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Business Intelligence (BI) and Competitive Intelligence (CI) are both critical for improving the performance and success rate for your organization. While both are different in practice, when put together, they are an equation for business success. Business Intelligence focuses more on internal strategies, where Competitive Intelligence allows businesses to focus on what’s happening outside the four walls of a company.

You won’t be able to see success within your organization unless your sales and marketing teams are aligned. This is true when it comes to goals, initiatives, and strategies—including your competitive intelligence (CI) strategies. There are only minimal barriers preventing marketers from deriving actionable competitive intelligence from their day-to-day activities to help sales succeed. There’s also little preventing sales from passing anecdotal intel back to marketing for ultra-targeted content and campaign productions. Yet many sales and marketing teams are not yet aligned in their CI strategy.

If your prior marketing and sales alignment attempts stumbled, perhaps your new impetus lies in a holistic competitive intelligence methodology.

The following post was written by Tamara Grominsky, Director of Product Marketing at Unbounce. She has over half a decade of experience bringing new products to market, positioning existing products for expansion and driving sustainable revenue growth at high tech companies.

Standing out in a crowded market isn’t easy. Unless your company is the industry leader, you’re tirelessly fighting for market share. And, even if you are the leader, there will always be new businesses coming up behind you.

If you are looking for unique ways to position your business without engaging in a feature or pricing war, you may want to consider a differentiated customer strategy instead. Because, the fact is, just because you are competing in the same market does not mean you have the same ideal customer.  

If you’re looking for new ways to differentiate yourself from your competition, redesigning your website is a solid place to start. When people hear about your brand, they will likely head to your website or even your social media profiles - which will then likely direct them to your site. When they get to your site, you want them to see what you have to offer, front and center. You know that when you offer a product or solution, there are more likely than not, other companies that have similar offerings. When people come to your website, you want them to think of your brand as the best in the industry and choose your offerings over those of your competition.

Designing a website in a competitive industry is a loaded task. You want to make sure you stand out from your competitors when it comes to color, design, imagery, messaging, and CTAs. You also want to ensure that you are meeting the needs of your target customers by highlighting how your solution solves their problems. With so many moving parts going into a differentiated website, let’s take a look at five pairs of rivals to see how they differentiate themselves from their competition through their websites.