Why Competitive Intelligence And Data Analytics Are Different But Work Well Together

By Author: Octopus Intelligence
Total Articles: 70
Comment this article

Why Competitive Intelligence and Data Analytics are different but work well together
Here we discuss why Competitive Intelligence and data analytics are different but work well together. Both Competitive Intelligence and data analytics are used to find answers to questions. And Competitive Intelligence can include data analytics as a tool to find great certainty.

What Is Data Analytics?
According to Investopedia, Data analytics is the science of analysing raw data to make conclusions about that information. Many of the techniques and processes of data analytics have been automated into mechanical methods and algorithms that work over raw data for human consumption.

What is Competitive Intelligence?
Competitive Intelligence is the finding, sorting and critical analysis of information. To make sense of what’s happening and why. Predict what’s going to happen and give the options to help you control the outcome. Competitive Intelligence offers certainty, competitive advantage, insight, growth & security.

If appropriately used, Data Analytics can be important for small to medium-sized ...
... companies. Still, results are dependent on the realisation and use of the massive amount of data. Data that’s not been used or, in fact, know about. There’s a vast amount of data at their fingertips and many tools to help analyse it.

Competitive Intelligence help fill gaps in knowledge. And tries to determine what is going to happen next. Or what will happen if you decide to do this or that. Data analytics can provide input into your thinking, but it is dangerous to rely solely on it. It’s like going for a 10-mile hike up to the hills without wet weather clothing because you caught last nights weather update.

Competitive Intelligence
As a marketer, you know it’s essential to understand which marketing campaigns work. And which ones are flops? You create the next campaign to drive traffic to create revenue.

Data analytics allows you to compare traffic from various social media channels. You can determine if the messaging is working for your platform. Or whether demographics are influencing your traffic levels. Also, analytics will let you know the conversion rates and all that sort of helpful stuff. You will understand the possible explanations for this. And analytics can help, but it won’t provide a complete answer. And if done correctly, suggest actions you can improve the situation you face.

Competitive Intelligence used properly helps you answer questions. Questions that analytics can only guess at. There’s surveys or customer feedback to answer those questions. You might test with a new landing page or message. And any pure marketing research you may be doing is focused on your marketing strategy’s success or failure. On the other hand, Competitive Intelligence offers market information as a whole. Provides insights as to why specific campaigns may perform at different levels.

Data Analytics
The Data Analytics used in these situations will likely include social media data, internal data from your CRM and web analytics. On a broader scale, they helo you understand if your campaigns are working or not. Also, you can investigate campaign-specific data sets for whatever purpose you desire.

By collecting significant information from various channels, Data Analytics helps you inform your Competitive Intelligence. and can form the majority of your Competitive Intelligence results. But it’s rarely the full picture. Data Analytics can only offer information about web properties, brands, and products. The picture isn’t complete without including your market, competitors, and target audience research. It is a fantastic starting point. And your Data Analytics will inform your marketing and product development initiatives.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing
By its very nature, Data Analytics is backwards-looking to make predictions. And guesses based on what has happened. And it can be potent in finding patterns and plot future events until it’s not. The primary purpose of Competitive Intelligence is to find more certainty in decisions. And to gain a competitive advantage. Marketers primary responsibility is to meet their customers wants and needs. To understand your customers’ pain points and how you plan to solve their problems.

Finally, due to the masses of data needed to assess a situation, Data Analytics tends to be as automated as much as possible. Now some Competitive Intelligence Software Companies will tell you you can automate all your Competitive Intelligence work too. You can. Especially the boring bits. But the most potent aspect of Competitive Intelligence is the use of something called the human mind. Talking to people and manually finding stuff out.

Conclusion
Why Competitive Intelligence and Data Analytics are different but work well together
Here we discussed why Competitive Intelligence and data analytics are different but work well together.

Competitive Intelligence analysis allows you to isolate any holes in competitive offerings. So you can exploit. So you can position your company to develop new offers to bring to market. Futurescaping and leveraging what you know about competitors to attack open market space. To differentiate yourself in the customer’s mind.