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Category Archives: Competitive Intelligence
The Business of Social Intelligence
Enterprise 2.0 Conference!
Hello all! Just a quick note to let you know that we’re at the Enterprise 2.0 Conferencein Boston today and tomorrow! We’re so excited to meet others in the industry and to see the latest products/services that they have created, and to show them ours as well. The conference focuses on enlightening its participants of the emergence of bigger picture implications of technology and how we can expect to integrate such products/services into each of our own unique business plans and models.
This year, the conference is at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston.
Moving from Enterprise 1.0 to Enterprise 2.0 includes but is not limited to the following changes:
Hierarchy to Flat organization
Friction to Ease of Organization Flow
Bureaucracy to Agility
Top down to Bottom Up
Need to know to Transparancy
As you can see the structure and nature of the workplace and work production is beginning to shift, and this conference is a great place for us to enhance one’s own business configuration to better fit into the future of business enterprises.
Stay updated on our conference ventures today and tomorrow via our social channels. www.facebook.com/viraltechnologies or www.twitter.com/viraltech
Top 5 Reasons to Properly “Brand” Your Brand
1. It can drive more traffic to your Web sites
If consumers identify certain descriptive words or slogans that represent your brand, it makes your company much more visible within the online marketplace. The more ways that people can describe and identify your brand, the more search results will be found in sites like Google and Bing. A great example of this is McDonalds. The following keywords/phrases would easily find the company on search engines:
• I’m Lovin’ It
• Golden Arches
• Big Mac
• McNuggets
• Ronald McDonald
• Filet-O-Fish
• Put a Smile On
• Happy Meal
2. It gives your company more credibility
Now That's Brand Loyalty!
Plain and simple, people go with what they know. If faced with a decision between two different products with similar price points, people will most probably always go with the better-known brand. Consumers have a very strong influence on one another and if a company has built their brand around a specific product or service, people will talk (good or bad). The more positive chatter, the greater chance your company has at becoming a credible organization and one within which consumers will become loyal to. There is a phenomenon called brand religion that explains this behavior. This means that the value of a company’s brand becomes so high that consumers will remain loyal to it even if it costs much more or its stock has depleted.
3. Helps your company to develop a recognizable identity
One piece of effective branding is that you have created an identity that can be recognized by the masses. Do you recognize all of the logos on the rest stop sign when driving on the highway? If yes, it means that that brand has done a good job in developing a recognizable brand identity. If you have made the products or services of your brand to represent something specific, your consumers will expect that consistency for all of your products/services. For example, Coach is a highly recognizable brand, and their products are identified as a high-end and good-quality alternative.
4. Makes your consumers view you in a certain way, and affects their behaviors
Being a recognized brand also comes with a lot of responsibility. People start to expect certain things from your brand, and they can turn on you just as easily if you disappoint them. An example of this would be finding out that a company that positioned themselves as a very environmentally responsible organization that prided themselves in using all green and natural products, was using artificial growth hormones on their animals, and emitting chemicals into the atmosphere. If your consumers viewed you as the way you marketed yourself (green and all natural), and you indulge in behaviors that prove otherwise, your consumers will most probably switch to a different brand no matter how loyal they had been to you previously. A strong brand also allows the transfer of the brand to new products, meaning your consumer will assume that because your brand has created the product, it will be as good as their other products that they love so much.
5. Distinguishes your company from competitors
This simply means that your entire brand make-up including products, designs, logo, and overall mission is unique to other companies in your field. Making sure to stand-out is important, especially in such a saturated market. A great example of a company that has made their brand distinguishable from their competitors is Apple. Not only do they develop high-tech and highly functional unique products, but they are the people that other brands mimic. Their products are so unique from their “competitors” that it almost seems as though they aren’t competing. Apple and HP are both computer companies, but Apple products are so different from other computer products that they almost can’t be lumped in the same category.
The 5 W’s of Competitive Intelligence
Who:
Who are your Competitors? – discovering who your competitors are (as if you didn’t already know) is very important to ensure that you are offering the best product in your industry. Being able to identify your competitors can help you to find out more about what they are doing better or worse than your brand, and also can help you to listen to what their customers are saying about them.
Who are the Customers of Your Competition? – again this is important so that you can listen to their conversation about your competitor’s brand and see what they do/do not like about that company, and rework your product/service accordingly.
What:
What are the Customers of Your Competition Unhappy About? – are you repeating the same mistake that your competitor is doing? Well by monitoring what your competitor’s clients are complaining about can help your brand to not mimic whatever made these consumers unhappy. You can also take that one step further by advertising the anti-“whatever they didn’t like about competitor’s product/service.” For example if they are complaining about the slow and poor customer service, advertise your GREAT customer service and provide incentives to these people to switch over to your brand.
What Has Your Competition Been Successful With and What Have They Failed At? – as illustrated above, the opposite can also occur. Your competitor is has just created a great product that is very user-friendly and reliable. Your consumers have been complaining about the complicity of your product, and for that reason, your clients are switching over. In monitoring what your competition is doing well, you can do your best to replicate (in a lawful manner), and perhaps even surpass the user-experience of your product/service.
When:
When Did Your Competition Start Gaining/Losing Followers/Customers? (spotting trends) – this is a very important aspect of competitive intelligence to consider especially because in looking at time periods, you can then track it back to an event or experience that could have caused the gain or loss. For example, your competition started losing customers/followers around the same time that its well-respected and mature CEO retired—people may have lost faith and trust in the company enough so that they felt they didn’t want to give them the business anymore (this is your chance to swoop in, and ensure them that your brand will take care of them in the way that your competitor’s brand used to).
When and How Often Does Your Competition Engage With Customers? – engaging is such an important aspect in gaining a loyal and faithful brand following. If your clients know that you value their input, and respond to their questions/concerns/comments quickly and effectively, they will be more apt to return again for further product purchases/services.
