Welcome to the era where artificial intelligence (AI) isn't just a futuristic concept; it's a groundbreaking tool in business.
When it comes to staying ahead of the competition, knowledge is power. And what better way to gain that knowledge than by harnessing the capabilities of AI in your competitive analysis efforts?
In this article, we're going to explore 10 ingenious ways you can leverage AI to supercharge your competitive analysis.
By embracing AI-powered tools and techniques, you can supercharge your competitive analysis efforts, make smarter strategic decisions, and ultimately, achieve greater success in your industry.
Whether you're a seasoned marketer, a business owner, or someone simply curious about the endless possibilities AI brings, you're in for a treat.
Gone are the days of manual data crunching and endless hours spent sifting through spreadsheets. With AI, you can automate tedious tasks, uncover invaluable insights, and make informed decisions with confidence.
But how exactly can AI transform the way you analyze your competitors? Let's dive in.
What is AI in Competitive Analysis?
Artificial intelligence is the simulation of human intellect by software-run machines. The machines mimic humans in that they can speak, read, write, hear, and even move.
Competitive analysis, on the other hand, is the process of gathering information about your competitors in order to compare your company’s performance with them and to spot opportunities for improvement.
In the realm of competitive analysis, AI, or artificial intelligence, refers to the use of advanced technologies and algorithms to gather, analyze, and derive insights from vast amounts of data related to competitors, market trends, and consumer behavior.
Benefits of AI-Driven Competitive Analysis
AI and competitive analysis are a match made in heaven.
AI systems are capable of automating processes that were traditionally manual and time-consuming, such as data collection, pattern recognition, and predictive modeling.
Through the power of AI, businesses can gain a deeper understanding of their competitive landscape, identify emerging trends, predict market movements, and make informed strategic decisions.
AI in competitive analysis enables organizations to stay agile, responsive, and ahead of the curve.
How to Use AI in Competitive Analysis: 10 Ways to Harness AI Tools
1. Monitor news and social media
AI can track mentions of your company or your competitor’s brand across social media and news outlets.
That’s great news for any marketer who’s sick of scrolling through newsfeeds and tweets because AI can group this information and detect trends automatically.
AI media monitoring tools allow you to collect vast amounts of information about your competitor and understand their activity and strategies.
2. Identify patterns and trends in your competitors’ content
AI can create content for you based on your competitor’s content and the patterns and trends that emerge from them. There are tools that can scan your competitor’s websites and give you a list of the most frequently used terms and phrases.
From that data, AI can fashion captions, articles, and other copy, all optimized for SEO.
3. Analyze customer reviews
Another useful trick AI can do is use Natural Language Processing (NLP) to analyze the sentiments people have in user reviews, thereby giving you a glimpse into how your target audience feels about your competitor.
These machine learning algorithms can even group the sentiments into positive, neutral, and negative because they can absorb the nuance and context of written reviews.
4. Be alerted when products and prices change
Want to keep tabs on your competitor’s new products and price changes? AI can help with that.
Web scraping tools powered by AI automates data collection from multiple sources, giving you updated information on catalogs, pricing, and features.
As with social media, AI-driven software can extract insights from the information collected so you can understand the competitive landscape and optimize your pricing strategy.
5. Attract customers with compelling product copy
AI paraphrasing tools are highly useful in competitive analysis because they give you alternatives for copy your competitor is using in their product pages. There’s no room for plagiarism with tools like these.
They can recognize patterns your competitor uses in their product information so you can understand their strategy deeper.
Using these eloquent tools will also supercharge your writing and give insights on how to improve your product copy.
6. Predict customer and competitor actions
Machine learning platforms can run predictive analysis without the need for a data science expert and are worth considering if you want to amp up your competitive advantage.
These tools analyze market trends, your target audience’s behavior, and your competitor’s performance. This in turn allows you to create predictive models so you can make plans for the future and rethink your strategy.
7. Create competitive benchmarks and identify top-performing brands
AI can also produce benchmarks that compare your performance with your competitors. This way, you don’t have to manually compare key performance indicators and drown in data.
Benchmarks can give insights into your market share, customer sentiment, and ad and email performance. They will enable you to spot your strengths and weaknesses so you can make informed decisions.
8. Synthesize data into reports
Aside from creating competitive benchmarks, AI-driven tools can automatically make reports for you out of the data you or a separate tool has collected.
Automating reports saves you time and resources and produces actionable insights faster than it would take when you do it yourself.
9. Extract insights from images
Similar to how you can generate images through prompts made to AI software, AI can infer meaning from pictures, too! Computer vision can “see” images like a human being can and translate what they see into data.
