Marketing intelligence is key to the survival of any business regardless of niche. It is a tool that will help you understand the environment in which you’re operating and tailor your marketing strategy accordingly. It will also help you develop products that your target niche will find more beneficial.
The aim of marketing intelligence is to systematically collect and analyze information about what is going on outside your business so that you’re able to make better decisions. Besides discovering existing and upcoming competitors, market intelligence relays information about what consumers think about a brand. It will also help you find out if your products are competitively priced.
Given the importance of market intelligence in helping determine your business environment, it’s crucial that it is done and done right. Here are some tips to guide you in doing so.
The Right Picture
In the course of your marketing intelligence, you will come across information that will tempt you to react. Notably, marketing tactics that will work wonders for your competitors or pricing strategies working for your rivals, through these strategies you’ll also receive valuable feedback about your brand from consumers.
A mistake to avoid is building out a big picture from the intelligence you gather and reacting to it. You may end up spending a lot on rebranding and still not create the impact you were hoping for. A more effective approach is to define what matters to your success from the start of a marketing campaign.
This is why successful marketing intelligence starts by drafting key intelligence topics, which in turn informs the creation of key intelligence questions. These questions should be centered around discovering consumers’ aspirations and pain points both today and in the future. Examples of these questions are:
- What do your current customers aspire to?
- Are your competitors offering a solution that meets those aspirations?
- Are other industries offering a solution?
Answering a comprehensive list of such questions will help you develop a marketing intelligence strategy focused on the right picture, not the big picture.
Get Your Message Out
The essence of marketing intelligence is to get information that will help you refine your brand messaging. It will ensure that you’re saying the things that will pique the interest of potential buyers, believing that you’re offering a better solution than what currently exists. A common mistake is to come up with the right messaging but channel it through older channels.
Having the right message is one thing; getting it out to the right ears and eyes is another. Done effectively, marketing intelligence will give you a full view of the competitive market to know where to target your potential customers. You will then know which channels will most effectively reach your target audience in their entirety.
Your marketing intelligence can help you discover previously untapped platforms where your competitors have been communicating with consumers in your niche. The result could be a collaboration with a strategic Instagram influencer that will make your brand the face of a solution in the eyes of an eager audience.
Real-Time Data
As with any activity a business engages in, you will want your marketing intelligence to yield a good return on investment. If the information you’re relying on is inaccurate or outdated, your conclusions on the business environment you’re operating in will be off the mark. You will also be in danger of misjudging consumer trends and splurging on marketing campaigns or product features that don’t resonate with consumers.
To avoid this, you need to ensure your marketing intelligence produces accurate, real-time data and analyzes it well. There are many avenues through which you can collect this data, beginning with industry bodies.
Marketing surveys effectively collect accurate information on what consumers think about your products and those of competitors. Email surveys are a great way of collecting customer data. And you don’t have to come up with the questions from scratch as several applications can help you with that.
Social media is arguably more effective in the collection of real-time data. You can collect data in the form of Twitter polls that users can quickly respond to. Comments and likes on Instagram posts or YouTube videos can be instrumental in collecting data on your competitors’ brand messaging.
There is a science to collecting relevant real-time data and analyzing it to generate accurate marketing intelligence for effective decision-making. An agency well versed in branding best practices and pitfalls will be best placed to help you with this crucial step.
Learn From The Best
Creating your marketing intelligence strategy is an involving exercise that requires well-defined goals, actionable data, and a means to measure success. Instead of hammering it out from scratch, you can borrow ideas from other businesses in and outside your industry that have successfully carried out marketing intelligence. Roping in marketing gurus will save you the time and expense of reinventing the wheel.
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About Are Morch
Hi, I am Are Morch. Your Digital Transformation Coach helps hotels create unique and unexpected experiences by freeing up resources to focus on new ideas through value innovation and a growth mindset.
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