Thoughts on all things about Intelligence, problem solving and market analysis

In this article we aim to guide you to show that knowing your competition inside and out is very important. And, hopefully, showing you Competitive Analysis is so much more than SEO and keywords. 

Marketing people can sometimes get nervous about spying on their competitors and believe its best to just focus on their own business. Some will think that knowing your competition inside and out is a bit unethical, but nothing could be further from the truth when you do it the right way.

A Highly competitive environment

You are working in a highly competitive environment, and you need to know what you are up against. After all, it is highly likely that your competitors are looking at you. If not, then the critical question to answer pretty quickly is – why not?

It’s relatively easy to find the basics on a competitor and even look at their strategies. Start by looking to see how they are performing better than you.

Google Competitive Intelligence and be blindsided

Now, if you Google “Competitive Intelligence” or “knowing your competitor inside and out” you will likely be swamped by the latest SEO software claiming to offer Competitive Intelligence. And offering to monitor keywords. Keywords and SEO is only a tiny part of Competitor Intelligence. And in most cases, you don’t need to spend a penny on finding competitor keywords – Ubersuggest from Neil Patel is a great starting point and it’s free. 

Looking at keywords will indeed enable you to improve your landing page performance. Powerful landing pages can significantly increase a conversion rate, while weaker ones can completely turn off potential clients.

Looking at how others in your industry conduct SEO and other online initiatives will assist you in picking up new strategies. Big budget competitors may be keeping landing pages simple or using video. And you can improve your keyword performance. I know its a little boring,

But, these are all excellent ideas, but let’s face it, its all very tactical.

Knowing your competition inside and out with Competitive Intelligence is so much more powerful and yes, strategic.

Be more strategic

Take a look at what your competitor is saying in it’s communication to the outside world. Also, what they are not saying. Ask yourself, does this equate to what they are actually doing and thinking? And, most importantly, what are they going to do next. Questions to consider:

• What are they writing about?
• What is their style?
• Do they have a consistent tone of voice? Can you describe it?
• How do they engage with their audience?
• Do they reveal future strategies?
• Are they announcing new initiatives because the current one is bombing?
• Are forums and review sites telling you a different story to the official line they are pumping out?
• Are they revealing how the management team thinks and make decisions?
• Is about just one person – the founder, or have they gone beyond that?
• Then provide an answer to each of these questions:
• How can we take advantage of what they are doing
• Can we see what they are going to do next?

And, finally, a fundamental question. So what?

In summary

In this article, we have suggested that knowing your competition inside and out is very important. Don’t be fooled into the thinking Competitive Intelligence is just keywords, SEO and other tactical rubbish. We suggest it is about knowing how they think, decide and act. And, what they are going to do next and most importantly, so what?

Here is what people think of us.

Business Intelligence and Competitive Intelligence are critical in the performance improvement of your organisation. However, Business Intelligence and Competitive Intelligence are very different animals when on their own. When put in the same cage, they can bring huge rewards for your business.

The main differences are that Business Intelligence has an internal focus, while Competitive Intelligence looks at what’s happening in the outside world. Business Intelligence and Competitive Intelligence collects data. Then sorts it into relevant virtual piles within one location. Analysing what’s found and then taking action.

Business Intelligence looks into the business so the main difference with Competitive Intelligence, is that data from external sources. The analysis (the part which most organisation’s skip), creating options and then taking action.  Similar processes, but their benefits differ.

What is Business Intelligence?

Business Intelligence looks inward and is, to varying degrees, well established in most businesses. Business intelligence gathers data on your business from many of sources. Such as like sales, SEO and accounts etc. And bringing it all together to analyse it to make decisions to the allow you to grow.

So, business intelligence looks through the data. So you to make decisions on the improving or creating new tactics and strategies to make your business more efficient and profitable.

What is Competitive Intelligence?

Competitive Intelligence looks outwards and is not as established as Business Intelligence. Competitive Intelligence gathers data on your competitors, markets and external environment (think Porters 5 forces), to give you an understanding of the critical information, and using your findings to anticipate your competitors’ or markets’ next move. You will understand your competitive landscape so much better and improve upon your own strategies and associated tactics.

How Can You Benefit from Business Intelligence?

All businesses will have multiple data sources holding valuable Intelligence for your teams.

