Selecting a consumer intelligence solution can be challenging. Navigating through various vendors, use cases, and features can seem overwhelming without a proper framework. This buyer’s guide is designed to simplify the process.

It covers four essential areas for understanding consumers: search, segmentation, analysis, and action. For each area, we outline the necessary solutions and features to achieve your goals.

Search

Uncover what your consumers are saying online by exploring their conversations across the web.

Data Coverage

Reliable decisions require comprehensive data. Many vendors claim to offer complete coverage, but few deliver. Accurate, clean, and reliable data is essential for creating better campaigns, spotting threats, and understanding your consumers.

Ask vendors: “Does your product offer…”

• A historical archive of 1.7 trillion+ conversations?
• Data available back to 2010?
• Data sourced from 100 million+ sites?
• Over half a billion new conversations daily?
• Official Twitter Partnership for full Twitter data?
• Firehose access to Reddit and Tumblr?
• Coverage from major news sites (CNN, NY Times)?
• Coverage from blogs (WordPress, Medium)?
• Coverage from forums (Yahoo Answers, GoodReads)?
• Coverage from review sites (Google Reviews, TripAdvisor)?
• Ability to collect paywalled or print news?
• Ability to collect broadcast data from TV and radio?
• Global coverage from every country and language?

Data Speed

Real-time awareness is crucial. Choose a solution that provides live coverage updated by the minute.

Ask vendors: “Does your product offer…”

• Real-time data?
• Minute-by-minute data analysis?
• Live visualizations?
• Always-on, smart email alerts?
• Integration with other solutions (Hootsuite, Khoros)?
• Firehose coverage of Twitter?

Data Flexibility

With over 1 billion live sites, you need flexibility to collect relevant data.

Ask vendors: “Does your product offer…”

• Ability to request new sites to crawl?
• SLA to add new sites within 72 hours?
• New sites added weekly or daily?
• Exclusive partnerships with data providers?
• Proprietary data crawlers?
• Ability to upload custom content (NPS scores, call logs)?

Data Quality

Ensure your data is reliable and trustworthy.

Ask vendors: “Does your product offer…”

• Smart spam filters?
• A blacklist of sites not crawled by default?
• Crawlers that search for conversation in key areas?
• User capability to exclude irrelevant sites and mentions?
• Preview results before activating a search?
• Automated search builder with built-in exclusion terms?

Data Compliance

Ensure your data collection is compliant to avoid risks.

Ask vendors: “Does your product offer…”

• Tools for compliantly collecting Facebook and Instagram data?
• Only publicly available and ethically sourced data?
• Comprehensive user data privacy policy?
• IS027001 certification (or similar)?
• Compliance feed ingestion for data deletion?
• Restriction of verbatim mentions visibility?

Search Functionality

Powerful search tools are essential for collecting the right data.

Ask vendors: “Does your product offer…”

• AI-powered search?
• Unlimited quick searches with up to a year of historical data?
• Flexible and easy-to-use search builder?
• Language agnostic searches?
• Ability to search in 190+ languages?
• Logo search capabilities?
• Keyword and image search?
• Filtering by custom-built audiences?
• Geo-fencing search capabilities?
• Large search string limit?
• Preview of 31 days of data before saving a query?
• A sampling of large searches?
• Historical data specification (back to 2010)?
• A range of search operators (40+ advised)?
• Review ratings search?
• Minute-by-minute time range search?
• Search for Twitter authors by followers or verification?
• Author gender-specific search?
• Basic operators (AND, OR, NOT, NEAR)?
• Channel-specific searches for Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Instagram?

Collecting relevant data is the first step to gaining valuable consumer insights. Without high-quality data, insights and platform reliability suffer. However, the search is just the beginning. Next, ensure your platform can effectively segment the large volumes of data you collect.

Ready to dive deeper into finding the perfect consumer intelligence solution? Continue reading our comprehensive guide to uncover all the essential features, tips, and strategies you need to make an informed decision.