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Lexis Nexis
What is competition monitoring?
Competition monitoring (also competitor observation or competitive intelligence) refers to continuous reconnaissance of the market and the business environment in order to define your own market position. It involves the systematic collection and analysis of information on the competition, competitive products and services, and trends. You can use this as a basic for taking strategic and tactical decisions and thus always be one step ahead of the competition
Regular market monitoring is followed if necessary by a market analysis or competition analysis during which the collected data is interpreted and linked.
Competitive intelligence as a pillar of corporate strategy
How do you tackle your strategic planning? You probably monitor trends and ongoing developments. It’s good if you also listen to feedback from your customers. But where do your competitors feature in this? Do you know how your competitors are moving in the market? Competition monitoring enables you to avoid unpleasant surprises, to respond quickly and to modify your company’s strategy promptly.
Is competitive intelligence (CI) or competition monitoring part of your strategy?
Identify crucial competitive factors: Why strategic competition monitoring is so important
In the course of your media monitoring, you should not ignore the competition in any of your areas of business. Successful competitive intelligence enables you to uncover important information and thus gain valuable information advantages for your corporate strategy.
By keeping an eye on your competitors, you can leverage key competitive advantages. Especially in times of digitization, the market is fast-paced: Within a short time, a competitor can gain a competitive edge unnoticed.
However, if you keep an eye on the market, you will be aware of certain developments more quickly and can react accordingly. Because in the business environment: knowledge is ahead.
The quality and Timing of the analysis are crucial
Restricting market monitoring to searches in the freely accessible Internet is risky. The information there is often incomplete. And you always need to check the source of the information.
To cover all important aspects, you should base your business intelligence on up-to-date information from a number of valid sources, such as:
The challenge is not just to get general access to this data. You also need the right tools to evaluate them. Only by the right analysis you clarify important questions:
Where is the competition expanding?
Which new products are developed?
Which marketing and advertising activities are being rolled out?
What attention do the media pay to the competition?
But all these insights are of little use if you learn them at the wrong time. Automated and customized e-mail alerts ensure that you are always up to date and stay informed about new developments. Because the information advantage brings the greatest benefit if you act early.
Brand Monitoring and Brand Perception
The big well-known brands in particular are constantly fighting for the favor of (potential) customers. Continuous monitoring of the target group’s brand perception delivers important insights for strategic business orientation or concrete marketing campaigns.
In the course of brand monitoring, the researched data must be examined thoroughly. A purely quantitative comparison of media reports may suggest that the competition is in the lead. However, the tonality analysis may come out in your favor if reports on the competition are couched in more negative terms.
In connection with online reputation management you should not ignore social media monitoring. You should therefore combine various metrics from different sources in order to obtain robust results. Graphics make the analysis easier.
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