Markets change constantly, so you have to stay on top of things. You can’t build a successful business by making assumptions and guesses. With competitive intelligence, you can figure out how your competition thinks and behaves. You can develop your products, determine to price, and position your brand based on their attitude and objectives. Your company’s strategy relies on competitive intelligence.
It allows companies to collect information about the industry, environment, competition, and competitive products in order to analyze them. CI helps:
- Analyze industry trends for future decisions;
- Acquire knowledge and insights about trends, expectations, and technologies;
- Assess strengths and weaknesses;
- Improve the efficiency of resource allocation;
- improve profitability;
- Enhance the product launch process;
- predict the steps of competitors;
- make the right business decisions.
Now when you know about the importance of competitive intelligence, let’s discuss the types of it.
Ways to explore the competitive intelligence (CI)
Its main objectives are to assist companies in understanding their markets, making informed strategic decisions, and maximizing profits.
Competitive intelligence services is used for these purposes by businesses of all sizes. Competitive intelligence consists of two types of activities. A tactical approach (a short-term process intended to assist a company in achieving specific objectives, such as capturing market share or increasing profits); Strategic (deals with longer-term concerns, such as potential risks and advantages). Once you understand the main types of CI, you can move on to examining its sources.
Sources of competitive intelligence analysis
The social media platforms. It is possible to compare your product with your competitors’ alternatives by looking at customer comments on different social media platforms. Feedback will help you build a better product.
Competitor sites. By visiting competitors’ websites, you can analyze their products and services, learn about their business, and stay informed about their updates. It is possible to monitor changes in competitors’ rankings or use tools like SEMRush to do a competitor analysis Ahrefs You can check the top organic keywords for any URL and find out how many visitors your rivals receive from them.
Reports from syndicated sources. The reports are vital because they provide market information, growth forecasts, profiles of companies, and trends. These reports can give you information about your market, your main competitors, and what makes them unique.
Tests in marketing. Insights into your competitors’ plans can be gained from landing pages and A/B tests. Observing your rivals’ campaigns can help you determine what works best and what you don’t need to implement.
Reviews of products. Reviews from third parties can also be analyzed. Knowing what your rivals’ customers enjoy and dislike can help you improve your products and services. You will be able to learn about competitors’ strengths and weaknesses this way. When you know what consumers think of your goods, you can identify your competitors’ weaknesses and gain an advantage over them.
Package and pricing updates. Marketing campaigns are also affected by changes to packaging and pricing. This is why sharing them with internal teams, such as sales, is so important. Your rival’s updates reveal changes in their strategy, for example, when they expand their business.
Positioning and messaging changes. Keep an eye out for changes in messaging and positioning from your competitors. With this information, you’ll be able to determine their strategy. The team visits the competitors’ sites in order to study their home pages, blog postings, landing pages, and product pages. We now know the main sources of information, so let’s look at the steps for conducting CI.
How to compete via competitive intelligence?
It is essential for every business to have competitive intelligence, but not everyone is conversant with the process. To assist you, we have outlined several steps.
Determine which competitors are direct and indirect. Knowing your competitors is the first step. Identify at least your top five direct competitors, if you have a lot of them. Determine your indirect competitors (companies not in your industry that compete with you for clients), aspirational competitors (companies in your industry that can inspire your business), and perceived competitors (companies that may appear during the sales discovery process but are not your competitors). Knowing your competitive environment means understanding your competitors.
Decide which areas to focus on. Following the identification of your rivals, determine where your data collection efforts should be focused. Collect as much information as possible online and from the front lines of your company. To process information more effectively, narrow the search circle.
Learn as much as you can. The next step requires you to learn more about your competitors’ sites, products, social media platforms, and content. Next, you should research your competitors’ websites, products, social media platforms, and content. Analyze them thoroughly.
Analyze the competition. In this stage, your manager identifies the major trends and highlights the most relevant data. Then, the information is organized in the right way for each team to understand. Your competitors’ profiles must be created and you will need to track their updates, including changes to their products or services, along with customer reviews.
Please share your findings. Stakeholders will benefit from your findings. A meeting, an email, or an internal chat can be used to accomplish this. Ensure that your team has easy access to data by storing it on a reliable platform.
Take advantage of the information to benefit your company. Provide each of your team members with actionable information. Marketing can use the data to come up with new marketing campaigns, and sales can use it to tweak scripts and processes.
Example of CI
The way airlines use competitive intelligence is a great example. Based on the information they receive, they change their ticket prices every day. To receive good revenue, this company will increase its prices if competitors do the same. Additionally, airline companies monitor their customers’ actions to make price adjustments based on their behavior.
In addition, they increase prices when they find users repeatedly searching for the same flight information. Competitive intelligence consultants can help brands increase their chances for success, thereby improving their competitive advantage. In order to understand the gaps and take steps to improve, they use data from websites, reports, and customer feedback.
