A company that started selling books online began doing well.
Initially, Amazon only sold books but they soon diversified their product range to include electronics, software, video games, clothes, food, toys, and jewelry. Eventually, they started producing their own content, launching streaming services, an AI-powered voice assistant, and acquiring a multi-billion dollar grocery store chain.
If you haven’t yet realized which company is being described, it’s probably one that you know well.
In the 26 years since it was founded, Amazon has transformed from an online marketplace for books to one of the largest and most influential technology companies in the world.
When Amazon was first created, people didn’t think it would have such a large impact. It was only competition for booksellers, like Barnes & Noble. But now it competes with many different types of companies and has changed the way consumers think about convenience and delivery times.
Companies like Amazon have an advantage over other businesses because they have access to a lot of customer data. This shows how important it is to have competitive intelligence in today’s business world.
What is competitive intelligence?
Competitive intelligence (CI) is the ability to gather, analyze, and use information about your customers and your competitors to help you make decisions that will give you a competitive advantage.
Having knowledge about your competitor’s business practices is key to being successful in your own business. This information can be gathered by studying your competitor’s social media posts for details about a new product launch, or by doing more research about their company’s environment, products, competitors, services, and identity.
The process of gathering and analyzing information is an important part of every successful business strategy. It can help a company understand where it stands within the market, make data-driven decisions, and identify gaps in its operations that are not profitable.
As opposed to espionage which refers to morally ambiguous actions such as bribing a rival company’s employee for classified information or breaking into a rival company’s system, competitive intelligence refers to a company’s efforts to be better informed and avoid being surprised by any other company’s plans.
What are the goals of competitive intelligence?
It is important to set goals in business planning, as this will help to keep you focused and maintain a certain level of momentum. It all starts with having a good understanding of the information and knowledge you have, and how it can be used to benefit your business in the long term. Having goals also makes you feel more in control and capable.
The goal of competitive intelligence is to study and learn alternative ways to do better than your competitors, rather than copying all of their ways.
The goals of competitive intelligence are to understand the strategies and tactics of competitors, anticipate their moves, and develop countermeasures. The first step is to identify the competitors. This can be done by looking at who is selling similar products or services, who is bidding on the same contracts, or who is trying to enter the same market. The next step is to collect information about the competitor’s business, such as their financial situation, their products and services, their marketing and sales strategies, and their business practices. This can be done through public sources, such as financial reports and website, or through private sources, such as customers, suppliers, or former employees. The third step is to analyze the information to understand the competitor’s strengths and weaknesses, their objectives and strategies, and their likely actions. This will allow you to develop countermeasures to thwart their plans or take advantage of their weaknesses.
Goal #1: Win new customers (and keep the ones you have)
Typically, customer choice gives them control over you. It can be difficult to persuade someone to buy from you instead of many other options. You have to offer worthwhile qualities, be dependable in your actions, and present original solutions to show that you are the best possible choice.
If you’re not sure what your competitor is offering, it can be hard to figure out how to market your own products. Knowing what your competitor is up to can help you make a lot of money.
Goal #2: Improve market positioning
securing a customer’s attention is only the first step; you then need to have a good reason for them to consider your product over others. This comes down to having something eye-catching or innovative about your product or business, which is often the result of good marketing and customer insight.
Basically, competitive intelligence tells us what is happening, but consumer insights will help us see why it is happening. This can help us make our business more profitable, boost customer satisfaction, and retain future customers.
Marketers can capture the attention of consumers and communicate the unique value of their products and brands through positioning.
Goal #3: Design better products
Creating value is what they do. Our focus has been on the importance of communicating value, which is an effort primarily coordinated by sales and marketing teams. Creating value is also an integral part of a productive business. This is where Product teams come in. Creating value is their specialty.
The main responsibility of product managers is to come up with innovative products that will be appreciated by customers.
Competitive intelligence helps you understand what other companies are doing so that you can improve your own products and services to better meet consumer needs.
Goal #4: Develop long-term business strategy
As various team members work on creating innovative products, improving positioning, and building iconic brands, executive leaders make informed decisions that will affect the long-term business strategy.
Executive leaders are responsible for more than just product strategy work; they also have a lot of responsibility that extends far beyond that.
