A Step-by-Step Guide to Starting Your Competitive Intelligence Program - even if you are alone!
Competitive Intelligence (CI) is the practice of gathering and analyzing information about companies in your industry, and competitors in particular. It involves understanding who your competitors are, what they're offering, and how they're positioning themselves in the market.
CI helps you get valuable answers to strategic questions like:
Whether you're a marketer, a product manager, a sales professional, or stepping into your first role dedicated to CI, studying your market can help you think more strategically, and make better day-to-day decisions.
If you've ever wondered how to start gathering and using competitive insights, and are unsure where to begin, this guide is for you!
In the following sections, we'll walk you through:
Competitive Intelligence (CI) is the process of gathering, analyzing, and applying information about your competitors and your market. It helps you understand what's happening outside your organization so you can make better strategic decisions.
At its core, CI involves:
Information gathered as part of Competitive Intelligence can vary a lot from one company or one industry to another, but generally include :
CI can reveal important and insightful information on a company. While it can be tempting to obtain those insights using a wide range of techniques, it's crucial to conduct CI ethically and legally. This is precisely what sets apart Competitive Intelligence from Corporate Espionage.
CI has the potential to impact virtually all areas of your organization, from marketing and product development to sales and overall business strategy.
It’s also a formidable opportunity for collaboration, as teams can discuss findings and develop a new perspective on your industry. It brings fresh insights that make day-to-day decisions easier.
Competitive Intelligence plays a vital role in shaping your marketing strategies:
For product managers, CI provides insights that can guide roadmaps and development decisions:
Sales teams benefit from CI by:
At an organizational level, CI influences broader strategic decisions:
Starting with Competitive Intelligence can feel like standing at the base of a mountain, unsure of the path upward. You're excited about the possibilities but might also be feeling overwhelmed. You're not alone—many professionals new to CI share similar concerns.
"I don't have a dedicated team or budget for CI—can I still make an impact?"
Many professionals worry that without a team or specialized tools, their CI efforts won't be effective. Also, if you are in Sales, Product or Marketing, your management may expect you to perform CI activities in addition to your regular duties, which makes it especially challenging.
"There's so much information out there—how do I even begin?"
It's easy to feel inundated by the sheer volume of data available. Websites, social media, news articles, industry reports—the list goes on.
"I'm excited about CI, but my team doesn't see its value."
It's common to face skepticism. Popular advice and startup culture have told us for a long time to “worry about your customers, not your competitors”.
"What if I miss a major move by a competitor or have to share bad news with my team?"
It's important to recognize that you can't control competitors' actions, and your role in monitoring and reporting is vital, even when the news isn't favorable.
Taking the initiative is already making a significant contribution to your company. Take baby steps to overcome those challenges, share quick wins, and your work will be recognized soon enough!
Now that you understand what Competitive Intelligence (CI) is and the challenges you might face, it's time to dive into actionable steps to kickstart your CI efforts.
Before collecting any data, define what you want to achieve. Clear objectives will focus your activities and ensure the insights you gather are actionable.
Start by understanding your organization's most important goals and how CI can support them. Identify the general areas where CI can make an impact, then narrow your focus even more by setting specific objectives.
For example, are you aiming to:
A specific and measurable goal could be: "By the end of Q4, all salespeople have been trained on the new battlecards, and win rate against Competitor X has improved from 40% to 50%. "
Write down your objectives and share them with relevant team members. Revisit them periodically to track progress and make adjustments if necessary.
With your objectives in place, the next step is to decide which competitors to focus on. Monitoring every competitor isn't practical, so prioritizing helps you concentrate on the most relevant ones.
The most important criteria to determine a competitor's relevance is the Share of the Market you are targeting: focus on competitors with a significant or growing presence. Then, consider Product Similarity and Customer Overlap, prioritize those whose offerings closely match yours or competitors with a different offering, targeting the same customer segments.
You can use the following analysis to classify your competitors into 3 different types.
For each competitor, create a profile that includes:
Those profiles will serve as a basis to further research, and sharing insights with other teams.
With your competitor list ready, it's time to start collecting information.
Always cross-reference data, be cautious with unverified claims, and only use information obtained legally and ethically.
Now that you've set your objectives, identified key competitors, and started gathering information, it's time to explore tools and techniques.
Are you working solo or with a small team? Leveraging the right tools is the way to save time and ensure you don´t miss anything.
To get started quickly, follow our practical guide to creating a Competitor Dashboard for your company.
Discover how to effortlessly build the perfect competitor analysis dashboard for your SaaS company in a few easy steps.
Before diving into specialized tools, it's important to understand the basics of manual research. You can use those methods as a quick and cost-effective way to get started.
Competitor websites are treasure troves of information. Make it a habit to:
Pro Tip: Don´t get lost reading mindlessly. It’s easy to get caught up so always have a goal in mind, and log significant updates you find during your reviews.
Sign up for your competitors' newsletters to receive updates directly in your inbox. This allows you to:
Pro Tip: Consider using a dedicated email address for subscriptions to keep your inbox organized and share with colleagues.
Social media platforms offer real-time insights into competitor activities and customer sentiment.
This in-person side of Competitor Intelligence is often underlooked but often yields rich insights.
Pro tip: When attending Industry Events, collect brochures, slide decks, or any distributed materials. Bring them home to your colleagues in Marketing and Product. (Salespeople probably have already snagged their copies!)
While manual methods are essential, they can be time-consuming. Free and low-cost tools can automate some of your CI tasks and are generally a good way to start automating things.
Set up Google Alerts to receive email notifications when new content matching your specified keywords appears online.
While not all websites support it, RSS feeds allow you to aggregate updates from multiple websites in one place.