• Your management team will get a snapshot of whats going on in the business so they can make the big decisions on processes, expansion, investment and recruitment.
• Your marketing team will get an understanding of how campaigns are performing,  article metrics, and website traffic—allowing you to figure out what’s going well and where to invest your time and money in the future.
• Product marketing teams can improve their product launches and sales development activities, and better target their ideal customers. Look at historical product launches, campaigns and take into account what worked and what didn’t to learn from it.
  • What they are buying?
  • What they are not buying and why?
• Your sales teams receive better sales figures, so you have a better understanding of which deals close the fastest, average sales cycle times. And which members of the sale team perform the best. Allowing you to improve the sales message, focus on recruitment issues and target sales training needs.

How Can You Benefit from Competitive Intelligence?

Competitive Intelligence can help product marketers can understand what your competition is doing (and more importantly, what it’s going to do).  Research target audience, Marketing message and positioning. Create winning business development tools and deliver significant product launches that stand out and addresses the market’s needs.

One neat trick is if both you and your competitor are about to launch a fabulous game-changing product. With great fanfare, how much better would it be to launch it the day for your competitors? Marketers can take a look at their competitors:

• Content
• Campaigns
• Social media posts
• SEO rankings
• Trade events
• Marketing strategies
• Product offering
• Reputation in the market

Learn from the competition to enhance their differentiation. Also, it’s not to copy them. But reduce the strengths of the competition and play on their weaknesses. Clearly, sales need Competitive Intelligence to win more tender applications. And to understand why they win. Also why the competitor wins. To better position themselves and win more deals.

To have prepared “landmines” should come across a rival in the market. Using simple and accessible tools such as battle cards and SWOT analysis, sales teams can better position themselves against competitors and win more competitive deals. By understanding their competitor’s current strategy and future moves, the senior management can control the market better. Make better decisions based on Intelligence and not guesswork.

Conclusion

Market Intelligence Versus Business Intelligence. What’s the Difference? Well, we discussed what Business Intelligence and Competitive Intelligence are and the differences and benefits of each one. These intelligence toolsets are clearly used differently. One looks internally and the other externally.

They will, however, impact on all and different parts of your corporate strategy. Used together than you can ensure you are going to win a lot more than loose.

Get ready to put some noses out of joint and get closer to be the market leader with Business and Competitive Intelligence.

Talent Intelligence

Competitive intelligence is crucial to how well you can find and hire the talents that your organisation needs to thrive. And the more informed you are about your competitors, industry trends, market movements, and other salient business factors, the better you can acquire the talents. Importantly, the talent that can help you take your growth to the next level.

And, this is why Steve Roemerman of the Forbes Technology Council considers excavation of competitor data as a primary tactic. Especially in the initial creation of long-term business strategies. From the very beginning of the recruitment process, applying competitive and market intelligence will make better hiring decisions. Now and in the future.

While this may entail complex and intersectional data acquisition tactics down the line. There are relatively simple but highly effective ways of utilising competitive intelligence in the hiring process. Comeet advises reviewing similar job postings or openings in order to better understand how you can differentiate yourself from the other companies. And, options being considered by your candidates.

It’s important to realise that you’re just one of the hundreds or thousands of companies in your industry looking to do the same.

Lone fish in the wide and open sea

However unique your proprietary software, service, or product may be, in the eyes of in-demand and highly skilled talents, you’re just one of their many options. A lone fish in the wide and open sea of organisations that could potentially help them achieve their own personal career goals. Moreover, by reviewing your competitors’ job postings for the same position you’re looking for can give you a better idea of how they’re positioning themselves in the market. And more importantly, how you can stand out.

This is what we mean in ‘Be Powerful! Get Intelligence by Monitoring Competitor. When we say that there’s crucial insight by monitoring your rivals’ presence on all observable channels. Online, you can gain a wealth of competitive insight from just basic research and intelligence gathering methods. Don’t stop with just studying your competitors’ job postings.

Devote time

So devote time and resources to studying their press releases. And even recent PR efforts, social media presence, LinkedIn posts, and even the publicly-available CVs of their decision makers. Importantly, apart from allowing you to differentiate your organisation from the competition. This research can lay the foundation for a competitively intelligent business strategy.

However, today, more and more organisations are seeing the value of utilising competitive intelligence for hiring. And for holding on to the best talents in their industries. A TechNews.mobi forecast on the digital talent acquisition market not only suggests massive growth in the near future. But also predicts the increased use of such strategies in banking and finance, telecommunications, service providers, logistics, and even government and defence.

