Competitive Intelligence is the art of staying one step ahead of the competition by gathering information about their operations. You have to know what they are up to, so I am going to show you how to check out your competitors' products and marketing schemes without them even knowing you are there. In other words, this lesson is about how to spy on the competition without getting caught.

Assuming that you have less than five direct competitors, you should always buy their product to determine their sales process (and service) and get on their mailing list to see future promotions. The relatively small price you pay for their product will pay for itself many times over in the knowledge you gain by finding out what they are doing and how they are doing it.

Some of your competitors may process orders manually and could recognize your name as their competition. Use your spouse's name, a fictitious name, an employee's name, or an alternative company name (if you have another company) that will allow the mail to get to you without revealing who you are. Also, make sure you use an alternative email address and phone number.

I do this with all of my competitors and find out exactly what they are doing, who they are dealing with, and how they are doing it... all by their email and snail mail correspondence.

Also, by purchasing their products you will be able to experience exactly what a regular customer would go through and you can then judge their product, service and operations against yours. This gives a great advantage to all of your customers because you will know the pros and cons of your competition and can more effectively sell your product or service.

Important Tip: You may even want to have one of your employees or friends call your competitor. They could pose as a satisfied customer wanting to see what products or services the company is working on for the future.

Where Do You Start?

An absolute must is to go to http://www.netwatch.ca, it will search for specific keywords (i.e. your personal name, company name, product name... or your competitor's personal name, company name, product name) in over 280,000 newsgroups.

As a side note, we used to recommend Reference.com, which was a great service with a ton of features, and most of all, it was totally free. Their site is now down for an unknown reason, but this should only be temporary. If you want to go with these guys, check their URL whenever you have the chance and see if they have any updates listed.

Another free service which you may have heard of, DejaNews, offers a very limited version of what Netwatch.ca does and what http://www.reference.com used to do. Through DejaNews, you can perform a search for keywords in specified newsgroups to find out if your name, or any other information about your company, is being used without your prior knowledge or permission. This service is a great start, but Netwatch.ca will provide you with the full details automatically (as listed below) without requiring you do to any work whatsoever.

Page 1 of 3 :: First | Last :: Prev | 1 2 3 | Next