Market research and market intelligence can be seen as two sides of one coin. Both are closely linked to functionality and go hand-in-hand. Market intelligence is the activity of understanding the market and a company's place within it. This includes gathering data from both internal and external sources, such as survey results and customer information, in order to gain insight. Market intelligence can also include looking at other published data and competitors to help you understand the business market research pricing of your product or service. Market intelligence is also useful in conducting competition analysis, and it helps you to identify your target markets.
This information can help your marketing team position your company in the market. Companies that value intelligence data might be able to make five times faster decisions. Market intelligence is the information that a company gathers about a market or industry in order to make business decisions and guide its competitive strategy. Market intelligence is a tool that allows you to learn more about your market, customers and competitors. It helps in estimating growth potential. This data can be gathered from many sources, including sales records, surveys, social networks, news websites, manufacturers and customers.
Businesses should use market intelligence to obtain data about the demographics and spending habits of their clients in order to create better social media ads. Companies can use market intelligence to build their brands and make better decisions about their products. Because the term "Marketing Intelligence" can be used to refer to a variety of concepts, as well as many technologies, databases and platforms, it is easy to misunderstand. We have created a comprehensive guide to help marketers understand marketing intelligence and its importance.
Marketing Intelligence - What Is It?
Marketing intelligence is data that helps the company's marketing operations. This data can be used to analyze market trends, competition activity and product and customer trend patterns. It also helps make informed decisions. Market intelligence is information that a company collects about the market in which they are currently operating or planning to enter. These facts help the company identify the market segment, penetration, as well as overall opportunity.
Marketing intelligence often includes competitive intelligence. This information focuses on the particular competitors of a company. This information can be used by executives to make informed business decisions. It includes current market share, prices, and consumer trends.
Market intelligence provides a thorough understanding of the market in which they are marketing. The other type of intelligence is business intelligence. This includes internal information such as productivity, business operations and sales. To give executives a better view of their target markets, business intelligence and market intelligence are becoming more closely linked.
Learning About Marketing Intelligence
A thorough understanding of industry status and changing customer landscape is one of the most important aspects that can impact an organization's ability to stay ahead of its competition. Marketers can use this data, also known as "Marketing Intelligence," to optimize their efforts and assess the market based on their own insights and those of other marketers.
Marketing Intelligence - Why Is It Important?
Marketing intelligence should guide your teams' decisions. Marketers can gain an in-depth understanding of consumer behavior and patterns by gathering and analyzing contextual data. This data can help businesses gain insight into their market and give them an edge over their competitors. Marketing intelligence is vital to provide your business with strong foundations on which all of your decisions can be made.
Marketing analytics can help you set future goals easier. Clear goals will make your marketing intelligence efforts more effective and complete. It is easier to find the right data for your media mix if you know exactly what function it will serve. Marketing intelligence considers setting your KPIs for your marketing intelligence. This will help you determine if your efforts are reaching your goals.
Quantitative KPIs
These KPIs can be measured immediately, making them the easiest to identify. These KPIs can also be used to analyze sales and your competitors' overall revenues. These include a review of product sales as well as a comparison between your company's overall revenue and that of your competitors.
Qualitative KPIs
These KPIs can be more difficult to quantify, but they provide teams with a better understanding of the marketing and commercial goals. Marketers have access to a variety of indicators, such as customer surveys, assessments, tests, and discussions.
These indicators can be used by your organization to evaluate the effectiveness of its commercial and marketing strategies. However, they can be difficult to quantify. You can use mail surveys, focus groups, consumer feedback, evaluations, response rates, and other data to determine the success or failure of your company. Marketing intelligence has two main goals. It helps you to expand your company and provides market information that will help you keep your leadership position after you reach the top.
Adding Market Intelligence To Your Business Model Can Bring You Many Benefits
Product Performance
Data Intelligence lets you analyze customer feedback about a product that is already on the market. It will tell you how the product is selling with your target audience, what the product's performance is in the marketplace, and how people feel about the utility offered by the company.
