Competitive research may appear overwhelming, especially if you are a newbie.
But keep in mind this is something you must not ignore if you want to stay afloat in business.
Understanding who your competition is will put you in an advantageous position and help you stay ahead while launching a product or service.
Getting to know competition involves 3 steps:
• Who else is selling products similar to yours?
• In what manner are they selling?
• In which locations are they selling and what is the demographic of the consumer?
To get answers to the above, you may have to take assistance from your own in-house marketing team or hire an expert service.
Competitive intelligence must be considered an integral part of building a marketing strategy , especially during these Covod-19 pandemic times.
We are facing an unprecedented crisis brought on by a fall in demand for products, rising unemployment, and closure of companies.
Businesses that are still able to survive are adopting innovative methods in pricing and brand development.
The key for you is to identify challenges and build a strategy with out-of-the-box thinking.
But it is practically impossible for you to sustain your unique approaches without some clarity on the competitors’ way of doing business.
Let us get to the brass tacks of what competitive intelligence is.
Competitive intelligence strategies reveal and analyze the market and rival activity and provide actionable acumen.
The final objective is to provide leadership that supports innovativeness and informed business decisions.
But in a time of crisis like the Covid-19 pandemic, the focus can be different.
Competition laws will still apply.
The advice today can be:
• To collaborate with competitors to meet public health objectives
• To part with some of your resources - human and material - to help corona virus victims.
In such a scenario, restrict cooperation to what is strictly necessary to achieve objectives.
Better still; get the request from any government agency to collaborate in writing.
The present crisis is likely to pass in a few month's time or even in a year.
Therefore, understanding competition is a crucial marketing activity.
If necessary, you may have to hire professionals to evaluate the competitive landscape on a regular basis.
Conducting competition research must be an ongoing strategy. It includes putting in place content marketing strategy among other things.
Regardless of the situation, we are living in, there are potential business benefits by performing competitive research.
You will get good insights into the market and will be better prepared to target customers.
Moreover, you will be able to forecast the market potential of your products/services for the coming months.
Smart marketers anyway gather rival intelligence even though they may not define it in a conventional way.
They are aware of the business environment they are operating in, and how their own strategies are functioning.
But for many, knowledge of what competitive intelligence is can help them move ahead.
Mike Smith has hand-on experience in content marketing and that’s the reason why his blogs on the subject are educative and easy to understand. Mike has been a creative writer and is focused on the world of content marketing for many years now.