Where:
Where Does Your Competition Put Most of Their Marketing Efforts? (what media types) – knowing this information is helpful when gathering competitive intelligence because we can start to understand their business strategies and plans. If we know they are putting most of their marketing efforts into their website, then we know that perhaps they are lacking in the social media marketing area, and we can zero in and capitalize on this hole. It’s also good to know where the unsaturated areas of your market lie in the online marketplace, so that you can take advantage of the lack of usage in this area and be one of the first to set up stake with little to no competition.
Where Do Most Customers Share Their Opinions About Your Competition? (what media types) – this is a great place to camp out because obviously if the majority of the competition’s clients are gathering and sharing thoughts in one specific area, then you will get the most insight in that specific area. Gaining customer insight is crucial to the success of your company for your own brand and for your competitor’s brand because there is always room for improvement, and customers will tell you which areas are lacking.
Why:
Why Are Customers Choosing Your Competition Over Your Brand? (what do customers value) – again listening to what customers are looking for in a product or service will help you to mold into the company that your customers dream of. Look to see what your competitor’s customers like about their brand and cross-reference it to that of your own…do you have similar programs, or are they lacking in comparison to your competition?
Why is Your Competition Making Certain Business Decisions? – Predictive Analytics allow you to be better prepared for future changes in the competitive landscape .
How B2B Brands are Taking Advantage of Social Media
What’s The Scoop on This IPv6 Thing I’ve Been Hearing About?
Any device that connects to the internet has what’s known as an “IP address,” or “Internet Protocal address;” think of it as the digital version of your home address. Just as your house needs an address so that people and mail know how to get there, so too does your computer/smartphone/other device. However, rather than something like “123 Main Street, Anytown, USA,” your computer’s address comes – or used to come until today – in the form of 12 numbers, separated into 4 groups of three numbers separated by periods (“123.456.789.012,” for example). Every device in the world has a unique address in this format; it’s how the device is able to send and receive information, just like sending and receiving mail or packages to and from your home. This is known as the IPv4 format, since there are 4 groups of numbers (or “octets,” as they’re called).
So what is IPv6, then? Well, even though there are a heck of a lot of number combinations when using 12 places, there are also a heck of a lot of internet-connected devices out there in the world – so many, in fact, that we’re really, really close to using up all of the possible combinations of numbers already. That’s where the new protocol, IPv6, comes in. This new protocol enables computers and internet-enabled devices to use a new address that has 6 “octets” instead of four (“123.456.789.012.345.678,” for example). Clearly, this makes millions of new IP addresses available for public consumption and ensures that we – and all of our toys – can stay connected for the foreseeable future.
5 Steps to Creating a Competitive Advantage for your Business
New Viral Technologies Web Site!
Hello everyone! Viral Technologies is proud to announce the launch of our new and improved Web site! With a new look and a few new additions to our company, we are looking forward to the growth of our business and the onset of summer! Check out the new site here where you’ll notice our clean, sleek new color palette and interface.
Hope you all enjoy it! Give us a call 1-855-718-4725 or drop us an email info@viraltechnologies.com for more information or to ask us about our innovative and advanced intelligence/social media/SEO/graphic/Web design services!
Harnessing the Power of LinkedIn for Competitive Intelligence
LinkedIn has become an invaluable research and monitoring tool for professionals and businesses looking to interact and converse with similarly-positioned companies and individuals. Because of LinkedIn’s reputation as being a social network for “the professional,” many people are more inclined, and feel more comfortable filling out personal information than they would be on Facebook or Twitter. For that reason, many LinkedIn users opt to make their profiles public in order to better position themselves to be seen by potential employers, business partners, and potential clients.
LinkedIn differs from other social media platforms in that users have a more legitimate motive to connect with another user. Professionals are more apt to connect with other professionals for matters having to do with business rather than pleasure. LinkedIn also makes it harder to connect with someone that you have never worked with, are not a connection of, that you didn’t go to school with, or that you aren’t friends with. If you are looking to connect with someone that you don’t know, you must be introduced by a mutual connection—again making it harder for ill-intentioned users to connect with other users.
Those in the competitive intelligence field can take advantage of many users’ LinkedIn public setting. LinkedIn is loaded with valuable information that companies will often post freely, giving companies like us significant information about our competitors.
Below is a list of potential competitive intelligence data that can be gathered from a LinkedIn account.
• Monitoring the backgrounds of all new hires gives the competition valuable insight into what area of business a certain company is trying to expand on—this may also suggest weak areas of the company.
• An in-depth analysis of company employees’ connections can often reveal a lead to their new developments or partnerships.
• A company’s frequent interactions with companies from a very specific geographical area can sometimes hint at a possible move for the company or even the opening of a second location in that area.
• Sometimes a company will provide a link to a slideshare presentation, which is meant for their employees, often involving the company’s strategy, financial statistics, or an introduction to new software or product. If the slideshare presentation isn’t set to private (which often times it isn’t), anyone can view this presentation including the competition. It is important to catch this early though because often times slideshare presentations are taken down after a few weeks by the company.
Just like Facebook or Twitter, the profile of a business or professional can tell us a lot about that brand or person. Using these strategies, we can dig a little deeper into our competition’s world, allowing us to bridge some of the gaps that we as a business may encounter. LinkedIn profiles can give us a lot of insight as to where our company stands in comparison to our competition, and what specifically we are doing better or worse than competing brands. Of course, all of these competitive intelligence strategies are legal, and we don’t advise snooping beyond the hints that we’ve given here.
If you’d like to better understand your competition using LinkedIn or any other social media platforms, please contact Viral Technologies today for your FREE competitive intelligence consultation!