Market intelligence can be used to assist almost every decisions faced by a company. Market intelligence helps a company to increase revenue, profit or market share. Three basic steps on how to go about gathering market intelligence and what types of market intelligence will deliver useful insights are:§ Don’t reinvent the wheel –A huge amount of learning can be gathered using workshops specially if guided by skilled external moderator.
§ Choose your battleground – Clearly stating your key objective will help in your business plan and actions will be taken.
§ Don’t stop digging –It is not only important that market intelligence is acted upon when it is collected but also a constant feedback is needed. Read more at: https://www.b2binternational.com/publications/guide-to-market-intelligence/

Data is collected through various paid, owned and earned media channels. Currently, B2B companies have started to emerge which is indeed a good news for marketers. Forward-looking media companies are investing to furnish superior quality prospects and performance data in order to generate new customers. They are as follows:

1. Data as the new media and marketing currency - Media companies uses data in association to their content and customer's marketing assets.
2. Behavioral prospect data and signal intent - It helps to figure out the best opportunities by encouraging prospects in a more targeted manner.
3. Company content consumption data for account-based marketing - It aims to target companies that B2B marketers finds ideal for their product.

Read more at: http://www.business2community.com/big-data/your-best-marketing-data-provider-may-be-right-underneath-your-nose-01264168

Let’s say you work for a publishing company deciding upon what New Release Newsletter to send to a particular customer. One simple way would be to just ask your customers as to what genre of books they would prefer to read- Preference Modeling-and the decide accordingly what newsletter to send to whom. Alternatively you can try to predict an individual’s buying propensity for a particular genre and send the newsletters accordingly – Cluster Modeling.
Which of the above should you chose to yield more accurate results?
A survey was conducted with a New York based publisher revealed that deciding which genre newsletter to send to whom based on Clusters had a 2-time better open rate, a 4-time better and 7-time higher click-through-rate, than those based on the consumer’s self-stated preference.
The conclusion: It is equally, if not more, important to observe what people do as compared to what they say.
Read more at: http://www.agilone.com/clustering-beats-preferences

 The potential to go public and make millions with an Initial Public offer (IPO) is appealing to most entrepreneurs and sometimes seems the statement of success.  But IPOs are not as pretty as they seem. Planning and executing the IPO is a hectic task, it requires huge research and strategy, which is mostly outsourced to investment bankers who gives a rosy picture hiding some important information you should know.  After the IPO is floated you end up creating a lock up since those shares can’t be sold for a while. Also, not every company is suited for IPO, except those who have a simple business model and a clear cash flow strategy. There is a difference between great valuation and accurate valuation, overvalued stocks collapse as the markets gets smart unless they grow into their valuation. Read more at: http://blogs.wsj.com/accelerators/2015/06/23/richie-hecker-understand-the-risks-of-going-public-before-you-ring-the-bell/

Corporates today provide many pro women services like day-care centres, six months-maternity leave, transportation services etc., in fact, sometimes companies hire same number of men and women at entry levels, but still the proportion of women workforce is on a decline. According to Economic Times, a recent report shows that women “invest” in their careers differently. After obtaining a job, the effort to take it further reduces. Post marriage, her career becomes home oriented as she has both work and home responsibilities. Apparently, women who work with same passion as men are tagged “non-family type”. They are not able to develop a rapport with their bosses as strong as men’s. So, retaining female employees depends entirely on herself, the family and the supervisor. Read more at: http://blogs.economictimes.indiatimes.com/et-commentary/why-indian-companies-are-losing-their-women-workforce/

19000 students across 340 countries around the world have chosen GOOGLE as their top choice when asked where they wanted to work according to a study. The other companies where they also liked to work in the ascending order were Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple. This particular study was conducted by Piazza, a discussion platform used by several students and teachers around the world. Pizza has been doing a great work in the market for recruiters and is an attractive tool. Piazza has also stated that women and men have different opinions in choosing their workplace. Hence, such a software helps the companies know how students see the world right now.

