Perception Studies and Measuring IR

The reason it must be third-party and anonymous is not cosmetic. Investors will tell an independent interviewer things they will never say on a management call: that they don't trust your capital-allocation discipline, that they think your CEO oversells, that they can't build a model of your unit economics from your disclosures. AttributionAttributionA framework for assigning credit to the touchpoints that contributed to a conversion, so you can measure which channels and interactions actually drive results.View full definition → kills candor. When you run this in-house, you get politeness; when you outsource it, you get the truth—and the truth is the point.

What a good study actually asks

Weak studies ask investors to rate you on a five-point scale across generic attributes. Strong studies extract the market's *decision model*. The questions that generate signal:

• "Walk me through the thesis for owning (or not owning) this stock." You are testing whether holders can articulate the bull case in the same terms you would. Divergence here is the single most important finding.
• "What would have to be true for you to double your position? To exit entirely?" This surfaces the specific catalysts and disqualifiers the market is watching—your real KPIs, as scored by capital.
• "Where do you think management is least credible?" Every management team has a credibility deficit somewhere—guidance accuracy, M&A track record, cost discipline. Naming it is the first step to repairing it.
• "Who do you consider the best-run comparable, and why?" This reveals your true peer set in the market's mind, which is frequently not the peer set in your proxy.

The output you want is not a satisfaction scoresatisfaction scoreCustomer Satisfaction Score, a direct measure of satisfaction captured right after a specific interaction or experience, usually on a short rating scale.View full definition →. It is a perception-vs-intent map: for each pillar of your strategy, what management intends the market to believe, what the market actually believes, and the size and cause of the gap. A gap driven by *disagreement* (they understand and disbelieve) requires a different response than a gap driven by *confusion* (they can't follow the disclosure). The first is a credibility problem you fix with proof points over time; the second is a communication problem you can fix by next quarter.

Timing and cadence

Run a full study every 12–18 months, and always in two specific situations: 6–9 months before a major strategic pivot or capital markets event (so you can pre-position the narrative), and immediately after a period of pronounced share-price weakness you can't fully explain. Between formal studies, treat every sell-side note and every question on your earnings call as a low-cost continuous perception signal. The formal study calibrates; the ongoing flow monitors drift.

Targeting: Engineering the Shareholder Register

Most IR teams are reactive—they meet whoever requests a meeting. That is portfolio management by inboundinboundA strategy that attracts prospects organically via valuable content (blog, SEO, social) rather than interrupting them.View full definition →. The advanced discipline is targeting: deliberately identifying the investors who *should* own you and concentrating engagement there. The premise is that your shareholder base is not given; it is, over a multi-year horizon, something you construct.

Start from your own investment case. Your strategy implies an ideal holder profile: a time horizon (a company mid-turnaround wants patient capital, not fast money that will punish the first noisy quarter), a style (growth, GARP, value, income), a typical position size and turnover, and a decision process you can actually feed with the disclosures you're willing to make.

Building the target list

The mechanical version—screening 13F filings for funds that hold your peers but not you—is table stakes and increasingly automated by your IR platform. The judgment lives in the qualification layer:

• Fit over size. A $400M fund that will build a 4% position and hold for three years is worth more targeting effort than a $40B generalist who might take a 0.1% position and flip it. Weight the list by *potential ownership as a share of your float*, not by AUM.
• Style-strategy match. Targeting a deep-value manager when you're a high-multiple compounder wastes everyone's time; they will anchor on a valuation you'll never trade at. The best target is the investor whose framework *rewards* the specific thing your strategy delivers.
• The switching cost. Investors who own your closest comparable but not you are the highest-probability conversions—they already understand the space and have done the sector work. Your job is a narrower one: explain why you, not them.

Measuring targeting, not just doing it

Targeting is only a discipline if you close the loop. Tag every targeted investor and track the funnelfunnelThe customer journey from awareness to purchase, typically Awareness, Interest, Consideration, Decision, Action, with prospects narrowing at each stage.View full definition →: targeted → engaged → position initiated → position held at 4+ quarters. A targeting program that generates meetings but no register change is theater. The metric that matters is conversion of targeted prospects into durable holders, and the diagnostic when it fails is equally valuable: if targets consistently engage and then decline, the perception study will usually tell you why.

Engagement Quality and the Metrics That Lie

The industrial CFO's 47 meetings are the archetype of a vanity metric: a number that rises with effort, feels like progress, and correlates weakly with the outcome that matters. Meeting count, roadshow days, website hits, and conference attendance all measure input. They tell you the machine is running, not that it's producing anything.

From activity to effect

Reframe every IR metric around one question: *did the market's understanding or the shareholder base improve?* This produces a hierarchy:

Vanity (input): number of meetings, roadshow cities, press releases, followers.

Better (throughput): quality of the audience met (decision-makers vs. junior analysts; targeted vs. inboundinboundA strategy that attracts prospects organically via valuable content (blog, SEO, social) rather than interrupting them.View full definition →), depth of engagement (did the meeting produce follow-up diligence, a model request, a site visit?), and analyst estimate dispersion (tight consensus signals a well-understood story; wide dispersion signals confusion or genuine disagreement).

