Industry executives, consultants, and sales professionals often need accurate, up-to-date information about a company for a variety of business and competitive intelligence goals, such as:

• Understanding a company’s financial health and key business segments
• Identifying and qualifying potential customers, affiliates, and suppliers
• Searching for investment and acquisition targets
• Capitalizing on a competitor’s weaknesses
• Increasing sales by understanding a clients’ businesses better
• Tracking corporate news such as restructuring, business expansion, and contract wins
• Accessing key employees to initiate business deals

Market intelligence is “an ongoing, holistic knowledge of all aspects of the marketplace,” according to Quirk’s Marketing Research Review. Market intelligence provides a high-level view by analyzing many different business areas including competitors, products, market dynamics, and customer insights.

Whether you need market research for an ongoing business need or for a specific project, determining the right amount to budget is an important step.

Setting an appropriate budget that meets your research requirements without unnecessary overspending demands careful consideration of several crucial factors. Here are four expert tips to help you make informed decisions and budget for market research costs effectively.

In the ever-changing landscape of the global economy, market research plays a pivotal role in ensuring your company's long-term success. Whether you aim to drive profitable growth, enter new markets, or maintain a competitive advantage, leveraging market research effectively is the key.

Understanding the performance of a company is always at the top of mind for leaders and consultants. While internal analysis of the company’s financials and data can be insightful, it can also be somewhat baseless without comparison to industry peers. It is always prudent to couple internal analysis with external benchmarking.

Market research is a critical tool for businesses to gain insights into the competitive landscape and make informed strategic decisions. However, the quality of data collected is crucial for overall success. Bad data can lead to erroneous conclusions, wasted resources, and potentially disastrous business outcomes.  

Even if you have a successful company, there’s no guarantee your business model will remain viable for long. So what happens when the market changes, and your business needs to adapt to stay relevant? This is where the concept of pivoting comes in.

Strategic business decisions are made on more than just quantitative data. To obtain deeper insights and gain an edge on the competition, many companies choose to conduct a voice of market (VOM) study, often outsourcing this work to a specialized firm that can produce highly targeted and impartial results.

You don’t know what you don’t know. One of the reasons a business seeks out market research is to help stakeholders identify those unknowns — about the markets in which the company participates, about how its competitors operate, and about its own position in the industry — in order to make strategic adjustments that will grow the business.

Market research serves a critical function for achieving growth and reducing business risk.