Posts Tagged ‘Competition’

In the information age, the value of information cannot be underestimated. Some big companies, in fact, have entire departments devoted to gathering competitive information.

You must be careful however, not to get so wrapped up in gathering information that you wait too long to act. You must be able to act early on in your research into a competitor’s upcoming product launch. By beating your competition, you can close out your competitor’s distribution channel. But if you dilly dally too long, your options to respond to a competitor’s move becomes smaller.

One company that provides training in competitive intelligence for example, warns entrepreneurs not to lie or misrepresent themselves or who they work for. In fact, there’s a law – the Economic Espionage Act – that governs the legalities of gathering competitive intelligence.

Here are a few tips on how you can get information about your competition so you can use them in creating effective marketing brochures for your ad campaign:

1. Exploit open sources

There is no better way to jumpstart than with Google. This database is the most used search engine in the Web. On Google, search for the company’s name or the industry to find out more about the competition.

Other sources include search engines for industry-focused Web pages, market research, economic analysis, as well as company reports that sell research by the page. This way, you can buy only the pages you need, instead of having to buy the entire report. But before you pay for your information, check whether you can get the same information for free from other sites.

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2. Get the help of everyone at your company and as many customers, vendors, and others as possible.

Talking to people remains the most effective way to gather intelligence. Use your employees to be your eyes and ears in the marketplace, in your industry – even in your company’s reception area.

For instance, your receptionist can be one of your most valuable sources of information. I know of a brochure printing company that routinely keeps vendors waiting for 10 to 15 minutes after they arrive at the reception area to allow the receptionists to listen in on their conversation. More often than not, these vendors will talk about other brochure printing companies or deals that have been offered to them. The receptionist then has been instructed to immediately email these information to the concerned staff so he or she is better prepared to negotiate when it’s time for them to meet.

Within your company, there is a wealth of information. I am aware of a large pharmaceutical firm that pirates staff from other pharmaceutical companies so that they can get inside information. To help employees understand what kind of information you’re after, circulate a list of the factors that are critical to your company’s success and let them know that these factors will determine their individual successes.

3. Cultivate relationships with competition.

There is no better way to get information than to get it directly from the horse’s mouth. Most of these businesspeople know that in order to get information, they also have to give information. As they say, you are going to be much more interesting to talk to if you have something that they would be interested in. You have to be careful though, that you do not give too much.

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Marketing Brochures, Brochure Printing

Finding relevant, timely information on competitors is easier than ever before because of social media tools.

 

Managers typically gain anecdotal competitive intelligence from tidbits they continually receive. Now, with the tools easily available today, business owners should apply a more systematic approach that makes it easy to learn what other companies are doing.

 

Using the internet and social media simplifies competitive analysis for those who know how to use the tools effectively. It’s a little more than just “Googling” competitors. The goal should be profiling competitors to gain a better understanding of their background, financials, products, marketing, strategy and facilities.

 

It’s not feasible to get all this information in one visit on the web. While some facts may never appear in social media, with patience and research, many questions can still be answered.  Social media sites are not silos of information; there is a great deal of intertwined info among sites like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and blogs. It’s an unstructured exchange that will require searching and analysis.

 

Here are some quick ideas to get started:

Join blog discussions germane to the product area. Use www.blogcatalog.com to find people discussing issues and ideas relevant to the industry, service group or marketing niche. Reading these will provide a background of what’s important. Posting to these blogs is advised only if the contributor is ready to share and get some comments back! This is a step towards being known as an authority in the field. Another strategy is to learn which bloggers influence customers. Measure their influence by Googling them to see what else they are doing. It’s all about engagement, feedback and exchange. That just could lead to some direct business.
Search www.summize.com for data being announced in Twitter about products, companies, and industries. For example, one market researcher learned that his competitors were using Twitter to broadcast announcements to potential respondents, asking them to participate in a survey at the mall for /hour. This tool also helps with advanced searches about people, words, places, dates, attitudes, and retweets or tweets containing links.
LinkedIn.com facilitates a huge amount of competitive knowledge. Most people use LinkedIn to network and connect with other professionals. By digging deeper (and using the keyword, company or people search), users can find information on businesses and functions within companies, job listings, and join discussion groups. To get started, create a brief profile, including a picture to inspire trust, and start adding contacts. Here’s a tip – perform an advanced search and under company name select “Past not current”. This will give a read on the turnover rate and whether key people are leaving.

