What is Competitive Intelligence?
Competitive intelligence is a key ingredient in a robust market intelligence strategy that aims to bolster marketing performance, increase sales and improve product strategy. It’s the systematic collection of data from a multitude of sources in the ongoing analysis of the competition
Competitive Intelligence helps you to stay up to date with your competitors and your market, and inform strategic business decisions. A thorough understanding of your competition’s strengths and weaknesses will enable you to fine tune your approach to your market and capture the attention of consumers and increase your brand’s share of voice.

What is “Competitive Intelligence” for?
The aim of competitive intelligence is to gain insight into your competition’s brands, products and consumer engagements to make informed decisions. Keeping your finger on the pulse of the competition coupled with consistent trend analysis puts your brand in position to take advantage of gaps in the market before anyone else notices.
Use competitive intelligence to:
- Conduct competitive analysis
- Drive new business pitches
- Measure brand perception and share of voice
- Map customer reviews
How to gain better results with Competitive Intelligence?
Everything from marketing, product development, influencer identification and investment strategy can benefit from a comprehensive understanding of your competition’s successes and missteps.
- Understand not only what otherbrands are getting right, but what they’re getting wrong as well.
- Insights into the competition are evolving 24/7 through social media and online news publications. This creates an absolute need for brands to keep tabs on the competition or fall behind
- Operate on the presumption that the competition is monitoring you. Therefore, you need to know as much as you can about your competition so you can put that information to work in everything you do.

Competitive Intelligence Resources
Does Social Skew Negative?
It’s a common perception that there are more negative posts on social than positive. I was reminded of this the other day by an article in the San Francisco Chronicle. A sports columnist said, “In the Twitter world, where Warriors [basketball] fans opine and argue,...
Demographic Segmentation: Soon To Be a Thing of the Past?
I’d like to challenge the conventional wisdom that gives too much credit to demographic segmentation as a way to define audiences and target them with products. I believe there’s a higher aim, which is meeting consumer needs. As marketers, I think we should prefer to...
Find Better Ideas for New Products with Social Listening
Inventing is easy; gaining the insights necessary to know what to invent is the secret. Nick Webb says too many new product developers are relying on outdated voice of the customer (VOC) research to find those insights. His company, Lassen Innovation, used social...