Finally, don’t get left in the dust of this rapid global digital transformation. And attracting and keeping top talent is just one benefit of competitive intelligence. Applying comprehensive data analytics to the development of your overall business road map can lead to much more significant results.

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Three examples of Marketing Intelligence

In this article, we offer three examples of Marketing Intelligence. But first the question. What is Marketing Intelligence? Marketing intelligence has many definite, but the best is any primary or secondary research which, once analysed, can be created into action for the benefit of an effective marketing strategy. So, anything associated with your customers, competitors, product/service, prospects, landscape and which cultural shift to aline—and surrounding Product, Price, Promotion and Placement. 

Great CX is achieved by driving customer lifetime value and engagement with consistency, relevance, convenience. Competitive Intelligence explains the why of your marketing while Marketing Intelligence isolates the What. 

Using Intelligence will let you know if your hard work has been productive. Marketing Intelligence is crucial if you want to do great strategic marketing. And why wouldn’t you want to do that? Very few companies and their CMO’s use data to make decisions and even less use proper Marketing Intelligence and Competitive Intelligence. So get this right you have found a significant competitive advantage.

Example 1

Here is a more data-driven Marketing Intelligence example. Let’s imagine you’re a CMO of a retailer and you are surrounded by KPIs about internet sales. You have a sales figure you want to achieve, so why not work back from this figure and estimate what a single website sale is worth. And then what’s your website conversion rate? So you now know what a number of complete sales will be worth a specific amount. And now you know how many sales you need to smash your sales targets. Those customers who have been interested enough to put one of your products into your cart and then don’t go through with the sale suddenly become very important. And are easier to convert and getting new people to your site. 

Example 2

You listen to a couple of SEO gurus, and your digital marketing manager tells you its all about content. Content is significant, but it takes time and money to do it right. And how do you know you are pointing your content artillery in the right direction? Now, how useful would up to date future pointing Marketing Intelligence be telling what content to develop, when and who? Combining other great SEO tools, such as looking at keywords and the like You have a better chance of your audience looking and engaging in your content. Money well spent. 

Example 3 

Analyse different situations that taking a look at the data has revealed. And with everything situation decide what you are going to do. That’s deciding what you are doing to do before something happens. You see when something happens, many people run around with their head on fire and they stop thinking. So think of anything that could go wrong or right, such as:

• What if you are getting too many customers?
• Also, what if you are not obtaining sufficient hits on your website?
• What if you are getting too many returns?
• What if a global pandemic comes along?

Now, not plan survives contact with the enemy, but if you have some “actions on” to continue the military theme, you will be in a better position to counter-attack. In this article, we offered three examples of Marketing Intelligence and asked what Marketing Intelligence is. What is clear if you need innovate marketing, reduced risk, greater opportunities, speedier and better decisions, then using Marketing Intelligence is crucial for you.

These questions may help: 

Stay ahead of the game

Intelligence is just knowing…

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Sometimes highly intelligent people get stuck on a nail about a theory and will not budge even when everyone is telling them they are wrong.

Something they believe to be true because that’s always been the way or it was how it was taught at university.

Just look at the political situation in your country or Brexit. You will see perfectly intelligent people on both sides of an argument fighting and falling out for what they believe.

Some even argue their view even when they know, deep down, they are wrong themselves.

Point to the data

They point to the data and use it to argue their point. They ignore information which disagrees with them, distort the evidence.  And, they try and explain why they are right, and you are wrong. If they are the boss, then it is view easier to push their viewpoint wrong. Any alternative theory will not sway them.

There are also those who come up with great theories but reject immediately upon seeing the first piece of opposing information.

What if you have ingrained belief built on unstable foundations of weak data? You are not going to gain any intelligence; you are not going to answer the questions.

Amazingly, some people carry on with their plans as it saves face and the effort of having to build a new strategy.

A military example: Market Garden

An excellent example of this occurred in the Netherlands in 1944. On the 17th September, the Allies launched Operation Market Garden. And sent paratroopers to capture and hold bridges along a 64-mile section of the Rhine. Once the bridges were captured, an armoured spearhead was to smash into the industrial heartland of Germany.

