Market Intelligence tools: 8 types of software to discover data

You could have the best screwdriver in the world, but if you use it to drive a nail, you won’t have much success!

The same goes for Market Intelligence tools! Yes because there are so many tools, software and programs you can use to do market research. The point is to identify which ones are really helpful in achieving your goal.

Would you rather watch the video instead of reading? Click below 👇

Also read our blog article “What is Market Intelligence? Benefits and practical cases“

But what software do you use?

“Okay… but what software do you use?” 

This is a question we are very often asked when we present the potential of the Market Intelligence (or Marketing Intelligence) and market research using online Big Data. They ask us what software allows them to analyze all the data we are talking about. 

As if there is only one software, as if only one tool is enough to study the complexity of an industry’s competitive landscape! 

However, this is a common mistake. Then again, it would be like thinking of repairing an automobile using only a wrench!

In fact, to analyze the data and understand the competitive scenario in 360 degrees, as we do when we analyze the market with our Market X-Ray , it is necessary to use many professional software, which can collect and analyze different data from each other.

Only by doing so can we get a comprehensive picture and find information from multiple perspectives! One would not be enough, which would obviously be limited in analyzing only a certain type of data.

The key point, then, is not to choose THE most comprehensive software or to choose the most popular tools, but rather to understand what types of tools are available and to know which ones to choose, thanks to a Data Driven Software Selection , based on one’s goals.

In short, it’s kind of like figuring out when you need a wrench and where, on the other hand, you need an allen wrench, a welder, and so on.

Market Intelligence tools: the 8 types of software to choose from

As you may have guessed, therefore, the first step is to gain clarity among the types of tools that exist in order to choose the ones best suited to your every need.

So let’s see what the main categories of Market Intelligence tools are! 

1st type of Market Intelligence tools: social listing software

Fundamental are the tools of Social Listening or also known as network listening tools, which allow you to intercept millions of social media conversations across posts, comments, reactions, and analyze different user interactions with content on the web.

They are extremely useful for monitoring your brand reputation and understanding what your customers are talking about online.

Just think that in our Market X-Ray market research, an entire part is devoted to analyzing this data, that is, so-called TALK data. Specifically, at this stage of the project we go to intercept what your target audience spontaneously writes online in forums or on social media.

By doing so, we are able to capture what their opinions are with respect to countless aspects, such as your brand, your product or service, or even the product or service of your competitors.

In addition, these social listening software programs allow you to aggregate all the news and articles on blogs about specific topics, mapping how well known the topic is, identifying relevant magazines, and also identifying promotional articles that your competitors are having published.

2nd type of Market Intelligence tools: the Web Analytics tools.

The second type of tools are Web Analytics tools.

What do you need them for? To collect data and track user behavior on a website or mobile application.

They are divided into two main types:

• Software to analyze the results of your websites that you have access to; the most popular and free one is Google Analytics , powered by the Google Search Console , then the tool Microsoft Clarity . Thus, there are multiple paid software such as:
  • Mixpanel , very useful in case of software with registered users
  • Chartbeat , designed for large online media
  • Hotjar e Crazyegg , focused on qualitative analysis of users through heat maps;
  • Leadfeeder , to identify business leads that access your site.
• Software to study competitors’ websites, evaluating their traffic and results. The best one, which by the way we use on a daily basis, is the web intelligence tool Similarweb .

An additional variant are App Analytics tools, to study mobile apps, downloads, and daily usage of them. 

In this very regard, however, a new trend is being recorded! There is an increasing trend towardintegration in the market for this type of software. This means that tools of this type that are being developed nowadays try to integrate within a single interface both data from the proprietary website and data from the App.

Indeed, the most observant will immediately be reminded of Google Analytics 4, the new version that replaces Google Universal!

If you want to learn more, watch the video on our YouTube channel – “ Google Analytics and the ongoing legal diatribe: what changes with the G4 version? “

3rd type of Market Intelligence tools: Search Engine Intelligence tools

Indispensable are Search Engine Intelligence tools, such as. Semrush , Seozoom , Google Ads Keyword Planner or even VidIq for videos.

All of these tools help you intercept and estimate people’s searches on search engines. With these tools, then, you will be able to understand how your customers research a particular topic and thus identify their level of awareness.

In addition, they will be extremely helpful when creating headlines for your content!

💡Tip: when you need to define the title for your new YouTube video, take advantage of software like VidIq and identify which keywords are the most searched and at the same time the least competitive you can rank on for YouTube optimization! At that point, when you choose keywords try typing them into Youtube and find out which videos already exist both at home and abroad: watch them carefully and create a distinctive headline and slant!

