Competitive intelligence gathering is not optional
So long as a business is unmindful of the consequences, it can certainly choose to do business without caring about competitive intelligence. Because any enterprise that fails to prioritize the collection and detailed examination of relevant data about the competition risks losing the race for market dominance in the not-too-long run. Without sizing up competitors and developing a certain sense of their resources as well as limitations and failings, how on earth can companies hope to make themselves more attractive and stand out from the crowd? Who knows, company B might have started cashing in on a certain customer need while company A, a rival, is still clueless about the trend. It’s all because businesses aren’t all equally clued in to competitive intelligence gathering.
Competitor intel is not getting the attention it deserves from many C-suites and, sooner or later, there is a price to pay by way of missed opportunities to improve existing offerings or bring entirely new ones into being. The adverse effects for businesses include a steady depletion of market share and revenue. Businesses that do not have their feelers out to discern competitors’ responses to market shifts are more susceptible to changing market conditions. In the worst cases, they could face an existential threat. Hence, the need to gather competitive intelligence without fail.
Importance of the Service
Look under the hood of your competitor’s social media strategy
Whether it’s a $1 billion mega corporation or a less-than-$40 million small business, scraping together competitive data is crucial. Let’s consider the top three ways to gather competitive intelligence. A detailed analysis of the competitor’s social media channels will reveal the kind of specific imagery and words the brand employs to appeal to the emotions, needs, and aspirations of their followers, fans, prospects, and customers. There are several in-market tools that can deliver powerful analytics around competitors’ social media channels. These metrics include numbers of posts published, posting frequency, average engagement rate, number of fans or followers, top 50 industry hashtags on, say, Instagram, and more. Based on these metrics, businesses can benchmark their performance against best-in-class companies and discover opportunities to build more brand awareness and drive conversions.
Check out the competition’s web pages
It is particularly significant for businesses to spot the chinks and vulnerabilities in the competitors’ armor, including gaps in their online marketing strategy, and gain mileage out of them. Aggressively enterprising marketers make it a point to routinely sift rivals’ website traffic, website elements (e.g., text, audio, video content), backlinks, social media presence, and other SEO factors. This helps marketers discover the gaps therein and capitalize on them. There are plenty of tools around to gather competitive intelligence, including valuable insights about quality backlinks, referring domains, top-linked pages, audience’s search behavior, competitors’ traffic sources, and so on.
How’s the customer experience over there? Find out
Potential buyers look up online product reviews and, lots of times, based on these “social proofs,” they conclude whether or not a certain offering is deserving of their dollars or not! Armed with AI-powered tools, marketers comb terabytes of competitive product reviews to gather competitive intelligence. These typically cover key aspects like customer expectations, motivations, likes, and frustrations. Customers’ disappointments with competitor products are opportunities in disguise that businesses can capitalize on by enhancing their products with features and functionalities that customers absolutely love.
How can Infiniti Research help you?
Deep, accurate, and relevant metrics on competitors are crucial for any business that wants to stay relevant without being engulfed by existential threats. To stay ahead in the race for market supremacy and remain in a position of potential success, businesses often must take a bite out of the competition before the competition starts to bite! There are no two ways about it. Our dedicated teams gather competitive intelligence on a continuous basis and our coverage extends to a growing number of sectors. Our competitive intelligence portfolio is crafted to outmaneuver business rivals in every legit way possible. The difficult part for enterprises is that in-depth, accurate, relevant, and real-time data is just too hard to find and, for that matter, everyone in the marketing space is after it.
Curated data is at the heart of our competitive intelligence framework. By uniquely intersecting primary and secondary research, and, furthermore, backed by research frameworks seasoned over 20 long years, our competitive intelligence specialists help businesses give competitors a run for their marketing dollars. Over the last two decades, our experts have enabled business heads across domains to drive significant market share and maximize sales conversions. Everyone talks about it, but by delivering key competitor metrics, all in one place, we have actually helped clients pull off the trick. We gather competitive intelligence that translates into measurable bottom line results, and, by so doing, we walk the talk.
