What is competitive marketing intelligence? How does it differ from competitive intelligence? Do you need both? And how do you ensure they’re a worthwhile investment for your business? In this article, we lay out some simple definitions and provide answers to the all-important questions, so you can decide what type of intelligence is right for your plans.
What Is Competitive Marketing Intelligence?
Competitive marketing intelligence (sometimes called ‘marketing intelligence’ and ‘market intelligence’) refers to the insights you build from tracking the market online. The tracking process produces data, which is then analysed and understood to become ‘intelligence’.
The primary goal of competitive marketing intelligence is to better understand your target market – including their wants, needs, opinions and feelings as it relates to the types of products and services you provide. So that your sales, marketing and product teams can make informed choices about how best to reach, engage and satisfy them.
Competitive Marketing Intelligence Examples
Here are some of the most common things businesses track to build their competitive marketing intelligence.
New regulations and updates
If you operate in an industry that’s regulated and those regulations are subject to change, competitive market intelligence can be used to learn about what’s happening early, understand industry reaction and adapt processes and policies before others. It can also inform your position and content strategy so you establish your brand as an authoritative voice on the topic.
Social media engagement & sentiment
As discussed, most competitive marketing intelligence strategies focus on the customer – who they are, how they behave and what they think, feel and say about the brands, products and services in the market. Tracking social media as part of your intelligence strategy can bring a lot of that information to the fore, helping you to engage them and solve their pain points more effectively.
Customer reviews and feedback
Other valuable sources of insight are customer review sites and feedback forums. As well as presenting scores that are easy to track and compare, they offer a wealth of insight into customer satisfaction and competitor strengths and weaknesses. It can highlight problems with their buying experiences, products and after-sales – as well as customer wants and needs – all of which can be used to inform your marketing messages and areas of investment.
Press commentary
Industry trade publications are often the first to report on key market news. They also provide expert analysis and commentary on important industry topics, sometimes revealing details that aren’t officially announced in press releases. Not only that, but they can provide an insight into the PR and marketing strategy of your competitors, allowing you to compare against and improve your own approach.
Market research
As with competitive intelligence, marketing intelligence is often mistaken for market research. The key difference is in the framing of the project. Competitive market intelligence tends to be an ongoing process of collecting and analysing market data, whereas market research is usually a standalone piece of research with the aim of answering specific questions.
However, while focus groups and other offline market research don’t fall under the banner of market intelligence, the likes of customer surveys, polls, forms, observations and website analytics can and do.
How Does Competitive Intelligence Differ From Competitive Marketing Intelligence?
Given the similarity of their names, it’s hardly surprising that competitive marketing intelligence and competitive intelligence are mistaken for one another. But the name isn’t all they have in common. Like marketing intelligence, competitive intelligence refers to insights gathered through tracking online activity.
The key difference is that while marketing intelligence focuses on consumers and the wider market, competitive intelligence narrows in on your competitors. Competitor tracking is used to monitor their activity and mentions online.
The intelligence you gather offers insights into competitor strategies, tactics and upcoming projects allowing you to adapt and respond to the moves they make or validate your own plans to protect and grow your share of the market. It can cover criteria such as product strategy, feature updates, pricing, promotions, marketing messages, website changes, investments and more.
Whereas competitive marketing intelligence provides insights with the primary aim of supporting your marketing and sales teams, competitive intelligence can inform the entire organisation and set the direction for brand and business strategy.
Using WatchMyCompetitor (WMC) For Your Competitive Marketing Intelligence
Whether your efforts are focused on marketing or competitors, the value of building intelligence can’t be understated. The more informed you are as a business and across departments, the more advanced and effective your strategies and plans will be.
Intelligence gives you an opportunity to become the best-informed company in your market, helps you to adapt and respond faster to threats and opportunities and establishes your brand as an authority on important issues. All of this can provide a big advantage for your business.
The key though lies in the execution. That means setting your intelligence programmes up in the right way, capturing data and insights via a single, easy-to-use dashboard and having clear and workable processes in place to use what you learn. WatchMycompetitor is a fully-automated intelligence platform that provides real-time insights into your competitors and market. We can help you get each stage of this process right so that your investment in competitive marketing intelligence (and/or competitive intelligence) produces the outcomes you need.
Using WatchMyCompetitor For Your Competitive Marketing Intelligence
Whether your efforts are focused on marketing or competitors, the value of building intelligence can’t be understated. The more informed you are as a business and across departments, the more advanced and effective your strategies and plans will be.
Intelligence gives you an opportunity to become the best-informed company in your market, helps you to adapt and respond faster to threats and opportunities and establishes your brand as an authority on important issues. All of this can provide a big advantage for your business.
The key though lies in the execution. That means setting your intelligence programmes up in the right way, capturing data and insights via a single, easy-to-use dashboard and having clear and workable processes in place to use what you learn.
WatchMyCompetitor is a fully-automated intelligence platform that provides real-time insights into your competitors and market. We can help you get each stage of this process right so that your investment in competitive marketing intelligence (and/or competitive intelligence) produces the outcomes you need. Here’s a quick look at how it works:
Set-up
You’ll be assigned a WMC Market Intelligence Analyst who’ll help you set up and manage your dashboard. They’ll work with you to define the sources and types of intelligence you need to track to fulfil your goals. From signing up to receiving intelligence takes as little as five days.
Real-time alerts
The WMC platform will track and pull through intelligence in real-time, meaning you learn about what’s happening in your market as it happens. You’ll never miss an important item of news or activity again and you’ll gain insights that nobody else in your market has.
Integrate and share
WMC integrates with all leading communication and data visualisation tools, from Slack and Teams to Power BI, to help you disseminate intelligence to the right departments seamlessly with your existing processes. This can help you overcome one of the biggest challenges of any intelligence programme – gaining buy-in from key stakeholders.
Ongoing support
Your market intelligence analyst will be available for monthly or quarterly industry reviews, reports, feedback, strategy planning and anything else you need to maximise your use of the platform and to protect and grow your revenue.
All that’s left to make your competitive marketing intelligence strategy a success is to have the right processes and responsibilities in place to act upon the insights they receive – and we’re happy to help you get that right too.
For a demo of WMC and to discuss your competitive marketing intelligence needs, contact us today.