If you want to learn more, check out our YouTube video “ Captivating headlines: how can you write an effective headline using data? “

4th type of Market Intelligence tools: Databases

So there are Databases to more easily intercept reports, industry studies, aggregate statistics and so on. This type of tool is useful to you when you need to determine market value or find information otherwise not accessible.

We are talking about sources such as:

• Istat ;
• Data Europe ;
• Statesman ;
• ReportLinker etc.

💡Smalltip:

Do you want to find out the value of a particular market? Do you want to find out whether it is growing, decreasing, or stationary?

There is another method besides Databases that allows you to obtain this information. You simply type “market name” plus the term “market value” and the year you are interested in into the Google search bar. For example, “market intelligence software market value 2022.” In doing so, you will find many sites and articles discussing the latest trends and market studies.

You try it too!

5th type of Market Intelligence tools: trend hunting tools

Also very important are Trend Hunting tools, which collect and evaluate millions of trends around the world to identify the most interesting themes in each industry.

These include for example,

• Google Trends; 
• Helium10 Magnet ; 
• TrendHunter ; 
• CoolHunting .

Put simply, it sounds very simple: by using software, one can discover countless trends. The point, however, is another.

These tools, like all Market Intelligence software, are facilitators. That means they help you identify trends but then it’s up to you to figure out how you can leverage those opportunities to grow your business.

Identifying these possibilities, in fact, gives you countless advantages, such as:

• Get ahead of your competitors;
• Find yourself ready in front of industry news;
• Have control over what happens in your market;
• innovate your business etc.

But how do you translate a trend you’ve guessed into an opportunity for your business?

This is where most of the entrepreneurs we talk to get stuck: they don’t know how to monetize the trend.

Just to solve this problem, in our Community Boosters , every month we organize the live“Trend Room & News,” where entrepreneurs hunt for trends in their industry and train themselves to translate them into benefits for their business.

Do you also want to participate? Click on the banner below and learn about our Community Boosters !

For further study:

🎥 Watch the video on our YouTube channel – “ 5 types of practical tools for studying market trends “

📖 Read our blog article – “ How to do market research with Google Trends (but beware of DIY!) “

6th type of Market Intelligence tools: Amazon & Marketplace Analytics tools.

“Amazon & Marketplace Analytics” tools allow you to track sales on Marketplaces.

One of them, for example, is Helium10 , through which you can identify best-selling products, leading brands in that industry, logistics strategies, and even the best product sheet solutions. 

As you can imagine, however, it is not enough to collect all this data.

On the other hand, could you ever make a decision by looking at pages and pages of numbers in bulk?

Probably not, in fact you would certainly end up abandoning those papers on your desk. But if among all that data was the solution to increase turnover by 33% ? You would miss it!

That is why, once collected, all this data must necessarily be organized, analyzed, and depicted in the form of graphs and statistics… to enable you to get the information you need!

7th type: the Competitive Intelligence Tools

Then there are the Competitive Intelligence tools. These include in particular Advertising Analytics software ( Facebook Ads Library , Semrush , Moat etc.) and Price Intelligence (e.g. Helium10 ).

These software programs have multiple functionalities. In particular, they allow you to:

• Intercept competitors’ marketing campaigns;
• To estimate its investment in different channels;
• to dynamically identify the prices of their products and
• To even estimate their conversion rates.

With this kind of information then, you can accurately analyze your competitors’ strategies, grasp what are best practices or what, on the other hand, are weaknesses, and act accordingly!

8th type: business & finance analytics tool

Finally, the last type are the Business & Finance Analytics tools, with which you can analyze your competitors’ revenue trends and profitability over the past few years and thus assess market trends.

Among these, you can take advantage of:

• S-peek ;
• Kompass ;
• Atoka ;
• Cerved ,
• Crunchbased

But it didn’t end there! Because if you operate in the B2B sector, you can also use these tools to study potential customers and assess which segments are most interesting!

To learn more, watch the video on our YouTube channel “ B2B target customers: 3 methods to identify, study and reach them, thanks to data! “

Now what?

Congratulations! If you have read this far, you have discovered more than 25 fundamental Market Intelligence tools.

As you may have guessed, however, software is not a “magic formula” that can find answers at the click of a button.

Rather, you have to think of them as enablers. It is important to use them to facilitate one’s work but they are not able to give you the timely answers to your questions. Market intelligence tools, in fact, help you collect and process huge amounts of data, but to get useful information to apply directly to your business is not enough!

Moreover, to solve your problem and help you concretely, there is no single Market Intelligence software: rather, you need to use in a complementary way more tools than the ones we have just presented to you.

As you can see, the situation is more complex than expected.

This is precisely why Big Data experts like us at Central Marketing Intelligence , whom you can rely on!

Therefore, if you do not want to waste hours of your time and countless resources racking your brains about what software you should use and how to interpret the data you collect–contact us! Click below to get a free consultation with one of our Experts 👇