Market intelligence comes in many shapes and sizes. Sometimes you want to know what people are doing with their advertising. At other times, it’s important to see how they’re being mentioned or their initiatives over time.
You can probably do a lot of it manually but many things will fall through the cracks and you’ll spend a lot of time doing it. That’s where market intelligence tools come in. They allow you to paint a full picture of your competitive landscape and make the right moves the first time.
In this guide, we’ll dive deep into some of the best market intelligence tools available and help you understand what each one brings to the table.
Keep in mind that we may receive commissions when you click our links and make purchases. However, this does not impact our comparisons and recommendations. We try our best to keep things fair and balanced, in order to help you make the best choice for you.
Table of Contents
The best market intelligence tools
Before we jump in, note that market intelligence is a broad discipline. The tools on this list will try to cover most areas but I’m sure I’ll leave some out. Look at the list as a starting point for your research and eventual marketing campaigns.
1. Semrush
SemRush is a popular market intelligence tool with an emphasis on SEO and paid advertising. You can research keyword opportunities for content, understand what your competitors are ranking for, see what kind of ads they’re paying for, and much more.
It has a lot of additional features like the Market explorer report which allows you to see the entire size of a market (depending on the websites you’re researching) and how much of that market is ready to buy. This can be invaluable when you’re at the beginning stages of your research and don’t know if the market you want to tackle is a good fit or not.
Key features
- Keyword research
- Organic traffic research
- Backlink research
- Paid search traffic research
- Social media tracking
- Market trends analysis
- Keyword position tracking
- Visitor metrics breakdown
- Site usage research (duration of visits, bounce rate, page views, etc.)
- Etc.
Cons
- You can only get data for Google and none of the other search engines
- The reports are broad but you’re unable to drill down too deeply.
Pricing
Pricing starts at $119.95/m and goes up to $449.95/m. It also has multiple add-ons.
2. Sprout Social
Sprout social takes a different approach to market intelligence. The core of the software focuses on social media marketing, posting, analytics, etc. It also has a social listening aspect that allows you to spy on competitors and gain insights on what’s working, what’s not, and opportunities to acquire customers.
Key features
- Search and monitor influencers
- Monitor specific keywords
- Analytics for social content
- Analyze share of voice
- Customer feedback management
Cons
- It doesn’t have support for every major social platform
- For the platforms it does integrate with, it doesn’t offer post scheduling for all the features EG publishing to Instagram Stories is challenging
Pricing
Sprout social ranges from $99/m up to $249/m.
3. Similarweb
Similarweb is an expansive market intelligence and research tool that touches on SEO, referral traffic, social marketing, and audience demographics. It’s an ideal starting point to better understand a specific market.
I like to refer to Similarweb as the best tool to follow the breadcrumbs. As long as you know one competitor in your space, it’ll bring back a list of their competitors. From there, you can continue to research until you have a clear view of the competitive landscape.
Key features
- View global rankings and category rankings
- Find top traffic sources
- Find top keywords
- Find top social traffic sources
- Uncover competitors
- Get audience demographics
- Find out the technologies used on the site
4. Rival IQ
Rival IQ is another social media intelligence platform that allows you to uncover deep insights into your social media activities, your client’s social activity, and those of competitors. Of course, you can also see your analytics using the platform but we’re here for market intelligence.
It provides benchmark reporting based on your industry so you’ll be able to gauge your results against what’s attainable and strive to beat it. Going a step further, you can benchmark against specific competitors so you can figure out how they’re performing and what you need to beat. Of course, social media listening to understand the sentiment and find opportunities is available.
Key features
- Benchmarking against the industry and specific competitors
- Social listening
- Facebook boosted post monitoring
- Compare positioning with competitors
- Get a bird’s eye view of the key areas that drive engagement in your niche
- Monitor competitor’s social media posts and mentions
Cons
- Some types of data aren’t available
- The number of brands you can monitor is often limited considering the price being paid
Pricing
The pricing starts at $239/m and goes up to $519/m.
5. G2
G2 isn’t a traditional market intelligence platform. It doesn’t go out and monitor competitors for you. Instead, it’s up to you to uncover insights. It’s a review platform that aggregates customer reviews and displays them to buyers.
For market intelligence, take the competitors you found in the Similarweb research and search for them on G2. This can also be done on Trustpilot because G2 focuses on software companies. See what people are saying. What do they like and what do they dislike about the platform. This allows you to determine your product development if you don’t have much first-party research.
Key features
- Aggregate customer reviews
- Sort by start rating
- See pricing of competitors
- See positioning of competitors
Pricing
For market intelligence, it’s free.
6. Facebook Ads Library
The Facebook Ads library doesn’t tell you which ads are effective and which ones aren’t. It also doesn’t tell you who’s being targeted by the ads. So why is it a great market research tool? That’s because it shows you the creatives and copy that are producing conversions. You can also spy on landing pages.
This takes a little bit of effort. When you see the ads of your competitors, the most effective ones have been running for the longest amount of time. Focus on those.
Pay attention to the copy used, the CTA, the creatives, and the landing page that it’s being paired with. The only thing you’ll need to do after that is test to find out the best audiences.
As for cons, I’d say the only one is that you cannot find the audiences being targeted by the advertisers. That’s fair because it would be giving away too much of the secret sauce of the organizations using Facebook.
Pricing
It’s free for all users with a Facebook account.
7. Tubular
Tubular is a market intelligence platform that focuses on video. This includes content from YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Unfortunately, TikTok isn’t available as of this writing.
The platform allows you to benchmark against others in your space so you have a clear idea of what’s attainable and the performance metrics you need to beat. It also provides the ability to objectively compare the performance of videos over time. You can also analyze any creator to see their true performance with the Tubular Audience Ratings technology. These insights apply to YouTube and Facebook at this point.
Finally, using AI and machine learning, you can classify creators across different categories so it becomes easier to identify content partnership opportunities and grow your brand effectively.
Key features
- Work with multiple social video platforms
- See the content your audience watches with the also watches tool
- Get insights into real metrics while stripping away duplicates
- Categorize potential partners with AI and machine learning
- Benchmarking tools
- Tubular video ratings allow you to track performance over time
Cons
- Pricing isn’t transparent, you have to reach out for a quote
- The user experience can be lacking
8. ZoomInfo
ZoomInfo is a large B2B database of movers in shakers in various industries. It contains contact information such as emails and phone numbers, as well as data like the revenue of the company, location, etc. It also has a lot of other additional features like website analytics, contact enrichment, and sales outreach.
For the contact database and sales, you get what they refer to as buying intent signals, hundreds of buyer signals, and contact tracking. You can drill down further with social profiles, job roles, responsibilities, and everything in between. It’ll give you a complete look at your market and potential customers.
Cons
- A lot of the contact data is old or outdated (which is to be expected because people move around a lot in jobs)
- Data is difficult to move into other tools
Pricing
Pricing is custom and can only be gotten after communicating with the team.
Conclusion
Market intelligence tools can take many forms because market intelligence is so varied. We’ve touched on a few of the best tools available on the market right now.
For the tool with the widest applications, I’d recommend Semrush. Of course, you should take a look at the list, decide which ones make sense for you, and take them for a test drive. You won’t be disappointed.