Market Intelligence and Business Intelligence differ from Marketing Intelligence

Many systems focus on exploring the environment—market analysis, gathering competitive intelligence, and strategic marketing information. In this regard, it could be considered Market Intelligence. The organic operation of any business also generates huge amounts of information, and analyzing this data to uncover opportunities and improve growth decisions is known as Business Intelligence.

Marketing Intelligence arises from the growth of data that we can generate and obtain internally from interactions with our customers—even before they become customers. It is the analysis of information about their interests, behavior, purchasing patterns, and reactions to the company’s communication before, during, and after a purchase.

As an organization increases in size and complexity, the need for Marketing Intelligence also grows simultaneously. When addressing the topic of Marketing Intelligence, it is necessary to consider certain questions:

• Who buys our product?

• What do they value?

• What do they buy?

• What type of products are they interested in?

Some companies, particularly those with few clients, rely on simple interactions with their customers to stay up to date with market changes; informal conversations at trade shows, events, or through sales calls can provide valuable information about their needs, competitor activities, and future developments in the industry.

But as their customer base grows, these methods may become inadequate for providing the deep marketing knowledge needed to compete effectively. A more formal approach is required to systematically provide information. This raises the need for a more formal method of information supply. Marketing Intelligence systems step in and address the important fact that the quality of marketing information affects the effectiveness of decision-making.

Running out of information is not a problem, but drowning in it is.

- Neisbitt.

Philip Kotler (2001), in his book “Marketing Management: Implementation, Analysis and Control”, addresses marketing information systems through a continuous and interactive structure of people, equipment, and procedures used to collect, classify, analyze, and distribute relevant, timely, and accurate information to be used in the planning of marketing strategies and implementation controls.

Marketing is becoming a battle more based on information than on the power of sales.

- Philip Kotler.

Marketing Intelligence can also be described as an effort to systematize the flow of information that sales needs so that marketing becomes more useful for everyone. Some argue that a Marketing Intelligence system is a structured and interactive set of people, methodologies, and procedures designed to generate an orderly flow of information sources, enabling marketing decision-makers to plan with better strategic thinking.

For any marketing organization to succeed, it needs a supply of current and relevant information for marketing decision-making. To be useful, such information must be periodic, timely, pertinent, and accurate.

Customer behavior data is a key focus in Marketing Intelligence, since consumer behavior is one of the main concerns of every business organization. Every organization wants to know who its current and potential customers are—why, when, what, and how often they buy, as well as their purchase intent.

A Marketing Intelligence system incorporates relevant information for decision-making in four stages and can be represented as an infinite loop of interaction between the organization and the customer.

1. Telling a story: The initial presentation of the offer, crafting a good story about the products and services offered, generates interest and creates empathy.
2. Information gathering: Collects data, profiles, and progressively segments audiences to identify an opportunity.
3. Creating a personalized offer: Presentation of solutions tailored to each person based on the findings from data collection and analysis.
4. Customer experience: Solving a customer’s problem, validating an audience, learning, and continuous improvement.

For a marketing team or organization to determine the best sets of data to collect and the information to be extracted from processing this data, the following questions must be asked:

• What decisions do you usually make in your marketing planning?

• What information do you need to make these decisions?

• What information do you receive regularly?

• What special studies do you require periodically?

• What information do you wish you were getting but are not receiving now?

• What information would you like daily? Weekly? Monthly? Annually?

• What are the four most useful improvements that could be made to the current marketing information system?

¿What is a Marketing Intelligence System?

It can be described as the set of procedures and sources used to obtain daily information about relevant developments in the marketing environment. These facts about environmental developments are shared with those involved so they can be used as a basis for making better marketing decisions.

Any aspect of Marketing Intelligence is also known as Database Marketing—the collection and use of specific individual customer information to make marketing more efficient. The term database refers to stored information on potential customers (likely in the cloud) with software to process the data.

With the technology of a MINTS (Marketing Intelligence System), marketers can now deal directly with their customers as individuals, with personalized communication more easily. Direct marketing will help reduce sales costs and greatly reduce intermediaries—if not eliminate them entirely—from the sales cycle.

Benefits and Uses of Marketing Intelligence

In conclusion...

Marketing Intelligence gives organizations the power to discover, collect, and analyze relevant information to make accurate decisions, identify opportunities, define strategies, and grow. As marketers, we must incorporate these technological tools that allow us to deliver value to our clients in an increasingly precise way.

Companies like Amazon, Walmart, and other giants have spent millions and achieved exponential growth results through the application of Marketing Intelligence strategies, setting consumer expectations for the sales experience.

This does not mean that creating extraordinary customer experiences based on Marketing Intelligence is exclusive to large companies. There are numerous applications and systems at accessible price ranges—such as Content Management Systems (CMS), Customer Relationship Management systems (CRM), and Digital Asset Management repositories (DAM), among others—that together provide the necessary tools to achieve a successful Marketing Intelligence implementation.