It was Intelligence which told the decision-makers that there was a German Panza Division outside the town of Arnhem. And that they could come to the aide of the final bridge.

In the film depicting Market Garden, “A Bridge too Far“, the actor playing Brian Urquhart showed an overhead photograph of German tanks hidden under trees.

There may have been photographs, but it was Signals Intelligence from Bletchley Park who isolated the German forces.

Cancelling or changing the plan at such a late stage of the game was politically and practically very hard to do. Any delays or failures in the plan would see the whole operation fail. The generals were too eager and wanted to downplay bad news.

They also questioned the interpretation of Intelligence. After all, this SS Division had retreated battered and bruised from the fighting after D-Day. So it was assumed it must have been weak. Also, Intelligence only confirmed the location of German forces outside Arnhem.

The British could not use the Dutch the resistance to take a look to see how many tanks were there.  They had been compromised and not to be fully trusted.

Now there will be counter-arguments on why the generals were right not to use the Intelligence. It was a tough decision, and they did not have the benefit of hindsight.

Listing our inbuilt beliefs

Neither do we.  So listing our own inbuilt , theory, beliefs and biases is an excellent way of increasing the awareness. And reveal better insight.

That’s why Competitive Intelligence is best used independently to decision-makers. The truth may not always be popular, but it is still right, and I, for one, would rather make a decision knowing I have the best possible Intelligence to hand.

Intelligence is just knowing…

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Competitive tracking and Ad Intelligence: 5 mistakes to avoid

This piece discusses competitive tracking and Ad Intelligence: 5 mistakes to avoid. As you will be well aware, your team is busy, and you are struggling to keep up. So adding more work by looking outside your business to see what your competitors are up to can seem a burden you don’t need. After all, you have a product to release, sales targets to beat, customers to keep happy and keep the company going. But it is imperative to conduct Competitive Tracking and Ad Intelligence, and here are 5 mistakes to avoid. 

1. Objectives

Before investing in any software that will track your competitors every move, it is essential that you understand what you are going to look for. Objectives need to be set because the information will swamp you. Then it all gets too much hassle, and you immediately bin competitive tracking and Ad Intelligence idea. So creating objectives for the project is essential. These could involve the following areas:

• Developing your business strategy, giving your senior team an excellent understanding of the market landscape, trends and a good grasp of what’s going to happen next.
• To get to know how your competitors think, how they make decisions and who are the key players in the business. And what they are thinking about the future and what they will do next.
• Develop products to align with your future business strategy to help you correctly position your company in the right market space.
• There are not many business problems in which increasing sales can’t sort out. So using the tools to arm your sales teams to win more deals, giving them the tactics they can use against competitors and countering their strengths will improve sales.

2. No magic button

Finding evidence and signals with the aid of Competitive tracking will not bring instant results. Type in a competitor’s name and bingo there are all their strengths and weaknesses. It’s not going to happen. Despite what a salesperson will tell you, it takes time and analytical thought. Start small and look at a competitor and look for the small insights, habits and activities they do. Look at what they are saying and not saying. It takes time and effort. Eventually, you will start to build a picture and develop an understanding of where they are pointing their troops, tanks and resources. Are they looking at other markets? Are they developing a new product that’s going to smash you on the rocks? Or are they being lazy and complacent?

3. Software is an answer

Some software is excellent and is an answer to competitive tracking, but it is not the only answer. Incidentally, some software solutions are genuinely terrible, and I have no idea how they generate sales, but that’s another story. For software to work for you, it is vital to use the information it creates and collates for you to turn it into Intelligence. It’s not Intelligence until a human being has analysed the information.

4. Please leave it to the intern

Having invested in competitive tracking and Ad Intelligence, it is not necessary to build a team of 10 senior competitive Intelligence experts to make the most of your investment.  However, it is also wholly pointless, leaving it to the new recruit, the fresh graduate or intern to get on with producing automated reports. Without direction, access to decision-makers and importance given to the role. They need to be able to ask tough questions and offer challenging opinions.

5. Do something with the insight

There is no point in developing a competitive monitoring strategy if you don’t do anything with the insight. Perhaps, surprisingly, this is all too often the case. So blame the software, marketing or the Competitive Intelligence person. When you find some insight, it is essential to analysis what you can do and then do these three things. 

