Chapter 1
Facing reduced budget and headcount, marketers today must focus on efficiently growing revenue. “Growth at all costs is simply no longer being rewarded,” shares Bogomil Balkansky, Partner at Sequoia Capital. But, having to do more with less doesn’t mean that marketers can forego investments in their tech stacks. The right stack is necessary to drive efficient growth in any economic climate.
The first step in establishing a scalable tech stack is creating a strong data foundation with a market intelligence solution. Building a data foundation with automatic, accurate, and fresh data enables go-to-market teams to identify and segment their audience, score and route leads correctly, and personalize the buyer journey.
A market intelligence solution enables go-to-market teams to create a successful data foundation by providing fit data (firmographic, demographic, and technographic) and intent data. This data is then used to create, capture, and convert demand at scale.
While it’s clear that market intelligence software is extremely valuable, choosing the right one isn’t always easy. According to the MartechMap, there are over 200 solutions in the audience/marketing data and data enhancement category. With hundreds of options, it can be overwhelming to identify which solution is the best fit for your business.
That’s why we put together this buyer’s guide. Read on for best practices on selecting a market intelligence solution that enables you to identify and convert your most valuable customers, including how to:
- Define your goals and conduct vendor research
- Align on your business and technology requirements
- Identify the right questions to ask market intelligence vendors
Chapter 2
Doing your homework before diving into vendor conversations is absolutely critical to a successful buying process. If you are unprepared, you could end up buying a solution that doesn’t fit the needs of your business and exhaust your already limited budget.
Step 1: Define your goals
Market intelligence solutions provide an abundance of data, but it’s only useful if you know what you want to use that data to accomplish. You won’t be able to determine if the solution is the right fit for you if you haven’t clearly defined your challenges and your desired outcome.
Some questions you may consider include:
- Do you need more accurate and complete data?
- Are you looking to run more targeted, cost-efficient ad campaigns?
- Does your sales team need help prioritizing and personalizing their outreach?
- Do you want to better understand buyer intent?
💡 Check-in: Do you have a clear goal in mind? Be able to articulate why you need a market intelligence solution.
Step 2: Conduct research
Next, do your own research on the current market intelligence solutions available.
There are over 200 solutions in the audience/marketing data and data enhancement category. Talking to all or even most of these vendors isn’t possible (or recommended). Having more options doesn’t always lead to a better outcome (see the paradox of choice).
We suggest narrowing your list to around three vendors. This makes the process much more manageable.
Exploration phase
You are in the exploration phase if you are trying to understand what market intelligence solutions can do for you. You have a goal in mind but aren’t completely sure how a market intelligence tool may fit into the equation.
Some great places to source information while in this phase:
- Peer communities
- Events
- Webinars
Recommended Slack communities:
These groups often have channels specific to tech recommendations and questions. You can learn from peers without vendor influence.
Events and webinars are also excellent ways to connect with people in the space and learn more about the functionality of market intelligence tools.
Evaluation phase
You are in the evaluation phase if you understand the functionality of market intelligence providers and know you need this solution.
Ways to research:
- Review sites like G2 — filter out low-rated vendors and look for trends in reviews.
- Peer feedback — if you know customers, set up conversations to get unbiased opinions.
- Vendor management solutions — leverage their expertise and prior research.
💡 Check-in: Confirm your list of 3 vendors you want to speak with.
Step 3: Align on your business and technology requirements
Before talking to vendors, identify your business and technology requirements.
This ensures you’re prepared for the questions sales reps will ask and helps make a smart buying decision. Conduct this step with the team members involved to ensure alignment.
