Every company certainly wants to be superior to its competitors or competitors. Thus, the company can acquire more customers, thus dominating the market segment.
Therefore, companies need competitive intelligence as a business strategy. This is because in running a business, companies need to analyze their competitors (competitive analysis).
The goal is that the company can find out the weaknesses or strengths of competitors. That way, the company can design a more appropriate business strategy in the future. Both in terms of marketing strategy, sales strategy, product development, and overall business growth strategy.
In addition, the company can also find out its position in the market. Thus, companies can make business decisions that are more profitable or bring profit in the future. At the same time making the company superior to competitors.
Then, how to analyze competitors with competitive intelligence? Check out the full explanation via
What is Competitive Intelligence?
Quoting from Investopedia, CI or competitive intelligence is the ability to collect, analyze, and use information about competitors, customers, and other market factors that are useful as a competitive advantage.
That is, companies must collect information from various sources as insights to drive their competitive advantage. With this information, companies are able to understand the opportunities and challenges of their competitive environment.
Thus, CI plays an important role for future business development and growth. Just imagine. All businesses certainly have competitors in the same market segment. Whether it’s large businesses or small and medium scale businesses such as MSMEs, all of them certainly have competitors.
So to excel from competitors, companies need to carry out an analysis to determine the capacity of its own business and competitors. That way, companies can develop strategies to dominate market share, and can position themselves properly in the market.
Benefits of Competitive Intelligence
Competitive Intelligence is a business strategy that will help companies to find out information related to the development and performance of competitors. This means that this information can be used as a guide for making more informed business decisions.
In addition, CI also brings various other benefits that are very profitable for the company. Launching from Chron, the following are some of the benefits of implementing competitive intelligence:
- Help evaluate the performance of competitors in the market Know the development trends in the market
- Help provide insight into the marketing process, customer segmentation (customer insight), to the product development process (product insight)
- Knowing customer needs, customer pain points, to the overall market orientation
- Help determine a more effective business strategy for future business processes
- Becoming a benchmark for the success of the company’s business strategy Helping the company to be at the forefront of market competition
- Predict the development of competitors
3 Factors in Competitive Intelligence
After getting to know what competitive intelligence is and its benefits for business, now you need to understand what factors need to be analyzed to get quality CI. These factors include:
1. Pricing or product prices
The first is pricing or product prices. You need to know the price of a competitor’s product or service to screen CI. With this price information, companies can maintain the prices of their products in accordance with market pricing or market prices.
In addition, this information can also be used by companies to determine the type of pricing strategy to be used. For example dynamic pricing, bundle pricing, psychological pricing, and so on. Because with the right pricing, companies can create opportunities to acquire more new leads.
For example, company A has a business niche in the fashion sector. The company sells women’s cotton skirts at a price of IDR 50,000 per item. Meanwhile, company B, which sells similar products, sets a price of IDR 55,000.
With this price comparison, of course, the majority of consumers prefer to buy products from company A. This is because company A offers the same product quality, but charges a lower price.
This is why, product price is an important factor that you have to analyze for in CI. Because, basically, price is the main factor that influences consumer decisions or consumer buying decisions.
2. Marketing Strategy
Next is the marketing strategy or marketing campaign that competitors are doing. We know that the marketing process is one of the most important aspects that determine the company’s future progress. Because with the right marketing strategy, companies can get more new customers, increase lead conversion rates, generate more loyal customers, retain old customers, and increase sales.
There are various types of marketing strategies that companies can apply. Starting from social media marketing, affiliate marketing, to search marketing (SEM) and SEO.
For example, company A and company B are both involved in the culinary field. Both also maximize SEO and SEM as a marketing strategy. However, company A has a more qualified SEO and SEM strategy, so it gets a higher ranking on Google.
By knowing the quality of competitors’ marketing strategies, companies can evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of their strategies.
3. Web Design
The third factor is the competitor’s web design or website design. This may seem trivial, but it can have a significant impact. Because the majority of the audience tends to prefer the appearance of an authentic and user-friendly website design.
However, when analyzing a competitor’s website design, make sure you don’t create a design that seems too plagiarized. Instead, you need to display a brand identity on the site, so that it has a unique value that distinguishes your website from competitors’.
Thus is a review of what competitive intelligence is along with its benefits and what factors need to be analyzed. In essence, CI itself is a company’s ability to obtain information from competitors, customers, and market trends that are very useful for supporting business progress.
As with business intelligence, if a company can analyze information carefully, then the company has the opportunity to be superior to its competitors.