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Writing landing page copy, cooking up AdWords campaigns, agonizing over email subject lines - demand generation marketers have a lot on their plate. It’s no surprise that demand gen teams are not typically involved in the creation of competitive analyses; competitor analysis is a time-consuming endeavor. For that reason, competitor analysis typically falls into the realm of product marketing or a dedicated competitive intelligence (CI) team. But despite their removal from the CI process, demand gen marketers are doing  themselves a disservice if they aren’t consuming the output of the competitive analyses produced by their CI team. 

Campaign-driven marketers are frequently an afterthought when product marketing or CI teams scope the competitive landscape, create battlecards, and do everything possible to support the sales team in its effort to differentiate from the competition. After all, sales reps are the only ones directly battling competitive objections, right?

Not quite.

When your competitive landscape is constantly changing - with new competitors, new products, mergers, marketing campaigns, and more - it can be easy to fall into a reactive mode. An event happens, it’s reviewed, discussed, acted upon, and by the time that cycle has been completed, another competitive event has occurred, and the pattern starts all over again. If you’re constantly reacting to market movements, it feels like you never have a chance to get ahead of competitors or anchor on your company’s vision. It can seem like you’re constantly chasing competitors or changing strategies.

So how do you stay on top of your competitive landscape but break out of the reactive pattern? Here are five ways you can get ahead to be more proactive with your competitive intelligence strategy.

Competitive intelligence (CI) surfaces insights that can - and should - be leveraged across the business. Competitive intelligence can be translated into tactical activities as well as strategic decisions by every department and every employee. Let’s walk through the key areas across the business where competitive intelligence actions can be most impactful and provide a framework for assessing your organization’s ability to take advantage of these opportunities.

Bootstrapping a hacky solution to a complicated competitive intelligence (CI) problem is enticing. But, as a company grows, free software trials and bootstrap fixes wear thin. Your limited investments in appropriate tools can become embarrassing.

One cannot expect reliable growth if nothing is invested. A $0.00 budget for a competitive intelligence program is not enough to see real value from your CI program. You may consider hiring a full-time CI professional to address the challenge. According to PayScale, a competitive intelligence analyst can earn upwards of $100,000 / year. Companies will bleed that salary if they leave employees equipped with lesser tools. Exactly what sort of tools, you ask?

Here are six hacky tools limiting your competitive intelligence program’s growth. Each comes with costs and consequences you might not be able to endure.