A Guide To Understanding Market Intelligence For Businesses

Operating a business in today’s climate is far different than it used to be. Rather than relying on guesswork, we can use technology to help our customers and improve our business models. Market intelligence can play a crucial role in this, but not everyone knows what it is and how it can help. You can learn more about market intelligence and its use in businesses below.

What Is Market Intelligence?

When you stumble across a market intelligence platform providing services like data, insights, planning, and measurement, you may be wondering what these services entail and how they come under the umbrella of marketing intelligence.

Marketing intelligence consists of multiple information sources to help a business paint a picture of its existing market. Using a platform, an expert, or software, you can learn more about your customers, see growth opportunities, understand your competition, and highlight problems. All information comes courtesy of your social media metrics, customer data, sales logs, surveys, and similar.

What’s The Difference Between Market Intelligence And Business Intelligence?

Many marketing companies field questions about whether market intelligence and business intelligence are the same. While they might sound the same, they aren’t.

Business intelligence involves using information and data directly relating to your business to make an informed decision, such as sales numbers, internal company performance, and shipping volumes. While this information is essential, it doesn’t correlate with market intelligence.

Market intelligence looks at external information that affects your business, such as the geographic information of your customers, their demographics, your competition, and what people are buying.

Why Do Businesses Use Market Intelligence?

If you’ve been toying with the idea of using market intelligence tools, you might be wondering whether they’re worth your time or what other businesses do with them. It doesn’t matter what your line of work is, you may use market intelligence tools to make a whole host of important decisions for your company.

For example, you may be able to work out where you need to send more resources or what your customer buy patterns are. Some businesses also utilize them for learning about potential markets to tap into, the products they can be cross-marketing to their customers, and the demographic segments for existing or new products.

The more information they have, the easier many businesses find it to make an informed decision about the steps they take next.

How To Collect Market Intelligence

Data is necessary for businesses to decide about changes, the funding they can afford for expansion, and their expected growth. However, it’s crucial to know where this data comes from. Companies capture market intelligence in many ways, such as through surveys and website analytics.

Sending online surveys and polls to customers allows business owners to determine what their customers want. In contrast, website analytics can track customer movement to see if improvements can be made. With minimal effort, you can see the steps people take when they visit your website and the percentage resulting in sales. This information may help you discover trends that you can use to your advantage.

As unfamiliar as market intelligence might be, that doesn’t mean it won’t be helpful for your business. By taking note of this information above and using market intelligence tools, you may be able to make beneficial changes.