1. Make a decision and take action
2. Take action after making a decision
3. And finally, take action

6. Summary

So, in this article, we discussed competitive tracking and Ad Intelligence: 5 mistakes to avoid. Namely, Not setting objectives, not expecting the software to be a magic button, not analysing the data, not giving the project the level of importance it needs and finally, failing to act on the competitive insight

Bonus

When you are receiving a demo from the many CI and the data collators, the salesperson will focus on companies like Apple, Shell, Microsoft. Be impressed by finding a lot of information. Look at the smaller companies, companies in your geographical area. Now, you can not expect an impressive amount of information about your local corner shop, but you need to be sure that you will have sufficient data to play with before signing up to a deal. 

How to do a competitive analysis in 5 easy steps

In this article, we suggest how to do a competitive analysis in 5 easy steps. Start collecting the basics and then drilling down as follows:

1. Company Overview

It’s important to track your competitors’ established date, their fundraising rounds and their employee numbers to enable you to benchmark your own growth. Use this data to set yearly business goals and projections. You can find a company details on Linkedin, Crunchbase, AngelList and Owler. Although when it comes to Owler take what they present with a large pinch of salt. 

If you struggle to find a company’s revenues online, then use a formula like this one developed by Jason Lemkin of SaaSfor. Count the number of employees at your competitors’ company. Linkedin is suitable for this rather than standing outside their offices with a clipboard. Yes, we have done this, but a little more subtlety. Then multiply by £115,000 if well-funded. £160,000 if modestly funded. And that’s the competitors’ ballpark revenues.

You can, of course, compare this with your companies performance and those companies which publish their revenue. You may also need to play with the model a little depending on the competitor’s specific circumstances and industry. It just gives you a range, but the more work you put into the initial figures, the better the results.

2. Investors and M&A

Mergers and acquisition are one of the best to enter a new market and also, at the same time, get rid of a competitor. Research your competitor’s M&A history to understand what direction it is moving in. Investors tend to put their money into a business that does not directly compete with another investment. Makes sense really. Why invest in Apple when you are the major shareholder in Samsung? So, if you understand who is investing in your competitors you will have a great story to offer another investor who has yet to dip a toe into the water in your industry They missed the chance to invest in a competitor, so now they can work with you. 

3. Market Share

It is difficult to find market share information within unlisted organisations. Best way to do this is to analyse a customer questionnaire and ask them which products they use. Get the opinion of your competitors, former and current employees. Look at business press articles and gather data from analyst reports. A bit of good old reading and analysis will help you build a picture. 

4 Organisational Strength and Weakness

• What makes your competitor unique?
• Is the CEO an influencer?
• How do their culture and internal systems impact their bottom line?

Look at Glassdoor to get a picture of what really is going on behind closed doors. YOu have to look for patterns of course as you may just be reading the thoughts of a bitter ex-employee. The patterns will flow through. A great culture is tough to beat, especially if a. you are doing is just copying for the sake of it. You have to own the culture and really mean it.

5 Who are their customers?

You will not find a complete customer list – well, at least not legally! But you can gain an excellent picture of who your competitor’s customers are.  Look at press releases, reviews of their service, testimonials, social media feeds and most importantly, Linkedin. Whom are they connected with? Who else is connected to them in the company? Build a picture and never assume anything. 

I always remember giving a client a piece of news that shocked them and eventually nearly killed the company. They sold specialist equipment for aircraft. Their key competitor who was struggling had unbeknown to them, signed a deal with BAE Systems to get their product built into the aircraft direct. My client had to retrofit their product, and it was a bit of a shock to them. Especially when BAE Systems was an organisation, they were talking too, and their BAE contacts never knew either! Where did we find this fantastic piece of Intelligence? A 12-month-old online press release Googled – Granted it was a Brazilian subsidiary of BAE, but the information was there. Out in the open.

When it comes to competitors customers, you need to ask questions like:

• What are the needs of your competitor’s ideal customers?
• How do they acquire new customers?
• What type of content do they publish and where?
• What are their sales channels processes? What is their customer road map like?
• Can customers easily switch from them? Why should they move to you?
• What are the barriers to entry

Summary

In this article, we suggested how to do a competitive analysis in 5 easy steps. Be starting collecting the basics and then drilling down deeper. We suggested taking a look at company overviews and revenues, investor and M&A activity, market share, underlying strengths and weaknesses and understanding who are your competitors’ customers.