How a Marketing Intelligence System Can Help You Grow in 2022

The more you know about these three elements, the more equipped you will be to grow your brand and increase sales.

That’s why marketing intelligence is so important.

It helps you understand your position in the market, the wants and needs of your customers, and the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors.

In this guide, we’ll explore what marketing intelligence is and why it matters.

You’ll also learn the steps you can take to boost marketing intelligence at your organization and improve performance.

Let’s get started.

What Is Marketing Intelligence?

Marketing intelligence is the data that a company collects about its market, customers, competition, and growth opportunities.

The goal is to help the CMO and business leaders to make better decisions and guide the marketing strategy.

A company can collect information through internal sources like sales data and website analytics and external sources like social media, distributors, news organizations, and more.

Marketing intelligence provides micro and macro information to help you identify opportunities and challenges. It plays a vital role in several marketing processes.

A recent survey revealed the areas where advertisers see marketing intelligence and data analysis having the most significant impact in the coming years:

Without marketing intelligence insights, you’re operating in the dark. It plays a vital role in getting the most of your marketing budget.

What Is the Difference Between Marketing Intelligence and Marketing Research?

Marketing intelligence is often confused with marketing research. It’s not uncommon to hear these terms used interchangeably.

But these are two separate processes.

The goal of marketing research is to discover more information about the preferences and behaviors of your customers. It’s focused on the buyer’s journey at your company and the factors that influence purchasing decisions.

Marketing intelligence is much broader. It helps you learn about the wider industry, your competitors, and external factors that can impact your business and marketing strategy.

This can help you make more informed decisions and develop data-driven marketing strategies.

What Does Marketing Intelligence Include?

Marketing intelligence helps you gain a comprehensive understanding of your brand’s position in the market.  

It includes four main areas:

1. Competitive Intelligence

Gaining insights into your competitors can help you consolidate and grow your market share.

It’s essential to know who your competitors are, the threats they present to your brand, and the weaknesses you can capitalize on.

According to a recent survey, 78% of business leaders “agree” or “strongly agree” that competitive intelligence is critical to the success of their company.

Your competitors can often be the greatest source of insights for your strategy.

Competitive marketing intelligence can help you discover opportunities to differentiate your brand, create more impactful messaging, and even identify possibilities for new product development.

2. Product Intelligence

Product intelligence is about gaining a deep understanding of your products and how they compare to the alternatives on the market.

The best product intelligence data comes directly from consumers.

You can use traditional data collection options like surveys and focus groups. But the insights gained from social listening can provide a much larger sample. The data collected from social media also provides an unbiased assessment of your products.

The more you know about how consumers view your product, the more you align your marketing and product development with their needs.

3. Market Understanding

Market understanding is focused on the markets where you sell your product and the digital channels used by your audience.

A deep dive into market understanding can help determine how well you are currently performing and reveal growth opportunities.

You may discover new markets and audiences that could benefit from your product.

This information can help you understand your target audience and where you need to be present to win new customers.

4. Consumer Understanding

Consumer understanding should be at the heart of your marketing strategy and how your business creates value. It influences everything from product development and customer service to paid media and SEO.

Your customers are the most important element of your business.

Learning more about your current and prospective customers can help you identify opportunities to increase sales revenue and customer retention.

7 S teps of Marketing Intelligence

Marketing intelligence data needs to be accurate and comprehensive.

You can collect relevant and high-quality data to guide your strategy by following the seven steps below.

1. Tap Into Your Sales Data

Your sales team can be a great source of information for marketing intelligence. They know your products inside out and interact with customers every day.

It’s also their job to know what customers look for in a solution, keep up with industry trends, and understand competing products.

2. Competitor Analysis

You can gather insights into your competitors through digital and offline tactics. The goal is to identify the companies that sell a similar product to you and analyze their marketing strategy.

This can show you how you are currently competing and reveal the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors.

Competitor marketing intelligence should encompass every channel your audience uses during the buyer’s journey. It should include direct competitors, indirect competitors, and future competitors.

3. Customer Advisory Panel

A customer advisory panel can be an important source of information to guide your strategy and better understand your brand positioning.

You can learn more about your customer pain points, needs, and preferences. These insights help you improve the customer experience and make your marketing messaging more impactful.

4. Data Collection

External and internal data sources can provide valuable insights into consumer trends, marketing performance, and other factors that could impact your company.

You can access this data through several different sources.

Platforms like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Facebook Audience Insights, and a host of other tools can provide data on your current performance.

You can also leverage competitor analysis tools to spy on your competitors and gather insights to guide your strategy.

5. Online Customer Feedback

Customer feedback is crucial for marketing intelligence.

A recent survey revealed that over 67% of companies say customer feedback has been the biggest contributor to their most successful projects.

You can use online surveys, feedback forms, and email requests to better understand how customers view your brand and your products.

Social listening can provide unfiltered insights into how your customers perceive you and your competitors. Using natural language processing, social listening tools can gather relevant data from the billions of interactions that take place on social media every day.

6. Ensure Insights Are Shared Throughout the Organization

A marketing intelligence system can only benefit your company if it is used effectively.

It needs to reach the right stakeholders, be easy to understand, and get there at a speed it can be utilized.

That’s why a tool like Scoretize is super-useful. You can convert data into easy-to-understand insights that you can share throughout your organization.

It’s a simple way to ensure marketing intelligence makes a real impact on business performance.

Advantages of Marketing Intelligence

Marketing intelligence helps you to make better decisions faster. It can help you identify threats, overcome challenges, and meet your goals.

Here are the top advantages of marketing intelligence.

1. Deep Understanding of the Market

You can better understand the market and how your brand is competing. Marketing intelligence can help you see trends quickly, keep track of customer demand, and discover growth opportunities you may have overlooked.

2. Improve Customer Retention

A 5% increase in customer retention generates more than a 25% increase in profits. By gaining a 360-degree view of your customers through marketing intelligence, you can identify what motivates customers to leave and take action to reduce churn. 

3. Increase Sales

A marketing intelligence system helps you narrow in on high-value customer segments and discover the traits and motivations you can use to improve your marketing messaging. You can identify new audiences, upsell opportunities, and even entirely new markets for your products.

4. Be More Agile

The consumer landscape moves fast. In the last 10 years, we’ve seen huge disruption across multiple sectors. Instead of playing catch up, marketing intelligence can help you predict shifting consumer demand and preferences. You can be more agile and gain a first-mover advantage.

5. Make Data-Driven Decisions

Stakeholders can make decisions based on accurate data instead of assumptions and guesswork. Marketing intelligence is about empowering your teams to make data-driven decisions. It can guide your strategy and make sure every decision aligns with your broader goals and objectives.

Make Marketing Intelligence Part of Your Strategy

Marketing intelligence should be the foundation of your marketing strategy. Every campaign and initiative should be guided by what you know about your audience, competitors, and product.   

You can gain insights to help you become more customer-centric and move with shifting consumer preferences and needs.  

Ultimately, it’s the best way to gain a competitive advantage. If you’re not basing your decisions on accurate and up-to-date insights, you’re going to lose out on revenue to more informed competitors.