Read more at : http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/29/where-computer-science-engineering-and-math-majors-want-to-work/?ncid=rss&cps=gravity_1730_-7001745546600563025#.mzgrdo:U5OR

Data is the most important thing for marketing today and most marketers understand this pretty well. Simply collecting data won't help. It should be able to tell a story. Insights derived from data are very important. Data should be able to help marketers identify their customers and the appropriate offers for them. In an organization, every department holds some data on customers. The first task of the marketer is to get rid of data silos and gather all the marketing data at one place. Once this is done, robust analytics tools can be applied to the data to generate a singular customer view. Read more at: http://www.business2community.com/big-data/marketers-big-data-worth-01263023

Is your CRM system making you work but isn't working out for your company then here are some tips that will come handy. Oliver Lopez, founder and CEO of Structsales, in his blogpost on Hubspot Blogs puts down 5 points thinking along which one can make for a great CRM system for their organization.

• The relationship between sales process and CRM 

• Find your key performance indicators

• Give Reps clear and compelling guideline

• Link sales process to buying process

• What you need in CRM 

For more takeaways from this piece of information follow the link http://blog.hubspot.com/sales/how-to-make-crm-work-for-your-organization-and-not-the-other-way-around

How to make my content impressive and engaging- This is one question that haunts every brand now and then. With standard formatted blogpost becoming too common and dry to consume, the appetite for more creative and engaging content is increasing. Sylvia Jensen, marketing director at Oracle Marketing Cloud, shares 12 awesome ways to keep your brand message relevant and at the same time makes it stand out from the noise. Some of our picks are:

• Framing a quiz, it will be more engaging

• Examine a case study

• Explore different charts

• Put things in a comic strip

• Write a guide or glossary

For more, have a look at http://www.business2community.com/content-marketing/12-awesome-content-marketing-ideas-arent-blog-posts-01258747

Gaining insight from marketing databases is proving to be a tedious task for today's marketers. A recent survey has revealed that applying the accurate solutions to analyze and interpret data is the biggest challenge being faced by businesses today. To mitigate these problems, marketers can consider using marketing data management services. With the help of these services data consistency and completeness can be achieved without putting in much manual effort. Extracting insights from marketing databases leads to improvement of clarity and insight on target buyers. Once marketers are able to identify prospective consumers, they can create content that are personalized in nature and hits the targeted consumers. Read more at: http://www.business2community.com/big-data/you-love-data-but-your-teams-not-so-hot-for-it-three-tips-to-get-them-on-board-01259909

In business, one not only has to keep a track on competitors and a close watch on the market but also keep a tab on what the customers are feeling, and how they are responding about their products in social media. Luckily with the advancement of data analytics many such tools are available and are becoming popular. One such marketing tool is social mention, which is a search engine which searches any social mention of the topic in social media there are other tools such as quora, tweetreach, etc. These platforms enable a business leader to evaluate customer sentiments and use it for business development. Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jayson-demers/7-marketing-tools-to-find_b_7605262.html?ir=India&adsSiteOverride=in

As more and more data pours in, marketers need to keep adjusting their strategies to be updated in this dynamic ecosystem of information. Thomas Begin, vice president of strategy in Targetbase, in his special guest feature in Inside Bigdata talks about the analysis paralysis in times when many organizations are turning to consumer centric strategies. He points out the major lags in this transformation:

• Inadequate internal collaboration

• The inability to act quickly

• More focus on reporting rather than action. 

To have a look at the recommended solution to these lags follow the link http://insidebigdata.com/2015/05/05/keeping-big-data-small-to-create-engagement/

Decision making is powerful when data is coupled with insight. A survey revealed that 46% of CFOs admitted to making important decisions based solely on their gut, out of which 15% blamed poor decision making on inaccessibility of internal data. Only 23% make the effort to perform data mining for decision making. In order to make way in the competitive world, a combination of both is required for survival. According to Duncan Watts, a Microsoft researcher, ignoring data while making predictions can lead to huge losses. Both insight and data are equally important to earn better revenues. Read more at: http://www.cmswire.com/analytics/many-managers-mistrust-data-infographic/