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If this seems daunting, it’s not, just dedicate some time to “social media” activities, create a plan, start researching, and modify as needed based on which tools are working most effectively.

If you would like professional help in navigating the social media universe and pinpointing the most effective tools, contact Cynthia Cavoto at Marketing That Works for You for a free consultation.

Question by being/non-being: Is the egocentric based spirit of competition going to ultimately lead to the total annihilation of mankind?
Is what seems to me to have become an obsession with competitive activities which has carried over into the minds of the majority of humans as a way of seeing all relationships with other humans as well as all of life in general, going to lead to the eventual total mutual self destruction of the entire human race? I notice this type of mentality amongst many in my environment. It seems as though they have one overwhelming desire in life which is to either completely conquer others and have them in their complete control or to destroy them if they are unwilling to yield to their control. It seems that these types of people do not have enough intelligence or perhaps it is a special quality of dharma to go with the intelligence to be able to attain what Richard Maurice Bucke called “cosmic consciousness”. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Bucke . Without cosmic consciousness egocentric men will not only feel alienated from each other but from their entire environment as well.

Best answer:

Answer by chiccigyal
Yes!

Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!

Ecommerce is an affordable, and very simple way of starting up a business. In comparison to brick and mortar stores, the set up costs are a fraction, and barriers to entry are pretty non-existent. However, ecommerce is very competitive, have you ever wondered why? Since there are so many start ups, everyone is trying to beat competitor pricing, and therefore prices get driven down.

 

We all know online shoppers look for the lowest price as soon as they start hunting. If you have no mechanism in place to monitor competitor prices, then you don’t really stand a chance. Think about it, you need to be aware of what competitors are charging so that you can set your prices to a competitive level. Sure you can do this manually if you only sell 10 products, but for the majority of ecommerce businesses their product range will at least be in the hundreds, making it near impossible to monitor their competitors prices manually.

 

Using a competitor price monitoring service can facilitate this, allowing you to get on with your business whilst also being safe in the knowledge that any price changes your competitors make will be brought straight to your attention. Often you will find that such services are available for a few hours wages of whoever you had checking your competitor prices up until now, so it can be a very worthwhile investment. The beauty of it is that at present, its pretty much still an emerging industry, and not all that many ecommerce businesses are even aware what is possible with online competitive intelligence. A simple search for competitor price monitoring should return some useful results, so check it out and see if its any use to you.

 

Competitor price monitoring, while extremely useful, should be used in conjunction with other methods of intelligence, such as simply subscribing to competitors newsletters to see what they are up to. Head on over to their website and join their mailing list, this sounds so simple that most people seem to overlook it. News sections of websites and newsletters can provide important information about what competitors are up to, events they are attending, new products they are developing, new staff etc.

 

All in all, a competitive intelligence plan should cover every possible aspect of your competitor’s business.

Question by being/non-being: Is the egocentric based spirit of competition going to ultimately lead to the total annihilation of mankind?
Is what seems to me to have become an obsession with competitive activities which has carried over into the minds of the majority of humans as a way of seeing all relationships with other humans as well as all of life in general, going to lead to the eventual total mutual self destruction of the entire human race? I notice this type of mentality amongst many in my environment. It seems as though they have one overwhelming desire in life which is to either completely conquer others and have them in their complete control or to destroy them if they are unwilling to yield to their control. It seems that these types of people do not have enough intelligence or perhaps it is a special quality of dharma to go with the intelligence to be able to attain what Richard Maurice Bucke called “cosmic consciousness”. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Buc… . Without cosmic consciousness egocentric men will not only feel alienated from each other but from their entire environment as well

Best answer:

Answer by idamahn
no.

TFTP

Add your own answer in the comments!

Frequently I am asked “how do you get information about the competition?” Most people are surprised when I tell them that getting useful competitive intelligence is actually the easiest part of managing successful business competition. One of the best methods to gain valuable competitive intelligence is so simple, straightforward, and productive that I have put it on my list of Business Competition Best Practices: Win Loss Research.

The benefits that win loss research routinely delivers include:

o Increasing your rate of successful wins in competitive sales situations

o Enhancing your product management and development initiatives

o Reducing the level of uncertainty involved in sales forecasting

o Strengthening top and bottom line results for your business

o Improving the efficiency of your sales cycle process

o Setting the stage for future business growth

Win loss research is a succinct, guided discussion with decision makers and who have been involved in your recent win and loss sales decisions. The goal is to learn what key distinctions they saw between you and your competitors, the importance of those distinctions and the value they assigned to each competitor. While the focus of this research is on gaining insight into how your competitors operate and how you fare in comparison, it is inevitable that you also gain valuable customer information in the process.

