Long cycles.
A qualification, an audit and a technical transfer sit between the first impression and the purchase order. Attribution models built for e-commerce report on the last click of a two-year process.
Brand tracking for life sciences
BSC surveys decision makers in your category and asks which companies they know and which they would prefer. Repeat that on a fixed sample and you have a measurable, comparable read on what your marketing is actually building.
Illustrative, not measured data.
The questionnaire
Three waves, one frame
Illustrative, not measured data.
The problem
A qualification, an audit and a technical transfer sit between the first impression and the purchase order. Attribution models built for e-commerce report on the last click of a two-year process.
Procurement, quality and the technical lead influence the decision without ever filling in a form. They cannot be tracked, but they can be surveyed.
At any moment most of the category is not buying. Campaigns aimed only at the five percent in market ignore the ninety-five who will decide later and are forming an opinion now.
The absence of a lead is not evidence of the absence of an effect.
The method
Which companies in this category do you know? Unaided first, then aided against a fixed list.
Which of these would you prefer to work with on your next project?
Question wording, list order and sample frame stay fixed across waves. Anything that changes between waves is documented, because a comparison is only worth as much as the thing that stayed the same.
Why it predicts
Stated preference and intention are the strongest available predictors of later action. Ajzen's theory of planned behaviour (1991) formalised what category research keeps confirming: attitude and intention precede the act, and they can be measured while the act is still years away.
That matters here because of lag. Brand work reaches people who will start a project in eighteen months, so its effect appears in awareness first, in preference second and in pipeline last. Measuring only pipeline means judging the campaign on the one indicator that responds last.
Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50(2), 179-211.
Illustrative sequence, not measured data.
What you get
Awareness and preference for your company and the category set, with the change since the last wave and the margin of error.
Where you stand against the named alternatives your buyers actually consider.
By role, company size, region and buying involvement, so a shift can be traced to a group rather than to noise.
Your activity plotted against the wave line, so the question “did it move anything” has an answer with a date on it.
How it runs
Define the category, the competitor set and the respondent profile.
Wave 1 in field. This is the line every later wave is read against.
Findings, benchmark and the method appendix.
Same questions, same frame, so the comparison holds.
A single wave is a photograph. The value starts at wave two.
Who this is for
If you already know your awareness number and how it moved last year, you do not need us. Most companies in this category do not.
FAQ
A programme begins with the category, the companies your buyers compare you with, a sample plan, a fixed question set and the smallest change the study is able to detect. Everything after that is repetition on the same frame.