Pricing.
Mergers and sales.
Brand identity.
SEO positioning.
Let's take an example: why is it necessary to focus on competitive intelligence if I have decided to open an e-commerce ? You can identify what competitors have done to make the most of the sector, if they have opened an online shop only in Italian or are aiming for multilingualism. And how many languages has the site been translated into? Is there Portuguese? And English for Australians? Do they invest in SEO optimization?
Are your competitors mainly targeting ADV ? The list could go on forever but continuing this work continuously, like in a Deming cycle , helps you achieve great results.
What is the strength of competitive intelligence?
There are many solutions to collect useful data in the competition study phase. Why focus on this condition? What is its strong point? In reality, it is a process that does not only involve the introduction of tools for data collection but of an entire mentality devoted to the systemic organization of information relating to the evolution of markets and decisions taken by competitors.
What is competitive intelligence?
From these activities, data is then Peru Phone Numbers extracted that is used to influence short, medium and long-term business decisions. In short, the strength of competitive intelligence – also known as economic intelligence or EI – is the implementation of processes that integrate tools and techniques in the decision-making phase .
They are used to analyze everything that surrounds the brand, from competitors to markets to laws and trends. In this process you can integrate the public, subcultures and technological innovations.
What are the principles of Competitive Intelligence?
To work best with competitive intelligence, and obtain the information necessary for your study activity, it is necessary to operate with some essential points . Points that are excellently inserted in this graphic found in the Talkwalker article dedicated precisely to this topic.
competitive intelligence cycle
Without anticipating the various phases that I am about to describe, we can immediately say that we are faced with a redundant path: it never ends but moves towards a continuous search for perfection .
Find the data
The first necessary step to start your competitive intelligence journey: find a way to collect data. At this stage it is very important to use the right tools. One of the most used and recognized as a tool to work in the benchmark field is SEMrush . On the other hand, from a social point of view you must also use the same Talkwaker or the powerful Buzzsumo .
Process organization
Once all the information has been collected to do competitive intelligence, there is another job to do: managing the flow in an organized, streamlined, effective way. Eliminating what is not needed and gathering the data based on categories, objectives and flows. Our data analysis work has just begun.
Analyze the information
Let's get to the heart of data analysis: once the numbers have been collected and organized, we proceed with the operations necessary to transform aseptic figures into strategic information to bring to the decision table. Before tackling this phase, it is important to use simple and intuitive metrics.
An example of competitive intelligence? Look at Google Analytics and consider tracking traffic through fine-grained segmentation between organic search, social media, referrals, and email.
So you can optimize traffic from Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram. The same can be done with customer and competitor web conversations, press coverage and other internal and external data sources.
Share Smartly
The competitive intelligence process continues with a careful work of presenting the data in one place, cleaned of background noise and organized in a way that clarifies all the information useful to the client and other team members. This means comparing and extracting valuable information.
On this front, for example, you can use a very powerful tool that is Looker Studio . Using such a tool in your data storytelling work allows you to automate a series of processes and, at the same time, improve your internal competitive intelligence work .
Define the goals
Competitive intelligence activity continues and moves towards a higher goal: to exploit data to make useful decisions and not just to collect numbers and information to present to the customer.
Of course, this point is also important but certainly not sufficient to justify this operational infrastructure. The work of competitive intelligence finds its complete realization when it helps to make changes, take decisions, improve performance.
Must Read: What are Core Web Vitals
Do you need this approach too?
To summarize, we can say that competitive intelligence – in some cases known as corporate intelligence – collects, analyzes and exploits the information gathered in different market factors to increase the competitive advantage of a company. Or a freelancer .
Today we talk about competitive intelligence , even if in Italy the topic is still not very widespread, because this approach is perfect for feeding a certain type of consultancy with solid data.
I use information to inform and evaluate – together with the client – a seamless marketing strategy. And that continues in combination with SEO. Want to learn more?
