Company Background

Critical Mention is a B2B web app that helps public relations professionals monitor, review, and curate news stories about their company.

Goal

Acquisition. The board of directors at Critical Mention had hired a new CEO with the singular goal of selling the company. The new CEO soon decided the media monitoring product needed a complimentary product that would allow users to not only monitor for stories about their company, but to search for journalists and influencers who might be interested in publishing said stories.

Outcome

One year after release the media contact database had been added to 300+ contracts, added an additional $400K in revenue, and saw an 80% renewal rate.

Two years after release, the company was successfully acquired by global competitor Onclusive.

Process

Competitive analysis was key. There are many similar products on the market that our sales team regularly heard complaints about. Preliminary user interviews and usability testing of prototypes insured we were building what users needed and that it would easy to use. The number one complaint we heard was about data accuracy. Journalists change jobs often enough that records can easily become out of date.

Solution

The product launched with extensive filtering options to search the database of nearly 300K media contacts. We were able to leverage the firsthand knowledge of our users to increase data accuracy by adding functionality that allowed users to suggest corrections. The option of simply flagging a record for review quick and general, while also being able to suggest specific data corrections allowed users to take as much time and gets as detailed as they desired.