What is Market Intelligence? Benefits and practical cases

Few companies know it thoroughly, and even fewer are using it on a daily basis for their own goals… Yet it is precisely these few companies that are outperforming all competitors: I am talking about Market Intelligence.

What is market intelligence

If we were to “lock up” market intelligence within an academic definition, we could say that it is de:

“The set of all the methods, activities, tools (and even the mindset) for collecting, analyzing, and applying relevant data about your competitive environment.”

Instead of giving us a static snapshot as traditional market research does, market intelligence sets the method for always being able to monitor our competitive environment, day in and day out. 

Let me dwell for a moment on two terms I just used: “apply” and “relevant.” 

Truly relevant information (to avoid data indigestion)

Let’s start with the latter. There are dozens of tools on the Web, both free and paid, that can provide you with data on your target market. From Google Trends onward, the list is long. 

And even longer is the list of data you can glean about your market. Think a couple of years ago, researchers at the University of San Diego studied Americans’ behaviors in front of computers, smartphones, radio, TV, and even video games. 

And do you know what emerged? 

That each average American tends to consume about 34 gigabytes of data and information per day. A decidedly heavy media diet, which can lead to indigestion, since it involves “digesting” something like 100,000 words daily.

How many is 100,000 words? More than reading 100 articles like this every day or-if you prefer-reading a fine piece of Tolstoi’s War and Peace, which apparently runs close to 460,000 words!

But how much of this information is really relevant to your business? How functional are they to your activities? How many are operationally or strategically exploitable right away?

And here we come to the second term I would like to quickly elaborate on: application.

What Market Intelligence is NOT…

Not a Market Research

One of the first issues to unpack concerns the difference between market intelligence and market research. Commissioning data-driven market research is not the same as initiating a market intelligence process.

In fact, many companies mistakenly consider market intelligence to be synonymous with Market Research. It doesn’t. 

Market intelligence is not a spot event but precisely a continuous and constant process that allows for a 360-degree understanding, analysis and evaluation of all aspects affecting the internal and external environment dynamically so as to understand its evolution over time for the purpose of Simplify and improve all decision making processes.

It is not Business Intelligence

Business Intelligence is that set of technologies and methods that enables a company to move from raw internal data to useful information. That is, that complex system that correlates:

• Production data collected with the management system (ERP)
• Customer data collected through CRM
• Online (ecommerce) and offline sales data
• Data on our suppliers through the supply chain

It brings them together in one place (Data Warehouse) and makes them usable through a series of dashboards. 

Market intelligence, on the other hand, focuses more on all those data from external sources. In the past we had very few, but today thanks to online data we are able to get useful information and correlate it with internal data.

How Market Intelligence Works

Market intelligence doesn’t just collect data; it returns it. In the form of relevant and applicable information as in a kind of supply chain from the collection of raw data to the processing of applicable information, so-called insights.

How does he do it?

This is probably the most revolutionary aspect of market intelligence:

In fact, it is the only system that combines and processes external data and internal data by considering their interactions.

External data are those concerning:

• Competition
• Market trends
• Evolving consumer tastes and desires

While the internal ones are all that data about:

• The analytics of the corporate website
• The performance of present and past marketing campaigns
• the company’s economic/financial results

Basically, market intelligence uses multiple sources of information homogeneous and mismatched by examining customers, problems, competition as well as internal information such as sales records, website conversion rates, and even social media metrics, and relates them to each other, building unprecedented scenarios otherwise “invisible” even to the eyes of the most experienced and trained management.

Some practical cases: market intelligence applied to business

What can you do practically with market intelligence?

• You can find out what your customers and prospects are looking for (by defining one or more target models) on the Web. How? By analyzing their Google searches and tracking how they change from month to month.

• You can find out what they think about your brand, your products and/or services, and those of your competitors, without filtering or contaminating information and especially in real time thanks to the social listening .

• You can know how many visits your competitors’ websites have and where they come from through the Web Intelligence , which gives you an insider’s view to understand how your competitors are doing online and what results they are getting from day to day.

• You can learn about your competitors’ online sales trends from month to month on the major marketplaces by analyzing, for example, the Amazon Data . 

• You can find out what Ads your competitors are investing in and what landing pages they are driving their potential customers to, right down to figuring out conversion rates!

• Stay up-to-date constantly on new trends in your industry with a kind of 360-degree digital press review that informs you of changes in interest, new regulations, startups and innovative projects… everything you CANNOT miss about your market!

The concrete benefits of Market Intelligence

Having a dynamic and always up-to-date vision is decisive for: 

• Catch weak market signals before others do and take advantage of hidden growth opportunities
• Understand the impact of major changes (e.g., changes in relevant regulations) to be ready to respond at all times
• Anticipate your competitors’ moves so you are never caught unprepared
• Monitor your sales results and have a constant benchmark with competitors
• Always be present in the right channels to intercept new potential customers and be able to nip their needs in the bud
• Improve your sales closing rates by having a deep understanding of customers, competitor offers, and the ability to anticipate objections
• Innovate your products and services by understanding what your customers want (and what no survey will ever allow you to find out!).
• Minimize the risk of errors and be able to take prompt action through complete control of the competitive arena.

In addition, it allows you to accumulate new intelligence. Information that is not decisive today but will become so in a few months or even weeks. In short, an investment in the future of your business.

Turn to an agency that specializes in market intelligence is the only way to secure this information promptly and design your operational and strategic countermeasures.

The paradox is that there is a lot of other really relevant information on the Web-theoretically available to everyone-that is neither intercepted nor processed. Unfortunately, however, information is not like wine that gets better the older it gets. In fact, if you don’t take advantage of them in time they are perfectly useless. This is precisely why having a dynamic and always up-to-date vision is crucial. 

Wouldn’t it be absurd to have a wealth of potentially crucial information for your business at your fingertips and not take advantage of it?

As said by the author of, “The Richest Man in Babylon,” George Clason:

“Opportunity is a superb goddess who does not waste time on those who are not prepared.”