Win Loss Research drills down beyond standard pricing issues and gets into territories such as: decision process, sales team approach and professionalism, company reputation, product attributes, service issues, and handling of proposals. Although pricing information is involved, it should not be the centerpiece of the research unless it becomes apparent that it really was the key issue that drove the decision. The goal of Win Loss Research is to provide you with competitive insight you can act upon – actionable competitive intelligence – for sales process improvement and better results.

Typically this research is conducted either over the telephone or in a face-to-face interview. The latter is more common in places and cultures where that is the preferred communication modality. Getting the results that you want out of Win Loss Research is a combination of art and science; art being the skill of the researcher in eliciting the intelligence that you need; science being the development of a research guide that facilitates the discovery of actionable competitive intelligence.

As with almost anything worth doing, focusing on Critical Success Factors (CSFs) increases the likelihood that you will get what you need. For win loss research, focusing on the following CSFs will greatly increase your likelihood of obtaining productive competitor intelligence:

1) Selecting the optimal mix of win and loss opportunities to research is a reasonably complex task which must be done correctly to ensure that you are gaining insight from the target markets that matter most.

2) Development of a stimulating research survey that operates as a guide rather than a questionnaire is the backbone to outstanding results.

3) Using trained researchers who are skilled at eliciting useful information will usually provide more actionable intelligence.

Perhaps not surprising, the tone and quality of the initial research request can make or break your ability to get robust participation.

A common pitfall among companies that report doing win loss research is that they have their employees, typically the sales representatives, perform the research. You do need to have your sales people find out what happened. This should precede Win Loss Research which goes beyond the limited conversation from your sales reps’ debriefing. However, if the problem emanates from the quality of your sales person’s professionalism, it is not likely that you will learn this critical piece of information unless you use other resources for your research. It defies human behavior to think that the customer will feel comfortable being candid with a sales rep who has not met their expectations or that the sales rep will be candid in passing along information that may be construed as unfavorable to them.

An extraordinary thing about win loss research is that any size or category of company should be able to implement this as an ongoing business practice and see steady gains in their customer acquisition and sales. This form of research is not particularly costly or difficult to do, yet it does take a certain willingness to expose yourself to news that may make you uncomfortable at times.

One of the most frequent comments our researchers hear is a compliment to our clients for taking the time to learn and improve from their experience. Once you establish a practice of doing win loss research routinely and take action on the results, your company will realize the benefits of implementing this business competition best practice.

Find More Competitive Intelligence Articles

In this exclusive interview, SEO expert Michael Marshall talks about the role of competitive intelligence in Search Engine Optimization(SEO-CI), and offers some predictions on SEO trends to watch in 2010…

Read the full interview:
http://www.seoci.com/interview-with-michael-marshall/

What are 3 SEO trends to watch in 2010?

in normal search result listings.

3) The increasing influence of Personalization of Search.

2) Competitive Intelligence ? understanding strengths and weaknesses of competitors

3) Measuring performance through Web Analytics

You mentioned personalization of search. Can you elaborate on the impact of this on SEO?

A quote from Mike Moran is worth noting here:

“Widespread personalization will doom traditional rank checking. The question won’t be ‘Does my site rank No. 1?’ but rather ‘For what percentage of searchers does my site rank No. 1′ or ‘What was my average ranking yesterday?’ . [I]t’s the biggest change in search marketing since paid search.”

Any traditional SEO methodologies or SEO Tools that depend heavily on traditional rank checking methods are similarly doomed. This means that any methods for:

1) Determining which competitors you should emulate, as well as how they should be emulated, and

2) Determining the effectiveness of your SEO efforts

that depend on traditional rank checking methods are destined for obsolescence. The overall thematic relevance of a page also becomes more important.

You also mentioned competitive intelligence research.

A local business can use it to prioritize which target keyphrases are really worth going after and also to discover important components of a larger company’s SEO strategy, which of those components are most worthy of your attention and emulation, and which of those may be weaknesses that can be exploited…

About Michael Marshall:
Michael Marshall is a SEO consultant with over 19 years experience in information technology covering a wide range of specialties including: web design, software engineering, e-commerce solutions, artificial intelligence, and Internet marketing.

