opposable marketing

We were all taught manners in our commercial relationships; we should not speak badly about competition in front of our clients, but we should differentiate; we should not ransack for competition inside weaknesses, but we should monitor them and stay informed.

Competitive intelligence. Everybody does it, but only few talk about it.

Here's something nobody talks about: how to market substitute products. So I'll call it Opposable Marketing.

the silver bullet

The competition analysis provides valuable information about the strengths and weaknesses of your company, ultimately helping you answer the client's question: Why should I work with you, rather than with your competition? 

Do you have in place a system to collect and disseminate information about your competitors? 

Or do you occasionally trip on articles or pieces of data you'd like to keep, but haven't quite found the right storage format? 

online research: industry

Following my previous post on online research - where to search for country information, today I'm writing about how to search for industry data.

This is a summary of what, how and where to search for when you want to gather data on an industry from another country.

Valuable, quality data is not difficult to find online, even for free, when you know where to look.  

I'll work on an example: let's assume we're looking for information about the automotive manufacturing industry in Czech Republic.

So here are the Whats, the Hows and the Wheres:

associations: the hands-on type

Following my previous post on key bodies and assessing them on how up-to-date their statistics are, I'll add several other signs that you can rely on these sources in your online industry searches.

The local key body is the main authority that gathers and publishes yearly the industry overview and the local market statistics. That being said, you should expect to find 2011 data on their website or in their publications.

However, before taking this source into consideration, first check their number of members and what percentage of the industry to make, to make sure their facts and figures are relevant and that their representation warrant comes from the majority of the industry players.

key bodies: call it like it is!

This one is about how I assess the key industry bodies before starting a dialogue with them or using them as data sources.

Typically, these organizations have a website where usually there's a description of the association and its scope, its initiatives, list of members, market trends, a section with press releases, and a calendar of events.

If you intend to work with such organizations for your marketing actions, you must discern the difference between active channels and dead ends. 

online research: country

Today I'm letting myself easier off the hook and casually drop few lines from the comfort of my favorite subject - online research & market data collection. Say somebody from work comes to you and says: "Yes, but have you thought about Kazakhstan?"

Surely you have a country study content you're trying to fill in with information, as much as possible from free research.

If you're relatively new to this subject, you need a structured source for making your acquaintance of each new geographical entity you're starting to chart.