Every business must overcome unpredictable challenges in its growth. However, the appropriate application of modern marketing analytics can reduce business development risks. You want to know what the consumers buy and how your competitors implement different branding strategies. Market intelligence solutions can help you, and this post will tell you how to conduct market research and competitive analysis. 

What is Market Research? 

Market research is an umbrella term encompassing activities like face-to-face interviews, consumer surveys, and data collection through social media and news platforms. Therefore, corporations use market intelligence solutions using automated steps for data acquisition. 

Primary market research implies that the company owns the data and that researchers have directly interacted with consumers and suppliers. Secondary market research means social media listening, marketing analytics concerning third-party resources, and monitoring press coverage. 

Moreover, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) facilitate extensive automation across all the steps in market research. Such integrations enable companies to increase productivity and optimize operations to enhance capital efficiency. 

What is Competitive Analysis? 

Competitive analysis helps in identifying how an organization can extend its capabilities and rectify its business model shortcomings to thrive in the target industry. Marketing analytics consulting and reporting providers allow enterprises to inspect the internal and external factors influencing their competitiveness. 

Internal competitiveness addresses business challenges like inefficient operations. Meanwhile, external competitive analysis prioritizes identifying business development risks associated with macroeconomic events. For example, an economic slowdown will impact organizations. This impact will vary from industry to industry. 

Professional competitive analysts develop flexible reporting modules to make corporate communications and decision-making sessions more effective. They inspect the deficiencies in the supply chain and business administration. So, you will benefit from marketing analytics consulting and surpass your competitors in market share. 

How to Conduct Effective Market Research and Competitive Analysis? 

Market intelligence solutions often employ a unique combination of proprietary and open-source applications to deliver corporate service packages. Remember, integrating the programs and coding languages governed by third-party development rights will increase the financial liabilities. 

Therefore, it is important to identify the best strategy and determine how to conduct market research and competitive analysis using minimal resources. Otherwise, the cost of marketing analytics and related operations will render intelligence development solutions financially infeasible. 

We have listed the steps to guide you in performing competitive analysis, market research, and report visualizations. 

Steps in Market Research and Competitive Analysis 

1| Specify the Scope and Category of Market Research Methods 

An organization’s market research efforts depend on its scale of operations. So, regional businesses frequently prioritize local consumer sentiments and national laws. Nevertheless, an international enterprise has more extensive market analytics requirements, highlighting the significance of experienced consulting partners in international market research. 

If the database has the most values in a single language, market intelligence solutions can process them without difficulties. Yet, companies must utilize natural language processing (NLP) powered by multilingual large language models (LLMs). These services can automatically convert data across several languages and attribute emotions to consumer feedback. 

2| Estimate and Allocate the Required Resources 

The next steps in market research and competitive analysis workflows involve calculating which financial and computing resources will be necessary for you. For example, some programs in marketing analytics consulting attract recurring licensing fees while their open-source counterparts remain inexpensive. 

When enterprises increase their market research scope, they must allocate more resources to prevent scheduling conflicts. The unavailability of computing systems and skilled human resources also causes progress to slow down. Besides, burnout risks concerning the existing employees increase when they feel their department lacks the budget. 

3| Conduct the Research and Monitor the Progress 

Start using marketing analytics and intelligence solutions after consulting professionals who understand your target industry. Additionally, you want to develop progress monitoring systems that show whether your market research processes function correctly. It is also essential for competitive analysis and reporting communications. 

Progress tracking must involve periodic milestones and benchmarks to eliminate multi-departmental coordination issues in quarterly performance reviews. If you notice an unsatisfactory progress rate, the relevant team must address the inefficient operations as soon as possible. After all, realigning all the performance data only at the end of the business quarter is unrealistic.

 

4| Revise the Market Research Strategy for Industrial Relevance 

Did your company acquire another business? Will the industry trends undergo a significant shift this year? The same market strategy will work for you for a while. Still, a company needs multiple strategies to respond to the risks posed by the changing industry trends and administrative policies. 

When you revise your market research strategy, it can have ripple effects across your market intelligence solutions and procedures. Business leaders must therefore allocate a sufficient transition period to let the employees adjust to the new ecosystem resulting from the strategic revisions. 

Conclusion 

You have learned how to conduct market research and competitive analysis to increase business intelligence. The steps involve determining methodology, resource requirements, and performance monitoring techniques. 

Corporations can customize the recommended steps to craft unique roadmaps for their marketing intelligence solutions. However, maximizing automation via AI-ML integrations will continuously improve productivity and free up resources for other projects. 

A leader in marketing analytics, SG Analytics supports organizations in building and maintaining high-quality market intelligence and competitor research datasets. Contact us for advanced data gathering and exceptional validation that will help your business grow sustainably.