What kind of competitor data should be collected? Simply put, you need to collect the corresponding competitor data based on the data your company has. However, there is too much competitor data to be collected, and each department focuses on different points, such as the finance department focuses on profits, the production department focuses on resources, and the sales department focuses on the market, so data integration is critical. It is best to establish a competitor database within the company, which is maintained by a dedicated data team, provided by various functional departments and professional investigation companies, and set a confidentiality level for each intelligence to facilitate viewing by different positions.
Competitor data can be collected from different angles, which can be divided into media data, factory data, organizational data, operating data, marketing data, etc. When collecting media data, you can collect competitors’ news reports, financial reports, analysis reports, and industry reports. When collecting factory data, you can collect competitors’ production plans, factory quantity and layout, R&D intelligence, etc. When collecting organizational data, you can collect competitors’ corporate and brand basic data, employee data organizational structure, and recruitment data. When collecting operating data, you can collect competitors’ financial data, sales data, customer quantity, market share, etc. When collecting marketing data, you can collect competitors’ product data, price data, promotion data, channel data, etc.
How to collect competitor data
Competitor data is actually distributed in every corner of real life. Some corporate employees use Weibo to report daily sales data, and some employees will intentionally or unintentionally upload their company’s data to Baidu Library. There is a classic saying in the US Navy’s advanced intelligence analysis: 95% of intelligence comes from public information, 4% of intelligence comes from semi-public information, and only 1% or less of intelligence comes from confidential information.
Generally, there are two ways to collect competitor data: online and offline. The time cost of offline collection is relatively high, while online collection is more convenient and is increasingly popular among companies. Offline channels mainly include: purchasing industry analysis reports, participating in various forums, visiting competitor stores to observe, purchasing competitor products, understanding through talent flow, understanding through common customers, conducting market research, and entrusting professional institutions to investigate. Online channels mainly include: checking competitors’ annual reports, searching for competitors’ news reports, searching for network keywords, analyzing competitors’ recruitment advertisements, online questionnaires, etc. At present, some professional websites have also developed some tools to help merchants analyze competitor data and its development trends, and there are ready-made analysis models.