Questions to answer before researching market intelligence software
Business requirements for market intelligence software
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Business requirements
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Business requirements
| Business Requirement | Details |
|---|---|
| ✅ What is your timeline? | Identify how quickly you need to be up and running with a market intelligence solution to set realistic expectations in vendor conversations. |
| ✅ Who else is going to be involved? | Identify key stakeholders on your team and other internal teams so you can get them involved from the start. When evaluating a market intelligence solution, the buying committee often includes: • A business approver, like your Head of Marketing • Collaborators such as demand gen, growth, marketing operations, and revenue operations |
| ✅ What do you need to get this through to your procurement team? | Understand your purchase process. If you haven’t purchased software at your current company before, it’s a good idea to understand the layers of approval before diving into any conversations. This includes speaking with your legal and finance teams. |
| ✅ What is your budget? | This is pretty self-explanatory, but make sure you understand the range you are comfortable spending. This is especially important during a time of constrained budgets. |
| ✅ Who is your target audience? (ICP and personas) | Since market intelligence solutions are designed to help you find and convert your ideal customers, understanding and articulating your target audience is key. You want to ensure that the solution you select has data available for the companies and individuals you want to attract. As a reminder, your ideal customer profile is based on company-level firmographic and technographic data points (like employee size, technologies used, industry, and more). It serves as a representation of the customers and prospects you believe will get the most value out of your product or service. |
Technology requirements for market intelligence software
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| Technology Requirement | Details |
|---|---|
| ✅ What is the current size of your database? | Market intelligence providers offer enrichment to help address data deficiencies. Understanding your current database size and potential future growth will help for a more efficient and effective conversation. Evaluate the size of your database by asking yourself: • How many leads, contacts, and accounts are in your database now? • How many records are added monthly? • What is your monthly site traffic? • How do you expect those numbers to grow in 6–12 months? |
| ✅ What channels do you use today? | A key component of market intelligence solutions is the ability to activate your data across channels. Take stock of what channels you use today and where you plan to focus. For example, this may include: • Ad channels like Facebook and Google • Your website |
| ✅ What other tools are in your tech stack? | You want to select a market intelligence tool that easily integrates with your existing (and future) stack, so come prepared to speak with sales about the tools you are using, like your: • CRM • CDP • Data warehouse • Marketing automation tool • Conversational intelligence tool • Website personalization tool • Lead prioritization and routing tools • Intent provider • Ad platforms |
Chapter 3
Start by understanding if the market intelligence solution is a good fit for your company based on some of the minimum requirements like integrations and setup time and complexity. In this portion of the conversation, you want to understand if the tool will fit in your stack now and in the future.
Let’s take a look at what questions you should ask and why they are important.
Questions to ask vendors when researching market intelligence software
Integrations and connectivity
In Chapter 1 we discussed the importance of understanding your technology requirements, including identifying all of the tools in your stack. You want to ensure that the market intelligence tool you purchase today will work well with your current and future stack.
| Question to ask | Why it’s important |
|---|---|
| 🛠️ What tools do you integrate directly with? | Learn more about a vendor’s partner ecosystem. Integration information can typically be found on a vendor’s website but is still valuable to confirm during a conversation with your sales rep. When evaluating a market intelligence solution, you should be looking for direct integrations with tools like your CRM (like Salesforce), marketing automation platform (like Marketo or HubSpot), ad platforms (like Facebook), and intent providers (like G2). It should be easy to utilize and activate your data across your stack. |
| 💻 How flexible are your APIs? | A strong market intelligence solution doesn’t require coding but should offer flexibility for those who want to take a more developer-friendly approach. If there is anything you or your team may want to custom-build, this is an important question to ask. |
| ✅ How do you work with competing products that we are already using like x, y, and z? | This question is similar to the first question but also reveals how a sales rep speaks to the competition. While every vendor wants you to use their tools over the competitors, a good vendor acts more as a partner and understands that you may be using a variety of solutions. |
Differentiation and scalability
Every market intelligence solution has different strengths and weaknesses. Ask the right questions to ensure you have a clear understanding of what makes each option unique. This is also a good time to understand the future state of the product and how your business can grow with the solution.
