Competitive intelligence (CI) is the process of gathering and analyzing information about your competitors’ activities to make better business decisions.
CI has become increasingly important, as businesses are now more interconnected than ever before. CI provides insight into your competitors’ business models, product lines, marketing campaigns, sales techniques, distribution channels, and customer relationships. With all of this information at your fingertips, you can strategically plan for your future.
Competitive intelligence is information that can be used to help businesses thrive.
CI includes gathering and analyzing information about your competitors’ business models, product lines, marketing campaigns, sales techniques, distribution channels, and customer relationships. The goal of competitive intelligence is to provide you with a better understanding of the marketplace so you can make informed decisions.
CI has become increasingly important in today’s interconnected world. With CI, you have a clear view of your competitors’ business practices and processes. You might find that your competitor offers a service that could be helpful to your company; or that they are employing an innovative marketing technique that you should consider implementing; or they might even be moving into a market you want to enter. CI gives you much-needed insight into what your competitors are doing and how it could affect your business in the future.
CI will help you make better decisions. The effectiveness of your competitive intelligence strategy can help you find new opportunities, create more innovative products, identify target markets, and develop better business strategies.
CI provides an in-depth look into your competitors’ business model, product lines, marketing campaigns, sales techniques, distribution channels, and customer relationships. With all this information at your fingertips, you will be able to plan strategically for your future.
CI can help you identify opportunities in the market or determine whether there are any new competitors that could disrupt your business. It also allows you to know if there are any changes in your competitor’s prices or promotional campaigns that you can leverage for your advantage.
CI is beneficial to the entire company—not just to the marketing department. It helps everyone at the company better understand how it can adapt and grow in order to remain competitive amid change. CI helps companies focus on what matters most by providing a detailed overview of a company’s competition on a wide variety of levels including pricing strategy, distribution channels, and even client base.
The goals of CI vary from organization to organization but they all have one thing in common: they provide valuable insight into how a company can best prepare itself as things change around them.
There are five key categories of information that CI can provide your business with.
- Financial data: The financial data you can find includes the amount of revenue your competitors are generating, which is important when deciding how much to invest in a certain marketing campaign. You can also assess their level of profitability and the different areas where they’re spending their money.
- Product information: You can assess what kind of products or services your competitor offers and if those products or services offer any competitive advantages over yours.
- Market intelligence: This refers to anything related to market conditions, including pricing, competition, and customer preferences. This informs decisions about how to spend marketing dollars and on which product or service features to emphasize.
- Marketing intelligence: You can find out about your competitor’s marketing campaigns and find out if they’re any successful at building brand awareness, driving traffic, and converting visitors into customers. With this information, you can create a similar campaign for yourself that will lead to better results.
- Sales intelligence: Your competitors’ sales techniques, such as how they advertise or whether they offer discounts or incentives for new customers, will help you make more informed decisions on how to approach sales strategies.
Competitive intelligence is a powerful tool to explore and uncover the strategies and tactics of your competitors. Knowing their strengths and weaknesses will help you strategize, fine-tune your own marketing and business plans, and ultimately lead you to success.
To get started, start by asking yourself:
- What do my competitors offer that I don’t?
- What are the strengths and weaknesses of our competitors?
- What are their target markets?
- What pricing models do they use?
- What are their marketing campaigns?
- What are their sales methods?
- How do they compete with us?
- How can we make our company stand out from competitors?
- How can we create a competitive advantage over competitors?
- What are the customer feedbacks on our brand or products?
