing with similar challenges and opportunities. They want to learn from peers and compare and benchmark themselves against peers. And they want to stay abreast of what others are doing. This is one reason why people move stories often dominate the ‘most read’ sections of business news websites.

Research studies tapping into the feelings and thoughts of investors and advisers thus hold strong appeal to industry participants and by extension journalists. Our findings based on human interest stories have generated wide exposure. These include the impact of regulations on adviser mental health and adviser fears about being replaced by AI.

People are interested in people. So research studies focusing on the human factor will resonate with journalists.

Punchy prose

Financial journalists seek strong stories supported by strong stats. But the story may still go untold if the insights are not communicated effectively. Press releases should be short and sweet and written in a concise style that summarises key findings in clear and digestible English. And they must break down complex financial information into easy-to-understand copy.

Journalists will decide if a press release is newsworthy after seconds of skim-reading. So you’ve got to pack a punch and do so promptly. As such, a press release should ideally be a one-pager and structured so that the main findings jump off the page. Research results must be presented in a clear format so journalists don’t need to sift through text to locate the salient findings.

A press release should have a short and snappy headline, followed by a few bullet points displaying the key data findings. It then needs a strong intro neatly summing up what’s interesting about the results before fleshing out the details of the study. And it should include an impactful quote from a senior figure succinctly spelling out why the findings matter, what they mean for the industry and why they are newsworthy.

Tailored approach   

What is newsworthy to one journalist may be irrelevant to another. Research findings therefore need to be tailored to the individual journalist and their particular beat. It’s no use sending a press release about institutional investors to a mortgage journalist. Press releases must be aligned to the interests of a journalist’s readers.

Rather than blanket send-outs, the findings of large global studies can be sliced and diced to target journalists covering different patches in different parts of the world. With a global institutional investor study, for instance, multiple press releases can be created based on regional and investor type results.

The last word

Ultimately, research studies that generate headlines in the financial press are often powered by data-driven, actionable and thought-provoking insights. At CoreData, we pride ourselves not only on the quality of our data, but also on our ability to translate data into compelling stories.

Will Roberts is editorial director at CoreData Group, a global specialist financial services research and strategy consultancy. To find out more about our research programmes you can reach him at [email protected]