Competing brands are everywhere, which is why it’s so important to know what they’re up to.
In our experience, leveraging competitive intelligence can uncover important insights that help customize your marketing strategies and product offerings.
By keeping a close watch on market patterns and customer influences, businesses can adapt and win even in a competitive environment.
Investing in competitor market research can be one of the major sources of data that you use to make informed and important decisions. Keep reading to learn more!
What Is Competitive Intelligence in Research?
Competitive intelligence (CI) research is the gathering and analyzing of competitor information, as well as general market and industry trends.
The goal with CI is to gain a competitive edge and also to support businesses in decision-making.
With solid data to back up major choices, businesses can feel more assured that they’re making the right calls. This can lead to better outcomes and stronger positioning in the market.
Competitive intelligence data also helps businesses understand their rivals’ strengths and weaknesses.
PS: This info is like gold for making smart decisions.
For example, by knowing the tactics of a competing company, you can adjust your own strategies to outperform them.
We often use a variety of different data to do this competitive research. Anything from these public documents, competitors' websites, and web scraping can help put all of it together.
Our clients often tell us that competitive intelligence has helped them gain a real edge.
They feel more confident in their decisions and see better results - this is especially important for small businesses trying to make their mark in the industry.
With competitive intelligence in research, companies don't have to play guesswork with their strategies. They can make moves based on solid info, reducing risks and improving chances for success.
What Are The Benefits Of Competitive Intelligence?
Put simply, competitive intelligence research helps businesses gain an edge.
(So it’s no wonder that 62% of organizations are planning to increase their competitive intelligence spending.)
By knowing what’s going on in the market, it’s possible to make better business decisions with high quality data on competitors. We help a lot of businesses across many different industries do this to stay ahead.
The biggest perk (by far) is understanding competitors. Competitive intelligence provides details on what competitors are doing well and where they might be falling short. This can include their product launches, pricing, customer outreach strategies and marketing efforts.
Using this information, it’s possible to adjust your company's strategies to keep up and get ahead where competitors are lacking.
When it comes to risk management for your brand, CI is like a safety net. It can be used to spot any potential threats early. This might be new competitors entering the market or shifts in customer preferences.
Being aware of these changes helps take action before it’s too late.
Components To Look at in Competitive Research
When we dive into competitive research, there are several key components to consider.
Market Research: First and foremost, we need to understand the market. Who are the key players? What's the market share? We often look at trends, customer preferences, and market size. Investing in market research provides businesses with clear data and feedback on these exact topics.
Competitor Analysis: Another critical component is competitor analysis. We track competitors' products, pricing strategies, and promotional tactics. Observing their strengths and weaknesses helps us position ourselves better.
Customer Insights: Knowing what customers think and feel about competitors can be very revealing. We gather data through customer surveys, reviews, and social media.
Sales Data: We also analyze sales data, looking for patterns such as peak selling times or popular product features. This helps identify what drives sales in the market.
Technology and Innovation: Keeping tabs on new technologies and innovations our competitors are adopting is essential. This can provide clues about future trends and potential disruptions.
Personnel Monitoring: Monitoring competitor personnel movements can give us insights into their strategic shifts. Are they hiring aggressively? This might signal growth or new initiatives.
Regulatory Changes: It's important to stay updated with any regulatory changes that might impact the industry. These could affect how competitors operate and create new opportunities or threats.
Each of these components gives us a clearer picture of the competitive landscape, helping us make smarter business decisions.
Recommended Reading: What is Competitive Benchmarking? (& How You Can Do It)
Where To Look For Competitive Information
When looking for competitive intelligence data, there’s more than a few sources to check.
It’s also a good idea to make sure you’re hitting at least a few different sources to have enough data to be able to make viable business decisions.
Competitor Websites
The first place to check is competitors' websites. Websites can tell a lot about products, services, focus, users, and any recent news or updates. You can also check competitors' social media platforms.
Companies often engage with customers, share updates, and other useful information. Watching these can give us a hint about their strategies.
