What Is Actionable Intelligence?
Is there a difference between competitive intelligence and actionable intelligence? Actually, there is.
Competitive intelligence is any intelligence undergone that leads to a better understanding of the competitive landscape within your niche. Actionable intelligence is any intelligence you can use to improve your marketing position within the marketplace. Sometimes these two kinds of intelligence intersect, but sometimes they don’t. You hope you gather actionable intelligence about your competition and that you are able to act on it in time to be profitable.
But you have to be careful. There are some things that are illegal when spying on the competition.
In general, competitive intelligence simply means surveying what the competition has to offer its customers from the perspective of a customer and then turning that into data that you can use to beat them in the market. But some competitive intelligence doesn’t really mean anything that you can act upon for marketing purposes. For instance, you might find out that employees of Company A within your niche all drive Porsches. It’s nice to know, but does that help you be a better marketer for your company?
On the other hand, if you find out that employee morale is higher at Company A because they have a dress down Friday and catered lunch then you might be able to use that to improve your company’s relationship with your employees. That could in turn lead to better relations with your customers. That’s actionable intelligence.
Other forms of actionable intelligence about the competition includes:
- The price of competitive products
- Benefits of a product that are enjoyed by the company’s customers
- The size of a company’s marketing budget
- Which keywords they use in their AdWords campaigns
- The size of the company’s website
- Which calls to action are effective
- What subdomains the company owns
There are countless other items of competitive intelligence that can be considered actionable as well. And if you take the time to find out what the competition is up to, you’ll likely learn that you can act upon a lot of it.