How Digital Consumer Intelligence Will Revolutionize Decision Making

The reason? They have more access than ever before to information that brands have little control over. They also know the single most important fact in business: What they want.

Brands go to great lengths to align their understanding of consumers with what’s happening in reality – the market research industry is worth roughly $40 billion – and yet they still miss targets, fall short of goals, and plunge themselves into crises with frivolous marketing campaigns as they try to “relate” to their audiences.

Brands need to adapt and evolve. Enter: Digital Consumer Intelligence (DCI).

Here we’re going to break down what the new DCI market category actually is, what drove its creation, and why brands need to develop and nurture their own DCI practices.

What is Digital Consumer Intelligence?

Digital Consumer Intelligence is the combination of digital, survey, social, and first-party data sources with data science and AI. It helps to bring the voice of the consumer into each and every business-critical decision.

Brandwatch has long operated with the vision of bringing structure and meaning to the voices of billions of people, so brands can make decisions that truly connect with consumer needs. We largely did this through social listening and analysis and preached the word of data differentiation and overcoming silos, but now we’re building a platform that can ingest and segment all of the data that matters most to brands.

Brands must look beyond social for better answers. While social data provides quick insight and trend discovery, layering it with other sources allows researchers to check their findings and uncover more nuanced insights that they may not realize with just a single data source.

The key benefit of using unprompted data such as social is identifying what resonates with consumers. Conversely, prompted data allows brands to directly validate assumptions or insights from disparate data sources. When combined, these two data types provide you with a deeper understanding of consumers that empowers organizations in the strategic decisions they make at every level  – whether it be in product, marketing, or other departments across the enterprise.

And this data can come from all kinds of sources that are often neglected. It rests in your inbox, it lays dormant in chat logs and call transcripts, but that data and the insights therein are exactly what fuel DCI. Every data source is valuable when examined properly.

All this data, studied side-by-side, brings the voice of the consumer into your organization, giving your current and potential buyers an important seat at the table. That’s what DCI is all about.

Where did Digital Consumer Intelligence come from?

You could say that DCI is the result of business Darwinism, sparked by the need to adapt and survive. But, to get into the nitty-gritty, there are three market challenges that have converged to drive the creation of DCI.

1. The explosion of digital information
2. The digitally driven evolution of consumer behavior
3. Direct-to-consumer competitive pressure

1. The explosion of digital data

It seems cliché to speak of the digital data explosion that we’ve all heard of already, but we are truly living in an age of data abundance. It is only now that we are starting to learn how to put it to best use.

People have been talking about “big data” for roughly a decade, but brands still don’t take proper advantage of all the publicly available consumer data that lives online and all the data they own – and there’s so much.

Once ‘big data’ moved from being a buzz word to a thing people actually started working with, businesses started saying that “data is the new oil.” This belief is what drove businesses to take data analysis more seriously, and begin to understand the value of the data their company was generating. This also led to the uptake of a completely new business practice: data science. That very same process is now propelling Digital Consumer Intelligence to the forefront.

2. The evolution of consumer behavior

The influx of new digital channels and the abundance of information has changed consumer behavior in massive ways, especially when compared to five, ten, or 15 years ago.

Consumers are evaluating their buying choices online, outside of the influence of brands. People the world over are reviewing and commenting on their experiences with professional services and experiences online, and these reviews will influence the cash flow of complete strangers. This is the new word of mouth, and it’s driving buying behaviors.

In this new world of interactions, brands need to find new ways of understanding their consumers, and there are many ways to bring their voices to the decision making table.

That can start with listening to what consumers are saying on social media, but it can also incorporate prompted feedback like online surveys. With Brandwatch’s latest acquisition Qriously, you’re able to ask the questions that matter to your business of real people in a representative sample. You can read more here.

Developing deep connections with consumers across borders, cultures, devices, and media, can help businesses stay abreast of changing preferences and remain agile in a changing world.

As Forrester’s Cinny Little says, customers know “what they want, where and when they want it.” It’s the job of brands to find out that information and, with the right tools, they’ve never been better placed to do so.

3. Direct-to-consumer competitive landscape

How well do you actually know your consumers? Keep your focus on this question. It’s key to your organization’s ability to stay competitive in the digital era.

You can’t afford not to adapt and evolve, and graduate from your traditional market research practices. There are numerous examples of companies who have been run out of business because they fight change. Blockbuster is perhaps the most notable of the ‘dinosaurs’ – it refused to mail films directly to movie lovers’ homes – but the direct-to-consumer business model has only grown and digitized since then.

Now consumers can buy clothing, mattresses, groceries, toiletries, and just about anything else online and receive their purchases without ever encountering a store or customer service representative. Combine this with the fact that new technology platforms have essentially eliminated the barriers for new players to enter market categories, and you get the hyper-competitive, consumer-driven markets we see across almost every industry today.

Big conglomerates and well-established household brands now have to compete with smaller, more agile – and often better connected – entrants. The key question is: Who can better connect to their consumers? This further illustrates why brands need to discover, analyze, and influence decisions with the voice of the consumer.