The highly successful Jalsa of 25th December, 2011 organized by Pakistan Tehreek Insaf was a major social media milestone for Pakistan. By using a disruptive technology in early markets, PTI has upset the status quo, catapulting a man who did … Continue reading →

Spying on competitors can help businesses align marketing and pricing strategy.

While identifying competition, it is necessary not to keep your vision too narrow. A wider angle and more thorough approach will bring more competitors on your radar. Companies that fail to adapt this wider approach and identify their competitors narrowly are endangered by smooth operators who can easily become strong competitive threats.

Fighting Competition Effectively

This fast paced business environment requires quick and comprehensive information on competitor’s activity and the next potential move or product launch or even sponsorship to an event. In simple words, a successful business always stays at least one step ahead of its competitors.

While identifying competition, one of the key mistakes is to look only for your competitor’s positive points that might pull your customers. Not many businesses consider importance of negative aspects of your competitor’s business model – think about it, if you exactly know the negative elements of your competitor’s branding, marketing or pricing strategy, you can use this as an advantage to your company.

I read an excellent piece by David Aaker who is the vice chairman of Prophet and the author of Brand Relevance: Making Competitors Irrelevant. He writes the davidaaker.com blog on branding. David suggests;

“When a brand sallies forth into the marketplace, there are essentially two bases on which it can compete. The first is competing on brand preference by convincing buyers to opt for Brand A over comparable Brands X, Y, and Z. This is the kind of competition that takes place in well established categories and subcategories, and it is a tough and constant slog. The second, competing on Brand Relevance , involves presenting customers with a choice compared to which competitors’ offerings seem irrelevant. This is the route that breakthrough brands take, and is for most marketers the only route to growth and profitability

Marketing strategies geared toward this approach feature constant, incremental enhancements to the offering’s attractiveness, reliability, or price, in hopes of getting buyers to take a second look at a familiar brand. “New and improved” — whether faster, cheaper, or better — is the mantra. They devote even more resources to marketing communications that try to sway buyers with more clever advertising, more impactful promotions, more visible sponsorships, and more involving social media programs than the competition’s.”

I would also like to recommend eight common mistakes to avoid while spying on your competitors:

• Keeping narrow approach towards competitors list.
• Compromising on reliability of information.
• Ignoring negative points.
• Using outdated information.
• Ignoring customers as the key source of information.
• Overlooking the use of tools such as social media and other internet based source of information.
• Applying non-validated data.
• Ignoring Hear-Say.

Only intelligent companies can survive in this highly competitive business environment, are you intelligent enough?

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