Look over your shoulder -- stay ahead with competitive intelligence

We often face an interesting dilemma: how much should we focus on our competitors (both real and perceived)? Most of us instinctively know that we need to be watching out for companies who could take away a share of our pie. However, the challenge is often to find the right balance in worrying about the competition and adopting appropriate strategies to quell the threat, and focusing on our own business goals and convictions.

Obviously, this is an age-old dilemma, not peculiar to us; yet, in the environment that we operate in and the business that we are in makes things a lot different and more challenging. But with the Internet playing such a pivotal role in our businesses, tracking competitors has become absolutely critical. Noted search engine marketing expert, Paul Bruemmer, recently reiterated a similar sentiment on the value of competitive intelligence.

With customers and marketers alike turning to the search engines to meet their respective objectives, marketers are slugging it out on the search engines in the battle for the rankings. There is hardly anything preventing any company anywhere to buy a competitor's trade mark as a keyword and bidding on it, and benefit from the traffic that owes itself to a user looking for the trade-marked product/ service. Now, that is pinching traffic from right under one's nose. An obvious question may be: what can be done about it?

Lots can be done, if one can employ the right partners to leverage their expertise and experience (knowing ALL the tricks of the trade!) to prevent competitors from taking undue advantage. One question I hear is: hey, we are a big company with big brands, and we can take care of the competition-- we can monitor what's happening?

That's often a result of grossly underestimating the nature of the challenge. The Internet is a 24/7-beast--- quite literally, your companies may be sneaking in the cloud of darkness... Does the big company employ people 24/7 to track and monitor competitor activities on the internet? "We'll automate the process of monitoring," that's the next response. Fine, but is that your core competence? Is that something you should be focusing your resources on, or let a competent and trust-worthy third party do it?

Competitive tracking is also not a defensive strategy---- you could use it aggressively as well. Where are your competitors appearing in the search results? What keywords have they bid on, that you may have missed? Is that an opportunity for you to trial and potentially generate some revenue?

Undoubtedly, there are numerous other benefits of keeping track of your competitors-- what new initiatives are being taken, how are the competitors performing, what areas are they doing well and where are they failing? With all the information floating around, converting this information into strategic competitive intelligence is a niche in itself. You want to make sure you are relying on the right tools, the right people and the right organization to do it for you because the price of climbing up the wrong tree can be quite steep.

Until next time,


Ben Flux


(BTW, if you are interested in knowing how Traffic Junction can help with competitve intelligence, specifically to leverage your trade marks to the utmost and prevent trade mark abuse, get in touch with us.)

posted by Ben Flux - Traffic Junction @ 11/08/2005 08:41:00 AM