Modification To Product
Once the product is launched and has reached many users, it is time to reach consumers through different platforms. This will enable organizations to answer the following question: How can you improve your marketing intelligence of the product? What modifications can be made, or are there reengineering possibilities? How can they invent to extend the product's useful life?
The Audience's Desires
Market research can be a creative way to discover what the needs are of consumers in the stock market. It helps to determine the price a customer is willing to pay and the value he expects.
Analyze Competitors
If you do not know anything about other players or the products or services they offer, it is pointless to research the market. It is crucial to gather market intelligence about the product and the tactical steps taken in the same direction by competitors.
Read More: Effective Ways of Creating Market Research Strategy
New Opportunities
Even if the product has been established, a good business owner needs to be aware of the potential opportunities. You can stay up-to-date with the latest developments by creating a marketing research plan that covers all aspects of your business. Quickly answer questions such as how the brand can increase its product line or add new segments.
Strategized Approach
Relying on luck and intuition alone is a sign that you are weak. The business owner must plan their next move in order to stay ahead of the competition when operating in a particular market. To define the elements of the business, such as product development, marketing activities or financial norms, it must be based on intelligence.
Customer Retention
Data insights are a great way to create a customer retention strategy. It is important to be responsive to customer needs and provide a solution that will keep them in your company. Customer experience insights are a great way to attract new customers or keep existing customers satisfied.
Latest Trends
Market intelligence allows companies to be seen as a company that is aware of current trends and follows them. This could be the introduction of a product or a campaign marketing based on the most recent manga.
Multiple Forms Of Marketing Intelligence
Marketers have many options for generating valuable marketing intelligence. Let us take a look at some of the courses teams might use to gain more information about the market they want to sell to.
Focus Groups
Focus groups can be limited to a select group of people. This will help you to estimate the size of your target audience. To encourage discussion, a moderator asks a series of questions to the participants. This information can be used by marketing professionals to better understand their audience and plan their future initiatives.
Surveys
In that they are narrowly focused and more targeted, polls differ from questionnaires and surveys in this respect. Polls are faster than other methods that ask open-ended questions. You will get higher response rates.
Field Trials
Field tests can be used by businesses to test new brand or product factors. This reduces advertising waste and allows marketing teams to try out new concepts. Either targeted marketing or testing new products in small stores is an option. These projects may be scaled up or down depending on their success.
Questionnaires
Marketers can also reach large audiences with surveys. These surveys can be conducted online or offline and give marketers qualitative and quantitative insights into customers.
Formulas
Marketers can use forms to find out more about their target audience. These forms are usually completed by a researcher. These are designed to provide more insight than client opinions or general comments.
Mail Surveys
Mail surveys can be a cost-effective and efficient way to reach large audiences. Mail surveys are still useful for outreach organizations even if technology has advanced recently. You can gather and improve marketing information from sources other than the internet.
Tips To Boost Marketing Intelligence And Collect Information
There are several actions organizations can take to ensure that marketing intelligence is gathered from all aspects of the marketing environment.
Join Our Sales Team
Marketing intelligence can be greatly enhanced by B2B and B2C sales teams. Clients and potential clients often interact with sales teams. They gain insights into market trends, rivals' strengths and weaknesses, well as what the clients want in a solution. They are an invaluable tool for gaining marketing intelligence information.
Create A Customer Advisory Board
Marketing intelligence can be improved by creating an advisory board that encourages direct contact with customers. Businesses will become better at understanding the needs and wants of potential customers. This will allow them to create a message that is effective.
Focus On Quality Data
Organizations can access a wide range of online and offline data by partnering with third-party providers or using services that benefit from such agreements.
Choose A Marketing Analytics Platform That Is Suitable For Your Business
Marketing analytics technologies, which go beyond media mix modeling, can help you learn more about the reactions of your clients. Which is more popular: TV advertising or social media advertising? Is there a certain style of creative advertising that resonates with your target audience? Marketers need versatile marketing performance tools to make these connections and react to market changes. This will ensure that media planning teams are informed in their decision-making.
Get Consumer Feedback
Contacting current customers will help you to better understand the customer's perceptions and opinions about your marketing activities, customer experience, brand authority, and brand reputation. This information allows marketing efforts to be focused on the benefits. Surveys and feedback requests can be used as a leverage tool to gain insight into client attitudes and brand equity.
