Executing digital marketing strategies in a complex and competitive environment requires a thorough understanding of both strategy and execution within a specific marketplace. Understanding how similar brands and organizations operate within a business domain, otherwise known as competitive intelligence, facilitates assessing digital readiness and fostering business outcomes.
What Is Competitive Intelligence
Competitive intelligence is a cycle of collecting and analyzing data on your competitors, and delivering insights gleaned from that data to stakeholders around the business. Competitive intelligence can be broken down into four specific categories:
- Market Intelligence, which includes factors outside the business, such as demographics or current trends;
- Product intelligence, which includes factors such as features, price, and performance;
- Competitive Intelligence that provides information on the overall competitive landscape (including a SWOT analysis), and
- Consumer Intelligence provides insight into your customers, including potential journey mapping data.
Analysts can compare their company’s performance to its competitors by gathering data on key performance indicators (KPIs). These indicators can include revenue growth, market share, profit margins, customer retention, and innovation rates. Analysts can find this data through financial reports, industry benchmarks, customer reviews, and market research. Post-collection data is normalized to account for differences in size or market segment for a fair comparison. An analyst can identify trends, strengths, and gaps to assess where an organization outperforms competitors and potential shifts in strategy.
Why Should Digital Marketers Perform Competitive Intelligence?
One of the most critical digital marketing skills for professionals is the ability to read and analyze data. Competitive intelligence can inform every stage of digital marketing campaigns, from planning to execution and analytics. Data-driven decision-making drives the most effective campaigns, allowing professionals to evaluate overall effectiveness.
Competitive intelligence also provides several other advantages to digital marketing professionals, including.
- A more thorough understanding of the market and its competitive landscape;
- Identifying trends, gaps, and opportunities;
- Setting benchmarks and KPIs;
- Optimizing ad spend when appropriate; and
- Making more informed, strategic decisions.
Although there are various free online tools to assist in competitive intelligence research, many organizations are using artificial intelligence (AI)-based tools to facilitate their analysis.
AI Tools for Driving Competitive Intelligence
One primary advantage of using AI in digital marketing is its ability to process large volumes of data, analyze customer sentiments, and predict customer behavior. AI can also facilitate other digital marketing tasks and processes, including
- Automation.
- Data processing, summarization, querying, and analysis.
- Data visualization and reporting.
- Market trend analysis.
- Competitor monitoring.
- Sentiment analysis.
- Product and pricing analysis.
AI-driven competitive intelligence can help marketers avoid unnecessary concerns about such work being tedious and time-intensive while providing a more honest assessment of a brand’s current positioning. With the competitive intelligence industry experiencing rapid growth, digital marketers have the opportunity to expand their capacity to drive strong marketing outcomes.
Examples of AI-driven competitive and marketing intelligence tools that provide specific types of information and include
- AlphaSense
- Crayon
- Klue
- VisualPing
- Buzzsumo and
- Data.ai
Moving Forward
Embracing competitive intelligence allows digital marketers to excel in their tasks and deliver maximum value. Digital marketers should, at the very least,
- Actively collect and analyze competitor data through specific platforms;
- Develop skills in data analysis to provide a thorough examination of all data.
- Focusing on specific KPIs like market share and revenue growth to identify trends and opportunities;
- Integrate AI-driven tools to automate data processing, sentiment analysis, and competitor monitoring, and
- Develop effective engagement strategies that align with competitive intelligence efforts to address marketing challenges.
Completing these tasks will not only ensure that you have an honest assessment of your brand’s position but also allow you to refine your strategies, drive superior marketing outcomes, and secure your competitive advantage.
Author: Gordon Dymowski
B2B Social Media Marketing Consultant/Copywriter
Gordon Dymowski is a B2B social media consultant and copywriter working with small to medium-sized businesses around audience engagement, lead generation, and driving revenues. Gordon has assisted various organizations in social media strategy, engagement, and analytics with a specific focus on healthcare, technology, and mission-driven ventures. He is also a fiction writer who has written for various independent publishers.