Why Understanding Your Competitors is the Only Marketing Strategy You Need

We all want to be “successful” marketers.

But what does success in marketing even mean?

Sure, we can easily create social media portals.

We can count how many social followers we have.

We can watch our number of website visitors grow.

We can Generate sales leads from different channels.

But how do we know what is really successful?

When it comes down to it, A true market intelligence or competitive intelligence can do the differentiation.

The Competitors.

There are dozens of “how to” guides and “best practices” marketers can follow.

But the truth of the matter is, if you didn't truly understand you competitors, it doesn’t matter how expert you are in general marketing and no matter what your industry is, to be pioneer in any industry. Utilizing CI means you’re looking at your competitors as well as their operational, organizational, commercial practices and market share to give you the tools to make informed decisions for your best practice marketing strategy .

"To truly develop a “successful” strategic marketing plan, understanding your competitors is the only thing you need to do"

Competition comes in many forms.

Direct competitors you think it's easy to find because they sell the same product? The environment has shifted. We need to change our approach to competitors and analyzing data to build best practice strategic marketing plan.

Indirect competitors – those who are competing for the same market with slightly different products – are sometimes harder to identify. And competitors can come from anywhere; grocery stores didn’t think they would have to compete against Amazon, but in 2017 the online giant purchased the Whole Foods grocery chain!

"Company marketing methods need to be revised as well to effectively adopt the new Competitive intelligence techniques"

So who are your competitors? Competition isn’t just about the companies that do exactly what you’re planning on doing. It’s not even just about companies that have similar features to yours.?

• Direct competitors?– Companies that do something very similar to what you’re building. These companies are solving the same problem for customers that you’re going after. They may be targeting a broader or more specific set of customers, but if you share similar features, they are direct competitors and you should be including them in your analysis.
• Indirect competitors?– They offer different features than you are building, but they are servicing the same customer. They could be building a product that wasn’t originally created to solve the same problem as you, yet it’s being used for that. Or they could be solving the problem as part of a larger solution.
• Alternative solutions?– The most common alternatives to software products are manual solutions. Spreadsheets, checklists, pen and paper solutions, books. Even hiring consultants or contractors to do something for you is a common alternative. If they aren’t using software, people are solving their problems through one or more of these alternatives.
• Multiple tool solutions?– When people don’t have or choose a single software solution, they find ways to solve their problem by stitching together multiple tools. They could already be solving their problems using tools like Zapier or Google Spreadsheets to help automate manual processes.

Competitive Intelligence Cycle

No matter what your industry is, you are continually facing new challenges and new competition. The market is constantly changing, which is why you need competitive intelligence (CI) to stay ahead of the pack.

“Competitive intelligence“ marketers who deploy a complete marketing CI are 70% more likely to see improvement in the overall performance of their marketing strategic plan programs”

Conclusion

In today’s highly competitive business environment, firms need robust competitive intelligence for gathering information about their operating environment (Salguero et al., 2019). The core objective of a competitive intelligence system is to generate credible and useable information and data about essential indicators of market competition that will help organizations attain competitive advantage (Bose, 2008). Research (Calof and Wright, 2008) has shown that organizations lacking market intelligence struggle to survive, while those that have developed an intelligence network are not only able to survive but prove to be more innovative, creative, and competitively advantaged (Ladipo et al., 2017). As a product, competitive intelligence is the information about the market industry, analysis, benchmarking, company profiles, early warning alert, technology assessments, economic analysis, customer profiles, executive profiles, political analysis, and supplier profile (Calof, 2017). Among the myriad factors that facilitate or impede competitive advantage, prior research has consistently identified competitive intelligence as one of the most important (Nte et al., 2020; Qiu, 2008; Somiah et al., 2020).

The idea is that building competitive advantage through higher quality, general insight, and lower cost is possible through the development and effective development of a competitive intelligence system."

About Me

For almost 15 years my passion has been empowering decision-makers to increase returns on investments, maximize opportunities, and reduce risk.

I am competitive intelligence professional with focus on strategic consulting, market analysis, trend analysis, market research and financial forecasting. Experience with industrial sector and commodity products. Experienced at communicating actionable insights on business solutions for new products, offer launches, performance metrics and industry trends.

I believe that nonpublic information provides competitive advantage through superior knowledge. I also believe that cross-functional strategic workshops can turn this knowledge into winning strategies and tactics.

Specialties:

Early warning system

Competitive Intelligence

Competitive Analysis

Marketing Intelligence

Commercial Strategy

Development Strategy

Counter Intelligence