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Karen E. Rothwell is director of Outward Insights, a Boston-area strategy and competitive intelligence consulting firm. She is responsible for competitive intelligence consulting, coaching and training across multiple industries.It's no surprise that understanding the competitive environment provides several benefits to sales and marketing professionals. But what has become evident is the number of new venues available to sales and marketing professionals today to collect intelligence that did not exist as little as five years ago.
This theme was woven throughout the 9th Annual Sales & Marketing 2008 Frost & Sullivan Conference I attended recently in Phoenix. The proliferation of social media such as podcasts, blogs, wikis, and virtual worlds creates new opportunities for gathering intelligence. What is unique about these venues is that they are not additional published sources but a form of primary intelligence.
What sets these vehicles apart from more traditional sources is that the individuals participating in these media are freely volunteering their opinions. Folks are usually more open when they believe they are interacting with their peers. The information shared in such venues is honest and raw -- and far more revealing than traditional surveys or phone interviews, which can feel more like an official contract than an open dialogue.
So what exactly can blogs, wikis and the rest reveal from a competitive intelligence standpoint? Plenty. If analyzed properly, they hold insights into:
• Attitudes about your company and your competitors.
• Positive and negative opinions about your products and competing ones.
• Unique issues and challenges to your firm and products.
• Trends.
• Unmet needs of customers and clients -- or potential customers and clients.
Furthermore, the information shared is not outdated. In fact you can watch a real-time conversation unfold before your eyes on the Internet. And what's more, you can join in on a conversation to dig deeper and learn more about a topic.
The intelligence you uncover is more of a "soft intelligence" than solid facts and figures. It reveals opinions, feelings and possible reasons and explanations behind the actions of consumers. This type of intelligence can be just as important as hard-core statistics that come from more traditional market research.
Why? It not only can provide insights into the underlying assumptions of consumers -- which can explain their behavior today -- but also how they are likely to act and respond to new offerings in the future. Combined with qualified market research and secondary data, it can create the ultimate holistic view of the needs of customers.
Sales and marketing professionals that do not peruse these media for data on their own firms as well as their competitors are at a huge disadvantage. Listening to what consumers have to say about your product, both good and bad, can help you improve your offerings. Learning the same about your competition puts salespeople in a better position to sell against or displace a competitor.
It can seem a daunting task for a competitive intelligence practitioner to navigate through these various media. However, through some collaboration, intelligence, sales, and marketing professionals can divide and conquer. Try these four steps.
1) Develop a source map designating key intelligence sources, both human and Internet-based.
2) Assign marketing and sales to monitor these sources and visit them regularly to glean key pieces of data.
3) Develop a mechanism to share these insights with key company personnel.
4) Find time to review and discuss your collective intelligence as a group.
The 21st century is fast and furiously here. Don't fall behind and miss out on some intelligence gems that can help you outsmart your competition today.
This article was provided by Outward Insights. To read more about competitive intelligence, click here.
POSTED BY: Steve Nimmons (July 05, 2008 10:18 AM)
Very interesting remarks. As well as looking at this from a purely marketing position there are also a number of possibilities in security, privacy and IPR protection. Intelligence tooling is very useful from the perspective of reputation defense (as you mentioned in terms of monitoring negative feedback) and I think it also helps find leaks in the sieve of corporate intelligence that might (deliberately or not) be seeping through the corporate firewall and into the Web2.0 domain.
I see new functions for security and marketing working hand in hand to analyze brand reputation, information leakage as well as exposure of employees to Social Engineering attacks.
POSTED BY: ron towns (July 07, 2008 02:51 PM)
Not only is user feedback from online social hubs raw, but it also creates a conversation between brand and user, acting as relationship builder and customer service tool.
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