The competitive offensive

The first step is to know your enemy. He's easy to recognise because he's the one whose business you want to capture - or he's the one taking business from you.

An MIS (Marketing Information System) is a process of information gathering and is vitally important in every campaign. You can have access to all kinds of information about your enemy - Adindex, AMPS, Brewer's Apps, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and so forth. It's a very poor marketing professional who doesn't keep accurate records of what his competitors are up to.

© Maxim Evseev – 123RF.com

Where do you think 98% of "international spies" get their information? The same place you can. Newspapers, magazines, trade journals, watching what's happening on the streets and the whole gamut of internet information.

To gather the correct marketing intelligence involves the basic application of a nine-point system:

1. Who is the strong man in the opposition's camp? You need as much information about him (as a person) so that you can begin to understand how he behaves (as a businessman) and how he reacts to certain conditions or threats so that you can attempt to predict (and pre-empt) his next move.

You can get this information via any published source or through the systems I've mentioned before.

2. How do they feel about current trading conditions and likely short and medium-term developments? You need to know this in order to make sense of what they're doing. I might also enable you to predict what they're going to do, which is a huge advantage.

3. What are their strengths and weaknesses in:

• Merchandise
• Packaging
• Distribution
• Sales force
• Product quality
• Service efficiency
• Profitability and cash-flow management

4. How is their business managed? Is the emphasis on the financial, the production or the pure marketing (or a sensible mixture of all)?

5. Where do they place their most emphasis - Price? Service? Quality? Variety? Are they heavily into promotional activity or are they lower-key?

6. Based on the foregoing, how are their strategies likely to change? And can you pre-empt them? It's a little like a game of chess, you have to be able to think ahead, plan ahead and get ahead.

7. What media do they use to promote themselves and how much do they spend?

8. What is their advertising copy platform? How does it rate and compare against your own?

9. And when you begin the assessment, do not:

Become over-confident (look up hubris in your dictionary).

Do not rely on the first information received. Whilst you haven't got time to waste you can certainly devote sufficient time to make logical and sensible deductions, based upon information which may take a little longer to gather.

Do not seek out information that serves only to support your pre-conceived opinion. In fact, view all such information with suspicion - you were probably wrong in the first place.

Never try to rationalise a bad decision (be honest with yourself). You know it was a bad decision.

Obviously there are many more questions that need to be addressed - the above are just the main points to get you started.

It's not difficult to access all this information and the important thing is to keep well-organised files (paper or computer) and to build your competitive strategies around the conclusions you'll be able to draw once you have all the information you need.

Finally, when everything appears to be going well and decisions are obvious it's almost certain you've overlooked something. So return to 'Go' and start all over again. Remember always "measure twice, cut once."

az.oc.srewerb@sirhc

Read my blog (brewersdroop.co.za) or see what other amazing things we do at brewers.co.za

*Note that Bizcommunity staff and management do not necessarily share the views of its contributors - the opinions and statements expressed herein are solely those of the author.*