What is Market Intelligence
Market Intelligence is one of the many concentrations of competitive intelligence that we devote our research and analysis towards. While competitive intelligence is the process of researching competitors and industry shifts in order to determine potential threats and opportunities, market intelligence specializes in that process by focusing on better understanding a specific market. Knowing more about what kind of consumers inhabit this market as well as which competitors have found success is vital to knowing what strategy your company should take in entering this market.
By gathering market research data on your competitors and overall industry trends we can analyze our findings and provide you with our recommendations, we hope to allow you to make informed decisions in future business proposals. Having a clear understanding of a market is a very precise component of a company’s business strategy. Knowing what consumers think and how a product is perceived in any given market is necessary in understanding its potential success. If this is a new market that you wish to expand into market intelligence can give you the insight needed to know how your business might do before taking any irreversible steps.
The Importance of Market Intelligence
The competitive intelligence umbrella has a wide reach. Its ability to be applied to any industry already makes it universal but its radius of research can go even further. From financial statements to management operations, competitive intelligence information can be acquired from a multitude of sources. Market intelligence provides a clearer focus in the search for information and the end goal for our analysis. By focusing our search on providing a better understanding of a specific market, we can be more efficient in our research and more direct in the responses we provide.
Market intelligence is a tool that can greatly help inform decision making. As any informed company knows, it’s important to conduct market research during the development process of a new idea. Market intelligence is going a step beyond basic marketing research. Marketing research often focuses on learning about the consumers and their habits. While not exclusionary to industry shifts and competitor actions, it is often not the primary focus. Market intelligence offers a closer look at your industry and competitors in order to learn how they operate and how those strategies play out in the long term. Marketing research is most often considered when launching a new product or expanding a company’s reach. Market intelligence can, and is, used in this way but is more universal to any situation your business might find itself in.
Benefits of Market Intelligence
The information found via market intelligence can be useful for your business whether you are about to enact a new strategy or if you would like to check in on how your current strategies are faring against current industry standings. In fact, the latter situation is the one in which we find market intelligence to be most valuable. It is important to check in on your competitors at regular intervals. It is not enough to only consider their tactics when they are already posing a threat to your business. By evaluating your competitor’s placement in the market on a frequent basis you can assure no surprises will sneak up on you. Knowing which technologies and techniques are becoming industry standards, which competitors are expanding their product lines, and which lost out because of an overzealous decision is important to stay on top of.
While market intelligence might offer its greatest value through frequent evaluations, it still holds a great deal of influence when major decisions are being made. As an extension of traditional marketing research, market intelligence can offer the insight needed to make a decision about where to take your business next.
One situation where market intelligence can offer valuable understanding is when expanding business operations, especially overseas. The dream for most businesses is to bring their product or service to markets all over the world and experience the same success as they do in their home market. For nearly all companies this goal is completely unrealistic, at least without learning about these markets and making adjustments to their business to match them.
No company is immune to culture shock, some of the biggest and most successful companies have failed terribly in foreign markets because they felt overly confident in their business operations and thought they could operate the same way across the globe. Situations like the opening of Euro Disney or Netflix’s failure to expand in India have become iconic case studies and teachable moments for any business looking to expand into a new market. The biggest issue in these cases as well as most expansion failures are a lack of research about these markets and how they differ from the company’s home market. Different cultures value different things and these regions often house a different set of competitors.
There’s a lot to consider when expanding and the solution is often to make adjustments to your traditional business in order to meet this new market’s ideals and desires. Market intelligence can be the key to finding out what these adjustments need to be. If expansion is something your company is looking at for the future we can formulate an international market intelligence report that evaluates the current environment of that market as well as examples of other companies that have tried expanding into this market; to see what has worked and what hasn’t.
Market Intelligence Resources
When it comes to sourcing information for market intelligence we look through a multitude of resources. Similar to the components of competitive intelligence, market intelligence research is composed of data found in news sources, consumer reports, stock indexes, competitor’s web presence, and trade show announcements. Sources like these are all available to the public and allow for an, all encompassing, view of a competitor’s current situation. Looking at only one of these avenues of information is not enough. Getting information from all sorts of voices whether they be small, large, consumer, professional, amateur, or government allows for a more realistic understanding of who a competitor actually is.
Market intelligence allows for our search to be somewhat focused in subject matter but it is still crucial to our methodology to inspect all relevant resources. When it comes to market information it is a priority to look at digital marketing information. According to Nielsen, adults spend over a third of their day using internet connected devices. With so much time being spent online, our perception of everything has become heavily influenced by the ads, news stories, reviews, and consumer experiences we see online. The digital perception of a company, in many cases, can hold a stronger weight than the real life perception.
By researching this digital marketing intel we can assure we are accounting for the digital perception. Looking into a competitor’s social media is a great way to get an initial overview of their digital presence. It’s more than just seeing what a company posts, by looking at a competitor’s social media accounts we can see if they are announcing any new products, see what kind of market they are trying to target through the kinds of content they post, or if customers post about good or bad experiences. All of these areas of interest can offer insight into what kind of company a competitor is.
Social media intelligence informs a great deal of digital marketing intel and gives us a great starting point to look into other possible issues that might arise. Learning what a company’s social media presence is like can allow for us to better assess their market position in comparison to yours. Seeing how large or small of an engagement a competitor might have on social media can show if they are posing a threat against you online. While not all industries are heavily social media based, it is clear that it is a growing influence on all markets. If your competitors do not have a strong social media presence it might be a great opportunity for your company to rise to the occasion and reach a new demographic for leads.
Keeping Informed About Market Intelligence
It’s one thing for us to be conducting competitive intelligence research but the real step in which you get to see the value is through reporting. Offering our findings and recommendations through a competitive intelligence report is our primary offering of information. At this point we get to show you all of our findings and recommendations after spending dedicated time assessing all of the information and drawing larger conclusions from everything we’ve come across.
This is the best option for getting a clear understanding of your competitors, the only downside is it is time consuming to gather this information and come to these results. That is why ArchIntel offers strategic executive briefing. Strategic executive briefing offers our clients with daily intelligence briefings. These briefings are any updates that we find that are related to your competitors and industry. Any news that we find can be directly provided to you as soon as we come across it. This way you are always informed and up to date on all current, relevant developments.