Marketing Intelligence
A marketing intelligence system is a set of procedures and sources that managers use to obtain everyday information about developments in the marketing environment.
The internal records system supplies results data, but the marketing intelligence system supplies happenings data.
Marketing managers collect marketing intelligence by reading books, newspapers, and trade publications; talking to customers, suppliers, distributors, and other company managers; and monitoring online social media.
Table 3.1 shows eight ways to improve the quality and quantity of marketing intelligence.
Real-Life example (webshop visitor tracking)
A computer cookie is a small text file which contains a unique ID tag, placed on your computer by a website. The website saves a complimentary file with a matching ID tag. In this file various information can be stored, from pages visited on the site, to information voluntarily given to the site. When you revisit the site days or weeks later, the site can recognize you by matching the cookie on your computer with the counterpart in its database.
The beauty behind cookies is that it knows when your computer have entered the website. In fact, because your address is recorded and always being monitored, cookies enable a website to ‘follow’ you wherever you go while you’re on their site.
As you can imagine, knowing where your customers have been on your website, the pages they’ve viewed, how long they spent on each one, and how many times they’ve come back, is an extremely powerful sales and marketing tool.
Companies that make good use of “cookies,” records of Web site usage stored on personal browsers, are smart users of targeted marketing. Many consumers are happy to cooperate: Not only do they not delete cookies, but they also expect customized marketing appeals and deals once they accept them.
Measuring the flow of your webshop visitors
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