What is Competitive Monitoring?

Competitive monitoring is a business strategy to evaluate the progressions, tactics, and propaganda of your key competitors. By knowing where the competitors stand in terms of strategies, products, services, etc, a business owner can scheme counteractions to gain a better advantage. Competitive intelligence is the key to gaining more insights and constructive criticism. 70% of large establishments have agreed that competitive intelligence in their past business decisions could have brought in better results from their projects and campaigns. Tracking competitors’ performances can and will help formulate better plans, allowing your business to stay one step ahead of the competition. Applying the principles of analytics is the go-to business strategy of the modern world. 

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Why should every business practice competitive monitoring?

Scrutinizing the moves that the companies and entrepreneurs within your niche make is a standard business strategy. Staying aware of what your competition is up to, collecting data and analytics to make well-informed decisions will only help upgrade the next moves you make in a highly competitive world. Staying oblivious to what goes on with other companies in your same sector is a rookie mistake.

There has been a subtle and ethical rivalry between some big global brands like Pepsi and Coca-Cola, fast food joints like KFC, Wendy’s, Burger King and McDonald’s, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz. Some of the reasons that all top brands practice competitive marketing are as follows:

• Evaluating and comparing brand performance
• Exploring opportunities
• Optimizing operations 
• Increasing market opportunities 
• Compiling better marketing strategies 
• Bettering customer experiences 
• Data-driven business decisions with better success rates 
• Predicting and minimizing potential loss
• Foretelling and being prepared for competitors’ next moves
• Staying aware of limitations

Devising a competitive monitoring strategy

73% of companies are investing more in their competitive intelligence and monitoring to keep up with the hustle of the industry. Following this simple 4-step plan can set up a primary competitive monitoring plan. 

1. Identifying the competition 
2. Data collection 
3. Strategic analytics and predictions
4. Infusing the info into making better decisions 

There has always been the question of what to monitor. Focusing on too many irrelevant details without any plan is a waste of time and energy. What is analyzed, why, and how is it going to be applied? These are the questions that every business strategist needs to ask themselves before indulging in competitive monitoring. Here is a list of things that one should consider when checking their competition: 

• Social media activity
• Marketing campaigns 
• Customer service 
• Influencer marketing mentions
• Brand mention in the news 
• Investments and acquisitions 
• Stock market values
• Board members and investors 

The things that can be improved upon are endless. Having data on various factors can improve future decisions and company well-being. It can lead to positive changes in the customer interaction forum, pricing and packaging decisions, publicity, and branding strategies, adopting new methods into marketing, finance, and public relations, job postings, etc. 

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Business intelligence tools to get you started

1. Crunchbase – This free platform gives a comprehensive dashboard of info on competitors, their performance rates, interactions ad more. It collaborates with other platforms like Owler and SimilarWeb to give more refined data. It also gives data on financial aspects of the stock market trends of the competing companies, industry trends, and investments.

2. Owler – Owler provides comparable data about multiple competitors, their activities, performances, prospects, clients, and more from potential competitors. It can contribute to competitor identification and competitor monitoring.

3. Google Analytics – It can help gain sufficient data on the company’s online performance and the demographics of their website traffic. Tracking campaign performance and reach, keywords used, click-through rates, user visits, customer retention, and more can give a better idea of the company growth and performance.

4. HubSpot – It can provide the services of a CRM platform. From data on landing pages, email marketing outcomes, action tools to suggestive personalization, and more, the application possibilities are plenty.

5. ZoomInfo – This platform provides access to employees from several companies, info on prospect clients, leads, etc. From market insights, company contacts, lead building to industry research and integrated CRM, ZoomInfo can provide various user data. 

6. Visualizing – This platform helps track the trends, changes, and patterns in the pricing, products, offers, company announcements, campaigns, etc. It can help better identify the competitor’s strategy.

7. Crayon – Provides comprehensive and exhaustive amounts of data on the competitor’s every move. It can also be applied to your business to get side-by-side comparisons. It has features like benchmark reporting that alert you when a certain milestone is achieved. 

Competitive monitoring is a primary business intelligence strategy equipped by mainstream companies. Advertising campaigns by Pepsi and Coca Cola, Horlicks and Boost, several retail stores, Burger King and McDonald’s, Colgate and Pepsodent, Harpic and Domex, to name a few, have battled with deliberate advertising campaigns. Their strategies have always been customized to tackle the latest strategies adopted by their rivals. By using competitor data and analytics, the overall quality and performance of your company are bound to improve.