Aside from being a title of war movies, books and a Demi Lovato song, the phrase “behind enemy lines” has many meanings, including espionage.
When used in the context of PR, however, spying is neither clandestine nor is subterfuge necessary. You can get behind enemy lines without risk to find out what your competitors are doing. All it takes is for you to gather competitive intelligence through market research and measurement.
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By collecting and analyzing this intelligence, you can identify competitors’ strategies and tactics, see how they position themselves in the media and the market, learn about their successes, uncover hidden opportunities and create compelling ideas.
Mining rich, real-time data in social media will give you a clear picture of which brands have the largest share of voice on industry topics, and analysis can also suggest how your business might try to own those conversations in the future. Conducting market research also can help you uncover competitors’ messages and approaches.
You can apply these learnings to your PR plans. In other words, you can use competitive intelligence to make strategic decisions in your own business.
How to Begin
There are several steps you can take in media and market research, but the best way to gather competitive intelligence is by asking a lot of questions.
1. Websites
- Start your research on your competitors’ websites. This should be done every quarter, or at the very least, twice each year.
- Look at your competitors’ press releases and/or their News sections.
- Do press releases and news unveil strategy and successes?
- What are their key messages?
- Are these messages mirrored in social media channels, as outlined below?
- See if they offer downloads of videos, podcasts, infographics, white papers, case studies or other content.
- How frequently do they post different types of content?
- Consider subscribing to competitors’ email newsletters.
- Find out where they have a presence in social media channels. Typically, you can locate icons for social channels at the bottom of a home page or as share buttons underneath key content throughout the website.
2. LinkedIn
- Evaluate your competitors’ LinkedIn presence. This should be done every quarter to keep up with their latest news, growth rates and other helpful data.
- Are they using LinkedIn as a company profile page only or are they sharing information with their networks and audiences through posts and other content?
- Consider following competitors on LinkedIn, to ensure that your LinkedIn newsfeed will be populated with their current information.
3. Google Alerts
- Set up Google Alerts for your competitors, so you can find out every time they are mentioned online.
- This also helps you monitor keywords that are important to them, which can be used for social media analysis, as outlined below.
4. Search Engines
- Type your competitors’ names into your favorite search engine and examine the results. This should be done every six months.
- Find out the keywords and topics that are most important to them.
- Consider whether adding their popular keywords to your site will help obtain better search results.
- Use these keywords in social media analysis, as outlined below.
5. Owned Digital Media Analysis
- Conduct an analysis of your competitors’ owned digital channels, such as their Facebook, Twitter and YouTube accounts. This should be done monthly or quarterly, depending on how active your brand is on social media.
- How do they use these channels?
- Are they simply broadcasting company news
- Are they also sharing industry news with their audiences?
- Are they engaging with their stakeholders, customers and consumers? How are they engaging?
- Do their key messages mirror those on their website?
- Are their messages resonating with journalists and consumers?
- Are they creating buzz with specific keywords or hashtags?
6. Social Media Analysis
- Now that you’ve evaluated how your competitors use their digital channels to communicate with audiences, it’s time to find out how they are perceived in social media conversations overall.
- Conduct research on topics that are important to you.
- Who owns the conversation on each topic?
- If it’s a competitor, what is it doing to have such a large voice?
- What worked for it, and what didn’t?
- Are there ways that you can adapt what worked for it into your own strategies?
- This should be done every month or quarter, depending on how active your company is on social media.
- If you can’t conduct this research as frequently as suggested, then the best time to do it is during your PR planning period, typically in the last few months before the start of your fiscal year.
USE Competitive Intel to Drive Strategy
In summary, analysis of competitive intelligence can be used to:
- Identify competitor strategies, tactics, messaging and positioning
- Find out what is working for the competition, and what is not
- Inspire compelling ideas
- Uncover trends in the news cycle
- Suggest ideas to refine your messages
- Determine the media channels target audiences are using most frequently
Gaining competitive intelligence can lead to improving your business by helping you compete on pricing, service, perception and more. But keep in mind that your competitors can scrutinize your brand’s strategies and perception, too.
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