According to competitive intelligence experts from Aqute Intelligence, internal messaging channels are goldmines for collecting competitive intel. Create a competitive intelligence channel in your internal messaging platform and begin encouraging your team to contribute regularly.
Competitive Intelligence involves the legal and ethical collection of information about business competitors that can be used to help a company avoid risks, capitalize on opportunities, and develop strategic advantages.
1. Identify Your Competitors
Competitive intelligence is more than just the old cliche of “knowing your enemy.” Data can be used to reveal weaknesses within marketing, sales, and other business processes. This information can then help companies improve and streamline their own efforts, making them better equipped to succeed in the face of strong competition.
To achieve these advantages, marketers need a clear understanding who their competitors are. This can be challenging because it involves digging deeper than the surface information such as a company’s logo and name. Start by identifying businesses that offer similar products and services within your market. This can be done by analyzing keywords and specific messaging across marketing materials or evaluating the popularity of competitors’ websites.
Once you have a list of your direct competitors, you can expand your research to indirect and perceived competitors. Indirect competitors may not offer the exact same products or services, but they may still meet a customer’s need. Perceived competitors are those that appear during the discovery process, but don’t compete for business directly.
While every piece of competitor-related information is technically competitive intelligence, it’s important to prioritize your sources and focus on collecting the most relevant and reliable data. It’s also worth noting that not all competitor-related information is available online. While the Internet can be a valuable resource, it is important to use a mix of primary and secondary sources for competitive intelligence–networking with industry experts, visiting trade shows, collecting intel from other brands, leveraging news aggregation tools and paying attention to company announcements such as new hires and product launches.
2. Collecting Data
Collecting the right data is a key component of competitive intelligence. It is important to ensure that the data collected supports your long-term strategies and aligns with your goals. It also means prioritizing the data you collect. Although all publicly available data can be considered CI in theory, not every piece is created equal. Clearly defining your overall business goals at the outset helps you focus your CI efforts and avoid wasteful or inefficient data collection.
If your goal is to increase customer ratings, it would be logical to prioritize competitor feedback and reviews. These data points can help you identify which competitors are performing well and which ones are struggling, which will give you the information you need to develop a plan that will support your business goals.
Market trends and customer purchasing habits are also important data that can help you to outperform your competition. You can use this data to improve your marketing campaigns, and anticipate customer needs in order for you to better position your product or service.
CI will also help you identify new business opportunities that can help your company grow and thrive. You can, for example, use the intelligence you gain from observing that your competitors are promoting a new service like AI copywriting to quickly implement similar tactics to reach these potential customers.
Using a wide range of secondary and primary research, CI professionals gather information about their competitors from a variety of sources. Internet, industry conferences, events, trade magazines, and even company data (if it’s not confidential or proprietary) are all possible sources.
3. Analyze Data
Focusing your efforts on a clear set of business goals and a plan to support those goals with competitive intelligence will help you focus your efforts right from the start. This also ensures that time and resources aren’t spent on collecting data that doesn’t have a direct impact on meeting your long-term goals.
Gathering information about competitors and the market environment is one of the most time-consuming aspects of CI. This could include researching competitor websites, product updates, new team members, marketing campaigns and more. The next step is to analyze these pieces of information in order to develop insights. This is where competitive intelligence really begins to shine.
The key to gathering competitive intelligence is to identify and monitor the right sources. These sources can include social media channels and industry reports, as well as online forums and specialized software like SimilarWeb. These tools will allow you to track the changes in web traffic patterns for your competitors. This information allows you to compare your website to that of your competitors and identify its strengths and weaknesses.
Understanding your competitors’ target audience and how they communicate with them is another important aspect of competitive Intelligence. This can help you create your own messaging that is more targeted to their needs. It can also help identify your competitors’ interests and pain points, so you can better target them in your sales and marketing efforts.
Competitive intelligence can give you an edge over your competition by analyzing and understanding them. Competitive intelligence is a great tool to help you make informed business decisions.
4. Develop Insights
Once you’ve collected and analyzed competitive intelligence data, you can begin to develop insights. Developing insights allows you to take advantage trends and make informed decisions. This is a crucial step, as competitive intelligence can be an effective tool for companies that want to gain an advantage over their competition.
Insights can be key to implementing a strategic marketing plan that is successful. Insights can be used to guide everything from new product development and pricing strategies to social media posts and customer outreach programs. Insights can also be used to evaluate the success of a competitor’s marketing efforts and provide insight into the types of messaging customers respond to best.
You can also use insights to determine if a potential investment is worth it. For example, while a new product may appear to be an excellent opportunity, it may fail, and cost the company millions in lost revenues. Using competitive intelligence data can allow you to see how other competitors’ launches have performed and determine whether your investment will be worth it.
A comprehensive competitive intelligence strategy is only possible with the cooperation of all departments in a company. Clearly defining overall business goals from the outset will help to focus your CI efforts and ensure that valuable time and resources are being spent gathering the most relevant information. If your top competitors share a similar market and have a high value proposition, you should focus your CI efforts there rather than on smaller businesses.
Competitive intelligence shouldn’t be a one-time or even monthly event, either; it should be conducted on an ongoing basis. Automated monitoring allows you to get alerts as soon as your competition takes action, so that you can react quickly to any threats to your revenue.
5. Communicate Insights
Competitive intelligence’s goal is to improve the performance of businesses, but this will only be possible if insights are effectively communicated. CI is a process that should involve all stakeholders. This includes internal customers, competitors, distributors, technologies, and macroeconomic data. These resources can be used to identify business opportunities, threats and risks.
This can be done by sharing information via email, meetings, or Slack. This can be accomplished by sharing information over email, in meetings, or through Slack. It’s also crucial to set up a schedule on how often and who should receive intel. This will ensure all stakeholders receive regular intel and that it’s being consumed.
It’s important to focus only on the sources of information that will help you reach your goals. For example, if your goal is to refine marketing, pay attention to things like competitor websites, social media profiles, and whitepapers. Conversely, if your goal is to understand customer expectations, focus on things like customer reviews and complaints.
As the competition becomes more sophisticated, you must constantly monitor and adapt your go-to-market strategy. Developing a clear understanding of what your competitors are doing will enable you to develop a strategy that gives your organization the best chance of success. You will be better positioned to provide the solutions your customers need if you have a good understanding of their needs and those of the competition. The cliche, “know your enemy”, is more relevant than ever. CI can help you develop this knowledge and take your business to the next level.
