How do you differentiate market intelligence from competitive intelligence?

For me the term 'market intelligence' is more broad, signifying not only what your direct competitors are doing but also where the market in general is headed. For example, in a market intelligence report, I would expect to see information about customers' priorities and needs, new technology entering the market, and changes in behavior by geography, to name a few. In competitive intelligence, you focus more on the specific vendors in your market and how they are moving, what they are planning, and how these things may impact your own plans for product launches, etc.

There is certainly an overlap between market and competitive intelligence, but they serve very different purposes. For me, market intelligence is more about understanding customer trends, preferences, behaviors, buyer personas, and even micro-economic forces in your particular industry. 

Competitive intelligence is truly focused on your competitors--what they are building, understanding their strategies, analyzing their metrics, finding the "why" in their customer stories, and evaluating their product-market fit and unique offering in the market. 

So if you are building an intelligence team, make sure you have market and competitive intel roles either split out entirely or at least ensure the goals of the two are differentiated and clear to your teams (especially sales). 

Market intelligence + competitive intelligence = a full picture of how your organization fits in a market. 

Market intelligence is tells us what's driving decisions, actions, and budgets for customers. Think about it like supply and demand, and what is driving the demand or supply. Market intelligence helps define the GTM strategy or informs a marketing plan. Learn more about GTM strategy and market intelligence, check out THIS QUESTION from my AMA on GTM strategy!

Competitive intelligence is based on specific vendors and how those vendors meet customer needs. It is really important to understand HOW they meet the customer's need from a technical perspective. No marketing fluff here. Competitive intelligence helps your sales team articulate their value to customers, helps product marketers produce stronger competitive positioning, and it helps product teams prioritize roadmap features. 

There's definitely an overlap but competitive intelligence is based on building systems and tools to combat and defend yourself against competition while market intelligence gets you the research and information about the needs, wants, and trends of the market. 

If you combine both and add customer intelligence to the mix, you will have a super sophisticated integrated intelligence program that when used correctly, can build you massive leverage in the industry. 

You can think of market intelligence as a broader perspective research on market size, growth, segmentation and a general look at the key players while competitor intel is narrower in scope and looks more at how you position yourself against the competitors. For CI you'd look at what your rivals are doing and use your own internal data found in your CRM while performing win/loss analysis and reports. It's a bit more tactical. 

Market intelligence looks at the needs of the market and is the first source and signal on how you will build your product roadmap.