Marketing intelligence tools are programs that streamline and improve the process of understanding and gathering market data. Market intelligence software can help businesses collect information on their competition, consumers, and their own performance. While market intelligence has existed in some form for many years, the current rise in digital market intelligence solutions is understandable, given the more recent growth of both AI and social media. According to Fortune Business Insights, the competitive intelligence tool market is projected to double in the next few years, highlighting an increasing demand for this type of data-driven tool.
In this article, we’ll cover ten different marketing intelligence tools, providing an overview of their features, costs, and pros and cons.
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Marketing intelligence contributes enormously to a business’s success in any industry, since it provides valuable insights that support tactical decision-making and helps businesses gain more competitive advantage.
Marketing intelligence tools provide raw data and analytics, including competitor analysis. When fully informed, businesses can advance their marketing strategy and succeed over their competitors. Marketing intelligence also helps strategic decision making. Marketing intelligence software provides key insights and data about the market, consumers, and competition. These insights help businesses make informed decisions based on research, and structure a marketing plan around quantifiable data.
Additionally, it helps adapt to market dynamics. Industries move quickly and trends can come and go. Market intelligence software is an easier way to notice trends and make projections, helping businesses adapt to swift change.
While easy to confuse these two concepts, software for market intelligence and business intelligence are subtly different.
Business intelligence refers to company-specific data and insights, such as how well your business is performing, where you can budget, and where you can invest more time and resources. Market intelligence is less narrow than business intelligence and covers the market landscape as a whole. Market intelligence tools can provide actionable insights on customers, competitors, and industry trends.
Similarweb is a market intelligence tool that gives insights into marketing data like audience demographics and website traffic, in addition to competitor analysis. Like many other marketing intelligence tools, you can use it to learn about keyword ranking, popular pages, and site performance.
Similarweb offers data on nine different metrics, including geography, display advertising, and referring sites. One standout feature is its mobile app analysis, which collects traffic data focused exclusively on app usage. Similarweb has a paid subscription model that includes a 7-day free trial at every tier. Their Starter package costs USD125 per month and includes features like historical data and keyword analysis. Their Professional plan is $333 per month and includes additional keywords and industries.
For larger companies with more users, Similarweb offers custom pricing plans.
Brandwatch is a market intelligence tool that focuses on social media monitoring. Users can analyze the sentiment of conversations on social media, track trends, and mentions, and find related influencers.
One key feature of Brandwatch is its easy user interface, which has a straightforward design. They have a separate dashboard for each network source instead of a central navigation. Another feature, Brandwatch Analytics, is a great tool for social listening and influencer identification. Brandwatch has different pricing based on user needs, with a different plan for researchers, social media managers, and influencer marketers.
Their pricing options are available after a free demo.
If you're a social media marketer looking for a job, check out our guidelines for writing a winning social media manager resume.
Owletter is a marketing intelligence platform that’s great for monitoring email and performing competitor analysis. It’s useful for tracking email campaigns from competitors and doing performance analysis of elements like click-through rates.
One key feature of this market intelligence software is email storage, with access for the whole team. Another great feature is tags, which allow users to group businesses together based on keywords. Email alerts can also be customized and bookmarked.
Owletter is subscription-based, and their lowest plan starts at USD19 per month, allowing users to monitor up to 10 websites. At $39 per month, users can monitor 25 sites and get unlimited alerts and summaries. For $79 per month, users have unlimited site monitoring.
Want more email marketing tools? Check out our latest article on the 12 best email marketing tools this year.
AlphaSense is a competitive intelligence tool specialized in financial analysis. It’s used to access SEC filings, earnings call transcripts, and presentations for investors. Their AI can streamline the financial research process and provide information on trends and projections. One great feature of this software is their large searchable content library of over 300 million documents. Users can also track market trends and business developments, and their interface is user-friendly.
AlphaSense offers a free trial, with pricing available on request. They have tiered subscription plans – one for small businesses and individuals and one for larger teams.
Kompyte is a market intelligence software that specializes in competitor analysis for go-to-market teams.
