Hi Anya,

Besides just trying to sell, you can use the web to do Competitive Intelligence research and find out what, how and where your competitors are selling. I was asked last year to write an article about "Competitive Intelligence Resources" so if no one minds, I will just copy and paste it here. Perhaps this will give you an insight into some other ideas to improve your marketing. Here is the article:

Competitive Intelligence Resources



There are all kinds of tools to assist you to keep updated with your competitive intelligence status. I say status, because as far as I see this is a never ending process. Not only will you have to look for new competitors, you need to stay updated on what new things your old competitors are implementing.

One tool you might want to have a look at is called Website Watcher. It checks an unlimited number of web-sites for updates and changes with a minimum of time and online-costs. When changes in a website are detected, WebSite-Watcher saves last two versions to your hard disk and highlights all changes in text. This program offers a 40 day free trial but must be registered for $20.

http://www.webspector.com/downloads.htm#webspectorWebspector is a similar program you can look like. They offer a free download too. I didn't download this one to look at so I don't know if free download is really just a time limited demo or not. I couldn't find this information on their site.

There are some free services and programs that can help on a limited basis. Informant is a web based service that searches web for you based on search algorithms from Alta Vista, Excite and Infoseek. Copernic is a free software program that can be useful. There are more powerful features available to paid users, but the free version can serve up some useful information as well.

You might also be interested in having a look at Easy Seeker. You can use it to search over 100+ search engines and filter out duplicates. This software, although free is ad supported.

Further research on the net shows there is a lot of places to learn more about competitive Intelligence:

ADLAW Source for information on legal developments in advertising, marketing and media, including newsletters, cases, a guide to legal issues in advertising, and cyber law information. Ad Facts Provides customized competitive advertising and publicity tracking in print media (trade and consumer publications) and on the Internet. Offers reports on ad spending, publicity coverage, media placement, and analysis of the competitors' advertising strategies over time. Advertising Age Advertising Age, known for its top rated coverage of the advertising industry, offers this site with daily news, archives, plus listings such as top advertisers in various categories and a variety of lists such as 50 best commercials. Advertising Media Internet Center AMIC sponsors a vast collection of advertising-related websites, including links to companies, organizations, conferences, research institutes, media and the law. Advertising World University of Texas offers this abundant, collection of advertising and related links to companies, organizations, conferences and sports an excellent advertising-specific directory of topics. Advertising Worldwide Information AWI - an international database of useful information including: advertising agencies, market research companies, conventions, professional associations, audiovisual producers media resources and rates, legal issues, research and universities. Advertising and Marketing Publications Links to Advertising and Marketing publications. Adweek Online Subscription-based current, weekly and archived advertising-related articles and industry updates. Also includes classifieds. American Association of Advertising Agencies Newsletter, events, membership roster, abstracts of publications; some available free of cost, others for purchase. FindexOnline The worldwide directory of market research reports, studies and surveys; search and purchase full-text market research reports. Internet Advertising Bureau IAB events, news, membership information and research about the use and effectiveness of advertising on the Internet. Marketing Lists HTMARCOM Marketing lists on the internet. Media Central Daily and weekly advertising and promotion, marketing, television and cable, newspaper and radio news. MouseTracks: The List of Marketing Lists An extensive list of marketing related e-mail discussion groups. The Advertising Research Foundation A corporate membership association performing research in advertising, marketing and media. Their website offers information about the organization, ARF-sponsored events and links to recent issues of The Journal of Advertising Research. Web Digest for Marketers A free current issue of links to marketing-related sites and also a searchable, fee-based archive of links. Yahoo!'s Advertising News Advertising-specific news from Reuters, Business Wire, and PR Newswire. Yahoo!'s Advertising Sites A useful collection of advertising-specific organizations.

One of the greatest tools for Competitive Intelligence is your ability to look ahead and see where a competitor may be going. To do this you would want to look at such things as:

Academic publications Help-wanted ads Access to Information Act Industry regulators Annual reports to stockholders Industry research reports Business school cases Media quotes Company home pages Patent filings databases Court cases Press announcements Directories Securities and Exchange Commission Environmental Protection Agency Financial analyst reports Government filings (10Ks, 8Ks) State Uniform Commercial Code Trade Press Trade associations

You would also want to keep abreast of the news. By keeping abreast of your competitors involvement in things like:

Community meetings Professional meetings Financial analysts meetings Trade shows and exhibits Government hearings Professional meetings

This information you can use to your benefit and by employing strategies to study and learn more about your competitors, you can be far ahead of the competition. One government site claimed that:

Canada and the United States have very different CI systems from these countries. In Canada, no university offers a degree in CI; existing legislation prevents the sharing of strategic information; and our culture focuses on information as power with the hoarding of it seen as a way of differentiating the individual -- we do not share. Canada's intelligence service (CSIS) is not mandated to collect commercial intelligence, in fact, the service's mandate prevents it from doing so. CSIS is not allowed to share findings with Canadian companies should commercial intelligence be uncovered. At the executive level, few see the value of an integrated competitive intelligence system and North Americans certainly do not devour information in the same way that others do.

As for the United States, despite a growing number of university and executive programs in CI, the country is still far behind the rest of the world in CI. A study by the New-York-based Conference Board reveals that fewer than 5% of US corporations had full-fledged intelligence systems in place, only a marginal improvement of the 1988 findings of 3%

I guess we are a little too relaxed in North America. This attitude is NOT reflected across the entire globe. For example, Sweden is among the world leaders in CI. Collaboration among banks, academe, associations, government, and industry has helped create an impressive CI infrastructure with a large percentage of Sweden's top 500 firms having world-class CI departments. At the educational level, universities offer courses and degrees in CI, and there is even a high-school CI course that has been given to students throughout Europe. Within the Swedish business environment, there is much information sharing, and Sweden has relied on cartels, mergers, personal relationships, and so forth to maintain this system. Intelligence is gathered through tightly linked government, banking, business, and association networks around the world.

