Importance of Competitive Monitoring for Businesses

by Michael Wight December 2, 2015
December 2, 2015

Man playing chess


In order to keep up with the various changes and developments to the business landscape, it is vital that all businesses have a competitive monitoring strategy. Though competitive analysis covers various avenues, it is particularly fundamental to get to know your competitor’s business and product developments.


In a world where competition is an innate and inherent part of a business, it is entirely logical that every business has an effective monitoring strategy. Here are some ways as to how competitive monitoring can help a business.


Better Prepare for Any Unwelcome Surprises
Having a preliminary knowledge of any upcoming surprises from your competitors like a new product or promotional campaigns allows you to better prepare for and introduce a counter strategy. Any cost cutting strategy or innovation of a new product by the competitor is less likely to affect your business as you are already aware of the ‘surprises’ because of continued monitoring.


Helps to Avoid or At least Minimize Potential Losses
Competitive monitoring also allows businesses to steer clear from any catastrophic losses. Because, you are constantly monitoring your competitors, you can benefit from assessing their investments or strategies which failed and resulted in a loss. By determining where your competitors went wrong, you can ensure to avoid those mistakes to minimize losses.


Forecast Your Competitors Moves
Closely studying what your competition has been doing allows you to predict their future moves and strategies. This is beneficial for your business because it allows your product and services to standout. When you are aware of the customer base that your competition is targeting or the suppliers that they are thinking to partner with, you can predict what sort of an impact these strategies are likely to have on your business. Having such knowledge can help you plan better.


Discover Untapped Market Avenues
An effective competitive monitoring strategy entails that you are thoroughly aware of your competitors’ products, as well as their customer base. This can help your businesses in identifying the untapped avenues, of which you can take advantage of. These untapped avenues may cover products that customers want but are not delivered and even customer base that is neglected. Thus, you can further your profits by catering to the untapped market.


Assess Any New Threats
Another advantage of conducting competitive monitoring is that it allows you to assess any new or emerging threats. These threats can be in the form of new competitors storming into the market or any existing competitor planning to merge with or takeover another firm in the same industry. All in all, all of these scenarios pose a threat to your market share. Thereby, competitive monitoring allows you to create strategies beforehand in order to eliminate any potential threats to your business.


Competitive monitoring also covers online businesses that include reading the keywords that your competition is targeting. It is important to be in touch with this aspect since a major chunk of business comes from online sources as well.


There are many tools available that can help you understand how your competition is gaining business, but these are usually vague and professional opinions are better in that respect. Nonetheless, no need to worry because help is right here. Get in touch with us today to understand more about competitive monitoring.

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