What Is Market Intelligence?

Market intelligence is key to gaining a clear understanding and competitive advantage in your space.

By Jamie Johnson, Senior Analyst | Editor Reviewed: Adam Uzialko, Senior Editor
Business News Daily | Updated: May 7, 2024

Market intelligence refers to your understanding of the space in which your business operates and your ability to gather new information continuously. It includes a variety of activities, such as building customer profiles, conducting competitive analysis, examining trends affecting the market and the ongoing strategic adjustments all businesses must make. Market intelligence, then, is an important part of running a successful business. This guide will introduce the concept and explain how you can leverage market intelligence to prepare your company for a prosperous future.

What is market intelligence?

At its core, market intelligence uses multiple sources of information to create a broad picture of your company’s existing market. It assesses your company’s customers, problems, competition and opportunities for creating new products and services.

You can collect market intelligence by referencing sales logs, customer data, surveys and reviewing social media metrics.

Saul Dobney, CEO of research consultancy group Dobney.com, says it is easy for small companies to get started with a commonsense approach.

“It can be as simple as visiting your competitors’ websites or stores, finding published information about the number and type of potential customers, [and] keeping up to date with developments in your area from magazines, journals or business associations,” Dobney said. “It also includes checking for customer comments and feedback online that will help the business improve its offer or service.”

Market intelligence vs. business intelligence

Market intelligence is often confused with business intelligence but they aren’t the same thing. Business intelligence refers to data specifically about a company, while market intelligence looks at the overall trends.

In general, business intelligence is information about internal company performance. This includes how many products were shipped and the total number of sales in a month.

In contrast, market intelligence focuses on external information, including customer demographics, geographic information and what consumers buy. It also looks at the competition to see where your business stacks up relative to the rest of the marketplace. All of this can help form an analysis of business intelligence.

Market intelligence also considers what is happening with your company’s competition, which business intelligence ignores altogether.

How do companies use market intelligence?

Successful market intelligence answers concrete questions about current and potential customers and competitors and helps your company determine its internal goals. Here are some questions that market intelligence can address:

• Where should my company devote more resources?
• Which markets should I try to enter next?
• What are the buying patterns of our best customers?
• What products could be cross-marketed to existing customers?
• Into what demographic segments can my company push new and existing products?
• How do I conduct a market analysis?

Market intelligence helps businesses analyze the overall environment in which they are operating. This helps your business spot potential risks and identify new opportunities for growth. Most companies do this by looking at these four criteria.

Types of market intelligence

You may encounter a variety of types of market intelligence. The following are among the most common types of market intelligence to consider…[MORE]

+

To read the entire article, visit the Business News Daily website, via: What Is Market Intelligence?