Collecting competitive intelligence can be a useful exercise that provides important information to guide your business and marketing strategy, or it can be stored in a computer file and collect the equivalent of electronic dust if you’re not careful. While a competitive intelligence project can bring out your inner spy, it can also lead to confusion, data misinterpretation, and flawed strategy-making. Worse still, it can lead to something I call the “me too” syndrome where you end up pushing your business toward a model that is a poor imitation of a competitor rather than a rich, authentic representation of yourself. The following 10 tips for the effective collection and use of competitive intelligence information can help you avoid the pitfalls of collecting information about your competitors while helping you use it effectively.

Tip 1: Schedule Regular Time to Conduct Research

One of the most common complaints from business owners is that they don’t have time to do competitive intelligence. They also complain that they don’t have time for market research, marketing, and promotions, and whatever it is, they don’t have time for that. Every entrepreneur, businessman and executive faces this problem. Honestly, have you ever had a day where you had tons of free time? Probably not. The best way to overcome this problem is to block competitive intelligence time on your calendar like you would with a potential client appointment or important meeting. Reserve at least one hour a month, and preferably one hour every two weeks. This should give you uninterrupted time to do some research on the Internet and begin your competitive intelligence gathering efforts.

Tip 2: keep a list of competitors handy for future research

One time-saving tip that I like to share is the handy spreadsheet; keep a list of competitors in your spreadsheet for future reference. Include the date of the last investigation, the name of the competitor, and your website URL, and leave the last column blank to write any investigation notes. This ensures that each month when you sit down to do your competitive intelligence work, you will have the list close at hand and you won’t need to reinvent the wheel.

Tip 3: listen to your customers when they mention other companies

Your customers are an invaluable resource for information about your competitors. If they mention that someone else is doing the same for cheaper or better than you, write down the name. That is a competitor. Every time I get a call from a potential customer, I always ask, “How did you hear about us?” They will often mention that they visited a competitor’s website first and then came to us, or used a competitor’s services and weren’t happy with the price or results, so they are looking for a new provider. The companies, products, and people they mention may be competitors and give you great information to start your research and collection efforts.

Tip 4: track products and services, messages and offers

Many people make the mistake of simply tracking the overall efforts of their competitors. It is important to consider not only the direction in which the competitor is heading, but also the new products and services they offer. Look at the messages they are using to describe your products and services, and any prices, sales, or special offers to entice customers to buy from you. Are they retiring programs? Adding new ones? Do you promote research projects? Offering special events or announcing participation in a trade show? Each of these pieces adds to the big picture of your competitor’s activities and deserves follow-up and monitoring.

Tip 5: Sign up for competitive emails and social media

To make your job easier, sign up to receive your competitors’ press releases, email newsletters and announcements, and top social media sites. You will be surprised how much they share with their clients, information that you can obtain freely and publicly. You can even set up a Google alert to monitor new information and articles posted about them.

Tip 6: when you’re not looking for information, look up the name of a key executive

This is a useful trick I learned while researching an industry for which there was little published information on industry revenue, market growth, demographics, and more; use the name of a key company executive as your search term and see what comes up. In my specific example, the executive had an unusual last name, and when I typed her name into the search engine, the result was multiple articles in which she cited detailed demographics for the industry I was researching. If you know the names of competing companies, you can find out the names of key executives. To find interviews they have participated in, look up their names. You can unearth some gold nuggets of information.

Tip 7: consider SEO and internet marketing efforts

Take a few minutes to examine any elements of search engine optimization (SEO) that your competitors have implemented on their web pages. While a full discussion of each potential method and item is beyond the scope of this article, there are many good resources online that offer tips and advice on what to examine and how to find the information. For example, you can insert any URL into the Google Keyword Analysis Tool and the tool will try to extrapolate the keywords from the page. A cursory examination of the HTML code on any web page uncovers the meta tags in place and, using your favorite search engine, you can read the descriptions of your competitors’ pages. Learn all you can about SEO and use this knowledge to power your own internet marketing efforts and to help you discover your competitors’ level of SEO fluency.

Tip 8: don’t fall into the “me too” trap

One of the pitfalls of conducting competitive intelligence is assuming that what you see your competitors doing is the ‘best’ or ‘correct’ way of doing things. If your competition posts ads on certain websites, the business owner thinks they should too. Beware of the “me too” trap and copying anything, even the smallest, that your competitors are doing. In the first place, you do not know if what you are doing is successful; They could be failing miserably in their efforts, not generating sales or leads from your campaign, even if you like it. You don’t have access to your results, so you don’t know what works and what doesn’t. Copying everything they are doing can be dangerous. Why turn your business into a bad copy of someone else? Instead, focus on how you can improve your business, products, or marketing efforts based on what you learn during competitive analysis. Can you add new features? Best service? Focus on your own efforts and avoid the “me too” trap.

Tip 9: Avoid price wars

Another trap that many newbies fall into is entering a price war with competing companies after seeing their prices. Many entrepreneurs find that their prices are higher than those of the competition and panic, thinking that by lowering their prices they will beat the competition and increase their own sales. You can increase your sales, but unless you can lower your costs, you have also decreased your profit margin. And how much of that can your business handle? What if your competitor decides to lower prices further? Can you afford to keep downloading yours? Can you afford to set your customers’ expectations around lower prices?

Tip 10: use the information to choose your strategy

After completing your competitive evaluation, use the information you’ve discovered to establish your own marketing strategy. Strive to improve your products, promotions, and services, always focusing on what you can do better, more efficiently, or less costly (while still maintaining margin) than your competitors.

Focus on your own business strategy and decide for yourself how you are going to position your business in the market in light of what you have learned. The result can be a competitive business, one that acknowledges competition without being reactionary to competition. Be the leader, not the follower, and use competitive intelligence to your advantage.