Users can utilize Kompyte to track and analyze their competition’s digital strategy through insights like keywords, content, and pricing. One great feature of this competitive intelligence tool is the Company Profile Dashboard, which lets users organize and categorize their competitors. Clicking on the profile gives you access to that company’s data and information. They also offer customizable reports, which allows users to visualize data in an easy-to-read format.
Kompyte has different subscription tiers with special features, and pricing is available on request. Their Essentials Plan allows users to track data for 10 companies, while the Professional Plan can track up to 20. They also have an unlimited plan with no restrictions.
Visualping is a marketing intelligence tool used to track web page changes and send alerts. Users can select specific page sections to track, such as products or pricing, and receive an alert when changes occur. A unique feature of this platform is the website widgets. Users can create a widget to add to their site, so visitors can subscribe to their pages, and get an email whenever there are updates. Visualping also offers browser extensions for platforms like Chrome. Their settings are customizable, so users can select monitoring frequency and sensitivity to match their needs.
Visualping has a free service available with limited functions and includes 150 site checks per month. They also have paid subscription options, ranging from USD10 to $50 per month for individual users, and $100 per month or more for business plans. Paid subscriptions offer more features and frequency of checks.
Contify is market intelligence software used for competitor analysis and business insights. This tool gets data from sources like social media, news sites, job portals, and industry reports. One feature of this competitive intelligence tool is their email newsletter, which sends actionable insights to users in an easy-to-read format. Users can also access data on the platform, through reports, or via News Feed APIs. Their AI gathers data on competitors and target accounts while filtering noise. Contify is a paid subscription that offers a free trial, with pricing information available on request.
Talkwalker is a marketing intelligence tool for social media analytics. It helps users track their presence and brand image online using social media listening and sentiment analysis. Users can employ Talkwalker’s data to improve their engagement on social media. A key feature of this software is influencer identification, which helps users find influencers related to their market niche. Talkwalker also offers crisis management tools, which allows users to search for crisis terms and assign people to respond automatically to comments. Their user interface has data sections for different social media metrics, like shares, likes, and comments. Talkwalker offers a free demo, with pricing available on request. Their plans are curated for user needs, such as data analysis in addition to social listening. They also have business and premium plans with more functions.
SpyFu is marketing intelligence software that focuses on search engine marketing and optimization – SEO and SEM. Users track their competitor’s performance as well as metrics like pay-per-click ad monitoring and keywords. One feature of SpyFu is their List Builder, which helps users research more targeted domains and keywords, and filter by location or industry, among other components. Their navigation bar is broken down into sections for backlinks, keyword and SEO research, and reports. SpyFu is a subscription-based service. Their Basic plan starts at USD39 per month and includes historical data, domain overview, and traced keywords. Their Pro plan is $79 per month and includes unlimited search results and data exports.
Mention is a market intelligence tool that’s used for media monitoring and social listening.
Users can employ Mention to track mentions of their brand online, in addition to their industry and competition. This software also summarizes data and gives insights for brands using social media. One feature of this tool is a customizable team page, which lets users add team members and set permissions. The Mention dashboard can be viewed in a few different languages. They also offer crisis management tools and influencer identification.
Mention is a subscription-based software with several different pricing options. Their Solo plan starts at USD41 per month and offers 2 alerts and 5,000 mentions meant for a single user. Their Pro plan is $83 per month, and ProPlus is $149, with additional features, alerts, mentions, and users. Each plan is available with a free trial.
Market intelligence tools have enjoyed a rise in popularity as businesses have looked for creative ways to manage their online presence, do market research, and analyze data. These tools provide great market intelligence solutions by streamlining the data collection and analysis process. Market intelligence software like Talkwalker, Mention, and Brandwatch are great for insights related to social media, while tools like AlphaSense and Kompyte are useful for competitor analysis.
Choosing the right marketing intelligence tool to suit your needs will ensure you stay competitive in a fast-paced market.
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— Originally written by Tiffany Quinn —
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