As a business owner, it’s essential to understand your competitors’ actions to stay competitive. Tracking competitive data gives you an edge by allowing you to make informed decisions regarding pricing, marketing strategies, and product offerings. Competitive data can also help you identify customer preferences and behaviors that you can use to define new strategies to improve your business. Let’s explore why knowing how to effectively use competitive data is essential for retailers.
Understand Your Competition
Competitive data will help you understand your competitors’ actions to get ahead. This includes tracking their pricing, product offerings, promotional activities, and more. Many businesses are reluctant to pay for competitive research because they think it’s too expensive or time-consuming. In a recent study completed by NewVantage, 96% of industry-leading Fortune 1000 firms reported gaining measurable business outcomes through their use of data intelligence, yet only 39.3% reported using data as an asset. This creates a sizable opportunity gap for businesses to take advantage of the curve by learning more about their products, the target market, and what their competitors are doing.
While you may be reluctant to make the jump, if done correctly, the insights from this research can help you make smarter decisions about improving and growing your business. Knowing what your competitors are up to will help you develop new strategies and tactics that will help you gain an edge over them.
Find New Opportunities
In addition to understanding your competition, you can also use competitive data to identify areas with untapped potential for growth or expansion. By analyzing the performance of similar products from other companies, you may uncover opportunities that could benefit your business. For example, suppose a competitor has successfully sold a specific product within a particular market segment. In that case, it could be worth investing in that same market segment to capture some of the same customers and build brand recognition in new areas.
Garnter, Inc.’s January 2020 study showed that 42% of sales leaders rate their sales analytics ROI as significantly higher than expected. Additionally, the study shows that sales leaders feel sales analytics offer the greatest return in skills development, sales force sizing, opportunity qualification, pipeline forecasting, and lead scoring. According to Gartner, “[Successful sales leaders] will require creating a culture where ‘information as a second language’ is the expectation.”
Improve Your Pricing Strategy
You can also use competitive data to inform pricing decisions. Knowing what prices other companies are charging for similar products allows retailers to adjust their prices accordingly to remain competitive while generating enough profit margins to sustain their businesses. It is essential to look at current prices and any upcoming changes or trends that may impact pricing over time so retailers can prepare accordingly by adjusting their own prices or launching sales promotions when appropriate.
Conclusion
Competitive data is essential for any retail business looking to stay competitive and maximize profits through informed decision-making about pricing, marketing strategies, product offerings, and more. By budgeting for competitive data, retailers can access valuable insights into their competition and potential growth and expansion opportunities. Done correctly, this investment of time and resources pays off when it comes time for making informed decisions about how best to invest in the future success of their businesses.
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Intrics provides insights and clarity by analyzing over 100 million price changes weekly from top retailers in every market of the United States. By considering national brands and private-label alike and linking disparate SKUs and descriptions to a single UPC, Intrics provides product-level indexes in your market. This allows you to be the first to react by quickly understanding changes to product prices, whether your competitors are absorbing or forwarding increased costs to consumers, and how your prices and price changes compare to theirs.