| Question to ask | Why it’s important |
|---|---|
| 🎯 What do you do differently than everyone else? | Let’s face it, vendors start to blend together when you’re researching multiple options. You want to look for vendors that offer control, flexibility, and high-quality data. Take the opportunity to better understand the vendor’s strengths, whether that’s their data accuracy, data breadth, or integration partners. These answers come with a degree of bias, but tapping into Slack groups, events, webinars, review sites, and talking to other demand gen marketers and marketing ops professionals in the space (as mentioned in Chapter 1) can help you validate these claims. |
| 🏢 What companies in my space use your product? | You can find this information on a customers or case studies page on a market intelligence provider’s website. However, sales reps should be able to highlight this information to help you better understand how the product works for companies like yours. They should also be able to share stories specific to your role, whether that’s demand gen, marketing ops, growth, or another marketing function. |
| 🚀 How does the product scale? What happens when our company grows? | This question is often overlooked. We all want to solve for the now, but it is also important to be future-looking. While a vendor may offer certain integrations today, you want to ensure you have the flexibility to connect with other tools as your business and stack grows. Ideally, your market intelligence solution will help your company reach new buyers and companies, which means growth. What can you do with the product to take your company to the next level and the next after that? This is also an opportunity to ask to see the product roadmap. |
Skills required and timeline
Some market intelligence tools can be set up in a matter of days or weeks, while others take months. Understanding what skills are required of you and your team as well as the length of time to start seeing results will help you determine if it’s the right fit for your company.
| Question to ask | Why it’s important |
|---|---|
| 📅 What is a realistic implementation timeline? When will I see value? | Asking these questions will help you understand how quickly you will be able to get started with the product and how quickly you will start to see value. This is also an opportunity to ensure the vendor timeline aligns with your business needs and your timeline required to achieve certain milestones or hit set KPIs. In an era of efficiency, time is of the essence. |
| 📜 What kind of technical skills do I need to get this up and running? | Knowing if a product is deeply technical, will require a great deal of your time, and need additional resources (from operations, engineering, data teams, etc.) helps you better determine if the solution is the right fit. |
| ❓ Does it require any custom development work? | This question is closely related to the above question. Understand what is plug and play and where you may need an understanding of code to get the most out of the product. A strong market intelligence solution doesn’t require coding knowledge to get started, though they may offer open APIs for those who want to take a more developer-friendly approach. |
| 🚗 Can I test out any of this functionality before signing on as a customer? | Making a technology purchase is a big decision. Having the ability to better understand the functionality before signing the paperwork is extremely important. Ask your market intelligence vendors how you can test drive the product. This will also help you understand how easy or difficult the product is to use. At Dureach, we offer a suite of free tools to help marketers like you get the most out of product before becoming paying customers. Check out our Weekly Visitor Report to get a weekly report of the companies visiting your website and the TAM Calculator to calculate your total addressable market. |
Chapter 4
Once you have identified that the market intelligence provider will integrate with your current stack and what the setup process looks like, it’s time to look one layer deeper. The next step is to understand the ins and outs of the data provided.
Reliable fit and intent data are foundational to any go-to-market strategy. To activate your ICP, you must enrich your source of truth with automatic, accurate, and fresh data, and then use this data to create personalized buyer experiences.
Let’s take a look at what questions you should ask and why they are important.
Questions to ask when evaluating data accuracy and availability for market intelligence software
Fit data sourcing and quality
The power of market intelligence solutions lies in the data foundation. Use this as an opportunity to understand if the fit data provided is top-notch, and has the right breadth of information for your organization specifically.
| Question to ask | Why it’s important |
|---|---|
| ℹ️ What data attributes do you provide? | Most market intelligence providers offer standard attributes like company name, industry, and company size, but make sure to dig a layer deeper to understand the availability of attributes that may be specific to your business. For example, if you’re targeting hypergrowth startups, you may want to know the funding raised by a company. If your sales team wants to further personalize outreach, you may want to be able to identify prospects’ social handles. Dureach provides over 100 business data attributes, including: • Total number of employees at a company • Annual revenue for public companies • Fiscal year-end date • And, much more |
| 🎯 How accurate is the data? | In your conversations, ask providers how they verify and determine the accuracy of data. You should feel confident about how accurate the data is, as your business operations rely on it. At Dureach, we validate every record in four stages. • Has the record been refreshed in the last 30 days? • Do data sources agree with one another? • Are there anomalies and if so, why? • Does the data look accurate to our highly trained team of researchers? |
| # What is data coverage for my target audience? | Based on your industry and target audience, there will likely be a degree of variance in coverage. Ask the marketing intelligence providers you’re speaking with what they see on average for comparison. For example, the data coverage needed for a B2B company targeting ecommerce brands will look very different than for a B2B company targeting legal firms. |
| ✔️ How do you approach data quality management? | This is another opportunity to understand how often the data is refreshed. In the tech space, job titles change, new funding rounds are announced, and more in the blink of an eye. Market intelligence solutions should be refreshing their data at least every 30 days. |
Intent data sourcing and quality
Similar to evaluating fit data, you want to dive deeper into the type and quality of intent data provided.
