Nobody cares about your business, but competitive intelligence helps

by Octopus Intelligence Octopus Competitive Intelligence

Nobody cares about your business, but competitive intelligence helps

Nobody cares. It’s true. Nobody cares about your business or anything about it. Other than a passing nod or headshake to the causes you get behind, no one really cares. It may appear brutal, but it’s true. Big brands spend millions on advertising their products, and there are very few we can say we like. You can probably list some of the brands you love. Some may be aspiring brands like Aston Martin, Paul Smith, and Louis Vitton. Not sure anyone really loves a particular brand of bleach, a bank, an insurance company or a bobble hat.

If you own it, you will love your business as you live and breathe it, but it’s debatable if all your employees do. Some more than others. But certainly not as much as you do, so unless you have a £50 million annual adverting budget, it’s fair to say no one gives two hoots about your business.

Catch the train

Imagine the last time you were on a train. It’s springtime, the green fields are passing by, and you have warm coffee on tap. The carriage is half empty. We know it’s hard to imagine in the UK, even in first class.

Now, someone comes down the aisle and tells you about their taxi company. You can get off at the next station, and they will drive you directly to your final destination. You will not care how comfortable their seats are and their engine’s capacity, and you will not be interested in their brand’s colour and those who have used them in the past. At the very least, it is a hard sell for them to get you to part with your money.

Now, put yourself in the middle of nowhere, it’s minus two, and you are caught in a snow shower. You are freezing in a broken-down train. The taxi salesperson will have a better chance of selling to you. They have caught you with an immediate need. A desire to relive a pain point. But it’s a very niche business tactic. And very hit-and-miss, to say the least.

A slightly worse or better version of your competitor

In normal circumstances, you don’t care at all. And there’s nothing to make you care. And the brutal truth is that many businesses we talk to are basically a slightly worse or better version of the most popular competitor in their sector. This is especially true in the tech sector, especially fintech. Or at least that’s what they look like to the outside world. For instance, you may disagree if you live in a fintech. But that’s sort of the point.

Your chances improve if you have an advertising budget and you know your target demographics and all that stuff. But still, if your tone of voice, pictures, and message doesn’t resonate, customers are going to look elsewhere. And that’s if they are looking at all.

Competitive intelligence is a nifty tool to isolate customer personas and understand why people buy or don’t buy from you. You need to work on insight from competitive intelligence to isolate what will give them a reason to care that your brand exists and is relevant to you. And if your website looks like everyone else, you will not develop a real USP.

Most businesses in your market will have a similar USP and be the same as everyone else’s. And they will have real trouble getting anyone to care about their brand, let alone spend their money.

Talk for hours

The analysis and work associated with competitive intelligence help you move away from a worse / better version of everyone else who’s selling your products. But what if you sell the same as everyone else? But you also talk to potential customers and advise every one of them? They will happily talk on the phone for hours to get what they really need absolutely right. And ensure that the customer isn’t going to overpay for something they dont need.

Sell a customer a product that more than matches their needs, even if you could get away with selling a more expensive one. This will likely be in massive contrast to your competitors. Competitors who are bigger but come with large offices, huge sales targets, and considerable stock levels need to shift, and it’s an entirely different thing. So now, by telling the story about how this company interacts with their customers, turn your strength and supposed weaknesses of being smaller (but more agile) into a competitive advantage by making people care.

Now, you may be s bigger player in the market, but it’s just the same. Use competitive intelligence to find another story that sells the fact that you are a large and established business. Take time to think, analyse, research and confirm what that story is and figure out how we can tell that story on the website.

Nobody cares about your business, but competitive intelligence helps

So this is why making people care is the first thing you need to know before building your marketing strategy. Why should they buy from you over your competitors? You need to be able to answer these questions before you can build a marketing strategy.

If you have not answered these questions, then make time to do it. If you have, then keep asking the questions as things change overnight.

We are Octopus, and we’re all about your real competitive advantage.

We are the global bespoke people-powered global competitive intelligence company creating the insight you can do something with.

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