What are the Advantages of Marketing Intelligence?

The advantages of marketing intelligence are the same as with every other form of intelligence: when you know more, you can make more informed decisions. SaaS Marketing intelligence specifically gives companies a better understanding of their target end users—and how to convince those buyers to choose your product. Yes, that’s a pretty quick explanation of the benefits of marketing intelligence. Blog over? Well, not exactly. We can also tell you ways to grow and improve this intelligence to become more profitable.

What is the Similarity and Difference Between Marketing Research and Marketing Intelligence?

Does marketing intelligence sound like marketing research to you? Then you must already know something about this topic! If you don’t think they sound the same at all, that’s fine too—because they’re actually really different.

• Marketing research is an organized effort to manually gather information about current and target customers. Traditional forms of market research include polls and surveys, focus groups, and customer interviews.
• Marketing intelligence includes insights like the ones achieved in marketing research, but it also goes beyond them to include competitor research and intelligence about your own product, such as customer data from your CRM (internal source) or market research information (external source).

Essentially, marketing intelligence encompasses market research, combining customer insights with other information to supercharge decision-making across all departments.

What are the Three Sources of Marketing Intelligence?

There are three primary sources of marketing intelligence: marketing research, competitor intelligence, and internal data. Let’s review how Statwax helps you make the most of each one.

1. Marketing Research: As we reviewed in the previous section, market research is the process of gathering information about customers from the customers themselves. Statwax uses persona-based targeting to go beyond the basics and dig deep into each buyer’s motivations, goals, challenges, and intentions as they shop for a SaaS solution.
2. Competitor Intelligence: Competitor intelligence is derived from third-party sources that let you know the marketing activities and spending of others in your market space. We specifically leverage these insights to support account-based paid search strategies that make the most of every dollar our clients are spending on pay per click, so you stand out to buyers at every stage of their exploration.
3. Internal Data: Internal data about past performance in sales, marketing, and customer retention is also a valuable source of insight that supports future decisions. Statwax helps SaaS companies achieve repeatable, predictable revenue through predictive modeling that forecasts your successes and spending in the sales pipeline.

How to Improve the Quality of Marketing Intelligence

There are several strategies any company can use to improve the quality of marketing intelligence to achieve stronger customer acquisition.

• Enlist Cross-Functional Stakeholders: Gathering and including data from across departments will only improve the output of marketing intelligence analytics. Make sure anyone who regularly speaks with end users about their requirements and expectations has a seat at the table—or at least, that their data is being included in the analysis. No table required, so don’t worry…you can stay in pajamas.
• Focus on Quality Data: You have complete control over the quality of your internal data, but once third-party sources get integrated, that control goes out the window. Before basing serious decisions on surveys, brand authority measurements, or the geographies reflected in a list you purchased, make sure the source is trustworthy. Sometimes you can do that before the data is purchased, but in other cases, you won’t know something stinks until you open the container.
• Work with Professional Marketing Data Analysts: The last and perhaps easiest way to improve the quality of your marketing intelligence is to make it someone else’s job. In these situations, you definitely want to work with companies that  understand what is needed and are passionate about delivering results that meet and exceed expectations.

Of course, that’s a beautiful segue to talk about ourselves. Statwax is a team committed to transparency, accountability, and authenticity. That’s the kind of world we want to live and work in, and therefore, the kind of experience we aspire to provide to our clients. And we don’t just aspire, we achieve. In 2020, 100% of our SaaS clients met or exceeded their customer acquisition goals, because over 90% of the leads we deliver are high-quality. This results in a five-fold return on marketing spending, all achieved through the power of applied marketing intelligence.

Statwax is committed to helping you execute your SaaS marketing strategy smarter and achieve your goals with ease. Let’s talk today about the benefits of a partnership for your business, bottom line, and the satisfied future customers waiting to meet you.