The Invisible Threat: The Innovative Competitive Intelligence Value in Your Competition's Websites

Benefits

Choosing a Consultant

Best Practices Direct

Articles

May 2006

The Invisible Threat: The Innovative Competitive Intelligence Value in Your Competition's Websites
By Celeste Smith Bishop, Bishop Market Resources

What do you think about when you contemplate your competitor's website? Nice design? Online sales? Great branding? If this is where the contemplation of your competitor's website pretty much ends, it's time for a fresh look.

Savvy competitors set high expectations for their website marketing and achieve some pretty compelling results, such as: leads, customers, sales, expanded market reach, reduced customer churn and improved profit contribution from existing customers. And there's more – dynamic partner and vendor programs that deliver results with less time, money and agony than more traditional approaches.

What makes these savvy competitors so good? They use their websites as channels to gain competitive advantages. Let's take a look at some of those potential competitive advantages, such as:

Businesses that leverage their websites as growth and profit tools achieve high ROI. Arguably, this is an indication of their fierce competitive intent in other areas as well.
An aggressive website can level the playing field for emerging competitors. For hardly more than the price of admission, new competitors can gain instant credibility, drive lead generation and build a formidable sales pipeline at your expense.
Stealth favors competitive success: It's much easier to gain ground when no one is looking. Without new approaches to timely competitive intelligence discovery, your competitors might as well be invisible.
Aggressive competitors use the speed and flexibility possible through their websites to immediately adapt to changing market conditions and seize every competitive advantage.
Alienation of affection is an old-fashioned term for "disrupted customer loyalty." If your customers and best prospects seek information on the Internet and they find it on your competitor's site, what impact does that have on your bottom line?

So What Do You Do?

The first step in creating powerful web marketing is to discover which competitors are aggressively using their websites to drive business growth. You may find some competitors mounting aggressive web-based campaigns aimed at your customers and most attractive prospects. If your competitors’ websites are not showing signs of aggressive use to fulfill company goals, you have a tremendous opportunity to gain ground.

Next, drill down further to uncover what your most aggressive competitors are doing. Look beyond Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) techniques that represent only a fraction of the ways to build targeted traffic for lead generation and sales through your website. Identify complimentary online and offline marketing initiatives as well as business activities with partners, suppliers, and customers. Online publication of articles, case studies and white papers that are well-distributed throughout varying Internet venues is one of the most effective tactics to drive highly targeted visitors to websites. Look beyond what is immediately observable on your competitors' websites.

Finally, now that you know which competitors' website marketing might be a threat – and what your competitors are doing to drive traffic – find out how much any of that traffic building activity really matters to their results. If your competitor has only succeeded in driving traffic to its website that contributes nothing to its business goals – what good has it done and at what cost? Don't be too surprised if your competitors don't have this last step together – yet.

Aggressive competitors leverage their websites like a Swiss army knife, producing value in many ways with one tool – their website channels. And each success they achieve has the potential to put your business further behind. Competitors are visible if you know how to apply innovative competitive intelligence tools and techniques to stay on top of this highly efficient channel for lead generation, sales and more. There's solid gold in "going to school" on your competitors. Staying ahead of the game and becoming the competitor that your competitors worry about – now that's success!

Celeste Smith Bishop is a business competition professional who produces competitive intelligence, analysis and strategy for organizations, teams and individuals. Bishop has also developed expertise as a search engine marketer who specializes in website competition. You can learn more about the art and science of business competition at the Brain Food area on http://www.BishopMarketResources.com or by calling 1-866-844-SWOT.

Permisson to Reprint: You may reprint any items from "The Innovative Competitive Intelligence Value in Your Competition's Websites” in your own print or electronic newsletter, but please include the above author attribution in its entirety and notify the author.