Watching your competition is smart business. Manufacturers typically keep tabs on the market by:
- Poking around competitors’ websites for clues
- Downloading content/attending webinars when new products are announced
- Networking throughout the industry for word-of-mouth rumors
But those options are reactive and don’t allow enough time to proactively plan a response. Also, they don’t necessarily uncover critical information.
What manufacturers who want to keep an eye on the competition need is intelligence.
Sales Intelligence is actionable data about your competition, including signals that can indicate strategic and tactical shifts before they happen. Spotting these pivots in their early stages helps you adjust your own strategies ahead of time. You can sidestep competitors’ efforts, keep your customers, and win more new deals.
The (Not So) Secret Activities That Reveal Competitor Strategy
Your competitors have pain points to solve, customers with specific needs, and a desire to win more business.
As they consider opportunities, your competitors are performing research online.
They’re doing things like:
- Searching topics related to new products, emerging markets, or different target customers
- Reading websites of materials vendors and other resources they might need for a new strategy
- Checking industry publications to understand new regulations
The activities are usually anonymous, but they leave digital footprints that can be gathered, analyzed, and tied back to specific accounts. Ultimately, these signals can add up to a dossier that reveals your competitor’s roadmap.
At 6sense we usually talk about these types of signals as buyer intent. Buyer intent can reveal potential customers who are researching solutions you can offer. It’s incredibly useful for focusing your marketing and sales teams on the best revenue opportunities.
But intent data insights can also be fine-tuned to keep a watchful eye on your competition.
By tracking the topics and activity your competitors might be researching, the 6sense Revenue AI™ platform can give you an advantage.
Putting This Intelligence to Use
Once you know what your competitors are most interested in, you can create sales and marketing strategies to stay ahead. Here are few use cases:
Example 1: The Competition is Creating a New Product to Compete with Yours
Capturing the Insight: You are tracking competitors to see if they’re researching keywords related to your products or services.
The Impact: You notice a competitor researching keywords for a product they don’t offer, but which you do. As their research activity increases, it’s clear they’re getting ready to launch their own product to compete with yours.
But you know what’s coming, so you:
- Create a targeted marketing campaign for loyal customers,
- Increase sales engagement with those accounts,
- Offer deals or discounts to lock in contract renewals before the competition enters the market
It’s also a good time to double down on efforts to reach prospective customers who are researching this product or topic. Intent data can help you prioritize outreach to likely buyers.
Your competition is probably planning a big sales and marketing splash to introduce their competing solution. By getting to in-market accounts first, you can turn your competitor’s product awareness spending into your sales.
Example 2: The Competition is Keenly Interested in a New Regulation
Capturing the Insight: A new regulation has been passed for your industry, but it’s not clear how competitors are likely to respond. You track regulation-related keywords competitors are researching.
The Impact: You uncover that multiple competitors are heavily researching the topic and vendors that’ll help them achieve compliance. This can help round out your own compliance roadmap by:
- Finding solutions for meeting regulatory requirements
- Communicating with your customers about the changing regulations and impact on them, if any
- Creating campaigns to target buyers researching these regulations and products that meet the new standard
Again, intent data can provide a peek into competitors’ minds. It also can help you recognize any anxieties surrounding the new regulations. This helps you address buyer concerns, show that you are on top of the issue, and demonstrate why you’re a great business partner.
Conclusion
Manufacturers looking to stay a step (or two) ahead of the competition can use 6sense as a tool to track competitors’ online research efforts. This intelligence can reveal a competitor’s roadmap and priorities, handing you a big competitive advantage.
