January 2005

The Invisible Threat: Your Competitor's Website
Innovative competitive intelligence value
By Celeste Smith Bishop

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 ends, it's time for a fresh look.

Savvy competitors set high expectations for their Web marketing and achieve some rather compelling results, such as: leads, customers, sales, expanded market reach, customer churn reduction, 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, 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 find it on your competitor's site, how does that impact 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, it leaves you with an unexploited opportunity.

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.

Finally, now that you know which competitor's Web marketing might be a threat—and what the competitor is doing to drive traffic—find out how much any of that traffic-building activity really matters, regarding lead generation and sales efforts. If your competitor has only succeeded in driving traffic to its Website but 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 it together at this last step ... yet.

Aggressive companies 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 high-potential channel for lead generation and sales. There's solid gold in "going to school" on your competition. Staying ahead of the game and becoming the competitor that others worry about—now that's success!

Signs that competitors are Website savvy

There are several tip-offs that your competitors may be leveraging their sites:

• Evidence of unique page titles and descriptions that appear to incorporate keyword phrases. (To view these in Internet Explorer, go to "View" and "Source.")
• Use of site maps that will help search engine spiders locate all of the pages on a Website.
• Content developed from the perspective of searchers that appears to play off of keyword phrases; going beyond standard self-promotion information.
• Sign of lead-generation initiatives, such as prompting to sign up for a newsletter or be notified of updates.
• Links to the Website from "authority Websites," such as industry trade associations or The Wall Street Journal.

Beyond SEO

Studies show that a relatively small amount of the total Website traffic arrives at Websites from search engines! To help drive people to your site, think outside the box. For example, use existing channels such as your telephone answering system to direct callers on hold to an interesting article on your Website. Publish articles and make sure your resource box at the end of the article stimulates traffic to your Website.

Celeste Smith Bishop is a business competition professional who produces competitive intelligence, analysis, and strategy for organizations, teams, and individuals. Ms. Bishop has also developed expertise as a search engine marketer who specializes in Website competition.

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.