Simply put, marketing intelligence is a broad term that relates to data and technologies available to resources. Marketing intelligence is data or information relevant to the company when creating campaigns. Once the data is collected, it is analyzed, helping marketers make informed business decisions. Decisions can be made on aspects such as competitor behavior, product and consumer trends. These measures allow an organization to remain relevant and diversify its offerings.
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How Important Is Market Intelligence For My Business?
We can not stress the importance of marketing intelligence enough. It’s what makes your marketing efforts worthwhile. And ensures that your conversion rate remains steady. It acts as a guiding light that helps your company achieve anything and everything.
This measure helps your internal teams make educated business decisions. By collecting consumer data and analyzing industry trends, marketers can understand what’s working and what isn’t.
It gives businesses a competitive advantage over their industry rivals and even educates their target audience about various product offerings. Not only the present but you can apply marketing intelligence to future goal setting as well.
You should set clear goals beforehand, which can help improve the efficiency and scope of your marketing efforts. Clearly define the role you want data to play in your company’s operations. This can help you extract the right data when creating a marketing mix.
Constituents of Market Intelligence
Competitor Intelligence
Pillars of Competitor Intelligence
Competitor intelligence can be explained as the collection of data. This pertains to competitor analysis using ethical methods. Such as government databases and public records.
This technique is majorly used to enter a market segment in a foreign country. Where understanding the competition becomes far more important. Understanding the country’s culture and what brands are doing to ensure survival is key when devising a marketing strategy.
Product Intelligence
Product intelligence is gathering data. This relates to studying about competitor products or similar offerings available in the market. You need to be smart about this! If an apparel company has stopped outsourcing materials.
It means that they are making it in-house, which would cause a reduction in price and improved quality in the long run. Consider such information before coming up with a marketing strategy. This measure will enable your company to strategically launch models at the right time and price.
Market Understanding
This concept relates to knowing about your company, market trends, and segments your business intends to target. Understanding consumer demand is crucial to determining your company’s market position.
This would indirectly impact your revenue and, inevitably, the market share. Market research can provide relevant information about your target audiences, such as age group and income class. Allowing you to create an effective marketing strategy suitable for various income groups.
Marketing Intelligence Strategies
Choose Competitors to Benchmark
Businesses should conduct competitive analysis. This will help the company identify both direct and indirect competitors. Organizations that manufacture products similar to yours are not your only rivals in the industry.
Be sure to pay attention to companies that are targeting the same audience as you. Include industry leaders in your competitor’s list. This will help you learn and acquire knowledge from their initiatives. When this is done thoroughly, it can inspire you to create better products with increased functions and improved aesthetics.
You should judge your competitors on the following aspects:
- Unique Selling Point
- Core Competencies
- Market Positioning
- SWOT Analysis
- Marketing Mix
Rate each one of your competitors (either direct or indirect) as per the above-mentioned metrics. This measure will allow you to better understand your rivals competing for the attention of target audience members.
Choose The Right Metrics
When creating a marketing intelligence strategy, make sure that you consider the right metrics. This is a prerequisite for establishing clear goals that goes a long way in evaluating the campaign’s effectiveness. Metrics being introduced should be brand and performance-centric. The former should focus on audience insights such as demographics and digital trends. Whereas the latter should focus on sales volume, cost of sales and customer acquisition rate. It’s crucial to set KPIs to track the progress of your goals.
Here are some KPIs that you need to be aware of:
- Sales Results: The efforts made by an organization should either directly or indirectly impact sales revenue. This is a culmination of online sales or ones made through your store.
- Qualitative Feedback: This can be done through either distributing surveys or asking customers for feedback individually. You can schedule interviews with key personnel or NPS (Net Promoter Score) surveys. Input the score in your system and determine the nature of customer feedback.
- Customer Retention: This is an important aspect that ensures your business stays afloat in tough economic times. It has an indirect connection with marketing intelligence. Meaning that the campaign should not only be effective in acquiring new clients but also retain the existing ones.
Identify Sources to Gather Data
Once you have chosen the right metrics, gather audience and competitor intelligence data. Tools such as Google Analytics, Facebook Audience Insights or third-party platforms can be used to gather relevant information about your target audience.
But if you want to enter a new market segment, data collected from these sources wouldn’t be of much use. In such cases, consider using data collection solutions such as Gartner, IDC, or Forrester. There’s no harm in spending money on these solutions as they are beneficial in the long run. Such platforms would give you better insights into the market’s current condition, allowing you to develop targeted marketing campaigns.
The Journey of Insights Into Actions
The purpose of marketing intelligence data is directed at generating meaningful insights. This information is the cornerstone of the decision-making process. Hence, paying deep attention to the methods used to share insights is vital.
Here are some techniques you can use:
- Statistical Analysis: Collect insights on metrics such as engagement rate and benchmark them against the industry average. This will help you clearly understand where you stand in the market.