| Question to ask | Why it’s important |
|---|---|
| 🔎 Do you provide intent data? What does intent data mean to you? | Intent data comes in many shapes and sizes. Intent data can be overt (filling out a demo form) or covert (visiting your pricing page or reading reviews for your company or competitors). Overt data is typically collected through your onsite forms. Web activity is collected by IP Intelligence solutions. Third-party providers like G2 offer intent data on how buyers are doing research on their platform. Look for a market intelligence provider that can identify your anonymous web traffic and that offers integration with leading third-party intent providers like G2. |
| ❓ Can you help me identify anonymous web traffic? | This relates closely to the above question. We have it listed as a separate question because many providers may speak directly to third-party intent when discussing intent data, but first-party intent indicates any even higher degree of interest. First-party intent shows that a prospect is on your website and distinctly interested in your product or resources. |
Privacy policies
Data and privacy go hand-in-hand. While it is often a confusing topic, it’s an important part of the conversation. Ensure the solution you are evaluating offers a robust privacy policy, including region-specific considerations like CCPA and GDPR, depending on where your business operates.
| Question to ask | Why it’s important |
|---|---|
| 📄 How do you approach privacy regulations and storing data? | Regardless of where your business operates, privacy regulations still exist. Understand how the market intelligence provider stores and processes data and ensure that this is in compliance with any legal requirements your organization has in place. |
| 📜 What is your GDPR policy? | Will you be able to use the data to market and sell to European countries? If your company serves international markets, it is extremely important to understand how market intelligence providers process European data and how this affects you and your business. You can typically find more information about privacy regulations and GDPR policies on a vendor’s website. |
Chapter 5
Having a solid data foundation is the first piece in the revenue-driven marketing puzzle, but to drive scalable growth, you need to be able to activate that data across the channels you depend on like ads, your website, and more. Asking the right questions will help you understand how various market intelligence solutions approach data activation.
We’ve organized the following questions into three categories – create demand, capture intent, and convert pipeline. Utilizing this framework enables you to see how the vendors you are evaluating can help you activate your ICP throughout the funnel.
Questions to ask about how to use market intelligence software
Create demand
The buyer’s journey starts with creating demand. Ask questions that help you understand how the data provided will enable you to scale your acquisition programs. The goal is to drive scalable and efficient growth, which is more difficult in a world of rising CAC and increased competition.
| Question to ask | Why it’s important |
|---|---|
| 🎯 Which data attributes can I use to build audiences on ad platforms? | Understand the breadth of targeting attributes available and the size of the market intelligence provider’s database. Make sure you can build audiences based on the criteria that is most important to you whether that’s industry, company size, or something else. Additionally, ensure that the market intelligence provider has an extensive dataset so you can reach contacts and accounts that are not already in your database. To help you deliver hyper-targeted ads that reach a broad audience, Dureach offers over 100 attributes, 44 million companies, and 350 million contacts. |
| 📲 Which ad platforms do you connect directly to? | Exporting a CSV of data and then uploading it to an ad platform means that data is already stale. Understand if the market intelligence solutions you are evaluating works directly with your most-used ad platforms like Facebook and Google. This will ensure the data flowing from your market intelligence solution to your ad programs is always fresh and accurate. |
| 🚀 How can you help me lower the cost of my paid programs? | Strong market intelligence solutions enable you to build successful acquisition programs on Facebook, capitalizing on the lower cost and larger audience size. Robert Bethell, Head of Demand Generation at RStudio generated two times the number of qualified leads at a fraction of the cost ($5-20/registration vs. $50-100/registration) by using Dureach and Facebook. You can learn more about how to acquire ICP leads at a lower cost using Dureach and Facebook here. |
Capture intent
The buyer’s journey continues by capturing intent. You’ve done the work to get prospects to your website, now it’s time to drive more conversions. Ask your market intelligence provider how they support their customers in increasing website conversions.
