Why Competitive Intelligence is a must and how to do it accurately?
In today’s fast-paced world, a business cannot run believing they operate in a monopoly. Even the most unique idea would lead to competitors, and it’s just a matter of time. Thus, finding competitors and understanding what they are doing to keep them on track. Moreover, to know the strategies and tactics, they plan to use in the future. To keep up with dynamic trends in the industry.
Major advantages of doing competitive Intelligence
1. Gain market understanding
Competitive research helps you get an idea about easy-to-miss dynamic market trends. Moreover, it identifies trends and future opportunities that can be an asset for you.
What is Competitive Intelligence?
Competitive Intelligence is the finding & critical analysis of information to make sense of what’s happening & why. Predict what’s going to happen & give the options to control the outcome. The insight to create more certainty & competitive advantage.
2. Helps marketing processes
During the new product launch, customers are focused on only one thing. How this new product can make their lives easier and smarter. If customers prefer a competitor’s brand. And they are doing a better job outlining their benefits. Thus, competitive research helps you to understand customer behaviour. And gain a closer view of competitors’ marketing strategies. Moreover, based on competitors’ strategies, you can change your approach. And gain the attention of a more extensive consumer base.
3. Helps to discover gaps
Competitive research data helps identify gaps in the market, including potential places where competitors have not offered any services or products. This is a lucrative opportunity to fill the gap and explore a new market for the brand.
4. Helps develop a plan for business
Gather data on competitive activities, market trends, and performance. Then you can create fruitful strategies and a roadmap for the future of your business.
How to do an accurate competitive analysis
There are some basic steps to doing a detailed competitive analysis:
- Know who your major competitors are
- Know the prime products and services of your competitors. And understand if you are a direct competitor
- Understand their marketing and sales strategy
- Check their content strategy
- Check their level of engagement with their customer using content management
- Understand their promotion strategies
- Analyse their social media strategy and performance of the marketing methods
You have decided to get a competitive analysis. You then need to make the decision to do this on your own or hire a third-party service or professional firm.
Benefits of doing competitive intelligence in-house
You understand your goals and product better and can realise which competitive factors to track. Moreover, you already have access to an array of real-time data. And the authority to generate more if needed. Your managers are more accepting toward suggestions coming from insider employees than outside.
However, there is a downside as well. Competitive research, gathering data, and crunching numbers are specialist fields. And it can take months and even more to develop an in-house team that is as good as hiring an outside consultant. And, of course, an external consultant like Octopus has no baggage. No bias or thoughts about how things should be done. We don’t think outside the box, and we are not in a box.
Some opt for a middle ground. Hiring the service of a consultant to initiate a project and ask for updates. In contrast, the in-house team handles day-to-day tracking.
Benefits of hiring consultant for competitive research
Competitive Intelligence consulting firms bring extensive insight, knowledge and expertise to the table. Moreover, they can access special tools and technologies you may not know. They have hundreds of analysts at their disposal; thus, they can get the job done systematically. However, the downside is that senior managers could face compliance issues.
By Swamini Kulkarni
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