- Data Proof: Your organization should pay attention to the credibility of your data through the power of visualization. It should showcase your entire analysis and even highlight the key insights. So that the stakeholders can make informed business decisions. Don’t forget to mention the sources from where data was collected to build authenticity with the target audience.
- Follow Recommended Action: If insights reveal that the sales of a particular product are declining, follow the recommendations on what should be done to improve revenue. This aspect would have a ripple effect on your internal operations and ensures that they remain streamlined.
Methodologies of Marketing Intelligence
Surveys
Mobile-responsive surveys
This type of research involves a set of questions put together in a concise manner. It helps gather data from the target market. And analyze the same variables to create a valuable market intelligence strategy. Ideally, conduct a survey of a large group of people to ensure that the results are reliable. Conduct online surveys as it ensures seamless collection of data.
Data collection through online surveys is economical. And makes sure that the results are authenticated in real-time. With the wide-scale awareness of this method, businesses would opt for this technique. As it would allow them to quickly gather results without facing much hassle. In today’s digital era, the majority of the target audience prefers online communication.
Making such surveys is the best way to gather feedback from audience members. Such a technique is important when you are on the way to launching a new product. And are keen to understand what consumers would think. Although still popular but in-person surveys have declined in recent years.
But it’s ideal if you want to ensure that the results aren’t falsified. In-person surveys work like a charm in high-traffic locations such as malls. You wouldn’t need to continuously ask for follow-ups or request customers to fill out the survey.
As everything would be done before your eyes. This is why this technique has a high response rate. But compiling data in an understandable form would be tasking.
Analysis
Once data is collected, it is time for analysis. There’s no point in gathering information without any meaning. This is where intelligence comes in. It’s data that becomes the foundation of your action.
An analysis is performed on the collected data. Adding meaning to the company’s internal operations. There are tools available online. That not only allow you to collect data but also analyze it. Using advanced analytical methods.
Analyzing the information collected helps you transform it into valuable market intelligence. Thus enabling a company to understand target market opinions, trends and competition. It also helps in identifying areas which require improvements and upgrades.
You can use advanced analytical methods such as the following:
- Conjoint Analysis
- Maxdiff Analysis
- Gap Analysis
- Trend Analysis
Text And Sentiment Analysis
Text and Sentiment Analysis allow a company to understand the market accurately. Allowing them to make strategic business decisions. It’s vital for your company to monitor the market conditions on a regular basis. This enables your business to stay competitive. And maintain its market share while also retaining customers. If needed, you can also make amendments to the product’s features and design.
Reporting
Once the required information is extracted, it’s time to convey it to the relevant stakeholders. Who can understand the information and make an educated decision? Using reports and presentations is an important part of market intelligence. A presentation uses the aid of visual infographics. To help a business understand markets in an easier manner.
The non-technical stakeholders can understand a presentation in which visuals are incorporated. Make sure to double-check the data before inputting any values. The wrong interpretation of information can land your company in a world of trouble. You should use graphs and charts when presenting data to stakeholders.
Advantages of Marketing Intelligence
Understanding the market can lead a company to success in no time. The concept of market intelligence pertains to gathering data in real-time. From the market and further understanding the customers, trends and behaviors. Thus enabling a company to stay competitive and meet market demands.
In today’s competitive marketplace, the attack on consumers is from all sides. By either company, that is your direct or indirect competition. Hence It is important to understand when the customer exhibits dissatisfaction. And the reasons behind it can prevent the loss of customers. It can help you analyze and give you insights into the areas of improvement.
Thus helping you retain clients and understand customer lifetime value. An effective marketing intelligence strategy helps improve your existing sales process. If you have a variety of product offerings, identify which ones are meant for each target segment. Market intelligence helps you determine segmentation. Allowing your company to understand the success rate of different products.
Market intelligence helps boost process efficiency and ensures that there are no disruptions. This identification of gaps and giving actionable insights to develop crucial strategies. It’s all possible due to the power of data and analytics. Market intelligence also provides businesses with a competitive advantage. It allows companies to keep a watchful eye on the competition and upcoming trends. Allowing ventures to penetrate the market or even increase the market share.
What Does The Future Look Like?
The entire market intelligence process has now become much easier. With the aid of reliable and powerful market intelligence software. It can effectively enable a company to penetrate a market successfully. It allows companies to determine market segmentation and understand the competition. And the market as a whole. Slowly, traditional sectors, such as the retail industry, would see a wide-scale implementation of marketing intelligence. The sector would be more advanced and powerful than before. Marketing intelligence would create a unified view of their customers. It would happen at a personal level across various channels. This omnichannel technique is going to require new roles and tools. Making customers the major focus of business operations. Once implemented, this technology would have a ripple effect on every other sector.
Featured Image: Martechlive
