Competitive Intelligence

Jump Intelligence

Intelligence comes in many different shapes and sizes, and while competitive and business intelligence is all about knowing what your competitors are up to, to really get the jump on that intelligence you first of all need to know what you’re doing yourself – makes sense doesn’t it? So before you start worrying about anybody else, do you . . .

• Track your own ROI from your advertising straight down to your direct online transactions? If not, why not?
• Capture information requests
• Store any locator’s searches on your website

By knowing this type of information, you can put a dollar value on each step, for example, let’s say that around 1% of the people who request further information buy from you within the first week, or that 10% of people who sign up for the newsletter purchase from you, then you know which direction has the greatest dollar value don’t you, and you can plan your attack accordingly.

Getting the jump on intelligence doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to over analyse every single piece of information you have, just how to identify a problem and then solve it – that’s all you have to do. If you don’t have a specific goal in mind you can simply find yourselves going around in circles, and those who really get the jump on intelligence have to know where they are jumping to.

It’s also important to know where you’re heading, instead of constantly looking at where you’ve been. We can all learn from the past mistakes, but if you spend your entire life analysing past data you will end up being reactive instead of proactive, and proactive is what you need to stay one jump ahead of the competition.

If I say jump, you say “how high”, and all that sort of stuff.