These tools help you track social media activity and mentions of your competitors. Some free options include : Hootsuite, TweetDeck and Social Mention.
Those are especially useful to keep track of changes in pricing on your competitor websites. Free Options include Visualping and ChangeDetection.
If you want a straightforward and structured approach, it’s worth setting up a dedicated platform.
PeerPanda is designed specifically for product managers and marketers who need a streamlined, all-in-one solution to track competitors effectively.
With everything in one place—competitor emails, websites and AI insights—it saves you time and keeps your insights organized.
Plus, it’s free to get started, so you can dive in right away.
As your competitive intelligence efforts grow—or if you want to structure everything effectively from the start—you may want to try a Competitor Intelligence Platform.
Those all-in-one tools offer effective ways to automate and enhance your research, and provide numerous advantages:
Their Competitor Database organizes all your competitor information in one place. This makes it easy to access and share updates, track changes over time, and maintain historical records.
They are often equipped with Automated Monitoring Tools that keep you updated on competitors' activities. They continuously collect data from sources like websites, news outlets, and social media, sending alerts when significant changes occur. This saves time, ensures you don't miss critical developments, and allows you to focus on analysis and strategy.
Nearly all platforms now have integrated AI technologies that can summarize key points from vast information and provide actionable insights.
With so many options, it is easy to constitute a monitoring stack that's adapted to your business. Here are some factors to consider to choose the right ones :
Monitoring the right things: If your B2C product relies heavily on social media for distribution, prioritize tools that excel at listening to competitor mentions.
Budget Constraints: Enterprise solutions cost tens of thousands of dollars. Thankfully, solutions like PeerPanda offer affordable alternatives to startups and medium companies.
If you are in the process of selecting tools and evaluating pros and cons, you should checkout our updated roundup of tools for Competitor Monitoring
Looking for the best competitor monitoring tools in 2024? This guide breaks down top options by business type, so you can choose the right fit to track and analyze competitors.
Having gathered tools and techniques, the next step is to structure your CI program to organize your CI activities.
In this section, we'll explore how to develop a plan, integrate CI into your daily workflow, and share your insights.
Creating a structured plan for your CI activities provides a roadmap that guides your efforts and keeps you focused on your objectives.
Identify immediate tasks, such as setting up monitoring tools or compiling competitor profiles. Some projects will require implementing specific tools or training people. Anticipate them early so you can prioritize and secure bandwidth from other teams if needed.
If you're working alone, define time allocations for CI tasks within your schedule. If involving others, clarify who is responsible for specific activities, such as data collection, analysis, or reporting.
Arrange regular meetings with sales, customer service, and product teams to share and gather insights.
Consistency is key. Making CI a seamless part of your routine ensures that it does not become something "extra”, that you could easily overlook.
Anticipate recurring activities and block specific times in your calendar:
What will be your source of truth on competitor data? How will you share important news? How will you ensure that salespeople effectively use insights on competitors to prepare their customer calls?
Gathering information is important, but it’s useless without the proper communication channels in place.
Choose one single platform for organizing competitor data and stick to it. You can use general knowledge management tools like Google Drive, Notion or Confluence, or a dedicated Competitive Intelligence Platform.
If you are using a dedicated tool, ensure that everyone in your company has proper access, or you risk having people creating their own documents in places they are more familiar with.
Keep track of changes and updates to ensure you're working with the most recent information, but don´t hesitate to delete information and documents as soon as they are obsolete. Stale information can give the impression that everything is outdated. Ensure your database is well organized and regularly updated.
When sharing insights, less is usually more. Emphasize the most critical insights to draw attention where it's needed. There is no need to be comprehensive.
You will likely have to tailor your communication to each audience. This means giving high-level overviews for senior leadership, focusing on strategic matters. Teams that require granular information, such as product development or marketing will benefit for more in-depth reports.
Avoid jargon and use clear and concise language that's accessible to all stakeholders.
In our dedicated guide to creating Competitor Dashboards, you will find advice on sharing regular insights on competitor developments.
Learn how to equip your team with powerful competitor insights with a shared dashboard.
Getting creative in your communication is a great way to draw engagement and attention to your CI program. Here are some ideas that you can implement in your company:
CI is a deeply collaborative activity. Encourage team members to provide feedback on CI reports and share their perspectives. Sales, Product and even Customer Success can contribute their side of the story.
Also, take the time to regularly evaluate how well your CI activities meet the needs of your company, and make changes to your documentation and communication methods based on feedback.
Implementing Competitive Intelligence (CI) effectively requires more than just gathering and analyzing data. It involves adhering to ethical standards, continuously improving your skills, and fostering collaboration across your organization.
Adhering to laws and regulations is obviously non-negotiable. Beyond that, it is also important to ensure the information you use were obtained ethically. Overlooking that is a surefire way to damage your own reputation, and break trust with customers, partners, and employees.
Drawing inspiration from the Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP) Code of Ethics, here are some fundamental principles to guide your CI activities:
You can start by developing a clear policy outlining acceptable practices for CI within your organization. Teach ethical considerations during the training of new members, and ensure everyone in your organization is aware of the legal and reputational risks of not upholding ethical standards.
Competitive Intelligence is most powerful when it's a collaborative effort across all teams involved in Go To Market activities.
Having laid the groundwork for your Competitive Intelligence (CI) efforts, it's time to focus on personal and organizational growth. This section will present you with some ideas on how to build your CI skillset, showcase the value of your work, and leverage advanced tools and techniques.
By understanding the fundamentals, overcoming challenges, and adopting effective practices, you're well on your way to becoming the Competitive Expert in your Company!
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