Some other useful minor things to take a look at from competitors are:
- Press releases
- Job postings
- Customer reviews
Secondary Research & Marketing Tools
Secondary research such as industry reports and market research studies are also great to take a look at.
These secondary research options offer a high-level overview of the market and can provide details about market share, growth trends, and more.
Furthermore, using marketing tools to peek at what competitors are doing marketing wise like on search engines, social media advertising, and other things will give a hint on what they are focusing on or growing.
By using these sources, you can gather a lot of valuable information to use. Each source helps get a full picture of what the competition is doing.
How to Conduct Competitive Intelligence
At Drive Research, we believe there’s an art to conducting competitive research. You’ll need to target which rivals to focus on, determine the specific information you need, and be able to successfully analyze that data once you receive it. Let’s dive in.
Find Your Competitors To Target
Identifying competitors is the first step. In our experience, everything from digital to local competitors counts.
Even indirect competitors are ones to pay some attention to. If you’re looking digitally, Google Search, social media, and industry reports can help spot direct and indirect competitors.
Direct competitors that offer similar products or services are the best to spend the majority of your time on. Indirect competitors are good to look at but may only have a little useful data. Lists of companies in trade associations and customer feedback are also great to start with.
We recommend creating a detailed list of competitors to ensure no one is overlooked.
Determine What To Research
Next, decide on the information you need. Key areas include product features, pricing, marketing strategies, target audiences, and technological advancements.
Understanding competitors' strengths and weaknesses can guide your strategy.
Focus on areas that impact your market share, such as new product launches or changes in customer preferences. Gathering detailed information in these areas helps tailor your approach.
Analyze Your Data & Create Action Items
Data analysis transforms information into insights. We categorize and compare data to identify patterns and trends.
Tools like SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) and other commonly used competitive analysis comparisons are effective here. Creating visual representations with infographics can also help highlight key findings.
It’s also best to have an expert market researcher take a look at the data to find any trends, patterns, and more that can help guide your business decisions.
Develop specific action items based on insights, like improving a product feature or adjusting pricing. Effective analysis like these leads to strategies that enhance your competitive position.
Run a Competitive Intelligence Survey
Running a competitive intelligence survey is one of the best ways to carry out this type of research.
In our experience, using surveys is a practical and effective way to gather primary data for you and only you. This helps businesses understand their competitors better and improve their competitive positions.
Define Your Goals
First, define your goals for your survey. Do you want to look at pricing? Product features? Target audiences that your competitor services? This will help guide you and make your survey a success.
Next, define your target audience. Use demographic and behavioral questions to narrow down who you want responses from.
For example, you might ask about age, income level, or buying habits. You’ll need to do some recruiting for this audience, but you want to make sure you know exactly who it is to make that part easier.
Data Collection
Data collection comes next and can be where a lot of companies get stuck. At Drive Research, we help companies recruit respondents so they can focus on the rest of their survey.
If you’re doing it yourself, share it through email lists, social media, or websites where your audience is active. Offering incentives like discounts or gift cards can increase response rates.
Next, design your survey questions. Keep them clear and concise. Ask about specific products or services your competitors offer. An example question might be, "Why did you choose Product X over Product Y?"
Analyze Results
Spend time analyzing your results.
Look for patterns and trends in the data. Are customers unhappy with a competitor's customer service? Are they impressed with another's quality?
These are the things you want to think about when analyzing your data.
Bonus: maintaining regular survey schedules can be super important. Instead of making it a one-time thing, set up regular intervals - weekly or monthly - for gathering data. This way, you stay current with market trends and shifts.
Contact Our Competitive Intelligence Company
Drive Research is a market research company specializing in competitive intelligence efforts. With years of market research under their belts, our research team will develop a competitive intelligence survey to ensure you receive the insights you need to outperform industry rivals.
To learn more about our market research services, get in touch with us today.
- Message us on our website
- Email us at [email protected]
- Call us at 888-725-DATA
- Text us at 315-303-2040
Austin Parker
Austin has an extensive background in SEO as he's been blogging since 16 years old back when the internet was in its infancy. As fitting, he holds a Bachelor's degree in English with a concentration in creative writing.
Learn more about Austin, here.