On top of that, this AI subset can act on the data or make recommendations. Computer vision can be used in marketing to examine the millions of images posted on social media so marketers can understand competitor products and detect trends.
10. Understand your competitors’ products or innovations
Need help deciphering studies and papers related to your competitor’s product formulations or technologies? There’s an AI tool for that! AI simplifies jargon and makes expert information more digestible to marketers.
By understanding the advancements your competitors are making, you can scope out the competitive landscape, what’s possible, and the gaps and opportunities you can take advantage of.
Panoramata’s AI-Powered Features for Smarter Competitive Analysis
Panoramata has many AI-powered features that can speed up and enhance your competitive analysis. Here are just some things you can take advantage of in the platform.
Track brand activity
Got a brand you want to keep your eye on? Panoramata can track them automatically for you. View any brand’s updates and activity on a dedicated brand page, which is just a search away.
You can also follow the brands you want to track so their real-time activity can appear on your account’s dashboard.
AI condenses brand activities into summaries so you can get the gist of their recent updates on the dashboard or the brand’s page.
To generate a summary of a brand’s activity, follow these steps.
- Go to the brand’s page
- In the summary tab, you’ll see a button that says “Summarize recent updates”. Click on the button.
- Wait for it to generate the summary.
Receive weekly updates and summaries about your tracked brands
On top of the above, you can also track updates via weekly summaries delivered to your inbox. This is an email containing the activity of brands you track, such as their new emails, ads, and landing pages. You can also view recent emails for an inspiration boost, should you need it.
Get marketing inspiration
Speaking of inspiration, you can use Panoromata’s AI assistant to write clickworthy subject lines and read about best practices and actionable tips.
Here’s how you can access inspiration through these features.
- Subject lines
If you want to improve your subject lines for better open rates, Panoramata’s AI features will come in handy. Here’s how to access the subject line generator.
- Select an email from your chosen brand.
- On the email’s page, click on “Generate subject lines”
- Wait for it to create the subject lines
- Inspiration action points
Inspiration action points are marketing tips and practices based on the content Panoramata has on a selected brand. To access these points, follow the steps below.
- Go to your chosen brand’s page.
- On the summary tab, click “Get inspiration points from (brand)”.
- Wait for it to create inspiration points
Generate a benchmark
Benchmarks allow you to directly compare brands together. Through benchmarks, you can track brand activity in real time and find out which ones are most active.
They often take a long time to create but thankfully, Panoramata can create benchmarks automatically.
To see if a brand has an existing benchmark, go to the benchmarks tab on their brand page. You can choose from industry benchmarks, competitor benchmarks, content breakdowns, and rankings.
Alternatively, you can create your own benchmark on Panoramata to track and compare a particular group of brands.
Here’s how to create a benchmark:
- Click Benchmarks on the leftmost panel.
- Click blue “Create new benchmark” button on the top left.
- Select the brands you want to benchmark.
- Create a title for the benchmark.
- Customize the privacy settings then click “Create benchmark”.
- Click on your newly created benchmark from the list.
- You can now view the benchmark and/or select a date range you want to track.
Get inspiration and actionable insights from a saved list
You can also use Panoramata’s AI assistant for inspiration and best practices. For example, you can use it to help you plan your next campaign and create marketing briefs.
You can also ask the assistant about anything related to the benchmarks and lists you’ve synced with your account.
Here’s an example of how you can plan a campaign with AI.
Embracing the Future of Competitive Analysis with AI
In conclusion, AI has emerged as a game-changer in the field of competitive analysis, offering businesses unprecedented insights and opportunities for strategic advantage.
From gathering comprehensive data to uncovering actionable insights and predicting future trends, AI empowers businesses to stay ahead of the competition in today's fast-paced market environment.
By embracing AI-powered tools and techniques, you can supercharge your competitive analysis efforts, make smarter strategic decisions, and ultimately, achieve greater success in your industry.
Frequently Asked Questions
How can AI be used in competitive analysis?
AI automates data collection from online sources, analyzes customer feedback through NLP algorithms, and predicts competitor strategies, enabling e-commerce brands to stay updated and make informed decisions.
How do you do a competitive intelligence analysis?
Define goals, gather data from various sources, conduct SWOT analysis, and regularly update your strategy to adapt to market changes and emerging trends.
What are some ways to gather competitive intelligence about a competitor?
Utilize competitive benchmarking, online tools for data gathering, and network with industry professionals to gather insights on competitors' activities and market trends.