They inquire about long-term strategies to grow revenue and market share, if there are other markets to expand into, and ways to protect the company from unnecessary risks.
Competitive intelligence is essential in understanding your competitors and customers. Increasing your market share, expanding into new markets, and reducing risks can only be done by having a deep understanding of your competitors and customers.
Types Of Competitive Intelligence
We can categorize competitive intelligence activities into two, namely Tactical and Strategic intelligence:
Strategic intelligence
Strategic intelligence focuses on issues that will occur in the future. The goal of strategic intelligence is to provide organizations with information about future trends and patterns so that they can be prepared for them.
Strategic intelligence can help an organization by giving decision-makers the chance to see potential business ideas.
The most common users of strategic intelligence are the senior leaders in organizations. They are primarily responsible for making the macro-level decisions that define the organization’s path and future. However, it is crucial to ensure that stakeholders across the organization can easily access and incorporate this knowledge into their areas of expertise so that the entire organization can work towards the same vision.
Tactical intelligence
Tactical intelligence focuses on present day information in order to make decisions on how to best carry out current business initiatives, such as increasing market share and revenues.
Decision-makers can use tactical intelligence to change their current course of action and take advantage of new opportunities.
Each type of intelligence user- whether specialized or not- can plan operational decisions to help them achieve their specific goals.
Seven Tips for Using Competitive Intelligence From Search
1. Gather Data Systematically
Many companies could benefit from gathering and computing online data in a methodical way, according to Jacob. Transforming Big Data into actionable insights is the end result of this process, and a good competitive intelligence tool is necessary to do so.
2. Get the Right Tool
Jacob believes that businesses should focus on their most important source of traffic. He argues that different businesses should use different tools, as he believes there is no complete competitive intelligence tool on the market today.
Jacob believes that the perfect competitive intelligence tool would be able to capture data from all online channels, rather than just focusing on one particular area. He argues that a tool which tries to cover all channels usually only does a half-hearted job, and it is better to have a tool which focuses 100% on one channel.
3. Keep Looking
If you want to stay competitive in today’s market, you need to not only keep track of your own performance, but also stay up to date on what your competitors are doing. Knowing who is gaining ground and who is losing market share can give you a leg up on the competition and help you take advantage of golden opportunities before they arise. Understanding your competitor’s strategy will help your business anticipate challenges and plan a better online presence. Without knowing your competitors’ search strategy, you’ll be “shooting in the dark” instead of targeting your own campaigns and strategies to gain market share.
4. Think Holistic
Marketing intelligence should take into account all aspects of a company’s competition. This includes an analysis of web data, both paid and organic, to get a clear understanding of where the company stands in relation to its competition. Additionally, companies should look at the different types of content that their competitors are producing, in order to better understand their strategies. Having a clear view of the competitive landscape is essential for making intelligent business decisions.
5. Keep it Fresh
If you base your decisions and strategy on outdated data, it could have a negative impact on your business. It’s important to have current and sufficient data, as industries change quickly. A traditional competitive analysis report might not have the most up-to-date information, which could limit the insights you get from it.
6. Use Indicators
It is important for CMOs and Online Marketing Managers to get an overview of their competition in order to make decisions, plan budgets, and track their own performance. Competitive Intelligence should be done in a way that will help simplify Big Data and turn it into meaningful numbers that can be easily understood and used as a common KPI by marketing people.
7. Stand out
Jacob explains that companies shouldn’t base their business strategy solely on what their competitors are doing because they’ll always fall behind. The pressure on the market is often higher than the growth, so someone will get “squeezed.” Jacob says that companies don’t want to be the ones getting squeezed.
Conclusion
The key to identifying strategic opportunities and improving your business is through continuous, timely, and accurate competitive intelligence. While anyone can find information about a company on the internet, competitive intelligence goes beyond just scratching the surface. It involves translating extensive data about your competitors into actionable processes to achieve significant results.
You can only getcompetitive intelligence that yields results if you have analytical expertise and good knowledge management. This is because when data comes in from various sources, like the news media, competitor interviews, public filings, industry experts, conferences, and trade shows, you need it to be expertly analyzed to make the most of it.
To be successful in your business, you should employ good and ethical competitive intelligence practices to learn about a company’s everyday activity, key distributors, stakeholders, suppliers, and competitors.
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