If you’re looking to gain a competitive advantage in your business strategy–and let’s face it, who isn’t, you might want to focus on effective employee communication.
Employee communication–how your employees talk and interact can boost your competitive intelligence. In layman’s terms, that’s how much data you have from various sources to make informed business decisions.
When you foster a workplace culture emphasizing effective communication from the top down, you can gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace.
In this article, you’ll learn:
- What competitive intelligence is
- How to perform effective competitor research
- What competitive intelligence tools to use
- How to improve communication at work to boost competitive intelligence
What is competitive intelligence?
Competitive intelligence involves collecting and analyzing data and other useful information on your competitors, target customers, and the overall market. This data plays a crucial role in helping you gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace.
Organizations use competitive intelligence to identify market gaps and opportunities and to better understand the competitive environment.
The more information a business has, the more informed decisions it can make—which is the ideal path to establishing a competitive advantage.
Why is competitive intelligence important?
When done correctly, competitive intelligence has numerous advantages, such as:
- Improved sales and marketing strategies
- The ability to stay ahead of competitors
- Better decision-making
Let’s start with better decision-making. With more data and research from multiple sources, you can make more informed decisions. You’ll act less on instinct or what has worked in the past and more on facts, statistics, and current market trends.
For example, if you discover that your target customer is slightly older or younger than you expected, or perhaps even a different demographic, you can adapt your marketing team’s strategies to improve sales. This adaptability helps you stay ahead of your competitors. See below for an example demographics report:
How to acquire competitive intelligence
Acquiring competitive intelligence may seem complex at first. However, below, we’ve explained three main ways to help you start gaining that competitive edge.
Your competitors
Competitor research shouldn’t be new to you. But, effective research on your competitors provides important insight into what your competitors are doing right and what you can potentially improve.
It can also help you avoid mistakes that your competitors have made, which can be costly.
For example, your competitor research may reveal a distinctive marketing trend you missed. Further, you may have neglected a key target audience segment or content gap in your marketing.
Put your competitors under the microscope to find necessary improvements and mistakes to avoid. It’s a great way to stay ahead of the competitive curve.
Your customers
Customer research, such as surveys, focus groups, interviews, website and social media analytics, customer feedback, and more, can help provide valuable insights.
You can decide what audience segments to target, adapt marketing strategies to target your ideal customer profile (ICP), and adjust content marketing strategies to answer their objections. You can even tweak your PPC campaigns to be more effective by leveraging the most up-to-date and accurate data.
Various competitive intelligence tools can help you with this process, including Breadcrumbs Reveal, a powerful data analysis tool that helps you identify your ICP. The in-depth, comprehensive analysis lets you make data-driven decisions to optimize your revenue strategies.
Your tools
Not only can you use competitor research and research on your customers, but you can also use your own tools to gather competitive intelligence. You have lots of tools and data available, some of which you might be unaware of and yet to get the most out of.
For instance, you can gather and analyze data from the following:
- SEO tools (Semrush, Google Search Console, Google Analytics)
- Your CRM (customer relationship management system)
- IT monitoring tools
- Other competitor analysis tools like Unkover
- Social media platforms
- Lead scoring tools
The data from these tools should inform your marketing and sales team strategies. For example, in the Google search console, you may notice you rank for several keywords you have not specifically targeted in your content marketing efforts. You can use these to improve your SEO further.
Also, competitor research SEO tools such as Ahrefs can help you identify new topic clusters your competitors have covered or keywords you should target.
Moreover, you can use a competitor analysis tool such as Unkover to discover competitive insights and improve your company’s competitive intelligence. See the below image to see how it works.
How to use effective communication to boost competitive intelligence
Unclear communication can affect employee engagement and competitive intelligence. Removing communication barriers plays a crucial role in building strong relationships at work and may help boost competitive intelligence in several ways–we explain these in detail below.
Enhancing company culture
The buzzword “company culture” is thrown around more than football on game day. But what does it actually mean?
For starters, you’ll get a different definition depending on who you ask. According to a 2023 Gallup report on workplace culture, it’s how people interact with each other and get their work done.
Enhancing company culture is crucial for fostering employee wellness, adaptability, and open communication. Internal communications, such as company magazines, briefs, training videos, newsletters, and more, play a vital role in this process.
For example, employee apps like Blink can significantly improve internal communication by providing a centralized platform for sharing information, updates, and feedback.
