What is marketing intelligence and how can it help your business?

What is marketing intelligence?

Marketing intelligence is the process of gathering and analyzing data related to customer behavior, market trends, and competitor activity in order to inform your marketing. Think of it as really focused research and data collection. Gathering marketing intelligence is an essential tool for businesses of all sizes. Marketing intelligence is more than just knowing what your competitors are doing. Marketing intelligence helps you dig into more of the qualitative data, the “why” of it all.

Marketing intelligence involves collecting and analyzing a wide range of data related to customer behavior and preferences, as well as market and industry trends. This can include data related to sales, customer feedback, social media activity, web traffic, and more. By analyzing this data, businesses can gain valuable insights that can inform their marketing strategies and tactics.

How can marketing intelligence data help your business?

Improved Customer Understanding through Voice of the Customer

Your business is nothing without customers. Too many companies ignore what their customers are asking for and instead try to guess. By analyzing data related to customer behavior and preferences, businesses can gain a better understanding of their customer’s needs and preferences. Commonly known as a Voice of the Customer program, this type of marketing intelligence data can help businesses develop more targeted marketing campaigns and product offerings that better meet customer needs.

More Effective Marketing Strategies

Too often, companies ask the wrong questions and execute the wrong tactics. By having a deeper understanding of what customers want, and analyzing market trends and competitor activity, businesses can develop more effective marketing strategies The goal of collecting marketing intelligence is to have the ability to personalize and tailor the tactics that are being executed. Additionally, marketing intelligence data should give you a blueprint for your measurement plan. As you determine what data will give you the best marketing intelligence, factor in the repeatability of data collection and the measurability of the data. Can you easily tell if the data is improving? Does the data lend itself to telling you if your efforts aren’t working?

Competitive Advantage

By leveraging marketing intelligence, businesses can work to gain an advantage over their competitors. Understanding how your competitors operate in the digital landscape can help you shape your own marketing. You can do this at a high level, or you can dig in deeper, depending on how important it is to be #1 in your space. Start with publicly available data. A high-level analysis could include social media listening of your competitors and SEO analytics. The deep dive could be data from Yelp or Google reviews, or even G2 reviews of the company itself. If you’re looking for new talent, Glassdoor is another good resource to see how your benefits stand up against your competitors. When using data-driven insights to make strategic decisions, businesses can optimize their marketing strategies, product offerings, and operations, which can lead to increased revenue, market share, and customer loyalty.

Getting Started with Marketing Intelligence

Before you start throwing your net to see what’s out there, decide how you’re going to use marketing intelligence data. A great way to start is a user story.

As a [persona], I [want to], so [that]. 

As a marketing manager, I want to understand my customer’s pain points through marketing intelligence analysis, so that I can deliver what they want most. 

We recommend writing out multiple user stories, getting more and more granular with each story. The goal is to have a really strong understanding of why you need this data, what data you need, and how you will measure success.

Marketing intelligence is the process of gathering and analyzing data related to customer behavior, market trends, and competitor activity to inform marketing strategies and tactics. By leveraging the power of marketing intelligence, businesses can gain a better understanding of their customers, develop more effective marketing strategies, and gain a competitive advantage. As the amount of data available continues to grow, the potential benefits of marketing intelligence will only continue to grow. By investing in the tools and resources needed to analyze and leverage marketing intelligence, businesses can unlock their full potential and drive success in today’s data-driven economy.