Market intelligence is a method of tracking what others are doing. You can use this information to your advantage if you know where to get it. Stay ahead of the curve by collecting and utilizing the most current data. There is no-one-size-fits-all to this business model. What determines which path you take is your end goal. Some small businesses might be looking to gain more sales, while more significant entities want to capture a broader audience. Once you have narrowed down your goals, you can search market intelligence from various platforms, free services, or by hiring industry leaders.
This company needs no introduction. It has a vast amount of data pertaining to your business, and you can also follow branches related to your main product or service. In some cases, it is to a company’s benefit to go after the related products because these smaller niches often have less competition.
Google Trends tracks information at an international level, but you can break it down to specific countries and time frames. The system allows you to search by subject matter, or you can browse through pre-selected hot topics.
For a more automated process, set yourself up with Google alerts. In your inbox, you will receive updates on the subjects you preprogrammed into the alert system. Sometimes the information you get will be pertinent, but it can also be way off target.
Social Media
No market intelligence system should leave out social media. It can be the backbone of a company’s success. Twitter has made it simple to get feeds from companies or influencers that are related to your field. The benefits of social market intelligence are you can see retweets, likes, and comments. These signals can be particularly useful to your marketing team.
Track Competition
Tracking your competitors can give you insight into the strength of their products or services. There are two factors to pull from this data. If the company is robust, it could mean that there is a hungry audience for your product, but you will have to decide if there is enough room in the field for you. Big-box players could push you out, but you may also have a local niche to serve.
Some online resources that you can pull company information from are LinkedIn and CrunchBase. From these sites, you can discover where the headquarters are and if they are competing in your region. There are details about their staff members and executive officers. The sites are usually very transparent, and you can garner a sense of your competitors’ reach and business model.
Research
Once you have gathered all of this information, it is time to weed through it and decide if it is fluff or viable data. You may find that social media feeds and Google alerts are filled with useless information that contains your keyword or phrase. It will be useful but time-consuming for you or your technical team to really scrutinize the data. Once you have done that, only move forward with the most appropriate material from reliable resources.
Create
The final process of market intelligence is what you create with it. After you have selected a theme or issue to build on, you can create articles, videos, and social feeds. Some companies can streamline this process for you so that you can spend your time developing products and communicating with your fans.
NetBase Quid specializes in gathering market intelligence, and they have the tools to capture and sort on and offline information. The details are stored in one platform, and you can manipulate them to extract clues about your competition, find coming trends, and build poignant marketing pieces.
