To strategize effectively and avoid risk, your company requires a 360-degree picture that incorporates customer and market intelligence. This entails obtaining data from every possible source.
Simply put, the more data sets you have access to, the more educated you will be. However, like with everything else in life, balance is critical.
If you invest excessively in social interactions about your brand without first grasping the underlying market drivers, your understanding of your brand’s positioning will be imbalanced.
On the other hand, a firm grasp of market circumstances without a firm grasp of social media trend lines may cause you to undersell your messaging to large swathes of your target audience.
If your competitors repeatedly outmanoeuvre you in a given area, the likelihood is that they are more informed than you. Business agility is not based on bravado; it is based on a holistic view of consumer and market intelligence.
Following the pandemic’s devastation of numerous industries, companies are engaged in an arms race for intelligence. It’s a race to the top, and the one who can pivot first wins. Without proper intelligence, brands make costly errors that have a negative impact on their bottom line.
For many industries, last year was a case of sink or swim, which highlighted the critical nature of pivoting on a dime. Brands have become more tenacious in their efforts to mitigate unforeseeable risk, which has resulted in a profound need for accessible and actionable intelligence built on a powerful data network.
Siloed data, while expedient, is a squandered resource and a hindrance to agile decision-making. Your brand’s position should be understood across all data silos, including internal data, consumer and social intelligence, and strategic market information.
Consumer intelligence should be based on social media analytics, staff and product evaluations, and polls, in addition to logistical purchase data, to provide a comprehensive and robust understanding of your customer voice (VoC). Similarly, your competitive intelligence should incorporate the same insights and be as well-informed as possible.
Consider the information that may be gleaned from Glassdoor evaluations alone. And this is precisely the type of data that can be imported into your market research platform to develop a more full picture of your firm.
To begin, your market intelligence strategy should be top-down, with a unified understanding of global positioning, trends, and competitive movement. As you drill down into your category, you may require access to information about the mergers and acquisitions and patent landscape in your area.
Any unstructured data that you can obtain, such as earnings call transcripts, that provides insight into the competition is critical for gaining an edge.
Access to a wealth of valuable data across the consumer and market spectrum will be the deciding factor between first movers and those who fall behind this year. To win, your market research tools must be capable of handling anything you throw at them – and that should be a lot.
