Competitive Intelligence in Brand Positioning

It's the aim and goal of any business or a company to understand their competitor in a given space and how they are gaining or losing in the said space. Such an analysis is what professionals in savvy brands usually refer to as competitive intelligence. It's essential to understand at any given time, your competition is always on their toes, gathering as much competitive intelligence in regards to your brand. Your competition understands quite perfectly that they are you as a grand and will not give up your competitive intelligence quite easily. Your competitors are willing to do the extra work and understand your game to their advantage. Therefore, it's at the heart of any brand to stay on top of their game and in control of their competitors in the industry or their space of operation at any given time.

One of the areas that companies take pretty seriously and at times form part of their mission-critical is competitive intelligence. So it is essential to have a monitoring team in place and a team that can affect radical changes in the shortest time possible to win control of the market. 

Therefore, competitive intelligence refers to the deliberate effort by the brand and the company to focus on creating an informed consumer that is market-driven and understanding how to position your brand in the larger industry context. The above scenario must also combine with an in-depth understanding of what your audience wants so that a brand can engage in impactful conversations. Also, being in an apposition to focus on your mandate's core business as a brand and not being swayed by influencer distractors are some of the goals that a brand must maintain to remain relevant in an ever-competitive market.

Being aware of what is happening and how your competition is performing in the market assists companies and brands in understanding and tapping into emerging trends in the marketplace way before their competitors understand how to penetrate the market. In most instances, competitors who try to copy such a move usually end up failing and not achieving critical results as anticipated.

Therefore, a brand must be very deliberate on their analytics dictate and at the same time prepare always to pivot their solutions transparently in the eyes of their consumers to remain relevant in the marketplace. Therefore, competitive intelligence is critical and a critical aspect that separates those brands that will dominate the market now and in the future. Similarly, allowing a brand to get a drive-by and elaborate intelligence on various angles will separate your brand from those struggling to catch up with the trend. Therefore, one of the perfect illustrations of market intelligence offers a competitive advantage to brands and companies that first embraced it.

Currently, brands and mainly your competitors are working quite hard to understand your traffic sources, keywords and trace any changes in your site. They are also closely monitoring your white spaces opportunities, and all these get done unchallenged. The whole point of going to this length is to gather as much data intelligence as possible regarding their competition and analyze it to understand your competitor's focus and goal in the industry. Therefore, any brand or company's core business is moving slightly faster than their competition in understanding and taking advantage of the emerging market trend before their competition. Therefore, allowing your competition to trail your market and competitors' intelligence is the only way and option of remaining on top of the game.

For a brand to identify and associate with these emerging opportunities in the market, they must invest in powerful competitor auditing teams and capabilities and invest in training their leads in market intelligence.