Competitive intelligence research can help your company get ahead, but to be effective, it has to be done right. Here are 10 tips to help you kick off your competitive intelligence program.
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Pharma Competitive Intelligence – Digital Marketing Programs
Competitive intelligence tips and examples to help pharmaceutical companies identify competitors’ digital selling programs.
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Competitive Intelligence During COVID-19
Best Practices Identified During COVID-19 Mystery Shopping: Canadian Tire: No delay in ordering / picking up merchandise What happened: L.L.Bean: Making it extremely easy to return clothing What happened: Worst Practices Identified During COVID-19 Mystery Shopping: No Frills: Lack of floor staff results in over-stressed cashiers reacting rudely to customers What happened: Staples: Contact centre not taking calls What happened:
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Investors Group – An Example of Innovative COVID-19 Messaging
Investors Group The page heading, “Helping you navigate uncertain times and stay focused on long-term goals”, is a refreshing change. It brings a sense of control during a chaotic period. This message is reinforced by the Investors Groups’ EVP’s “Market Volatility Update” video with uplifting comments such as, “Equity markets will recover at lightning speed as the coronavirus slows down from its peak.” The 2nd Investors Group’s video, “Recent Market Volatility” makes excellent use of historical charts to demonstrate that markets have always rebounded after a downturn. Investors Group also set up a variety of helpful resources for their clients which will help them manage their financials during the epidemic.… Read More
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5 Pharmaceutical Competitive Intelligence Pitfalls to Avoid
Consider the following pharmaceutical competitive intelligence (CI) scenario: You’re racing against 2 competitors to launch a gene therapy drug to treat diabetes. With so much at stake, your marketing VP gives you the green light to set up a CI program to gain a clearer understanding of these competitor threats. Will you obtain the competitive information that you require to make the best strategic business decisions? Although some pharmaceutical CI programs garner just the right competitive intelligence to allow companies to effectively fight back competitive threats, the majority fail. But why do so many attempts by Canadian pharma companies to set up a CI program fail? Wishful thinking, oversimplifying and lacking… Read More
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8 Key Competitive Intelligence Guidelines to Follow
If your company or organization does not have competitive intelligence rules in place or if the rules are filled with lengthy legalese, please consider incorporating these rules that are easy to read and follow: Do not actively seek to obtain, or gain access to, trade secrets belonging to another company or encourage an employee of another company to do the same on behalf of you. Do not seek to obtain, or gain access to, competitive information from a third party if you believe that information may have been wrongfully obtained. Do not misrepresent your identity or employment, or use false pretexts of any kind, to obtain competitor information. Do not… Read More
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What Comes To Mind If Your Field Reps Collect Competitive Intelligence Without Any Guidelines?
Introduction Sometimes marketing departments under pressure to learn about competitive threats, will request that their field staff gather CI without giving any direction. Whether they don’t want to risk turning off team members by imposing too many “rules” or are simply too busy juggling priorities, the outcome will be disappointing. I these situations, CI invariably becomes the flavour of the month versus providing ongoing strategic value. Factors Driving Failure Factors (and consequences) that sabotage what otherwise would be an effective communication process are: Data not is verified, resulting in incomplete, unclear and inaccurate findings. Data dumping occurs, making reading painfully time consuming and boring. Duplication of information creates the impression… Read More
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What Goes into a Pharma Competitive Intelligence Study; Why Are They So Labour Intensive?
Introduction Executing a Pharma Competitive Intelligence study is anything but straight forward. It’s a combination of investigation, intuition, blending, synthesizing, quick study, obsessing and number crunching. Let’s spell out the steps and time that goes into a typical pharma Competitive Intelligence study. 1. Finalize Questions (10 Hours) Not only do you need to put together a list of questions that are precise, but the assumptions behind the questions have to be tested as well (If, e.g., one of the questions is, “What do other national diabetes associations besides The Canadian Diabetes Association feel about a national diabetes strategy?”, you’ll have to check out if there are, in fact, other… Read More
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