Unless you can create something phenomenal like Mark Zuckerberg, you’ll need to market your business whether you like it or not.
It may be challenging, especially if you run a small business, but there are ways to make it easier, and that’s why marketing intelligence exists.
Marketing intelligence can be seen as the ray of hope in your business if you feel like you’re not making any progress with advertising at all.
It makes things a lot easier, and unlike other pieces of information, you can quickly put it into action, but what exactly is marketing intelligence, and why is it so important?
Before anything else, you might want to know the difference between market intelligence and market research, as they’re often mistaken for each other.
Market Intelligence vs. Market Research
As with most marketing terms, it’s easy to mistake one for the other, as you can see with market intelligence and market research, but you shouldn’t tolerate this, as it may lead to misunderstandings.
While they are similar in that they both can serve as a means for a business to make better decisions and develop strategies, they’re also quite different from each other.
Perhaps their main difference is that market research deals with your business, products, and even your marketing channels.
In contrast, market intelligence deals with the market itself, such as your competitors and customer experience.
More particularly, market intelligence deals with the questions:
- Why are customers buying from your competitors?
- Is your company performing well according to the industry’s standards?
- Are your products and services good enough for your customers?
- Which companies are using the same keywords as you do?
- What drives customers to purchase products similar to yours?
- How are your competitors generating their traffic?
- How can you set your business apart from your competitors?
There’s a lot more to these questions, but more on that later.
What you need to know is that market research is company-oriented (products, strategies, campaigns), while market intelligence is market-oriented (competitors, market, industry).
However, just like with market research, you’ll have to invest quite a bit to make market intelligence a success. In that case, this website offers services that may be what you need.
You might be asking, is marketing intelligence really worth the investment?
You now know what marketing intelligence is, but you don’t know its importance, so it’s only natural to ask such a question.
One way to go about this is by looking at each type of marketing intelligence.
Competitive Intelligence Gives You An Edge
There are several types of marketing intelligence, but you’ll only get to know three of them in this guide, one of which is competitive intelligence.
As the name suggests, competitive intelligence refers to data about your competitors that you can use to your advantage. Gathering competitive intelligence can involve:
- Using tools to research competitor activities
- Asking past employees of your competitors
- Asking regular customers of your competitors
Obtaining competitive intelligence means that you’re slowly gaining a deeper understanding of your competitors, such as how they sell their services, why consumers buy from them, and the likes.
As a result, you can improve your marketing strategies accordingly.
In other words, you’re always several steps ahead of your competitors, which is extremely important to any industry with tight competition.
Moreover, you can learn from their mistakes and avoid pitfalls that they’ve already fallen into, and determine which ideas work and which don’t.
However, as incredible as it may seem, you shouldn’t always focus on your competitors. It’s also crucial to take some time studying your products, which’s another type of marketing intelligence.
Product Intelligence Accelerates Innovations
Product intelligence is a type of marketing intelligence, and as you may have guessed, it deals with information about your products, such as their price and specifications.
There are several ways to collect product intelligence.
The most common approach is the use of product intelligence software—an automated system that gathers and analyzes a product’s performance in real-time.
With product intelligence, you can figure out the inner workings of a product and may even reveal things that you, the owner, didn’t know.
For instance, you can find out how customers use your products.
But the main reason why product intelligence is so important is that it allows you to continually update your product.
With each update, you can make improvements that customers will like. Speaking of which, the last type of marketing intelligence deals with consumers.
Customer Intelligence Improves User Experience
Customer intelligence involves data analysis on consumers or even potential prospects. You can gain customer intelligence through tracking platforms such as:
- Google Analytics
- Biometric Testing
- Customer Mapping
One of the primary purposes of customer intelligence is that it allows you to resonate with your customers more than before, as it provides you with a deeper understanding of your customers.
It also provides you with a way to develop innovations that are sure to become a trend to your customers.
Customer intelligence is particularly helpful for businesses running websites and posts blogs, as it shows you what kind of content they find useful, creating a better user experience.
Final Words
Marketing intelligence deals with many things. Your products, your customers, and even your competitors all of which can prove to be useful for your business.
However, unlike market research, companies aren’t aware of what marketing intelligence is, but this guide should help you get the gist of it.
