Marketers are Investing in Market Intelligence at Record Rates - Here’s Why You Should Too

With a recession looming, uncertainty in the post-pandemic market, and shifting consumer priorities, technology leaders are strategizing how they will manage, operate, and grow their mobile businesses in a volatile economy. 

During the pandemic, marketers tripled their investment in market intelligence and research to gain a more comprehensive view of current and potential customers, identify market opportunities, and inform decision making. And in a time when consumers are more selective with their time, attention, and money, a growing number of CMOs are increasing their investment in market intelligence to back strategic business decisions with relevant market insights.

We’ve highlighted the key questions market intelligence can help your company answer that your data alone can’t, to help you understand the trends that are moving markets, gain insights into competitor’s playbooks, and track retail media & merchandising investments, so your business can succeed in an uncertain market. 

Monitor Market Shifts

Whether they spent time mastering trending TikTok dances, learning Italian on Duolingo, or beating every level of CandyCrush, the majority of smartphone owners changed how they engaged with mobile apps in 2020 and 2021. Consumers spent record amounts of time on their phones, leading to increased volumes of key metrics like downloads, daily active users, and time spent for apps across many industries. But with the changing economic landscape and restrictions lifted across the country, consumers are more selective with how they’re spending their time, attention, and money. And many companies may be struggling to benchmark their performance as consumer priorities shift.

The digital economy is rapidly shifting, and companies need to understand what is happening in the market in real-time to stay competitive as trends change. That’s why comparing benchmarks for your company to years past might not be the most effective strategy. Instead, it’s essential to benchmark performance against your category and the larger mobile economy as a whole, and optimize your business strategy in real time based on user engagement. 

Sensor Tower’s Store Intelligence makes it easy to view market shifts as they happen so you can benchmark your performance against the market and make informed, data-driven decisions. For example, you can dive into how the top performing apps are translating downloads into revenue to uncover strategies for better monetizing your app and hitting your revenue targets.

Identify Growth Opportunities

It's fundamental for brands and companies to provide meaningful mobile experiences to gain and retain customers. And while many say that comparison is the thief of joy, comparison is the key way to understand how your business can stand out and beat competitors to win over more customers. Companies need to understand what their competitors are investing in and how much, who their competitor’s audience is, and how engaged their users are. This will help marketers understand which initiatives are worth investing in and help them identify potential customers segments.

Sensor Tower’s Usage Intelligence and Consumer Intelligence products help companies across all industries understand the health of their competitor’s businesses and the engagement levels of their user bases. Our tools allow companies to benchmark their performance against global mobile usage data so they can target high value user segments. The platform also shows how customers are engaging with the world’s biggest and most important apps so companies can make informed investment decisions. For example, financial firms can forecast revenue and understand the user base of companies they want to invest in to make investment decisions before their competitors do.

Maximize Your Marketing Spend

With a recession looming, companies are eager to cut spending, and for many the first budget item that gets slashed is advertising. However with some businesses cutting back their ad spend, more market share is up for grabs across key networks for bold companies willing to invest to win. So instead of looking for avenues to cut spend, marketers should instead lean into market intelligence to ensure they’re making smart advertising investments on the right channels.

To successfully advertise in the digital space, it’s important to develop an effective strategy to maximize your impact on digital channels. This means finding the right networks to advertise on, the right level to invest, and the right creatives to run to ensure your messaging resonates with your target audience and drives usage, which can be difficult without marketing intelligence insights. Sensor Tower’s Ad Intelligence tool and Pathmatics platform simplify the digital advertising decision-making process by providing high power data for understanding how competitors and others in your market are investing in advertising across multiple channels and networks. This allows you to uncover impactful creatives that others are having success running, and key networks to advertise on to reach your shared target audience.

Market Intelligence can also help companies wanting to generate more visibility organically. Sensor Tower’s App Intelligence helps companies grow organically by providing key insight into app’s organic performance and data to help companies become more discoverable on the App Store. 

It’s never been more important to make data-driven business decisions, and that’s made easier with a trusted Market Intelligence platform. Sensor Tower empowers brands with accurate, actionable, and innovative intelligence to succeed in the rapidly-evolving digital economy, and would love to help your business prepare for the uncertain times that lay ahead. Reach out today to learn more.