Establishing the foundation of a business is key to ensuring its longevity, particularly in today’s world where there are more businesses than ever before. How exactly do businesses go about establishing a foundation that keeps them afloat even during some of the hardest economic times? Well, it starts with performing research on competitors. After all, what works for one business will likely work for others if they operate according to similar processes.
Keep reading to learn how today’s brands use emerging trends in competitive intelligence to build solid operational foundations.
Viewing Competitive Intelligence as Mission-Critical
One of the latest emerging trends in competitive intelligence stems from the way it is viewed. Competitive intelligence is mission-critical, and it SHOULD be viewed as such.
Those leading competitive intelligence (CI) programs can use their insatiable hunger for various forms of CI to demonstrate its actual worth across the entire board and company. In fact, when it comes to this form of intelligence, every worker can use it in some form or fashion to outplay competitors; this includes workers on your sales teams, marketing teams, product development teams, etc.
Creating a CI Team
Creating a competitive intelligence committee is an excellent method that brands can use to increase participation in CI programs. As workers and representatives from various departments serve as advisors on your CI teams, they can assist in the collection of internal data followed by then disseminating such insights in the appropriate manner to the right people at the right time. Ultimately, this increases engagement thanks to the ability to create competitive content that resonates with existing and prospective customers.
Updating Content to Better Serve Its Intended Purpose
Always make sure when using CI content that you use it in a manner that allows you to update it according to its purpose. Just because you update your marketing and sales content due to new CI insights doesn’t mean you can leave out updating your customer support content. Remember, customer support content is likely similar to that of your sales content, however, the latter has a larger focus on acquiring new customers while customer support should focus more on customer retention.
Using CI Tools to Find and Retain New Customers
Some of the latest emerging trends in CI tools that businesses use and yours can too include:
Crunchbase
NetBase Quid
Talkwalker
Spyfu
MOAT
Even though we live and operate in an unpredictable world, NetBase Quid continues to prove itself as one of the best AI-powered consumer and market intelligence tools that help businesses can use to find and retain valuable insights. These insights can then be used to help find and retain new customers.
Using Reviews and Testimonials
Emerging trends in CI methods showcase how valuable review sites are. More so, how such sites can be used as an important research tool. Using review sites and customer testimonials is crucial in today’s competitive landscape. Why? Because knowing what your customers like about your product or service and what your competitors’ customers dislike about their product or service can be the difference between gaining and losing customers.
Creating Battle Cards to Create CI Visualizations
A lot of brands are leveraging battle cards to their advantage to gain a competitive edge through competitive intelligence. Battle cards are simple to make. They usually come in the form of visual aids that make it easy to visualize how your company’s product stacks up against those of your competitors. The battle cards tend to compare the details of not only a product or service in general, but also its features, developmental process, distribution pipeline, and pricing, to one or more products of your many competitors.
The Takeaway
Client retention is far more essential than ever before; this has particularly proven true over the past 12 months. As businesses recover from issues created and endured by the COVID-19 pandemic, sales reps are seeing time and time again just how valuable it is to go out of their way to know exactly what customers want and need.
Your customers’ contentment and pleasure in doing business with your brand benefit your company not only in terms of customer loyalty but also in terms of exploration and development, especially when it comes to prospecting new clients. Make sure to use the emerging trends in CI programs and tools listed above to help your business reach a new level of success.
