Introduction

If you’re looking to gather b2b market insights, there are more than a few ways to do so. You can go through traditional research methods such as surveys, interviews, and focus groups. Each of these has its own advantages and disadvantages depending on your industry or approach. However, there are also some less known approaches that can provide deeper insight into the market than what is typically offered by traditional methods. In this article, we will discuss five lesser-known approaches that you can use to gather b2b market insights. 

1: Utilise LinkedIn for b2b market insights

LinkedIn is a great place to find information about your competitors. Follow them and see how they post about themselves, what their specific skills are, and what projects they have worked on. This can be a great way to learn more about the industry that you work in. You can also get an idea of what skills are valued in your industry. It's also good for finding potential employees for your company.

If you need somebody with experience in a certain field, LinkedIn's search feature makes it easy to find people who may be able to help you out with a project or two. LinkedIn also has a job board that can be very helpful. If you're hiring new employees, this is a great place to advertise your position. You can also see what skills are in high demand and which companies are looking for people like yours. Also, remember that LinkedIn is not just for professionals; it's also a great place to make new connections. 

In general, you can have a bird's eye view of your industry and the space that you work in through LinkedIn. 

2: Scope out your competitors

Competitive intelligence is another way to gather market insights. It's a strategic approach that helps you understand your competitors, their strengths and weaknesses, what they're doing to succeed, what they're not doing that you can do, how they are different from you, and how you are different from them. This information will help you formulate strategies for winning in the market. You can also gather competitive intelligence through social media. By following competitors on Twitter or Facebook and monitoring their posts, you can discover what they're doing well and how their customers are responding to those tactics. You'll also be able to see how they respond when someone else posts something negative about them. This, in turn, can help you determine what type of messaging strategy works best for your business.

3: Examine the people you are selling to

If you want to understand your customers better, try talking to them. Talk to the people that buy from you and talk to the people who sell for you. Most importantly, talk to those who don’t yet buy from or sell for your company but might be interested in doing so. There is a lot more information available than just cold-calling past customers and asking what they think about their experience with your brand. However, this is not to say that cold calling isn't useful to gather b2b market insights. 

If you want to understand the people who buy from or sell for you, get out of your office. Go visit them in their environment. If you are selling to businesses, go talk to their employees about what they do. Additionally, you can find out why they like working there. This is especially useful if the scope of your research project is to increase sales. If you are selling to consumers, go talk to them in their homes. See how they use your product or service and what other brands they like. If you want to understand both sides of the equation, try talking to people who don’t yet buy from or sell for your company but might be interested in doing so.

4: Talk to Influencers in your industry

Find and talk to influencers in your industry. Influencers can have a big impact on the way your product is perceived by customers. So it's important that you know what they are doing and how they are doing it. Talk to them about their own products or services, as well as any other brands they work with. Ask them what they think of yours, and make note of any suggestions or recommendations they give you. This information will help you determine whether there are new ways of approaching a customer base that might be more effective than those currently being used by competitors' offerings. If this is the case you can then see how those approaches could easily be incorporated into your own strategy for getting ahead.

The next step is to put together a plan for implementing the insights you've gleaned from your research. You should have a good idea of what you want to achieve with your product. However, you should also have a plan to come up with a way of achieving those goals. This may involve making some changes to existing features or introducing new ones that help differentiate you. Additionally, these features could help make your offering more appealing than those of competitors.

5: Find out more through crowdsourcing efforts

You can use crowdsourcing to gather b2b market insights. A lot of companies use this technique to collect information from the crowd and then act on it. This practice is known as crowdsourcing, which means obtaining information from a large number of people that are in your target market. In the case of B2B markets, crowdsourcing means gathering data from professionals who use your product or service or have knowledge about how it is used.

It can be done in several ways: surveys, focus groups, and online discussion forums. However, all these methods require a small investment in terms of time and effort involved.

Here are some less-known ways you can gather b2b market insights

Some people use LinkedIn to find out what their competitors are doing, but it can also be a great source of B2B market insights. You can scope out your competitors and see what they're doing right and where they're falling short. This is especially useful if you are trying to sell into a new industry. Alternatively, it's also useful if you're not sure how effective your current marketing strategy is.

Another way to gather b2b market insights is through examining the people you are selling to directly and indirectly. For example, if you have a product that targets small business owners, talk with those who would buy from you or those who might recommend buying from you (e.g., accountants, lawyers). If it's an enterprise solution for large organisations, talk with executives at those companies and potential clients too.

You should also reach out to influencers in your industry by asking them questions about why certain things work for them. In addition, you can find out how others could improve upon them. This will help create thought leadership around topics related specifically around this topic. Try asking questions like: "What do you think?"

Or go even further by mentioning other types of research such as surveys conducted by data collection panels. A data collection panel acts as a bridge between your company and survey respondents. Thus, the panel facilitates the process of collecting b2b market insights. 

Conclusion

Ultimately, there are many ways to gather market insights. The key is to know your audience, who they are, and what they want. Once you know this, then it’s time to start gathering data! There are a number of different tools available online that can help you do this with ease. For an in-depth guide, on b2b market insights, check out our recent blog post here. If you'd like to see how we can help, drop us a line at sales@grape-data.com.