Digital Consumer Intelligence: What, Why and How

At Brandwatch our purpose is to bring structure and meaning to the voices of billions of people, enabling brands to make decisions that truly connect with consumer needs.

Historically, we've focused on social listening and analytics.

Heading into 2020, we're continually evolving and incorporating more and more data sources and tools. Our goal is to bring together all the data that matters most to brands to help them grow and win.

We found ourselves looking for a market category for a company that combined digital data like survey, social, and first-party data sources with data science and AI.

It didn’t exist, so we created it.

Digital consumer intelligence (DCI) is the culmination of our vision and the north star of our platform (Consumer Research).

Brands will be empowered to layer their social data insights with other sources, meaning researchers can check their findings and uncover more nuanced insights than they could with just a single data source.

Digital consumer intelligence is a market of products and professionals. It will be big, and the time to adapt is now.

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Why Does DCI Matter?

DCI is paramount because it helps bring the voice of the consumer into every business-critical decision. According to Deloitte Research, companies who make more customer-centric decisions end up being 60% more profitable.

Customer-centricity means every employee can have an impact, as long as they have the right insights to act on.

With this different data at your fingertips, your organization gains a competitive edge. For example:

● Unprompted data helps you identify what resonates with consumers 'in the wild'. For example, what can you learn from public social media posts about your industry?.
● Prompted data allows brands to directly validate assumptions or insights. For example, what can be learned from asking consumers exactly what they think of your brand or competitors, via ads on their favorite apps?

The combination of the two offers up a much deeper understanding of consumers, empowering businesses to make more strategic decisions at every level.

And some of the best insights can come from digital resources that have remained untapped for years – from cluttered inboxes, to dormant chat logs.

By diving into all this data, you're effectively giving your consumer a seat at the decision table. Not only can they help your business make choices, they can also uncover new and surprising avenues of action.

This is where, in a cluttered world, you find your edge. When we can be playful with data, we welcome cutting edge innovation.

What technology trends have got people talking?

Get the full details here: https://t.co/VefsCYjm6R pic.twitter.com/iGwVBFeJgU

— Brandwatch (@Brandwatch) October 3, 2019

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How Can You Leverage DCI?

So how can you implement DCI in your organization?

It’s important to remember that the data, not the tech, is where you need to start with your evaluation. You must:

● Identify the business questions that matter most, and the sources that can help answer them.
● Explore the data that is currently available.
● Asl of that data: Is it being used to its full potential? Is it being kept in silos?
● Bring it all together, remembering to incorporate the winning combination of prompted/unprompted data necessary to capture the thoughts and behaviors of consumers.
● Harness the voice of the customer across a multitude of sources together in a single digital consumer intelligence solution.

From here, machine learning and artificial intelligence can do a large part of the analytical heavy lifting – bringing that structure and meaning that can be used for decision making across the organization.

But this is no ‘set and forget’ situation. Most importantly, you’ll continually analyze what that collective voice is saying and action those insights as they spring up. An agile approach is required for today’s rapidly changing landscape of consumer preference.

Keen to learn more about how you can bring digital consumer intelligence to life in your organization?

Join Brandwatch research analysts Alex Jones and Kate Hoffmiere as they illustrate unique examples of digital consumer intelligence in our first Brandwatch webinar of 2020.

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