Since it’s an election year, I think it’s appropriate to begin this column with one of my favorite movie lines from Michael Richie’s 1972 classic, “The Candidate.”

When Robert Redford’s character fares poorly in the primary of a California senatorial campaign, he is told to make changes or risk being humiliated in the general election by his opponent. Redford reverses his stance on several key issues and eventually defeats the incumbent. After Redford delivers his acceptance speech, he sits in a daze and asks his campaign staff, “Now what do we do?”

Have you ever felt that way at the conclusion of a product launch, trade show or press tour?

Like political campaigns, successful PR programs aren’t built on one-night stands – they can take months, even years, for a company and its products to gain traction. The Apple iPod, for example, has been around for years, but the marketing hype didn’t enter high gear until the masses started using MP3 players. Satellite radio is being featured on the covers of Forbes and Fortune Magazine these days, even though the top two companies in the category have less than 2 million registered users.

Launching new companies is difficult enough, but it takes the right combination of innovation, persistence, vision and luck to successfully introduce a new product category. Marketing guru Geoffrey Moore describes this phenomenon as “crossing the chasm.” The chasm is what separates an early market dominated by a few visionary customers to a mainstream market dominated by a large block of customers who are predominately pragmatic in nature.

Industry analysts can play a huge role in helping companies cross the chasm and I can’t think of a company that wouldn’t want to be listed as a leader in a Gartner Research quadrant. But gaining access to that elusive magic quadrant will require an effort that rivals any political campaign.

The political landscape is littered with millionaires who couldn’t buy themselves an election. Similarly, the tech landscape is filled with companies that wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars on analyst research they didn’t need in the hopes that their expenditures would ultimately result in coverage by these influential pundits.

That isn’t exactly how this game is played.

Industy analysts like Gartner Research and META Group are in the business of interpreting original research and providing advice to their paid customers, which consist primarily of decision-makers at large companies. Your company can make an analyst’s job easier by providing him or her with data about the market, information about your product and service offerings, and access to customers.

The ideal analyst relations program should accomplish the following objectives, according to Knowledge Capital Group (KCG), the leading technology analyst relations consultancy:

• Targets the right analysts
• Helps companies spend money with the right analyst firms
• Builds a contact strategy and plan
• Nominates an interactor team to execute the plan effectively
• Arms the team with the best presentations
• Trains the team in analyst interactions
• Integrates analyst relations activities with the sales force
• Measures results of the program to demonstrate ROI

If you are trying to gain a quick snapshot of which analysts are covering your space, Analyst Views (www.analystviews.com), a paid service from Bitpipe, allows you to search on a company or category for free. This search will list available reports, the source of the report and the name of the author. It’s a great way to build a quick list of the most influential analysts.

But the list alone does not make the program. KCG offers an affordable service that benchmarks the analyst firms and identifies the right individual analysts to target. KCG will support this benchmark with onsite training and consulting and will make recommendations on the right mix of research and consulting services to purchase from particular firms.

Before you invest a dime in an analyst firm, however, we recommend meeting directly with the analysts as part of a “try before you buy” tour. Different firms provide different functions – you may want to use one firm for its research and consulting services and another to author white papers and market perspectives that highlight your company. Other analysts might be earmarked for customer/prospect events or to comment on your company’s announcements.

The final component is to compare the audiences of the various analyst firms to your own target customers and business partners. If your market is mid-tier companies, then large enterprise research firms like Gartner Research may not be as important as smaller niche players. Conversely, decision-makers at larger Fortune 500 companies probably won’t be impressed by statistics or referrals from a tiny analyst firm whose reputation is no larger than your own organization.

Analyst relations can satisfy many marketing needs for you. But like any other marketing tool, they can’t be everything to everyone. If you begin with a clear understanding of what you need, why you need it and which firms can help you achieve your goals, then you likely won’t be asking, “Now what?” when you analyze your investment in analyst relations.

Anyway, that’s my two-cent’s worth