Back To The Basics

“Going back to the basics strengthens your foundation” – Anonymous

I wish I knew who it was that said this, as it is very on point. Going back to the basics means just that: The basics. Ground zero. The fundamentals for whatever discipline your business follows.

With every discipline there is a starting position — the thing or things you should learn first. In learning these, you can then advance to the next, more difficult part of that discipline. This seems to be easily understood, and yet everyday businesses try to skip sections or whole parts entirely.

Jim Rohn appropriately said, “Success is neither magical nor mysterious. Success is the natural consequence of consistently applying the basic fundamentals.”

For companies to grow, they have to change, adapt and evolve. Oftentimes this dilutes the original goals, notions and practices that made the company so effective in the first place. Industry Week published an excellent article a few years ago that addressed the importance of fundamentals.

At Metric Centric, we work with clients who sometimes overthink things. In many cases, they’re concentrating on the wrong aspects of the business. However, with some simple back-to-basics steps we’re able to help them reset and refocus on the proper priorities.

An absolute key to success is to research your market to understand your customer’s willingness to buy. Do they like your products and services? Are they buying something else that’s similar? Who do they follow to become more informed about best practices and new market trends?

By leveraging social listening practices and analyzing conversational data across the web, our team is able to help ANY business understand what the marketplace is saying about their brands, products or services. We quantify the impact of consumer sentiment and perceptions towards a business to provide clarity into:

• Diagnosing a brand’s health and marketplace presence.
• Identifying key topics of interest for industry insights.
• Analyzing competing brands or products in the market.
• Reporting on the perceptions towards an existing campaign.
• Monitoring audience response to a conference or event.

Metric Centric’s Consumer Voice (CV) Snapshot is an easily deployable research tool that provides an entry-level programmatic solution for marketplace assessments. In other words, it is a fast, focused and affordable option for any organization that wants to analyze marketplace sentiment and perception data. The following are a few organizations that have successfully leveraged and benefited from our CV Snapshot program:

• A mid-cap private equity group partnered with us to analyze global financial news platforms for marketplace presence by specific topics of interest. A consumer sentiment study was developed by analyzing online conversations to understand the professional perceptions towards several news platforms. With insights in hand, the PE group was able to ask executive leaders about their primary objectives and initiatives for 2022. Eventually, the PE group made an investment to take a majority ownership stake into one of the financial news platforms we analyzed.
• A biopharmaceutical consortium group wanted to better understand the perceptions and sentiment towards consortia pre- and during the COVID-19 pandemic era. They wanted to analyze the likeliness of participation from academic and corporate professionals. Our conversational analytics identified which consortia are top-of-mind, the influencers amplifying the attendance at certain biopharma events, and the topics that are most important to attendees. With our CV Snapshot, the client can develop better messaging in communications and adjust the curriculum for their consortium to the interests of their target audiences.
• A B2B chemical manufacturing company needed to recognize how their industrial lubricant products were applied across automotive and aviation industry sectors. Our CV Snapshot program produced sentiment and perception insights from conversational data collected from design engineers and maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) professionals. These insights will help the company better understand pain points with end-users as they apply industrial lubrication to machinery. The study will also guide the marketing and communications team to understand where their educational content needs to be present to capture the attention of targeted end-users.

In each of these programs, our clients were preparing strategic initiatives (or investments) in 2022. They understood and appreciated the importance of studying essential data points instead of relying on just gut instincts. Kudos to them for consistently practicing the fundamentals and going back to the basics.

When preparing your own business and communications strategies, reflect on the fundamentals that helped you to establish a foundation for your success. If you discover that your organization is lagging — or just off path a bit — let’s connect to discuss how our social listening and conversational analytic programs can help.