If you need some studying material off-line to pursue this topic a little further you can find all kinds of books on data mining at Amazon.com.

There is another free web based service offered by Excite that you can use to sort and filter through more than 300 online newspapers for late-breaking articles. Among these 300 or so, includes searches through Asia Week, Economist, London Evening Standard, Los Angeles Times, Forbes Digital, Advertising Age, and Russia Today.

I'd like to point out before this article goes to much further that although a lot of information and software ideas are being presented to you here, that you REALLY have to be prepared to do your homework. You will need to set up a system on your computer and really study this information and plan your intelligence process. You are not going to be able to rely solely on software or web based services...

Cambridge, Mass.-based constancy Fuld & Co. published a study, titled "Intelligence Software Report 2000."

Fuld reviewed more than 170 software packages for the competitive intelligence market. Of the 170 products reviewed, only a dozen were found to offer enough functionality to warrant immediate consideration -- and none of those provided complete support for a company's competitive intelligence program, according to Fuld.

And part of the problem that lies with the small entrepreneur is that a lot of these software packages are designed to pull information from major databases on the web about companies that sell stocks and are traded publicly. Interesting to note though, that once you have a strategic plan, much of what you may wish to discover can be done on your own. William E. Rothschild said, "Most major companies have developed World Wide Web sites to communicate directly, inexpensively,and efficiently with their customers, investors, suppliers and the public. In doing so, they inadvertently provide strategic and operational intelligence to Net-surfing competitors." In an article he wrote you can read how one of his clients, was able to use the Web listings of a key competitor...

When and if you do try to compile data yourself, information on other environmental trends such as industry trends, legal and regulatory trends, international trends, technology developments, political developments and economic conditions are important considerations. The relative strength of the competitor can be judged accurately only by assessing it with respect to the factors listed above. It's no secret that all the dot.com lay-offs, and the increasing knowledge of "proven to fail" business models is going to increase the interest in gaining accurate and reliable information about those competitors who have established their successes.

One of the best places to start your research is at Siteowner's. Use Siteowner's free services to find out how popular your competitor's sites are and how the search engines rank them. If you feel your searching skills need to be updated you can take a tutorial that will show you how to research companies online. There is also a CI Resource Index where you can read lots of articles about Competitive Intelligence.

While looking for more software that might be able to offer some assistance I ran across a demo product from Answer Chase. The software demo is only enabled for 60 days, but that should be long enough to learn how to use it to your benefit. For pricing it appears that the price is about $30 per month or $1 per day to keep using it.

I would have liked to download it and try it before I reported on it, but I am limited to the amount of time I can afford to spend. Time is a precious commodity. This product promises to free some of YOUR time.

One handy little tool I found that doesn't help a whole lot with compiling any type of intelligence reports but it does allow you to monitor competitors websites for changes in URL's at URL's you specify is called C4U. Here are some of the things it can do:

Example 1 ? Let?s say you?re a Cardiologist, a Doctor of the Heart, and you wish to keep updated with the recent developments in the new research after the causes of Heart Attacks orchestra ted by Dr. John Smith in Washington DC. All you have to do in this scenario, is add the main page of http://www.medicalmag.com/ to your C4U Page List, and type in the keywords ?Heart AND Research OR Dr. Smith AND Washington? . The next time an article with these words will appear, C4U will let you know of it, and present it to you in an accessible convenient way.

Example 2 ? You?re looking for a date on the Internet, and you?re checking out a dating service site. The problem is that you?re very selective, and you want a person who?s at least 5?11 or has green eyes, however, you?ve yet to find the right person in the current lists, and you?re waiting for new entries to show up In this case all you have to do is add the Web Page where the list appears, and if necessary, add a password and a username, and set C4U to detect new text and links in this page. The next time a new person comes along, you will be the first to know before he or she is already taken.As C4U will alert and keep an eye open for more people with added to that list.

Example 3: Using Internet Search Engines ?You?re a great fan of Elvis, The King, and you wish to keep track of fan sites added to Yahoo!. All you have to do is look for ?Elvis? in Yahoo! and add the ?Results? to your C4U Page List. When you do,make sure you check the options to notify you when a link is added or text is added, and that way, the next time Yahoo?s collection of Elvis Fan sites is expanded, you will surely be the first to know.

Example 4 ? Interested in the latest news for PCs and World Computing? Add www.pcmag.com to your C4U Page List and ask C4U to let you know if Text or Graphics have been added to the main page. If you?re anticipating a review of recent software of hardware, simply type it in as a keyword, and C4U will let you know when the PC Magazine personnel will review it.

You can download this freeware tool from C4U

A similar and free web based service can be found from NetMind.

A free service I use and recommend is available from Tracer Lock. It monitors the Web for sites matching your interests, and sends you email when it finds a new match. A recent upgrade in this service made some improvements to the format of the TracerLock notification emails. Now, when TracerLock emails you a list of URL's that match your search query, it also looks at the contents of each URL and includes the portion of the Web page text that matches your query. This makes it easier to tell whether a given match is actually relevant, without having to view each Web page and look for your search term.

Best Regards,
Steve MacLellan

PS:
Keep in mind I wrote this article over a year ago, so some of the links may not work.






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