Leveraging Competitive Marketing Intelligence
Keeping track of competitors can feel like a to-do list item, but the strong competitive intelligence from Aqute Intelligence impacts marketing and sales strategies for years to come. It’s for this reason that leveraging competitor tracking tools is so crucial.
For example, if high-end handbag company Amore wants to understand their competitors’ marketing approach, they can set up competitor tracking tools to identify specific messaging and campaigns.
1. Competitor Analysis
Competitive marketing intelligence is an essential tool for any business person, from new company founders to established leaders. It helps you keep up with the competition and understand your audience to ensure that your product and service remain relevant in an industry that is constantly changing.
Comparing similar brands in your industry with each other can help you gain insight into their product offerings and marketing strategies. It can help identify potential threats, market opportunities, and ways to improve strategies. The key is to focus on high-quality data rather than simply collecting a lot of information for the sake of it.
Start by selecting your primary competitors. These are the businesses that pose the biggest threat to your success and have a comparable value proposition, customer satisfaction and market share. They may not be the largest companies in your industry, but they could be smaller businesses that specialize in a particular niche or even startups looking to disrupt your market.
Once you’ve selected your main competitors, start researching them. This can be done using online tools, such as Ahrefs, or by asking your sales team which companies they regularly encounter in their customer conversations. Google is a great tool to check out your competitors and see what websites are often listed alongside yours in search results. This is an excellent way to discover what keywords and topics your audience searches for.
Pay attention to the pricing pages of your competitors. They will tell you much about their marketing strategy and how they position themselves in comparison to yours. Consider what features or products your competitors offer that you don’t. This can help you create a unique selling point for your own products or services.
There are two types – tactical and strategic – of competitor analysis. Strategic competitive intelligence is aimed at long-term planning and spotting trends in your industry, while tactical intelligence is focused on improving short-term tactics like specific marketing campaigns. Both are vital in building a strong competitive intelligence strategy for your business, but the more you use the insights that you get from competitor analysis, the better position your business will be in to thrive in your industry.
2. Market Research
Market research is the process by which consumer data is collected and analysed to support a company’s strategy. It can be used to validate a new product or service concept, identify growth opportunities and shape go-to-market strategy. It can also inform tactical decisions like marketing campaigns, sales tactics and customer service strategies.
Market intelligence is not just about identifying your competitors. It’s about knowing your target audience, and how to speak to them. To do this, you need to understand the broader ecosystem in which your business operates. This includes the strategies and methods of competitors, their marketing tools, their USPs, and their technologies. In this way, you can craft a well-rounded competitive intelligence strategy that will enable you to anticipate competitor moves, outmaneuver them and drive your own success.
You can do this by using different types of data, from public sources like social media and search engine result pages, to commercial sources like competitor analysis software. You can use paid market reports and the Competitors App, or you can collect your own data through analytics and customer feedback. It is important to focus only on data that will help you achieve your goals.
Market Intelligence is a continuous process. Stagnancy can cost your business market share to innovative, nimble competitors. By incorporating business intelligence into your operations, you can stay ahead of competitors, anticipate changes, and be attuned with consumer needs.
Investing in intelligence can help you discover untapped markets, emerging customer needs and trends that your competitors have not yet tapped into. This enables you to differentiate your business offerings, develop innovative products and services that address gaps in the market, and outperform your rivals. It’s an excellent way to identify high-potential clients and target them. It also allows you to create effective and targeted advertising campaigns that generate real ROI. A good market research strategy can boost your bottom line significantly, so it’s definitely worth investing in!
3. Competitive Analysis
The process of competitor analysis is to identify the strengths, weaknesses and opportunities of your competitors. This research will help you develop your marketing strategy and dominate your market. It can also guide product development, pricing strategies and sales tactics.
The goal of competitor research is to determine what makes competitors successful, so you can replicate or improve upon their methods. A competitive analysis looks at a wide range of aspects of your competition’s business, including product offerings, pricing strategies, customer service and advertising. Using the SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) model is one way to approach competitor analysis. Porter’s Five Forces and the BCG Matrix are two other models you can utilize.
You should perform a competitive analysis regularly, both to plan for the long-term and to stay on top of your competitors. You can use this information to make short-term decisions such as specific marketing campaigns. You can also take a look at the big picture to spot trends in your industry that could impact your business.
For example, the new product or service of a competitor may signal dissatisfaction with current offerings. You can identify untapped markets by analyzing your competitors’ products and services.
The research can be used by everyone in your company. The findings can be used by marketing teams to create their messaging. Sales and product teams can then shape their roadmaps according to the features or blindspots of competitors. The more comprehensive and digestible your competitor intelligence is, then the better you can make decisions.
4. Competitive Intelligence Reporting
The right tools are essential for competitive intelligence reports. This will allow your team to identify potential areas for improvement and uncover any risks that competitors might be exploiting.
You can then compare and contrast the information. Having this information in your arsenal allows you to develop strategies that will enable your company to outperform them, whether that be through product development, customer relations, or marketing efforts.
CMI (competitive marketing intelligence) is different from competitive intelligence. While both involve tracking competitor activity, the focus of CMI is primarily on how your competitors are improving their products and winning sales deals with customers.
CI focuses on specific business categories and sectors, while MI looks at data collected from a wide range of sources. This data can include things like consumer insights (psychological, social, cultural, personal and economic determinants and influences), technology insights (software, platforms, and hardware) and even geographic data.
Regardless of what category your CI report falls under, it should be clear and concise. Your reports will only be valuable if they are clear and concise. It should be updated regularly, and each department must submit their relevant information to the CI team. For example, sales representatives can share their intel on how they’re able to close deals with prospects using certain technologies or specific messaging.
