James Bond Your Competition (Recon Thursday/Process)

Hello again, Jim Glover, That Branding Guy, for Once a Day Marketing, where business takes shape.  And today is Recon Thursday.  Our topic today is “James Bond Your Competition.”

What I mean is that you are not going to be really James Bond secret spy but you might be secret shopper.  You’re basically taking time and immersing yourself into where your competitor is with their customers.  You may physically go to their stores or shops or call their 800 number, perhaps you interact with them through e-mail correspondence online and you’re just pretending to be a customer.  See how they respond to you, favorably, negatively, whatever they’re doing. That’s good information for your competitive matrix so that you can keep track of your competition and then devise strategies around it.

Just how do you play the spy game? One of the things you can do, as we discussed before, is dive into the Internet.  Use search engine key words, Google alerts, remember I talked about that.  You can program in your competitor’s name or their product and every time something goes online you will get an email notice. 

Overall, you need to be where your competitor’s customers are going.  It might be on a website or a mobile app developed by an individual or a company. 

There is also the traditional advertising and marketing world which includes TV commercials, radio and so forth.  I want you to really pay attention to everything that’s going on with respect to the traditional advertising.  Same thing with digital advertising.  See what the competition is doing.  Are they creating YouTube videos, have they created a social commerce site on Facebook and so forth?

You might even visit competitor’s retail outlets.  Physically go there and be that secret shopper.  Find out how their staff is interacting with you.  Perhaps there’s an 800 number you can call or an online chat you can use. 

So, you just need to be that spy, get in there and take a look and then take all that information and, once again, add it to your competitive matrix.  I guess this is like reporting back to “M.”

You probably now have a sense that it’s very important to have this kind of competitive information at your finger tips.  You can’t create strategy and action plans without it.

So, the cold war is over and there is no real James Bond.  But, you do want to become an expert at identifying what your competition is doing, keeping track of that and then using that information wisely.  So, in fact, you are James Bonding.  That’s our show for today, be sure to stop by tomorrow for Digital Friday.  And I am Jim Glover, That Branding Guy, for Once a Day Marketing, where business takes shape and we will see you next time.

James Glover: (505) 501-1330 or onceadaymarketing@gmail.com