Articles, Presentations, & Press Releases

The Launch Pad
May 2004

Competitive e-telligence

If you know what to look for and how to analyze the content, you can obtain a lot of information about your existing and potential competitors just by carefully reading their websites. This is called the gathering of competitive intelligence, or “e-telligence”. Okay, it’s spying. But if the companies didn’t want information to be public, they wouldn’t post it at their website anyway, right? Therefore, web content is fair game.

You may have heard of reverse engineering. Well, this process is sort of like reverse marketing. By reading web content, you can identify the company’s key marketing messages, and therefore you can figure out what their key differentiators are and much, much more. And then you’ll have some ideas on how to change your strategy or your product in order to be more competitive.

Treasure Map
In order to figure out where to find the competitor’s secrets, let’s first consider the sections of a typical corporate website. Companies may organize the information a little differently, but here are the basic sections and what they usually contain:

--Homepage: Company logo, description of what company does, news, navigation bars listing sections, search box
--Company: history, management team, jobs, locations and contact information
--Press Room or Media: current and archived press releases, press contacts
--Products and Services: lists or groups of key products and services the company offers
--Events: trade shows, user groups or other key industry events where the company will have a presence
--Support: information on how and where to obtain technical support and customer service
--Investors (if a public company): latest SEC reports and filings, quarterly results, contact information for investment packets
--Partners: list of existing partners, applications for becoming a partner
--Links and Ads: hot links to affiliates’ websites

Each of the sections to follow addresses what to look for, and the significance of what you may find there. You can analyze the sections in any order. A good way to accumulate the information is to print out one page from each section, and then highlight the information, adding a word or two that describe the significance. You may also write questions in the margins, such as “growth through product lines or hiring?” These questions may prompt you to look for other clues in other pages and sections of the website as you read through it.

Homepage
This is the page that’s all about image. Look at the basic layout of the page. Is there lots of text or a combination of text and graphics? If it’s too busy with too much information, that may mean the company is highly technical and detail-oriented. Is it sleek and modern-looking with a minimum of text but lots of headings and other links? This says to the visitor: we have a clear mission and vision, we are organized, and we see the big picture.

What types of graphics are on the homepage; are there pictures of people or of technology and products? If there are people, what are doing; are they using the technology in some way or are they just happy and smiling? When companies use lots of people pictures, they are trying to identify with customers and say that people are very important to them. That may or may not be true in the way that the company does business, but it does mean that they realize the importance of customers as people. If there are only pictures of products and technology, that can mean that the company has a very technical focus.

The last thing to consider on the homepage is what you notice first on the page; what draws your eye? It may be a flashing icon for a new product, or it might be a colorful banner listing the latest company news, or it might be a prominent mission statement near the top of the page. Whatever is most prominent is usually the key information that the company wants the site visitor to know. If it’s a news item or new product that’s prominent, that says the company is not stagnant, but is moving forward and growing. If it’s the mission statement, that means the company wants to establish and reinforce its reputation in the marketplace.

Company
The company culture and organizational structure will be described in this section. Most companies of any size have a brief company history, which tells you how long the company has been in business. The longer it’s been in business, the more stable the company will be, but it also may mean that the company is not in a growth cycle. Younger companies may be in growth mode and can be more aggressive in the marketplace until they are established and stable. The company history may also indicate whether the company has been involved in mergers and acquisitions. If that has occurred within the past year, the company may still be in transition mode, which can be distracting for companies until everyone is reassigned and established in their new jobs. That’s also when a company might be most vulnerable in terms of competitive position in the marketplace. Time to make your move?

The job listings are often listed in the Company section as well. What types of positions are open; are they in engineering, research and development, marketing, accounting, sales? Many job listings are indicators of growth cycles. Technical jobs can indicate that the company is developing new products. Sales jobs can mean that they are expanding geographically.

The key part of the Company is the management team, sometimes called “executive leadership” or “executive team”. There are usually bios and sometimes photos of senior management. The first thing to consider is which titles of executives are listed. Are they all technical titles? That may mean that the company is technology-driven and not market-driven. Are there lots of sales titles, especially with geographic locations listed? That indicates the degree of global presence that the company has and also where they want to achieve sales growth. Read through the bios to find out where the executives have worked before. They may have worked for other competitors in your industry, bringing with them valuable contacts with key customers. Does that give them an edge? Also look at their background and education. Do they bring unique expertise that will make that company a stronger competitor?

Press Room or Media
Read a few of the current press releases. They will address the hot products, people, and issues for which the company hopes to get media coverage. Press releases make a statement to the industry that the company is an important player (whether they are or not). When you read the press releases, what is the emphasis; people, technology, customer successes? If it’s a press release about a person, read the information as you would an executive bio. Adding that person to the company may be a key competitive move for them. Press releases are usually done before and during a major product launch, so that media coverage can help to create awareness of the new product about to be released. What are they saying about the new product or technology? That will give you an indication about their next product that you’ll be competing against. If the press release contains a key quote or endorsement from one of their customers, who is the customer and are they part of your target market? If so, that may have an impact on your market campaign.

