A true business owner has full power to draw up a business plan so that his company can influence the industry niche he is in and be at the forefront of his market share. One of the most important aspects that business owners must pay attention to is having a comprehensive understanding of their competitors (competitor analysis), the state of the industry, and the range of business market segmentation.
Well, business owners can understand the concept of marketing intelligence to answer these challenges. With the information obtained through this business method, business owners and stakeholders can evaluate their business marketing strategy.
As well as the marketing team can optimize planning for future marketing campaigns (marketing forecast) based on their own insights or insights from the scope of the industry.
Moreover, according to research on the Dashmote website, company marketers who apply market research, market analysis or marketing analysis, and other analytical processes optimally will experience business growth of up to 39%. So that your business can develop (business development) in accordance with the initial goals and targets of the business, follow some of the tips for maximizing marketing intelligence in this article, OK!
What is Marketing Intelligence?
First of all, let’s discuss the basic theory first. Launching from the Marketing91 site page, marketing intelligence is the company’s process of collecting and utilizing relevant information and data (data management) to develop the best marketing strategy for business. The data in question is information about the target market such as persona and consumer behavior, market trends, and other information.
Companies can use data derived from MI to make accurate business decisions, market penetration strategies, and determine business process opportunities in formulating the best marketing campaigns. That way the company can optimize the number of potential customers (leads) and
retain customers (customer retention) through lead conversion efforts, brand voice, brand awareness, and the number of business sales. And also help the company’s efforts to improve the performance of the sales process (sales process).
Marketing Intelligence vs Market Research: What’s the Difference?
Based on the definition above, it appears that marketing intelligence is different from market research, even though both are equally important for business management and the development of certain marketing strategies. Marketing intelligence focuses on collecting overall data from the market for the operational success of the company.
Meanwhile, market research aims to gain insight into customer preferences for brands (brand experience) and products (product insight). So that the sales force can influence customer purchasing decisions and acquire them (customer acquisition) to become customers who buy (sales leads).
Thus, the process within MI will include market research results and focus on insights that can be followed up with audience analysis, SWOT analysis, competitor analysis, business intelligence, and web analytics.
Components of Marketing Intelligence
To sum it up, marketing intelligence provides companies with the ability and several distinct opportunities to accurately navigate the complexities of marketing outreach and KPIs that are unique to the business. And if you do this marketing intelligence right, then you will need the following four components that help marketers formulate successful strategic decisions. Here’s an explanation.
1. Competitor Intelligence
Basically, competitor intelligence is the process of collecting all relevant data from business competitors (competitive analysis) to help marketers design the best marketing strategy. In addition, marketers with company stakeholders conduct a SWOT analysis of the company itself to understand its current position (brand positioning).
The main goal of applying competitor intelligence is to determine why customers choose their products and services. This is because the company will continue to develop in a sustainable manner (sustainable development) so that marketers need to regularly collect data about their competitors.
2. Product Intelligence
After analyzing business competition in the market, it is important to look at the production process of physical business products or product intelligence. The goal is to optimize product quality (product-led growth) to match customer expectations (demand).
In addition, utilizing the data collected about customer behavior and preferences aims to make the necessary changes in the product (product lifecycle). Therefore, make sure that your company’s products provide an excellent customer experience.
3. Market Understanding
For successful sales planning and company operations, you need to understand the market. That is, after producing the product, the company must analyze whether it will be profitable in the target market or not.
That way, marketing intelligence will help companies collect the data needed for future business planning (business forecasting) and help produce products that are well received in the market (product positioning).
4. Customer Understanding
Understanding customers is the main aspect in building and developing a business (brand extension). Therefore, companies must know the purchasing patterns, preferences, and reasons of customers in replacing products from certain brands with products from other competitors’ brands.
So, for a company to become a market leader, you must create a series of strategies to satisfy customers while engaging with your business product or service (brand engagement). You can achieve all of this easily when marketers can also analyze the market thoroughly.
Tips to Increase Business Marketing Intelligence
To ensure marketing intelligence can be successfully applied throughout the marketing process, there are some tips that companies need to do. The goal is to ensure that your company gathers the right intelligence, reaches the right conclusions, and makes the most of the resulting insights (leveraging). Here’s an explanation.
1. Create a Sales Team A sales team
for B2B and B2C target audiences, they have a unique position (unique value proposition) to assist marketing intelligence efforts. Therefore, you need to consider all possibilities to form a professional sales team in building relationships with customers (relationship marketing).
Thus, they can talk directly to customers and prospects (direct marketing) easily. In addition, they will often look into industry trends, competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, and what clients are looking for in a solution (customer advocacy). In addition to a sales team, you can also set up a business advisory board.
Its function is to assist the sales team in understanding customer interests, needs (demand management), and customer problems (customer pain points). Where this will have an impact on the creation of brand messaging that has a more impact on customers.
2. Focus on Quality Data
Through agreements with external partners or third-party services that leverage such agreements, companies can access a wide variety of online and offline data across the entire marketing mix. Take some quality data source, for example: A customer list showing geographic location.
The number of consumers who subscribe to a business’s services, so that data can show the reach of a business’s marketing ads. Company attribution data that demonstrates customer engagement across customer touchpoints and marketing channels. Measurement of brand authority conducted through studies and third party resources.
3. Use the Right Marketing Analytics Platform
The next tip is to use marketing analytics tools that go beyond modeling media mix and marketing attribution to give you more insight about your customers.
Do customers respond better to ads on TV or social media? Or is there a type of ad that gets the most attention and response from your audience? Marketers must look for flexible marketing performance tools that can maximize marketing intelligence and adapt to changes in the marketplace.
This will also ensure that the marketing team makes informed media planning decisions moving forward.
4. Collect Customer Feedback Reach customers
currently enabling a clearer understanding of perceptions around campaign effort, customer experience, brand authority, product satisfaction, and more.
With this information, marketing strategies can be more focused on areas that have the potential to bring profit. Consider leveraging tools such as polls, customer satisfaction surveys, and feedback tools to gain customer feedback and brand equity.
That’s a brief explanation of marketing intelligence that you need to understand. For those of you who plan to carry out certain marketing strategies and other marketing methods, you can take advantage of digital marketing agency services to help you develop the best and most effective business plan. You can also implement other marketing strategies, such as growth ha*k marketing, inbound marketing, 360 digital marketing, and data driven marketing which will make your company grow more rapidly.