Metrics That Matter

Summer Fridays may be in full effect, but that doesn’t mean the expectations of your clients are any slower or lower. As August heat and humidity rises, so does the opportunity to influence or shift how metrics are integrated into fall campaigns, and goals for Q4 and year-end.

Are there opportunities to consider new, quantitative metrics in your evaluation process?

Business decisions based on instinct make great cocktail hour stories. It is true that many entrepreneurs, thought leaders, and even Fortune 500 CEOs talk about having to hone their abilities over time and failure. But they will also tell you that understanding the data, knowing their business and customer was equally important.

Sluggish summer sales may be cyclical for your business, but have you explored how your customer base might be amenable to different offerings or schedules that increase orders or foot traffic?

This is where diving into customer sentiment and perception data can result in new knowledge that can help increase revenue and performance in the last weeks of the season. It can also enable you to make adjustments for the autumn or make changes in the offseason to be better prepared for the next “peak season” for your business.

“They said” is the enemy of informed decision making. Who is they? One person, that spoke to your staff? 10? 20? Inflating the importance of a single piece of feedback is what businesses can avoid by relying on quantitative data sets that measure different aspects of customer sentiment and perception.

There are six well-established and marketplace metrics to consider:

• Brand Presence Analysis– brand awareness and amplification measured through mentions, reach, and share-of-voice.
• Message Influence Score (MIS)– Measure the value of the message sent out to audiences based on their response.
• Source Influence Score (SIS) – Measures the value and trust of a message source; identifies channels where the brand message is best received.
• Net Promoter Score (NPS)– Measurement of loyalty and willingness to refer business to a friend; segments audience data into three categories: Promoters, Passives, and Detractors.
• Overall Satisfaction (OSAT)– Primary metric to gauge a customer’s overall satisfaction with a company, business, or organization.
• Quality of Product/Service (QPS)– Measures the consumer’s sentiment towards a particular company’s business product or service.

Are any of these in your metric mix? Clicks, shares, and likes matter but what your customers are saying and feeling matter even more. What are you really measuring?