Products and Services
This is usually the biggest section of any website, and there may be many different grouped pages. If there are lots of product categories, you can read through them and get a sense for how the company creates and develops their long-term product roadmap. How often do they add new features or whole new products to a product line? How different is each product from the previous product? How long do they keep each product available? How do they group their product families? If the company in question has been successful and has a big share of the market, they are probably letting market demand drive their product roadmap, which should be a good plan to follow for your company as well.

Events
Wondering whether the competitor will be at the next key trade show? Well, here you will find out. Companies will usually list a booth number for a trade show, along with any key presentations that will be given by their executives. If your company doesn’t participate in that trade show, perhaps you need to consider it. Other events besides trade shows might be listed as well, such as company-sponsored user groups. Take a look at the invitation or application to be part of the user group and what’s involved. Sometimes they will state how many people belong to the group. That will give you an idea of the size of their customer base. You may not get much further than that, however, unless you fill in the online application, and as a competitor, they are not likely to let you in!

Support
Companies usually want to make a good impression with potential customers that they have superior customer service, so this section usually addresses the availability and quality of their technical support and/or customer service. Read what they say about the their support and then figure out what you have to do in order to provide similar services.

Investors
Public companies usually will have their SEC documents and latest annual reports available for download from their websites. Downloading and reading these can give you a lot more detailed information about planned growth, sales by product and division, executive bios and salaries, and operating information.

Partners
Some companies will have their partners’ company logos posted prominently somewhere on the site, especially if the partner is large or well known. Sometimes these partners are in place because the company depends on them to provide complementary products and services to their customers in order to deliver the “whole product”. Just because you may not have similar partners doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad thing; you may not need them. Still, it’s important to understand the competitor’s partner relationships and why they are in place. If you need one in the future, that may limit your choices.

Links and Ads
The presence of links to other websites are telling because they must be important enough to the company that they risk having a site visitor click away from the company site to go somewhere else. There had better be a good business reason! Sometimes companies have business arrangements such as commissions, and sometimes they are merely business partners where they have agreed to do co-marketing between their websites. You should take note of these links and try to understand why the business relationship exists; what is the benefit to the competitor? Might your company have a good reason to do something similar?

Quick and Quirky Example
You are the Marketing Director for a small to medium-sized company called GeoFind Technology. As Marketing Director, you are responsible for market research as well as competitive intelligence. GeoFind Technology specializes in geo-positioning systems for the transportation industry. Its first product, “BeeLine” was a stellar success – a GPS device for long-haul truckers that integrated route information with up to the minute information from the National Weather Service. Now the company wants to sell to the consumer market.

In the last executive staff meeting, you presented the preliminary findings of some of the known competitors selling GPS systems for use in passenger cars. You only found one small company selling devices direct to consumers. The company was called “Go Girl!” and they manufacture and sell technology devices and travel gear designed for women, such as lightweight laptop cases and luggage and personal safety devices like alarms for purses and briefcases. Their small and lightweight GPS device can be used from a rental car or laptop. The Director of Development has now asked you to evaluate possible competitors in more detail, with an objective of selling to male consumers. Even though you expressed doubts about that being a viable market idea because men don’t ask for directions, the Director said to look into it anyway.

In your web research, you found two sites that appear to be targeting male consumers with similar systems. Company A’s website revealed the following:

-Homepage: photo of a football player in his SUV looking at his GPS display, with caption, “When you have to get there on time…”
-Company: company has been in business for 10 years, selling sports gear for fishing, off-roading, and motocross. Exec bios emphasize sales positions in the U.S.
-Products: several product lines are safety gear and helmets, but fishing supplies are high-tech navigational systems for locating fish
-Partners/Links: fishing gear distributors, motor bike manufacturers

Company B’s website:

-Homepage: very technical, with pictures of GPS satellites and passenger cars.
-Company: company has been in business for 20 years, originally developing GPS devices for the military, and then manufacturing devices for rental car companies. Exec bios have technical emphasis.
-Press room: Latest press release addresses new device that will be sold to consumers, but does not discuss means of distribution or partnerships.
-Product lines: there are 3 major product lines: military, fleet transportation systems, and consumer products. There are multiple products for military and fleet systems, but just one for consumer products, which appears to be brand new.
-Partners: Avis, Hertz, National

You report back to the Director of Development after analyzing the websites. You tell him that Company A is coming from the sports world and is clearly targeting the male consumer (especially jocks), and their messages are on target. However, Company A does not have that much GPS experience with the technology, so they might be vulnerable there. Their strength seems to be in setting up distributor relationships, however, so that may mean they could find the right channels to sell to their target customer. With Company B, they clearly have the technology advantage, but don’t really have a clear marketing path to the male consumer. Their partners are rental car companies, so they don’t really have any channels in place to get there. Your recommendation: To compete with Company A: Your company clearly has the technology to enter this market right away. To compete with Company B: You’ve had a recent product success selling direct to the customer. So, your company’s challenge will be to market it to the male consumer. You recommend leveraging your success with truckers to get male consumers interested. Get some endorsements from truckers who might also be sports enthusiasts to make the connection with male consumers.

Best of luck and happy spying, e-telligent marketers!

Catherine Kitcho
The Launch Doctor