Competitor Monitoring

Index

Scenario

Italian Lighting Manufacturing (ILM), a leading Italian company in the field of public lighting and sports facilities with a strong presence in Europe, has recently expanded its marketing mix by participating in several trade fairs. During these events, it had the opportunity to initiate contact with 32 target companies spread across France, Spain, Germany and the Netherlands.

However, ILM faces a significant challenge: it does not have access to the necessary information to fully understand the needs and requirements of these companies. ILM is determined to make the best out of the initial contacts with these companies and fully exploit the potential of these prospects, with the aim of maximising the conversion rate.

Goals

In order to maximise its conversion opportunities, ILM would like to:

Explore a service that would help them find out if their prospects are looking for their products or their competitors’ online

Get to know fully their prospects’ online behaviour

Undertake sales activities that can anticipate competitors and respond perfectly to the prospects’ needs

Strategy

Ultimately, the company decides to make use of VisionSphere’s Competitor Monitoring function in order to overcome the challenges posed by the B2B sector. This function gives companies a clear view of their prospects’ interest in competitors’ products, enabling them to take timely and targeted commercial action to maximise new customer acquisition opportunities.

To begin with, ILM has created 4 different campaigns, one for each of the countries of interest (Spain, France, Germany and the Netherlands), all with the same VisionSphere feature to specifically help with targeting target behaviour in relation to the company’s competitors.

Campaign creation

Aware of VisionSphere’s effectiveness in leveraging search language and geolocation for prospect tracking, ILM has decided to exploit it and has taken a strategic approach by creating 4 different campaigns, each targeting a specific country of interest: Spain, France, Germany and the Netherlands. Thanks to the platform’s intuitive and interactive nature, ILM was able to easily and swiftly define its campaigns.

By answering simple questions on the nature of the business, the company has contextualized its business, identifying the target companies to be monitored and defining the competitors it was interested in keeping an eye on. In this way, ILM can be aware of which of the targets are searching for its competitors, and also understand on which days and from which offices the searched are being carried out.

Let’s take a more detailed look into how the company has structured its 4 campaigns:

Campaign in Spain: 7 Spanish targets were initially set by the company. Other main search terms included ILM’s main Spanish local competitors, 2 of its main European competitors Illumi and Luxia Illumination, and specific names of its business’ products

Campaign in France: 8 French targets were initially set by the company. Other main search terms included ILM’s main French local competitors, 2 of its main European competitors Illumi and Luxia Illumination, and specific names of its business’ products

Campaign in Germany: 13 German targets were initially set by the company. Other main search terms included ILM’s main German local competitors, 2 of its main European competitors Illumi and Luxia Illumination, and specific names of its business’ products

Campaign in the Netherlands: 5 Dutch targets were initially set by the company. Other main search terms included ILM’s main Dutch local competitors, 2 of its main European competitors Illumi and Luxia Illumination, and specific names of its business’ products

With this campaign configuration, ILM ensures that VisionSphere intercepts all searches that prospects might perform online regarding its competitors, thus having the ability to know how often they are searched for and which products or services its prospects are most interested in.

Once defining the prospect companies to monitor, and approving the search terms and content, the campaigns are ready to be activated.

Monitoring

Once the VisionSphere campaigns have been activated, it begins monitoring the searches made by ILM’s target companies in the 4 respective countries. Within a short period of time, by setting VisionSphere’s notifications to specific keywords, ILM was able to see that some of the monitored companies were actually searching for the products and services of their competitors online.

In particular, VisionSphere disclosed the following data broken down by campaign:

Campaign in Spain
- 1 target company carries out daily internet searches on ILM’s competitor Luxia Illumination
- 1 other target searches for the products of ILM’s competitor Illumi

Campaign in France
- 2 of the target companies research continuously the names of ILM’s local French competitors
- 1 other target searches ILM’s competitor Illumi on a daily basis

Campaign in Germany
- 3 of the target companies carry out weekly searches for ILM’s competitor Luxia Illumination and its products

Campaign in the Netherlands
- 1 of the target companies carries out weekly searches on ILM’s competitor Luxia Illumination

*We will see later in detail how ILM will decide to exploit this valuable information to maximise the conversion rate of its prospects

We can immediately see how the accuracy of the data entered when creating the campaign proved to be an excellent source for strategy planning, as it enabled ILM to know, in real time, when prospects are searching for the competitors’ products and even the type of products they are searching for.

To give a clear idea of the potential of this function, let us see in detail how the company will actively exploit this advantage and anticipate the needs of its target companies by listening and adapting to its prospects’ online searches.

