Expansion is the sign of a healthy business. And with the aid of market intelligence services, business expansion is no longer a distant dream for emerging companies.
Recruiting more staff, expanding into new markets, and building industry reputation are all exciting developments that come with growth. But in today’s competitive market space, growing businesses face a host of different challenges. As the company grows, business leaders start realizing that there is no “one size that fits all” approach – every new opportunity and problem will eventually start demanding different solutions. What worked a year back may not work this year and may not be the best approach. Identifying and mitigating challenges associated with the market entry is essential if the business is to survive. Effective leadership will help business leaders make the most of existing opportunities but leveraging market intelligence services can unlock the doors to a lucrative new market segment.
With the rising pressure to sustain profitability and brand image in the market, companies have started facing the need to outpace their opponents when it comes to retaining and acquiring new customers. There’s nothing more depressing to the stakeholders than slow sales or high competition. Companies of today need to be on their toes and constantly think about ways to attract, serve, and retain their customers. Consumers change with every generation and companies need to be agile enough to serve the market as it stands in any given year. Whether you’re in the healthcare, automotive, manufacturing, or retail industry, market intelligence services are still essential for survival. With that being said, let’s take a look at what is market intelligence below and how it can take your business to the next level.
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What is market intelligence?
For any business to thrive in today’s competitive market space, keeping a track of competitors and the state of the industry is crucial. This information has, traditionally, been termed as market intelligence and for the C-suite, this information forms an important part of developing lucrative customer relationships, boosting leads, and creating an expansive customer base. In recent years, however, the practice of offering market intelligence services has evolved to include analytics and analysis to help business owners improve their strategies and projections.
Market intelligence services leverage various information sources to offer a comprehensive overview of the current market, key challenges, competitors, the potential of new products, and much more. But it can also be as simple as visiting a competitor’s website or finding published information about the company’s performance and their customer base. Understanding what the customers feel about the products or services being offered is one of the most crucial aspects of developing a competitive marketing intelligence.
An underrated ability of market intelligence services is its ability to put a company’s business intelligence in context. Business intelligence usually refers to the broader information set about product or services and their customers. For instance, the number of products shipped, total sales in a month, and other transactions occurring within a business. Market intelligence services, in contrast, focus only on specific customer segments from a target market, including demographics and additional information on what consumers buy – all of which can help inform an analysis of business intelligence. It also takes into account the competitors; which business intelligence completely ignores.
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Successful market intelligence services not only help business leaders answer questions about current and potential competitors and customers but also helps the company determine its internal goals. Some of the questions that market intelligence services can help answer include:
- What the some of the potential market segments that could be targeted?
- Is there any pattern to the consumers’ buying behavior?
- What kind of products could be cross-marketed to customers?
- What demographic should be targeted?
Though market intelligence is a multifaceted process, many companies gather information about their competitors by performing various types of high-level analysis. This process can sometimes get complicated and consume a lot of time and resources. At Infiniti Research, we help companies leverage the right market intelligence services to streamline business processes and boost ROI. Clients can now visualize all the data about their target market on a dedicated market intelligence portal, which acts as a centralized platform for storing, processing, and disseminating market information. It also provides comprehensive information on the quantitative and qualitative aspects of target markets, competitors, and end-users.
For more information on our portfolio of market intelligence services and how to gain a competitive advantage in any market, request more info.
Benefits of market intelligence services
Apart from giving business leaders an idea of the current and future market environment, market intelligence services can offer numerous benefits to companies, regardless of their product type. Listed below are some of the key benefits of comprehensive market intelligence research.
8 benefits of market intelligence services
- Gives companies an idea of how their products or services will perform in the target market
- Helps businesses understand their audience and their needs
- Allows business leaders to make changes to products if needed, based on consumer response
- Keeps companies updated about their competitors’ successes and failures. This improves decision-making and helps them identify the potential market opportunity
- Reveals new opportunities in the market, new segments, or emerging categories
- Reduces dependency on intuition and luck by informing decisions and strategic direction in product marketing and development
- Improves customer retention capabilities and helps identify estimate market size
- Positions you as an authority on upcoming market trends, allowing you to gain a competitive advantage
Companies of today cannot afford to take shortcuts when it comes to leveraging market intelligence services. Missing out on the benefits can ultimately be the deciding factor between success and failure for organizations.
Market Intelligence Services: An Overview
So why are market intelligence services so important in 2019? It has always been the key to success in the past, but thanks to technology, it has become extremely easy to access market intelligence data at the click of a button. This is the era of rapid changes and companies that can harness this new data will be successful in their market expansion attempts. Soon, we will witness the uprising of a new generation with immense buying power – Generation Z. Consumers of this generation influence household spending and hold direct spending power. And since there isn’t a lot of data readily available on their preferences and buying behavior, leveraging market intelligence services can help you understand the needs and preferences of this up-and-coming demographic. Buyers in the B2B marketplace are also facing similar issues and are now focusing on metrics like corporate social responsibility (CSR) to rope in potential clients. This is a testament to the fact that most people who were born between the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s want to have an impact on the world and give higher emphasis on social causes and the environment. There are many large and small businesses that are using this model worldwide and are rapidly gaining popularity among younger generations.
However, with the rise of this new consumer era, businesses have been faced with the dilemma to change the way they buy, sell, and share information. Leveraging market intelligence services can help in this context since it simplifies the process of adapting to new market trends and regulations. It can also help companies to identify opportunities to become market disruptors and establish processes to increase market size. To stand out in such a dynamic market, businesses need to constantly innovate when it comes to identifying potential market opportunities and product launch windows. Developing an understanding of what’s already out there helps business leaders make good decisions and investments when it comes to new opportunities. This is where the true importance of market intelligence services is realized by business stakeholders.
Market intelligence services: A complex, ongoing market research activity
2019 will witness the integration of big data tools with market intelligence services. Manually sifting through enormous data sets can be an arduous task, but with the rise of automation, it has become easier than ever to find the relevant data business leaders need from their internal sources and reputable websites. In a recent study, more than 65% of the experts predicted that data collection would be automated by the end of the decade. Automation and web-based tools have the capability to make market intelligence services affordable and actionable, even for small businesses.
Though most large companies eventually stop depending on market intelligence services for business growth, it is a good idea to continue collecting data on the market environment and keep up with the latest market trends. Without such a process in place, companies will miss out on their most information asset – their consumers. A company that regularly carries out competitive intelligence studies will always have a competitive advantage over its peers. Moreover, analyzing consumer behavior will help businesses to give their consumers exactly what they want, when they want it.
There is no such thing as being too prepared for market disruptions. It’s impossible to understand consumer behavior without the right tools and even if you do, there is no way to know how they will respond unless they start talking with their wallets. With market intelligence services, businesses can accurately predict demand fluctuations in the current market environment, analyze market trends, identify market opportunities, and develop competitive intelligence capabilities.
Growing a business in the midst of rising market competition is no simple task. It requires developing an understanding of your customers, their spending habits, competitors’ products, and much more. Gain limited-period access to our portfolio of market intelligence services to know more.
