This document provides tips and resources for conducting competitive intelligence on sales and marketing strategies. It recommends monitoring competitors' job postings, reviews, website content, thought leadership presence, customer base, employee profiles, and prospects to gain insights. Additional suggestions include analyzing financial filings, startup traction, email volume, social media analytics, metadata, keyword strategies, surveys, advertising tools, RSS subscribers, search trends, and traffic to understand how your company performs compared to competitors. The overall goal is to discover opportunities to differentiate yourself and optimize your own marketing approach.

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Competitive Intelligence for Sales and Marketing
How To Win More Opportunities and Optimize Your Marketing Strategy
Allen Gannett
Founder and CEO of TrackMaven

2. Founder & CEO of TrackMaven
The Competitive Intelligence Platform for Digital Marketers
allen@trackmaven.com
@allen
ALLENGANNETT

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COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE FOR SALES

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GOAL: Discover opportunities to differentiate yourself from your competitors

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CREATING FUD
Fear, Anxiety, Doubt

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JOB POSTINGS: INDEED
What are they hiring for?
What are their priorities for growth?

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Look for special projects/worry signs (CX,
UX, technical architect, etc.)
Look for new product signs. Hiring lots of
product managers, especially with specific skills.
Create Alerts for new postings
Job Postings are Leading Indicators

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Glassdoor
What is the company like internally? Organized? High morale?

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How they treat customers
Is it boiler
-roomesque?
Do people say things about
the product?
What we’re looking for

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IncData
Are they smaller than us?
Are they growing faster?

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Growth Rate
Revenue Rate
Industry
INC 500/0 has a significant amount of data

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REVENUE & RISKS
Analyze S1 Data

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Revenue Summary
Are they spending $1 to
make 0.50?
Disclose any risks to
business that would scare customers?
S1 Filing: Great resource if company is going public

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STARTUPS
How can you benefit from competitor transparency?

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Are they small?
Only generating a small
amount of revenue?
Look at Traction Section
AngelList: Look For “Overdisclosure” From Startups

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B2B REVIEWS
Do they have bad reviews?
What do people dislike?

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Overall Company Rating?
What
do people like and dislike?
TrustRadius and BestVendor

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WEBSITE MONITORING
Does the messaging make sense?
Is their website user-friendly?

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Create pings for specific
sections of competitor websites (ex: Pricing, Positioning, Offers, etc.)
VisualPing.io: Monitor Website Messaging

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THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
Does it have a positive or negative impact? Does it make them seem smart/knowledgeable?

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Do your competitors’ CEOs post
presentations on SlideShare?
Do they post industry talks online?
What audiences are they
cultivating?
What stories are they telling about
the company/product?
YouTube & SlideShare: Look For Executives’ Presence

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POPULARITY OVER TIME
Is their customer base shrinking?

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Track changes in competitors’
customer base
No one likes to be on a
sinking ship…
Pull down a list of customers
each month and search for losses
BuiltWith: Real-Time Popularity For Tech Products

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EMPLOYEE LINKEDINS
Look For Employee Overdisclosures

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PROSPECTS
Are we charging too much? Too little?

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ASK! Ask your prospects for
competitors’ pricing and materials
They are happy to share!
Prospects: Resource For Competitor Sales Funnel

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2
COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE FOR MARKETERS

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GOAL: Gain Insight Into How We Are Performing And What We Can Do To Improve

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SENDERBASE
Are we sending the right number of emails?

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SOCIAL PLATFORMS
Gather weekly stats on audience size/channel

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META DESCRIPTIONS
See what people think their key messages are

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META KEYWORDS
Are they broadcasting their SEO strategy?

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GOOGLE SURVEYS
Survey competitors customers on their opinions about them

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GHOSTERY
See your competitors’ advertising and marketing automation tools

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FEEDLY
How many people subscribe to competitors’ RSS feed?

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GOOGLE TRENDS
How much word of mouth is there for us? Organic search is a good proxy.

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TRAFFIC PANEL TOOLS
Which of your competitors have the largest footprint?

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CI Tools
Where are your competitors winning?

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QUESTIONS ?