| Question to ask | Why it’s important |
|---|---|
| 🛠️ What website personalization tools do you connect with? | The name of the game is efficiency and scale. You want to be able to quickly use your data to build personalized experiences that convert. Ensure that the market intelligence provider you are evaluating integrates directly with website personalization tools like Mutiny. This will enable you to tailor the buyer’s journey and drive more conversions. Learn how to personalize your website for different buyers with Dureach and Mutiny. |
| 💻 How can I use your data for website personalization? | A website is a company’s most valuable asset. Personalizing your website for different buyers is critical in improving conversion rates. Ask your market intelligence provider if their data is accessible directly in website personalization tools and what attributes are available. This is also a good opportunity to ask how customers like you are using data to build personalized web experiences. |
| 🛠️ What chatbot tools do you connect with? | Similar to the above question about website personalization tools, ensure that the market intelligence provider you are evaluating integrates directly with chatbot tools like Qualified, Drift, and Intercom. Check out how MongoDB built a differentiated website experience with Dureach, Intercom, and MadKudu. |
| 💬 How can I use your data for chatbot personalization? | Chatbots are another way to drive more conversions on your website. Chatbots provide an opportunity to have a real or automated conversation that expedites visitors through the buying process and creates a more seamless experience. Ask how data attributes can be used to improve this experience. |
| ❓ How else can you help me increase conversion rates on my website? | No one wants to fill out a lengthy form. In fact, 97-98% of website traffic is anonymous, meaning most people browsing your website aren’t filling out forms. Understand how your market intelligence provider can help you optimize your forms with dynamic form shortening to increase conversion rates. The Ada team used Dureach data to shorten forms in their chatbots, generating $2M in pipeline in just 5 months. |
Convert pipeline
Once you’ve brought visitors to your site and captured their intent, it’s time to convert that interest to pipeline. Ask market intelligence providers how you can use the data to efficiently run processes that help feed sales and CS teams with the information they need to close more deals.
| Question to ask | Why it’s important |
|---|---|
| 🛠️ What scoring and routing tools do you integrate with? | To drive efficient and scalable growth, you need to be able to quickly use your data to conduct critical business operations. Ensure that the market intelligence provider you are evaluating integrates directly with lead scoring and routing tools like MadKudu, LeanData, and ChiliPiper. |
| 🔎 How can I use the data for lead scoring processes? | With high volumes of inbound leads, helping your sales team prioritize their time is extremely important. Ask how current customers today are using the power of their data to score leads and ensure they are delivered to sales with extensive context. |
| 🔃 How can I use the data for lead routing processes? | Ask how current customers enhance their lead routing processes with the data available. For organizations with large, distributed sales teams, having a way to quickly identify which leads should be sent to which sales reps is extremely important. The Grafana team uses Dureach’s enriched data and LeanData’s routing capabilities to ensure prospects are sent to the right sales rep in the right region. |
Hopefully now you feel prepared to conduct research on market intelligence solutions, speak with vendors, and make an informed decision. The process can be overwhelming, but if you come prepared with your business and technology requirements and ask the right questions, you’ll be set up for success.
Quick cheat sheet
| Step | Action | Details |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Define your goals. | Always start with a clear goal in mind to ensure you are selecting the right market intelligence solution for your business. |
| 2 | Conduct research. | Consider joining marketing-centric Slack groups, talking with peers, attending events and webinars, and reading review sites like G2. |
| 3 | Align on your business and technology requirements. | Before diving into any vendor conversations, ensure that you and your team understand key business requirements like timeline, budget, and stakeholders as well as technology requirements, including your current stack. |
| 4 | Gather questions for vendor conversations. | Ask questions to better understand: • The company and product • Data accuracy and availability • How to use data to drive a better buyer experience throughout the funnel |
Once you’ve selected your market intelligence provider and have your data foundation in place, you’ll be on your way to building personalized journeys that drive revenue.