Marketing is an important way to reach out to customers. But start-ups may find it difficult to splurge a huge amount of money for marketing. So here goes a list of 5 pocket-friendly marketing techniques: i) Social media as it is an entirely free and easy-to- learn resource. ii) Conferences are also a good platform to share knowledge about one's organization with other business people. iii) Companies can offer free trial of their services or a free sample of their product. iv) Word of mouth from influential people. v) Providing customers with the proper description of their product or service and its usefulness. Read more at: https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/5-tips-for-marketing-on-a-budget

Marketing automation is software and tactics that enable companies to nurture prospects with highly personalized and useful content that helps convert prospects to customers and turn customers into delighted customers. It therefore makes for a highly profitable investment when it comes to adding value to the existing CRM solution. Eric Scott Johnston, analyst with Studio B, in an article on Inside-CRM blog talks about the takeaways from automated content marketing:

• Improve lead quality by reducing the number of unqualified leads.

• Develop great customer insights

• and finally when all things fall in place, companies retain their customers. 

For more on this piece follow the link  http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/insidecrm/3-ways-automated-content-marketing-can-benefit-your-crm-solution-67854 

Cut throat competition- a phrase that is enough to describe the fierce competition in today`s business scenario. Regardless of which industry one belongs to, their competitors are always there, and keeping track of their activities and decisions, most importantly searching for their customers. So it is important for business leaders to monitor the activities of their rivals as well, and keep a tab on their competitors, in order to retain customers. There are many tools for monitoring, one such tool is spyfu, which can be used to track down what the opponents are searching online. Another way is to use the social media, such as observing what the competitors are doing in public forums and how people are responding to that. To know more, read: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brett-relander/know-your-competition-wit_b_7555660.html?ir=India&adsSiteOverride=in

In recent years over the span of the last two decades, industries have been disrupted by internet competitors. People are becoming more and more interested in online or virtual shopping than to go outdoors. From newspapers to travel agencies, there are numerous sectors which have faced the heat due to e-business expansion of their counterparts. Despite this, it seemed that some business like telecom, television media etc.  were immune to this digital onslaught, but not anymore. A second wave of internet disruption threatens not only electronic and telecom business, but also industries like taxi services, banking and cosmetics. This leaves no other alternative for existing sellers other than to switch into online trading for survival. To know more read: http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/7688.html

The concept of agile marketing is taken from software development. The goals are to improve the speed, predictability, transparency and adaptability in the marketing functions. Tim Matthews (VP of marketing @Incapsula_com and author of The Professional Marketer) in his article in business2community.com mentioned about the six lessons he learned while managing agile marketing teams at two companies. They are as follows:

1.  Set the right cadence.

2. Take a break.

3. Insist on metrics.

4. Prioritize realistically.

5. Don't allow overly aggressive goals.

 6. Set the work volume competition.

Read more at: http://www.business2community.com/marketing/six-lessons-learned-managing-agile-marketing-teams-01250732

“Radio, television and internet-enables computers in the 20th century created an increase in option of media channels for brands.”- Christopher Heine (Digital Editor for Adweek)
Disruption and fragmentation are causing cracks between those who make platforms and those who hold the purse strings to ad budgets. Five statements from major industry players that help them to build a good marketing strategy:
• People, let's be real here.
• More native may mean more friction.
• The pace of change nowadays can be insane for creatives.
• The good news is that progress is being made.
• Everyone’s bottom line depends on this working out.
Read more at: http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/5-intriguing-takes-advertising-and-technologys-relationship-status-165409

Marketing automation a newly developed idea in marketing industry, deals with concepts of data tracking for lead, automate personal marketing activities and generate detailed reports for marketing activities. It embraces three major approaches namely lead tracking, automated execution and closed-loop reporting. At initial stages, foremost entity to consider in marketing automation is to show its value to the people dealing with checks in your company. With its involvement, few beneficiary impacts that it had generated includes, more lead output with same budget, empowered marketers to build and promote cross-channel online campaigns for user satisfaction, helped in financial justification of tracking and reports on ROI leading to no further complications in qualification or handling them onto sales, thus a smoother approach to marketing solutions.

To know more about marketing automation, please follow the link:http://www.business2community.com/marketing-automation/what-is-marketing-automation-01247668