He has degrees in Linguistics, Philosophy and Theology and is a contributing author to SEOToday.com, the premier website for SEM professionals, and a contributor to “Building Your Business With Google for Dummies” by Brad Hill.

Read the full interview:
http://www.seoci.com/interview-with-michael-marshall/

The interviewer Ivan Wong is a Search Marketing consultant with
www.MapleCommerce.com

HC intelligent home network Global large-scale enterprises have entered the domestic market, on the one hand to the market into the vitality, but it is also to bring some pressure on national enterprises, market competition will become more intense. Therefore, some other place in the product enterprises should strive to become more affordable price, and better meet the challenges.

09 years, smart home fast, and the intelligent home of the leading competition, a growing tendency to sell the market is becoming more pragmatic, the rise of Internet of things, more laid foundation for the development of smart home. Smart home industry, the focus of attention again.

2009 At the beginning of the financial crisis of so many intelligent home practitioners feel the slightest chill. The pace of new product development, product promotion plan, the overall regional marketing canceled or postponed. But with the domestic media to start the great debate the financial crisis, we find that the smart home industry, home industry and so has not been much of an impact. The data show that the first half of 2009, total domestic sales of real estate beyond the year 2008, the country’s large domestic enterprises, profit growth of 1 to June 22%% 17%% sales growth as an extension of the real estate and home industry industry, smart home in which the overall upward trend, driven by steadily forward, upholding a good momentum of development.

This year, a lot of security, home appliances, electrical companies began to enter the smart home industry, and made substantial moves. The end of 2008, Beijing, Serge Abou, the meeting, many intercom, security manufacturers have adopted “smart home” brand was a lot of industry speculation that this is a stunt intercom manufacturer. Time Push to 2009, has a new smart home market changes. gkb digital housing nationwide, “Mobile Intelligent Home – cell phone lights air conditioning” program, set up around the large-scale “gkb digital house” experience center, extensive recruitment of distributors, recruitment of technical and marketing talent. By the end of 2009, gkb digital house has Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River, Shanxi Province, Northeast China, Shandong and other regions experience setting up nearly 30 stores.

2009 6 months, Honeywell launched HRIS-1000 series of smart home systems, and marketing and distribution throughout the country to recruit partners. Prior to this, many projects through the mangrove coastal city luxurious case that the West Bank, Honeywell began to get involved this year, the field of intelligent home Honeywell launched HRIS-1000 series of smart home system as the central security system, integrated lighting control, electric curtain control, air conditioning and temperature control to heating and other functions. Responsible for developing this set of intelligent home system, Honeywell Security Asia Pacific business development director of Mr. Jia Zhuocheng that: the introduction of single-family home inherited the smart home system Honeywell home field advantage in the intelligence and In the user experience, remote control, third-party equipment integration, installation and after-sale maintenance works such as some try. In addition, Honeywell has a new style, warm, air purification, temperature control, etc., can provide cost-effective intelligent home users and reliable integration solutions. Thus, the conservative Building Automation market competition into the Red Sea, the electrical company based in the differentiation and develop new blue ocean “of space. Therefore, a conservative into the smart home electrical production is an important direction for business transformation.

2009 9 , TCL Legrand’s Global New Products will be formally launched the “Otter smart home products,” according to deputy general manager of TCL Legrand introduced cattle Zhen-Lin, Ott product is a complete intelligent system solutions program, the use of SCS-BUS Bus and ZigBe wireless technology, through the switch panel to achieve a custom scene? lighting, shutter, temperature control, audio, alarm, timer systems. Later, however, worth noting that the media publicity, TCL Legrand and not too much to publicize the “smart home system,” but rather as a traditional switch intelligent switch Ott upgrading of products, take the “single product” packaging line. Turning to the product’s development prospects, the cattle Zhenlin intelligent switch that Legrand has a nearly 15-year history, we obtained approval in Europe. Now advance more slowly in China, mainly to consider the suitability of the user requirements here. Facts show that China’s Smart Home is a very large market potential of a mature product, the beginning, people may be skeptical of it, but as time went on, everyone’s perception is changing, will be unfamiliar with not understand was the familiar, solution, and finally to the use of their own, this is an evolving process; and in this period, the product is also the course of practice, from time to time to improve, often naive. Technological development will accelerate the popularity of products.