The Areas Of Competitive Intelligence

Competitive intelligence, or CI, goes beyond the cliche “knowing your enemy” to unearth and analyse finer points of competing businesses to drive context-driven data-driven decisions.

CI teams from aqute.com can identify strengths and weaknesses of competitors by using data from review sites and news aggregators. This allows them to tailor their marketing messaging and align product features with specific market needs.

1. Market Research

The cliche “know your enemy” holds true in competitive Intelligence: the better you understand your competition, the more equipped you are to develop and execute marketing campaigns that surpass them. This can be used for everything from creating a better customer persona to improving your go-to market strategy.

Market research is the first step in gathering competitive intelligence. This can include anything from reading analyst’s reports and analyzing the CRM data to looking through competitors’ websites, their social media profiles, and their whitepapers. There are many sources of information to be found, but you should prioritize and focus your efforts on the most important things.

It’s tempting to look at every competitor in your industry when researching for competitive intelligence, but it’s best to narrow it down to two or three significant competitors. Concentrating on those that could be a threat (or might be if they changed the marketing strategy) or have similar customer profiles and who are a potential threat is important. It’s important to focus on the “star” assets of your competitors, which can drive sales and growth. Also, pay attention to their “question marks”, which have potential but could need more investment.

Market research is a great alternative to qualitative consumer research which is usually conducted directly with prospects and customers. It can give you a good overview of the market landscape. You can use market research to validate your assumptions about your audience or their preferences, or to find out information that would take too much time to do yourself, such as market trends and demographics. This type information can be used both to support strategic and tactical competitive intelligence, as well as to guide future strategic investments.

2. Industry Analysis

There’s more to competitive intelligence than the cliche “know your enemy.” This is an exercise in discovering the finer details of competitors’ business plans, and the marketplaces they serve. It’s an exploration of how a wide variety of events might disrupt their operations. And it’s an attempt to discern how their distributors and other stakeholders might be impacted.

The industry analysis is a compass for businesses to navigate the vast seas of markets. Marketers can identify challenges, risks and opportunities in their market by conducting regular and thorough industry analyses. With robust industry data, they can also supercharge their marketing and sales efforts, so they can stay ahead of the competition.

A complete competitive analysis will include a detailed description and summary of the current market situation, as well as your business’s position within it. It should cover your market at the local, regional, national and/or international level. It should also address any new laws or regulations that might impact your business, and any other factors that could affect the success of your product in that particular market.

Raw data alone isn’t very useful, but the right frameworks can transform it into actionable insights that will help your business. Porter’s Five Forces, and more specific tools for analyzing competing strategies (like branding or pricing strategy) are all essential models. These insights will help you develop and implement a Go-to Market strategy that will help you sail smoothly through the future.

3. Social Media Monitoring

One of the most important aspects of competitive intelligence is keeping up with competitor’s messages and campaigns. It will not only help you learn from mistakes made by competitors, but it will also help you identify new opportunities for your brand to differentiate itself from the competition.

A powerful way to do this is through social media monitoring. The best CI tools monitor both brand-related and sector-related conversations and provide data which helps to understand the market position, identify potential products or services, or even pinpoint gaps or weaknesses in your competitors’ offerings.

Another part of a good CI program is to keep up with the news, such as company announcements and events. This includes press releases, product launches, mergers, new acquisitions and other developments in the business world.

Using CI tools that are suitable for your business can make this data easier to understand. This is important when making informed decisions. Your CI software should be able sort and categorize your data based on themes that will keep you ahead of the competition, such as industry trends and insights, sentiment analysis and more.

Your CI tool must also include benchmarks that you can use to compare your performance with your competitors. Idealy, they should cover more than just the past week or two so that you can see your strategies evolving. The most important part of any CI is the ability to translate your competitor’s activities into business decision that will give you a true advantage in the marketplace. If you’re not able to do that, then all the research and data in the world won’t mean much to your business.

4. Industry Events

The competitive intelligence industry is a global community of forward-thinking enthusiasts, all rallied around the idea of winning, engaging, and retaining customers. It’s not an easy task, and it requires a lot of work and dedication. It’s a worthwhile goal! Taking the time to learn from and connect with your peers is a powerful way to elevate your role.

The best competitive intelligence teams are the ones that have a clear picture of their competitors and the market landscape, so they can make informed business decisions and develop strategic insights. Set a schedule of when you will conduct competitor and market analyses and then share these findings with your team.

This could be a weekly market review, a monthly update on key competitors or quarterly reports highlighting key changes to the landscape. No matter what schedule you implement, it’s crucial that the information collected is ethical and efficient.

It’s important to also have a good understanding of the messaging, products, marketing efforts, and other aspects of your competitors. This can help you identify your weaknesses and strengths, and then improve the go-to-market strategies so that you can gain more market share.

Using the tools, resources and information available to you, you can effectively gather competitive data and then turn it into useful information that your entire team can utilize. Your team will be able to market and sell products better if they have a deeper understanding of the competition.

5. Customer Surveys

Contrary to other methods of intelligence gathering, customer surveys provide direct insights about competitors. By coding verbatim comments that refer to specific competitor names, companies can identify potential threats well before they impact sales. Analyzing themes in customer feedback, and identifying features that customers want can help identify competitive opportunities.

However, the value of a customer survey depends on how well it is analyzed and collected data. The results of a survey, whether it’s an in-app experience, or a questionnaire on paper, must be interpreted correctly in order to produce useful data. A company may have an excellent response rate, but the information gathered could be misleading. The information is only as good as the questions asked, distribution channels used, and follow-up strategies employed.

Another consideration is how the company will act on the findings of customer surveys. By acting upon the information, businesses can build trust and encourage customers to respond to subsequent surveys. This can be done by sending personalized emails, social media announcements, or in-app notifications.

The goal of competitive intelligence is to use data and knowledge to gain an edge over competitors. This is not just a simple case of “knowing who your enemy is.” By keeping a close watch on the actions and messages of your competitors, you can stay one step ahead no matter what happens on the market. By collecting and analyzing intelligence, businesses can improve their position in the industry and be more confident when making major decisions.