Strategy Adaptation

Based on the data provided by VisionSphere, ILM has decided to adapt its commercial and communication strategies to maximise the opportunities for new customer acquisition in the four respective countries and as a way to handle the competition effectively. Let us see in detail how it exploited the information at its disposal:

For the target companies in Spain carrying out daily searches on competitor Luxia Illumination

ILM has decided to focus on a LinkedIn marketing strategy that would highlight the strengths of its products in comparison to those made by Luxia Illumination, pointing to its superior material quality, durability or energy efficiency.
After noticing the greater frequency of its prospect’s online searches, ILM also decided to initiate an email campaign, which was used to advertise its main products to the target’s employees. The emails made sure to compare ILM’s products, and how their features represented a significant improvement to its competitors’ products.

For the target companies in Spain carrying out searches on competitor Luxia Illumination’s products

ILM has elected to conduct a targeted marketing campaign on the company via Linkedin, deciding to highlighting the unique advantages of its products over Illumi’s.
It offers free advice by showcasing its products and how they differ from Illumi’s products, in a bid to convince the target company of ILM’s superiority.
It develops a sales communication campaign by anticipating questions or problems the prospect might have about Illumi’s products and how ILM’s products can help solve them more effectively.

For the target companies in France researching the names of local competitors:

ILM develops a positioning strategy that emphasises its expertise in the lighting industry and competitive pricing compared to smaller local competitors.
It creates an advertising campaign including case studies of satisfied French customers and the successes achieved through collaboration with those local companies.
It creates customised offers based on the research intercepted by VisionSphere to incentivise the prospect to choose ILM instead of local competitors

For the target companies in France searching daily for competitor Illumi:

Through research intercepted by VisionSphere, ILM better understands the reasons for the prospect’s interest in Illumi’s products and adapts its strategy in the following way:

Offers free consulting, coming prepared to promptly respond to the specific needs of this prospect and present customized solutions that surpass the offerings of Illumi.
It develops a commercial offer on the back of the successful consulting session, in which the prospect mentioned its business needs, while also using the data collected by VisionSphere before and after the consultancy to precisely target the nature of its needs.

As we have just seen, the solutions adopted by ILM are several, but also perfectly adapted to the needs of each of its targets. In particular, by knowing the precise nature of their internet searches, ILM has gained several economic and time-related advantages.

After the first few weeks of monitoring, ILM has effectively implemented its strategies by anticipating the activities of its competitors and succeeded in signing 2 collaboration contracts in France and Spain. Moreover, by exploiting VisionSphere’s constantly updated information, it has been able to clearly identify the gaps in its communication and commercial strategies and the strengths and weaknesses of its products. The information obtained was crucial in allowing the company to get real feedback from its own customers and subsequently improve and streamline products and processes with a data-driven approach.

Key Benefits and Results

The implementation of specific sales and marketing initiatives triggered by VisionSphere’s Competitor Monitoring campaign data led to a number of key benefits and tangible results for ILM:

Timely responsiveness: by observing whether potential customers were searching online for competitors, ILM was able to react promptly according to individual customer needs in real time.

Economic efficiency: ILM managed to optimise the allocation of financial resources, focusing purely on the most promising initiatives and reducing waste. This approach has allowed the company to maximise return on investment, ensuring efficient management of financial resources and better control of overall costs.

Personalised offers: by knowing prospects’ needs in advance, ILM tailored its offers according to their needs and preferences.

Anticipating competitors‘ moves: using the information obtained through VisionSphere’s monitoring tool, ILM anticipated competitors’ moves in time and adapted its marketing strategy accordingly.

Improvement of corporate strategy: by identifying competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, ILM was able to improve its corporate strategy.

Differentiation from competitors: by analysing the marketing and sales strategies of its competitors, ILM identified opportunities to differentiate itself in the market both strategically and with the introduction of new products, designed to meet the new needs of the prospects analysed.

Thanks to the responsiveness and flexibility enabled by the Competitor Monitoring function, ILM was able to take a targeted approach designed to meet the prospects’ needs and beat the competition to the punch, ensuring that tangible and direct benefits were achieved.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the implementation of VisionSphere’s Competitor Monitoring function has revolutionised ILM’s approach to managing its sales and marketing activities. By monitoring the target companies’ engagements with competitor, the company gained a deeper understanding of the market and the needs of potential customers, enabling it to move with greater responsiveness and more targeted strategies. The benefits of this initiative translate into a tangible competitive advantage for ILM in its industry, positioning it optimally to capitalise on market opportunities and consolidate its leadership position.

Find out if your potential customers are looking for your competitors and beat them to the beat