Understanding Competitive Marketing Intelligence: A Complete Step-by-Step Guide

What is Competitive Marketing Intelligence?
Sales and marketing teams have used competitive intelligence from companies like Enformion.com for a long time to build a full picture of what their competitors offer, what customers prefer, and which differences help sell their products or services.

Competitive marketing intelligence builds on this idea. In addition to knowing where your product or service stands in the market, it uses detailed insights to help improve marketing and sales efforts. These insights include:

• How customers use competing products or services

• What matters most to your audience and existing customers

• Adjusting messages to match how customers use your product

• Finding customer problems and interests your business can serve better than others

Why Competitive Intelligence and Analysis Matter in Marketing
To market effectively, you need to understand who your audience is and how to talk to them. A big part of that is also learning how your competitors talk to the same people. Competitive intelligence helps you see what your competitors are doing so you can match or even improve on it.

Some helpful tools for competitive intelligence in marketing include:

• Advertising tools that show paid ads and display campaigns

• SEO tools that show which keywords your competitors rank for

• Tools that give firmographic (company traits) and technographic (technology use) data

Using Competitive Intelligence in Advertising
Using competitive intelligence in advertising is a smart way to help your team grow faster and make better choices. Tools like SEMrush let you see what ads your competitors have run, what they are running now, and estimates of how much they spend on each ad.

This helps you build a strong advertising plan by showing you which keywords your competitors are using and what kind of ads they’re running. You can then build on that knowledge to make your own ads better. This gives you a good place to start and helps you build a successful advertising strategy.

Competitive Marketing Intelligence vs. Competitive Intelligence
There are two main types of business intelligence: competitive marketing intelligence and competitive intelligence. Both give helpful information to help you stay ahead of your competitors.

Sales and marketing teams often mix the two during early research. But doing so can make your results less clear. Knowing the difference helps you use both types more effectively.

Here are some key differences:

• Competitive marketing intelligence focuses on understanding your customers and their buying behavior.

• It looks closely at things like how your audience thinks, feels, and chooses products.

• It’s focused more on the customer side.

• Competitive intelligence looks at your competitors’ actions and business strategies.

• It includes how they spend, expand, form partnerships, and price their products.

• It’s more focused on how businesses run and compete.

Even though they are different, these two areas often work together when you’re looking at your competitors’ marketing and customer outreach strategies.

How to Collect Competitive Marketing Intelligence
To gather the best insights on your customers and competitors, you need the right tools—and sometimes, just clear conversations.

Talk to competitors about other competitors
Competitors may not talk about their own weaknesses, but they may be willing to discuss others in the same industry. People often switch jobs within the same field, so someone working at Competitor B may have useful insights about Competitor A.

Ask questions that let them speak about other companies. This can help you better understand your market and what strategies are being used.

Use tools and market research for deeper insights
Market research doesn’t always equal competitive marketing intelligence, but it can offer valuable information.

Tools like Crayon help collect data, track trends, and understand things like messaging and reviews. Research firms like Mintel can also provide customer engagement data and in-depth competitor research.

Listen to your audience
Social media is a great source of information. With the right tool, you can learn a lot from what people are saying online.

This includes what your customers and prospects are saying. Conversations during sales calls, objections in product demos, and reviews all hold valuable insights. Both positive and negative feedback—yours and your competitors’—can help shape your strategy.

Use HG Insights for Technographic and Spending Data
HG Insights collects data from over 7 million businesses, showing how they spend on cloud services and other technologies.

With this data, marketing and sales teams can:

• See how much customers spend with competitors

• Create better pricing plans

• Find new sales opportunities

Competitive Marketing Intelligence in Practice
Companies often begin with firmographic data when researching markets. This includes:

• Industry type

• Company size

• Location

• Revenue

• Business type

This kind of data helps you understand your market, including your Ideal Customer Profile and Total Addressable Market. But it’s not enough on its own.

To gain a real edge, look at technographic data—what tools and technologies your audience uses, how often, and when they started using them.

Even better, combine this with spend intelligence—how much money your potential customers are spending in each tech category or on certain products.

Technographic data helps you see which tools your customers rely on. This lets you build stronger marketing plans and smarter sales conversations.

Three Ways to Use Competitive Marketing Intelligence Effectively

1. Focus on the right sales leads
   A recent article from Harvard Business Review made it clear: marketing data should help you see what actually leads to revenue. Listening to conversations, knowing what prospects spend money on, and asking competitors about the market all take time—but they pay off. These insights help bring in better leads to your sales pipeline.

2. Connect sales messages to bigger trends and deeper problems
   Technology buyers do their homework. They look at reviews, content, and talk to others before making a choice. To grab their attention early, use competitive marketing intelligence to back up your pitch. For example, if you know what they’re spending on a product, you can ask: “Are you getting the results you want from that investment?” Use data to show your knowledge of the industry and position yourself as the expert.

3. Create more chances to replace competitors
   By using competitive marketing intelligence and spending data, you know exactly what your competitors are doing and how much customers spend on them. Instead of avoiding cost discussions, you can show how your product delivers more value for the money.

Can Competitive Marketing Intelligence Give You an Edge?

Yes, it can.

When you combine technographic data with spending data from platforms like HG Insights, you get a much clearer view of the market than companies using older research methods.

Here’s how you can use this intelligence right away:

• Make a list of top competitor customers by checking how they spend on tech. This helps you build a stronger pipeline.

• Run account-based campaigns with messages and pages tailored to your most important prospects.

• Adjust your sales and marketing content to focus on real industry problems rather than just product features.

When you use competitive marketing intelligence tools like HG Insights alongside traditional research, you give your team a much stronger chance of success. That’s a clear step forward.