Market Intelligence
Market Intelligence is about providing a company with a view of a market using existing sources of information to understand what is happening in a market place, what the issues are and what the likely market potential is. See some examples of our work.
Market Intelligence can be divided into two spheres
Often Market Intelligence relies purely on external data such as analysts reports, but there is often a great deal of untapped information internally that would give you an insight into your market, from sources such as databases and prospect lists, and an holistic view can prove very insightful.
Market Intelligence from external data
Market intelligence from external data is normally gathered through what is known as desk research. This means sourcing and analysing published information to build a picture of a market and to try and answer some specific commercial questions such as what is the market potential, what are competitors future plans likely to be, what prices might customers be willing to pay, what's the best means of entering a market.
Central to successful desk research is the ability to track down sources of information and to provide the right level of analysis. For example identifying who your competitors are and analysing their market position against yours to find strengths and weaknesses and indications of new developments, or identifying potential channel partners or locations to set up new offices.
Consequently, related to desk research in the form of collecting background information, is the process of list building. This involves seeking out lists of likely prospects or partners for relationship or network building and finding out key information about the companies for marketing purposes. A variety of places provide off-the-shelf lists, but often these lists need to be enhanced with other forms of information to make them useful - for instance background information about what the business offers, it's market positioning and details of who to contact.
A specific form of Market Intelligence is competitive intelligence. This is typically undertaken on an on-going basis and involves the collection of news, materials and other information about competitors from a wide variety of sources. This may involve collecting information about market positioning and market messages, core clients or contracts, size and structure of the business and issues like pricing or typical deal structures. Examples might include collecting price-check information, or details of promotional and advertising campaigns, or monitoring news channels for information about new products or new technologies (eg patents). Although competitor intelligence can be carried out as a one off project, in reality, because of its on-going nature, competitive intelligence is often more about putting structures in place to enable information about competitor behaviour to be fed-back and monitored, than specifically finding one-off pieces of data. One key point is that for legal and ethical reasons, competitor research should not be carried out in any underhand way (eg misrepresentation) and so should rely only on openly available information sources.
Increasingly, Market Intelligence can involve collecting data from posts, tweets and other social media. This type of 'market intelligence' overlaps with some forms of market research and with PR monitoring. For some companies, the volume of comment together with the need to manage and monitor across multiple languages and multiple domains mean that large scale software is used to capture and then text-analyse the data. This can provide companies with good insights into the mood of a market about, for instance, a new product that has been launched. But it can also be part of a communication or PR campaign to allow companies to be alert to negative comment or problems that are publicised via the social networks.
Market Intelligence from internal data
While much marketing intelligence is associated with collecting information externally, much marketing intelligence information can come from making better use of existing information such as customer databases, web-analytics and test-marketing. For instance by carrying out database analysis on orders taken it may be possible to understand where you have cross-sale and up-sale opportunities, or to understand what type of customers are your most profitable. Common database analysis include tracking recency, frequency and value of purchases. Looking for pareto segments. Augmenting database lists with external data to identify purchasing patterns.
Database information is not the only source of market data. Your website may also include a high degree of valuable information about who is looking for your products and services. Web site traffic analysis can help you understand what customers are looking for and why, and can be used in conjunction with test advertising and variations in site and page delivery (eg varying landing pages) to provide direct measurement and enhancement of marketing effectiveness.
Finally, don't overlook knowledge about customers, markets and competitors that comes from your staff. Often this is a poorly tapped source of information. Collecting and disseminating such information falls into the realms of customer knowledge management and making better use of this customer knowledge can help businesses focus far more on what the customer wants and says.
For help and advice on carrying out any market intelligence projects on-line or off-line contact info@dobney.com