This is particularly beneficial for frontline workers who need timely access to information and support. Having this access promotes a more engaged and collaborative work environment. It also boosts competitive intelligence and overall business performance.
One challenge in maintaining a strong company culture is ensuring all employees have access to the same information and training resources. Overcoming this can lead to a more unified team.
Using online training software can provide consistent and structured employee education, enhancing communication and equipping team members to contribute effectively to competitive intelligence initiatives.
An article by Forbes mentions how organizational culture helps build confidence at work and keeps employees motivated. Good company leadership and culture produce more engaged employees.
Employee recognition also plays a pivotal role in building a thriving company culture.
Gallup mentions that when you recognize and show your appreciation for behaviors that best exemplify the culture you wish to build, employees are more likely to engage in those behaviors.
In other words, if you recognize effective employee communication and show appreciation, employees are likelier to do it.
But how do you best provide recognition?
Bonusly surveyed 1,500 employed adults on employee recognition. Results found that 32% of respondents preferred words of affirmation, 33% gifts, and 25% acts of service.
The frequency of employee recognition also matters. A 2024 report found that monthly recognition was the most effective in improving retention and productivity.
Consider and answer, “So, what?”
This simple exercise can help employees better understand your product, service, and company. Analyzing data or customer and competitor research can help turn data into actionable insights. It develops a beyond-surface-level understanding.
This can also help boost competitive intelligence. By developing critical thinking skills with your employees, you’re interpreting all competitive intelligence insights at different levels.
Data-driven decisions in real-time
Companies must make data-driven decisions in real time–leveraging up-to-date data can help you make the most out of any given opportunity.
Using competitive intelligence means you will have lots of different data from multiple sources. This is known as fragmented data.
Fragmented data can be integrated to help create a bigger-picture understanding. Doing this allows you to create actionable intelligence for your business.
For example, engineering teams often manage a lot of information and use jargon that team members may have trouble remembering.
It’s essential to develop communication strategies to avoid misunderstandings or information silos. Especially when teams are trying to share information about competitors.
A solid strategy to improve communication and keep teams on the same page is to use a meeting minutes app to record conversations. This tool helps track decisions, transcribe action items, and store notes in one central place that everyone can easily access. Having a central hub like this improves collaboration and communication within and between teams and departments.
This data taken from meetings can be used together with other data collection methods, such as competitor research, including SEO and survey data, to help create actionable insights.
Provide clear context for stakeholders
Once you have leveraged improved communication among employees to boost competitive intelligence and other research methods, you must communicate your findings to stakeholders.
Providing clear content for stakeholders is essential–enabling you to receive full support to make the right decisions to gain that competitive advantage.
So how do you do it?
You need to present your data as clearly as possible. That includes expected deadlines for tasks such as testing new ice cream flavors, gathering competitive intelligence data, or implementing data into actionable tasks such as PPC and content marketing campaigns.
It can help to share examples of similar assignments and what teams will be impacted. The more specific you can be, the better.
Keep disagreements respectful and on-topic
Disagreements happen, especially when employees have different communication styles at work.
At times, it can feel like you’re speaking different languages. Nevertheless, keep disagreements respectful and on topic—they should not feel like a personal attack on the other person.
To prevent this, clear communication guidelines should be provided that emphasize respectful behavior and a culture of active listening.
Acknowledge and support every team member
To improve communication further, understand that there is more than one communication style.
According to research from Southern New Hampshire University, there are four main types of unique communication styles:
- Passive
- Aggressive
- Passive-aggressive
- Assertive
Recognize each employee’s unique communication style and tailor your methods accordingly. Discuss the importance of supporting each team member’s strengths and experience to enhance overall company culture and communication to achieve a shared goal.
You can learn about your employees’ preferred communication styles by administering personality and communication quizzes. One of them may have an Enneagram personality type 7, which can give you an understanding of their communication preferences. This enables you to make the most of your team’s strengths for effective engagement.
Numerous communication channels are also available, especially if you’re making the most of remote work. So, make sure to apply the same principles to build an effective team.
Final thoughts
Here is what you should take away from this article:
- Use competitive intelligence by gathering data on your competitors, target customers, and the market to make informed decisions.
- An effective communication strategy that fosters strong communication skills helps improve employee culture and competitive intelligence at work.
- Acquire data from multiple sources to create a bigger-picture understanding.
If you want to get ahead of your competitors by leveraging data, start your free Unkover trial today.