Competitive intelligence can be a useful tool to improve marketing and identify new business opportunities. It can also help you gain a competitive edge over your competitors.
How can companies collect and analyze information about competitors without breaking the laws? Competitive intelligence research provides the answer.
Defining Competitive Intelligence
Competitive intelligence is the collection and utilization of information about competitors, consumers, market trends, and other factors that can affect business strategy. Leading brands are always keeping an eye on their competitors to ensure they have all the information they need to maintain a competitive advantage.
The concept of competitive intelligence has been around for some time, with Leonard Fuld referencing it in one of his best-selling books on competitive analysis as early as 1985. In recent years, the CI sector has grown in importance and popularity, thanks to technological advancements which allow companies collect data from a growing number of sources. These include social networks, search engine optimizing (SEO), or even customer feedback during sales calls.
To be effective, a CI-team must first know how and where to gather information. This includes identifying competitors, understanding what type of data is relevant to the specific business, and knowing how to turn the information collected into actionable insights. When collecting data, it’s important to know the privacy laws of your region and to always follow the rules.
While many businesses have a general idea of how to gather competitor information, not everyone is familiar with the different types of intelligence. Essentially, there are two kinds of intelligence: strategic and tactical. Strategic intelligence focuses on the long-term, big picture view of your competition and how they’re likely to act in the future. Tactical Intelligence, on the contrary, focuses more on specific events and how they may impact a certain business.
Although both strategic and tactic intelligence are important to a company, you should focus on the tactical intelligence as it can have the greatest impact on your bottom-line. The faster you can identify threats and opportunities, the more prepared your business will be to take advantage of them. It is important to have tools that can help you quickly collect and analyze information about your competitors.
Identifying Your competitors
Identifying competitors is the key to developing competitive intelligence. The goal of a team that specializes in competitive intelligence (CI), is to identify the competition within the industry or landscape you are targeting. They also want to know how they are gaining sales and marketing deals. This will allow your product, sales, and marketing departments to combat their strategies with more data-backed knowledge to ensure that they remain on offense and continue bringing in revenue for the business.
The type of information you collect about a competitor will depend on the objectives and resources available to your company. It is important to remember that the more specific the information, the more valuable it is. You may find inspiration to rework your messaging if, for example, you are aware that one of your competitors is running a new advertising campaign that has a message that resonates with customers.
You should also consider any companies that your customers or your company may perceive as a threat. This is your competitive environment and includes aspirational companies, which have a similar business model but don’t compete with you for the same customers. Also included are perceived substitutes – the companies that potential customers would choose to buy from if they couldn’t buy from you.
CI can come from a number of sources, such as your own salespeople who may have learned about competitors when visiting their shops or any other public locations. You can also collect information using a search-engine optimization (SEO), which tracks changes to the website content and page ranking of your competitors over time. You can also visit the websites of competitors and read their press release to get a feel for what they are offering.
You can also check how they are positioning themselves on the market by monitoring their social-media activity and listening to feedback from customers. But it is important to remember that researching your competitors shouldn’t be unethical, or illegal. It can have serious consequences.
Collecting Information
When using Competitive Intelligence, it is important to make use of all the available information. This includes information from your competitors, such as their marketing strategies, pricing, and even customer reviews. It is also useful to use your data, such customer interview information and performance in sales. Having all of this information can help you better understand why you won or lost a deal, as well as how you could have done things differently.
You can also gather information from your own employees, such as when they talk to customers or prospects. This can be a great source of information because they know what your competition is doing and why. This is one of the key ways that you can get an edge over your competitor, by being able to make more informed decisions about what to do next.
There are also third-party providers who specialize in gathering public web data on your competitors. This information includes firmographics, techngraphics, social data, and much more. You can get a complete set of data from them that would take a lot of time and money to collect on your own.
This can be an excellent way to stay one step ahead of your competition without having to resort unethical methods, such as corporate spying. It is important to remain ethical while gathering information about your competition.
Location-based information is another way to collect Competitive intelligence. Geospatial information can be used, for instance, to find out how your competitor’s stores are performing if there are many stores in the same area. This can help you decide how to approach them when it comes to your sales strategy. You can also compare the reporting of your competitors on store openings and closures with a geospatial measure of those metrics in order to determine how accurate their numbers are.
Analyzing Information
The raw data collected by competitive intelligence is worthless without a framework to analyze it. The wrong analysis model, or incorrect interpretation of data, could be detrimental to your business. It’s important to comply with laws and regulations when you collect and distribute confidential or proprietary information.
Once you have a framework for analyzing your competitive intelligence, it’s time to start digging into the details. This step involves analyzing competitor products, teams and announcements. This process can take a lot of time depending on your business’s size.
While it’s difficult to know exactly what competitors are doing at all times, you can develop a good understanding of how they operate by comparing their activities with your own. This is called competitive benchmarking and it’s an important part of the process.
Competitive intelligence can also help you identify potential risks and opportunities in your market. If, for example, your competitors are developing a new technology that could disrupt your industry, competitive intelligence can help you anticipate this and make the necessary changes. This will prevent your brand from being obsolete or losing its competitive advantage.
Lastly, an effective competitive intelligence program can keep you ahead of your competition. By analyzing your competitors’ strategies and strengths, you can build a strategy that strengthens your position in the marketplace and keeps you one step ahead of the pack.
There are many advantages to competitive intelligence. However, it is important that you first understand the unique needs and goals of your business before pursuing this research. Clearly defining the objectives of your CI will help to focus your efforts and ensure your data is useful.
Remember that learning from your own mistakes and those made by others is the best way to achieve success. A thorough CI project will allow you uncover all the ways that your competitors are failing. This will allow you avoid making the same errors and capitalize on their mistakes.
