competitive intelligence on a startup budget

Competitive Intelligenceon a startup budget.

April 18, 2013

What do you want to know?

Before you can plan, you need context.

•Competition•Industry•Brand position in the marketplace•Target audience (lifestyle, demographics, etc.)•Opinions, reviews, satisfaction, dissatisfaction…•Benefits

What is your objective?

•Launch campaigns•Awareness•Drive traffic•Outreach•Product/service development (testing)•Other consultation –partners

Tools You Can Use – Mention

• Make it an alert• And share

Tools You Can Use – Biznar (Feed)

Tools You Can Use – Social Mention (Feed)

Enter Netvibes

Enter Netvibes

Enter Netvibes

Enter Netvibes

Enter Netvibes

What else can I monitor?

• Instagram feeds• Anything with a search feed/RSS feed• Twitter searches• The possibilities are endless

• Garbage in, garbage out.• Most systems allow for advanced searching.• Think about your search terms.• What do you want in?• What don’t you want in?• Any whole sites to eliminate?• Date parameters?• Any search terms that bring a ton of spam?

• Okay, enough of that. Sorry.

Can I talk a second about Boolean Searching?

• All the data in the world does not make a strategy. • Drill down into the results to get specific information – be

creative. – Think like a strategist. – Ask questions. – Use your imagination.– Test your theories, look for examples in the real world.

Now – what else do you need to know? Good strategic research often leads to more questions!

Now what?

• Use it as inputs along with other research, knowledge, feedback.

• Consider implications – are they widespread? Isolated?

• But wait, there’s more…

What can you do with all this new knowledge?

Spotting Trends is Vital

Trends are a great way to spot deltas which often provide indicators of the health of campaign.

But seriously, what can I measure?

WHO - Who interacted? What do you know about these consumers?

WHAT - What was discussed? What was shared? Engaged?WHERE - Where were the conversations happening - social

channels or geography?WHEN - When did the results happen? Context?WHY - Why were consumers engaging or feeling this way?HOW - How much of an impact did the social marketing have?

How do results hold up against benchmarks? How do they translate to brand metrics? How does this add to the bottom line?

Listen.Monitor.

Knowledge is power.