What Separates Marketing Research From Marketing Intelligence?
marketing intelligence can improve your future campaign performance and increase marketing ROI. It is, however, often misunderstood by business intelligence and marketing research.
Both of these words can help organizations choose the right marketing strategy based on data-driven analytics. However, the overarching goal is different. Marketing analysis focuses on the company's actions. This provides insight into marketing campaigns but does not include outside variables. Business intelligence, however, aims to increase efficiency across all locations departments, and by gathering data from all operations and processes of the company.
Marketing Intelligence: Advantages
Competitive Advantage
This marketing intelligence gathers information about rivals in order to draw conclusions that can be used to improve corporate plans. Brands can target the right people by understanding why they choose certain competitors.
Product Intelligence
"Product intelligence" is a thorough analysis of a brand's products and their place in the market. Interviewing customers, conducting focus groups, and surveying target markets are all ways businesses can find out more about their product's unique selling points and competitive advantages. This allows teams to match products more effectively to consumers' needs and concerns, which leads to higher conversion rates.
Marketing Understanding
This type of marketing intelligence uses the information to examine markets in which prospects and clients are present. Is the market familiar with trade magazines, trade publications, and books? Some might be members. Knowing where your target audience is most active will make it easier to select the right media mix, touchpoints and media channels (digital channels). You will also be able to see where your products fit in each category.
Consumer Understanding
Businesses need to keep their customer loyalty and happiness, even though they are primarily focused on new sales. Depending on your industry, it can cost five times more to acquire new clients than to keep existing ones. You will see a rise in retention rates and be able to target new clients with fewer marketing dollars.
Steps To Create Market Intelligence System
Market intelligence allows businesses to concentrate on the needs of their target market while simultaneously gaining an understanding of their competitors and the business environment. To gather up-to-date information, you might put up a market intelligence programme. You will be able to make wiser judgments, gain market share, and elevate brand positioning as a result of this.
Read More: 6 Stages of Digital Marketing Funnel
Set A Goal
Starting with the end in mind is an intelligent approach. What objectives do you have for your market intelligence research? There are several advantages to this kind of research, but you must first specify its scope.
For example, you might want to conduct various studies in order to evaluate new and existing products or markets. These investigations usually focus on the following: Products that are already available in existing markets. It is critical to comprehend how your brand stands out from the competition. Market segmentation research, competitive intelligence, and brand positioning can all be used to achieve this.
Existing goods are finding new markets. It is crucial to develop a market for your goods. Market research, market expansion, and market entry. You may also use studies to get a better idea of the areas in which you are not currently operating. New products, new markets. Do you want to try something totally different? By conducting market research and idea testing, you can lower your chance of error. Current markets receive new products. Research on product development will help all markets.
Establish Metrics
You can select the metrics that are going to be utilized to assess the outcomes once the investigation's scope has been established. Metrics will differ depending on the research objectives of each company.
These are just a few metrics that you could apply while assessing your research. There are numerous competitors with varying market shares. The number of potential customers or loyal customers, annual revenue, and anticipated growth all affect the market size. The typical client's age and income. the cost of a product on average across all markets.
Return on investment for the project is yet another crucial figure. In the majority of businesses, every research endeavor includes a budget. They want to be certain that their market research endeavors will pay off. Online research and surveys are great ways to get the data you need and ensure a positive return on your investment.
Create A Research Strategy
There are numerous alternatives for acquiring market intelligence data depending on your budget. You may access trade journals, industry experts, consumer preference, consumer feedback, and a variety of other information when conducting research online. For information like customer count, annual revenue, profitability, and client count, some research websites demand a fee.
Gaining consumer feedback for market research, brand positioning, as well as product concept testing can be done affordably by using online questionnaires. Data analytics and product intelligence can extract insights and trends from big databases of consumer purchases.
To help with multimillion-dollar product launches, several businesses employ professionals in market intelligence. They may offer comprehensive data, statistics, and guidance in exchange for payment. The amount of data you can gather will depend on your research objective, your financial situation, and other factors.
