Competitive Intelligence

Have you ever wondered how much your competitor spends on advertising or what new product/service they will launch next?  I have, so I dug a bit deeper and was shocked at how much information is available on the Internet.   Today, you don’t need to be a Black Hat to uncover corporate secrets.  The Internet has revolutionized competitive intelligence gathering.    Here are a few areas where the Internet becomes your friend or foe:

Monitoring Online Advertising:

The Internet has drastically changed advertising.  Print media such as mainstream papers and magazines are struggling to turn a profit.  Daily, newspapers are going out of business.  Online advertising has opened up a wealth of information which traditionally was  gathered by teams of clippers at advertising agencies.  You no longer need to contract with advertising agencies to monitor how well your ad campaigns are working, Google Analytics and other online tools will do it for free.  Now, we all know that nothing in this world is genuinely free.  The online world has developed a wide range of analytical tools that help companies monitor competitive information.  If you are in the business of selling online insurance, assistance cards, memberships or any other targeted service offerings, you leave a trail of keywords which are easily tracked and monitored.  These keywords are used by companies to help search engines (e.g. Google/Yahoo) find related content. Keywords are like a commodity, their prices are driven by demand and because of the online environment they can be tracked.  Two websites that monitor keywords are Keyword Spy and Spyfu.   With these two sites you can literally build a profile on advertising spend, targeted groups, buying patterns and more.  So what can you do to prevent your company information from proliferating on the web.  Today, not much.  In competitive markets like phones, electronics etc. some companies are creating ad campaigns as part of a Red Herring strategy.  This is expensive and may be effective for larger companies but it’s typically not economically feasible for smaller companies.  You can certainly not advertise on the Internet but remember, there is a generational shift and more people will be looking to the internet for advice, education and consumption. 

New Product/Service Initiatives & Employee Turnover:

Did you know that domain names like Coke.com or GlobalRepat.com are located in a public register?  The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) stores all domain names in a public register.  When your company buys a domain name (e.g. Coke.com, GlobalRepat.com etc) your company name and contact details are stored along with it.  Many times you can find who owns domain names by visiting sites like WHOIS. Clearly, who owns a domain name is not important.  The vulnerability is when companies register multiple domain names for impending products or services, e.g designed for new product/service launches.  Unless your company selects/pays for a private registration, your inactive domains are open to the public.

Looking for a job?  Why not visit the career section on a company website?  Career sections may be a great way of attracting industry professionals.  However, they are an even better way for your competitors to monitor your employee turnover.  Companies that post open positions on their websites unknowingly help their competitors.  Clearly the interpretation of the change is speculative but watch it for long enough and it tells a story.

Hopefully that provides some food for thought.  You can use it to your advantage regardless of what side of the fence you sit on.  Thanks for listening!