Best (outcome): register composition versus your ideal profile, the *durability* of holdings (turnover of your top 25 holders), the narrative gap measured by perception study, and the extent to which your valuation multiple can be explained by fundamentals rather than an unexplained discount.

The discipline is to force the outcome metrics into the board deck alongside—or instead of—the activity metrics. When a director asks "is IR working?", the answer is a change in register quality and a narrowing narrative gap, not a meeting tally.

The engagement-quality scorecard

For each meaningful interaction, capture three things your CRMCRMCustomer Relationship Management: software and strategy to manage and analyse customer interactions throughout their lifecycle.View full definition → should already support: *who* (decision-maker seniority and whether they were a strategic target), *what moved* (a specific question resolved, a concern raised, a follow-up requested), and *the resulting perception signal* (did they leave more or less likely to own you, in the IRO's judgment). Aggregated over a quarter, this converts a pile of meetings into a readout: which concerns recur, which segmentssegmentsDividing a market into distinct groups of customers who share similar needs, characteristics or behaviours, so each group can be served with a tailored approach.View full definition → are converting, and where the story is landing versus sliding off.

A subtle but powerful metric: inbound question drift. Track the topics analysts and investors raise unprompted over time. When the questions migrate from "explain your margin structure" to "how large can this new segment get," the market has internalized the base business and is now underwriting the growth option—precisely the shift a good narrative is designed to produce. Question drift is perception change you can observe weekly, for free.

Closing the Loop: From Measurement Back to Narrative

Measurement is inert unless it changes what you say and do. The final discipline—and the one that separates a reporting function from a strategic one—is the feedback loop that routes perception data back into the narrative, the disclosure, and sometimes the strategy itself.

The three responses to a narrative gap

When a perception study reveals a gap, the CFO has exactly three levers, and choosing correctly is the whole game:

1. Communicate differently. If the gap is confusion—the market can't follow your segment reporting, can't model your unit economics—the fix is disclosure. Add the KPIKPIKey Performance Indicator, a measurable value that shows how effectively you're achieving a specific objective, tracked over time against a target.View full definition → they keep asking for. Reframe the growth algorithm. This is fast and low-cost, and it's the right answer more often than executives assume.

2. Prove it over time. If the gap is a credibility deficit—they've heard the promise before and been disappointed—no amount of communication closes it. You close it by hitting guidance for four consecutive quarters, or by executing the buyback you announced. Credibility is repaid in results, not slides. The CFO's job here is *patience plus consistency*, and the perception study run 12 months later is the proof of repayment.

3. Change the strategy. Occasionally the market is right and you are wrong. If sophisticated, well-aligned holders consistently reject a piece of your strategy—a diworsification, an overpriced acquisition thesis, a capital-allocation habit—that is a signal to the CFO and board, not a communication problem to be spun away. The market's aggregated judgment is sometimes better information than your own conviction.

The failure mode is treating every gap as a communication problem (lever 1) when it is really a credibility or strategy problem (levers 2 and 3). More disclosure cannot fix a broken promise or a bad plan.

Instrumenting the loop

Make the loop explicit in your operating rhythm. Each perception study should produce a short set of narrative commitments—specific changes to disclosure, messaging, or KPIs—with owners and deadlines, reviewed at the next study. The earnings call becomes a testing ground: script the two or three messages designed to close the identified gaps, then measure via question drift and analyst notes whether they landed. IR stops being a broadcast and becomes a controlled experiment, iterated quarter over quarter, in shrinking the distance between what you mean and what the market believes.

Key Takeaways

1. Instrument the narrative gap, not the activity. Commission an anonymous, third-party perception study every 12–18 months whose core output is a perception-vs-intent mapmapUsing software to automate repetitive marketing tasks and campaigns, enabling personalisation at scale across channels like email, web, and social.View full definition →—and always diagnose whether a gap is confusion (fix with disclosure), disbelief (fix with results over time), or a signal your strategy is wrong.

2. Engineer the register through targeting, and measure conversion. Weight targets by potential ownership as a share of float and by style-strategy fit, not by AUM. Tag every target and track the funnelfunnelThe customer journey from awareness to purchase, typically Awareness, Interest, Consideration, Decision, Action, with prospects narrowing at each stage.View full definition → through to holders who stay four-plus quarters; meetings without register change are theater.

3. Retire the vanity metrics in the board deck. Replace meeting counts and roadshow days with register composition versus ideal, top-25-holder turnover, analyst estimate dispersion, and the measured narrative gap.

4. Watch question drift as a free, continuous perception signal. When unprompted investor questions migrate from base-business mechanics to the growth option, your narrative is working—track this weekly between formal studies.

5. Close the loop with named commitments. Convert each study into specific disclosure and messaging changes with owners and deadlines, test them on the next earnings call, and verify them at the following study. IR is a controlled experiment, not a broadcast.