Blog

Competitive Intelligence (CI) is an integral piece of every successful business strategy. It’s important for a company to understand where they stand within their market, so they can make intel-driven decisions. CI avoids operating in a vacuum, instead encouraging decisions designed to place itself as separate from and ahead of the competition.

Competitive Intelligence requires understanding not just the general concepts, but the various nuances and subcategories that fall within. Keep reading to understand the complete picture of what CI entails.

1) Competitive Intelligence

Competitive Intelligence is the process of capturing and analyzing information about your competitors to drive internal strategy changes and tactics. CI is important because, while most companies have a great understanding of what’s happening internally, external information is necessary to drive sound strategic decisions.

The key here is making data-based, informed decisions based on the competitive landscape in conjunction with internal factors. CI allows organizations to make more informed business and strategic decisions. 

Crayon's Competitive Intelligence Spotlight  is an interview series where we chat with intelligence professionals  to get a glimpse into their careers and gain unique insight into competitive strategy. In this edition of the Competitive Intelligence Spotlight Series, we shine the light on Stephen Tomas, Business Intelligence Director at FLEXcon. 

Crayon's Product Marketing Spotlight is an interview series where we chat with product marketers to get a glimpse into their careers and gain unique insight into product marketing strategy. In this edition of Product Marketing Spotlight Series, we shine the light on Tamara Grominsky, Director of Product Marketing at Unbounce.

AMA: Hubspot Principal Product Marketing Manager, Marcus Andrews on Product Launches originally appeared on Sharebird - the place to see how people at top companies do product marketing.

Answers by Marcus Andrews, Principal Product Marketing Manager at Hubspot, on Sharebird:

--------

How often is too often when it comes to launching a new product feature/enhancement publicly?

Great question! 

First and foremost your launches have to have substance and that should dictate the cadence more than marketing need. I've seen some companies try and do a launch every week and it starts off great but then loses momentum quickly because people stop caring. That’s a bad situation to be in. The launches just don't have enough substance and people are overwhelmed. 

You may have lots of different updates happening all the time, but the trick is packaged them up into a bigger more interesting update that has a slick narrative that ties them all together. 

One a month or one or two a quarter (depending on the size and speed) is a good cadence. It gives your audience time to breathe and will make your launches more substantial. Having one launch as the one big thing your team is focused on for a quarter also gives you a lot of direction and a launch shouldn't happen all in one day. It can rollout piece by piece over the course of at least a week or even a month.