Collect, Evaluate And Analyze Information
The information will be gathered through consumer surveys, market research, and analysis of the competition. You must next transform that data into knowledge that your business can utilize to make decisions. How are you going to manage it all? Start with the project's primary objective. What did you intend to demonstrate? You had a hunch that your product concept may succeed in a different market. You can analyze the data to determine the success or failure of your product.
The ability to compete intelligently is crucial. What did you manage to find out? Who are your key rivals? Do they have a significant competitive advantage, or are they lagging behind? Make recommendations in light of your findings. What would be the best plan of action after examining the market, the rivals, and the preferences of the customer journey?
Consider including the return on investment. Are you aware of a market opportunity that will bring in more money than the costs of the study? Add it to your report. Write down your observations in a brief report. Your suggestions will be appreciated by the leadership team of your organization. Make sure your executive sponsor is aware of the results.
Take Advantage Of The Insights
You shouldn't put the data you gathered from your market intelligence research on a shelf. How your findings can be put into practice will be of interest to your management team. Corporate executives may create effective plans by using competitor analysis, consumer understanding, and product intelligence. Although they are distinct, market research and marketing intelligence are sometimes confused. Let us examine what market intelligence may achieve that market research cannot.
Market Intelligence vs. Market Research
Developing a solid marketing plan requires both market research as well as market intelligence. Although neither can be switched out, neither is a disposable item. The terms can be used interchangeably, just like other marketing jargon. Most people refer to the other activity using a single phrase. The words may not matter as much as the thoughts. Although they are similar in their words, Each activity requires a separate set of research techniques and data for a different set of objectives.
A common tool for creating and assessing a marketing plan is market research. Market research is a crucial component of product development and frequently forms the basis of branding choices. Market research should be a crucial component of your due diligence when planning to develop products and services for new businesses. Deeper market knowledge is referred to as "market intelligence." This includes being aware of the market as well as the target market. For developing a marketing strategy as well as a marketing plan, this information is crucial.
Market information provides a broad overview of trends and potential prospects and covers a wider range of topics. Flexible firms may use market information to create new offerings that meet expanding needs. These words are frequently used in conjunction with numerous other marketing words. Although the techniques may be different, they are both crucial for developing a marketing strategy.
What Are Some Examples Of Marketing Intelligence?
The entire business's decision-making process is influenced by marketing intelligence. One illustration is the book and music shop Borders. Consumers turned to internet purchasing because they valued simplicity and convenience. However, Borders remained focused on brick-and-mortar stores. Instead of outsourcing to online retailers, Borders capitalized on the move towards online purchasing brought forth by the digital revolution.
Customers preferred the online experience, and Borders struggled to stay up with competition and a shifting market. Due to the company's incapacity to use pertinent retail marketing intelligence, the store was shut down in 2011.
Insights into a rival strategy can also be gained from market intelligence. Imagine a car company learning that a rival had lowered the cost of a particular automobile model. They might learn that the rival is getting ready to launch a new model, which then would explain why they need to move the older model rapidly. Based on every one of the potential influencing factors, your team can use this information to assist in making educated decisions.
Conclusion
We can sum up by noting that creating a top-notch market intelligence team necessitates numerous essential elements. It is not a simple task. With enough time, money, and perseverance, it is feasible to build a market intelligence team of superior caliber. This group has the potential to benefit the business greatly.
Making growth goals while seated in an empty office is impossible. One of the most important choices businesses can make to make sure their brand is well-known and beats rival brands in today's dynamic, changing market is Research for agency. It is clear that there are many essential components to creating a high-quality market intelligence team. It is not an easy task. It is possible to create a market intelligence group of exceptional caliber with enough money, time and perseverance. This group can be a huge asset to the company.
Any business' success depends on its market information. It is important to weigh the advantages and drawbacks of investing in MI, either in software or in traditional forms. Acquiring market intelligence can be costly and time-consuming. This could make it difficult for companies to make the right decisions. False intelligence could make your company's strategy less effective. This article will help you make informed business decisions.
