Competitive intelligence is a central theme for the growth of any business. Companies from all segments use market positioning strategies to differentiate and stand out.
Thus, knowing the competitors is important to understand the best ways to do this. While for some, data-driven decision-making is a complex process, the full set of opportunities, insights, and predictions it can yield has the potential to change organizational outcomes.
To facilitate the understanding of this concept and how to apply it in front of the competition, we prepared this article that presents a lot of relevant information. Good reading!
Understand The Importance Of Standing Out Among Competitors
The importance of standing out from the competition may seem obvious: the more players there are in a segment, the more differentiation is needed to guarantee customer preference.
But in addition, knowing which are the most attractive business attributes to the public makes it possible to plan commercial actions based on this, whose objective is to generate visibility and optimize the company’s performance against the competition.
Recognize The Role Of Authenticity In Business
When it comes to a company’s unique characteristics, the consumer increasingly values this authenticity, an important factor in making a purchase decision.
Whether in products or services, in customer service, and even through an authentic experience for your customer, it is based on this differentiation that an effective marketing strategy is built.
Therefore, competitive intelligence, as a tool for obtaining and managing organizational knowledge — internal and external — helps the brand to stand out from the competition.
Find Out What Competitive Intelligence Is
The concept of competitive intelligence encompasses all data processing actions — collecting, organizing, consolidating, and analyzing — related to factors that influence a business, whether internal or external. In this way, it is possible:
- map competitors, customers, suppliers, and processes;
- anticipate demands and trends ;
- predict scenarios and measure probabilities;
- develop an action plan;
- devise strategies ;
- make more assertive decisions ;
- increase results ;
- take advantage of opportunities ;
- minimize risks.
See What The Best Ways To Use Competitive Intelligence To Differentiate Yourself Are
Competitive intelligence is a key part of business strategy. Through it, differentiation can be built and applied to highlight a business from the competition. See best practices for this!
Map Your Market
Using data to understand, from macro situations that influence the area of activity to the particularities of the niche served, is the first step to standing out. From mapping the competition — brand identity, price, differentials, limitations, etc. — it is possible to know the deficiencies and excesses present in the market.
Know Your Customer
Even within a single line of business, the profile of the public can vary from one company to another. Quality, price, or location influence the direction of marketing and the weight of the purchase decision, varying from one group to another. Thus, knowing who the main consumer is allows you to increase the conversion rate.
Demographic information such as gender, age, location, or social class are the basis of this process. But consumption habits, preferences, and individual values cannot be left out of this research.
Define Your Identity
Realize that the mapping started from the outside — market, competition, customers — and now arrives at the enterprise itself since this influences competitive intelligence. Thus, it is not enough to know the competition if you do not act to stand out from it.
Questions like: what does the company offer that the competition does not? What are the organization’s values that consumers most appreciate? How is the business unique and innovative? These questions need to be asked to understand what the brand identity is.
Use Technology
Technology support is essential to put data collection, consolidation, and analysis into practice. Big Data, Data Analytics, Data Mining, Warehousing, Neural Networks, Machine Learning, and Business Intelligence tools, among others, facilitate the process.
These solutions can structure large volumes of information with agility and precision. Obtained from several sources and covering several aspects — digital performance, customer service, sales, productivity, trends, etc. — they can offer valuable insights.
Anticipate Market Trends
More than responding to what is happening in the market, predicting what will be a trend in the future guarantees a competitive edge. The data allows this predictive analysis to be carried out effectively, optimizing investment and the strategies outlined.
Communicate With Consumers
The best way to demonstrate the differentials of a business is to communicate directly with potential consumers. Digital and content marketing, for example, are great ways to do this.
Just remember to segment and target actions. This way, automation tools, omnichannel platforms, and CRM solutions can help. These technologies work as channels to put strategies into practice and capture useful information.
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