Why You Should Care About Marketing Intelligence Now More Than Ever

Every marketing leader has one simple question, "What strategies and tactics will allow my team to best reach our audience or customer?". The answer is just as simple as the question. Understanding consumer desires, behaviours, and trends are the keys to building and marketing a successful brand.

Even though the answer itself may be simple, determining the answer is anything but. What drives and motivates consumers to make purchases is evolving at a faster rate than ever before. This means that your marketing strategy has to be just as flexible and able to change in an instant. What works today may not work in a day or month from now. The world's most successful brands seem to have one thing in common, they're able to make the necessary changes to keep up with the constant shifts in consumer behaviour to stay competitive.

How do you make sure that your brand is at the top of its game and able to compete for someone's attention? The answer is adopting the use of marketing intelligence.

What is Marketing Intelligence?

You may or may not have heard of marketing intelligence, and that's ok. At RightMetric, we define it as the collection and analysis of external digital marketing data from across the internet. This includes data from:

• Social Media Platforms
• Search Engines
• Websites
• Mobile Apps
• Video Platforms
• Email Marketing
• Display Ads
• Blogs & Forums

Others have similar definitions but the main purpose is to help marketing leaders make better-informed business decisions based on competitor activity and consumer behaviour by harnessing data from as many points across the internet as possible.

Now that you know what marketing intelligence is, here's why it matters now more than ever:

1. Marketers Are Flying Blind Without Knowing It

Most marketers today already have a clear understanding of their existing consumers through the data that they've collected from various marketing channels. But they also know that there is a larger potential audience or consumer group that they're only partly reaching, or not reaching at all. The problem is that by only looking at internal data from existing customers, marketers are essentially only able to see half of the picture. If there was a way to have a more accurate view of an entire audience using both internal and external marketing data, it would be much easier to accomplish marketing objectives. The good news for marketers is that marketing intelligence does just that and enables data-driven insight from external sources to help them reach a larger audience and outmaneuver competitors.

2. Consumer Behaviour is Evolving Faster Than Ever Before

Given the constant innovation of technology, consumer behaviour is evolving at a rapid rate with no signs of slowing down. With the introduction of devices such as Amazon's Alexa, Google Home, and the emergence of platforms like TikTok, the way consumers search for, evaluate, and purchase products have changed. Many studies show that consumers care less about purchasing from well-known brands and more about finding products that meet their standards for quality, price, and most importantly, convenience. This means that brands must be willing to change and adapt to consumers' needs and wants while offering a convenient experience. Take a look around, there is no shortage of large brands that have gone out of business over the past decade because they have resisted changing with the behaviours of consumers. Marketing intelligence gives businesses the ability to see these shifts before they happen, so you can take action.

3. Competition is Fierce

Not only is consumer behaviour evolving, but competition between brands is fiercer than it's ever been and only getting more competitive. Consumers now have the ability to research the best products, prices and shipping times on a single product from companies all over the world and pick their best options all from the comfort of wherever they are. This means that your brand has to be on top of its game when it comes to understanding competitors. The good news is that marketing intelligence allows you to gain a robust understanding of your competitors and how your brand compares to them. This helps you understand where your brand falls short compared to competitors so that you can make the necessary changes and stay ahead.

4. The True Power of Marketing Intelligence is in the Sum of the Parts

Long before marketing intelligence was ever a thought, Aristotle said, "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts". What he meant is that when each piece is connected together, the single entity is stronger than any piece by itself. He may have been way ahead of his time, but this is exactly what makes marketing intelligence so powerful and how it should be approached. When you conduct traditional market research such as surveys or look at focus groups, oftentimes you are looking at each set of data by itself. This means you are only seeing a piece of the puzzle without taking into consideration the whole picture. By using multiple data sources and research methods with the goal of merging strengths and cancelling weaknesses, it allows you to gain a holistic view of the whole picture. This holistic view enables your marketing team to make more informed and accurate decisions.

There is no doubt that the use of marketing intelligence is the way of the future. It gives you the means to understand consumers in your market on a deeper level so that you know what drives them to make purchasing decisions. The use of marketing intelligence also helps you evaluate your competitors and how your company stacks up. When executed correctly, marketing intelligence allows you to make more informed business decisions that will not only help your brand succeed today but enable it to grow in the future.

Charlie Grinnell is the CEO of RightMetric, a marketing research & insights provider that helps consumer brands and agencies build winning digital strategies. Contact us today to learn more about how we could help your team.