All Along The Digital Watchtower

By Author: Lee Traupel
Total Articles: 8
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Its no secret interactive (web-based) marketing has arrived. The IDC
research group just released a study in late June of this year
indicating 99.9% of a survey of executives and entrepreneurs said
they currently conduct online marketing activities, or, are in the
process of implementing or initiating some form of interactive
marketing. The problem or challenge that many of these executives
(marketing, management, etc.) and entrepreneurs (marketing,
principals, etc.) have is how do they measure their online presence?

Most interactive marketing types, whether they are agencies working
for/with clients or in house personnel typically just measure a
company's return for a specific process or period of time. Many
never
think to actively monitor what a company's competitive position
is
vis-à-vis Search Engines or Directory Listings, the number of
links
they have pointing back to their web site or what type of "net
buzz"
is being generated (positive or negative) via the Usenet/Newsgroup
community - in short, its digital ...
... warfare and the fog of war is
obscuring the battle lines.

Entrepreneurial competitive intelligence sounds like a real mouthful,
or much more than it is. Basically its using off the shelf tools
(software or ASP services) to understand what your page 1-3 keyword
rankings are versus your direct competitors via the top tier Search
Engines (Google, AltaVista, Excite, AOL/NetFind, HotBot, Netscape,
Magellan, Lycos, Web Crawler) and how and where your company is
listed via the blue chip Directories (Yahoo, LookSmart, Open
Directory), what's your link popularity (number of links pointing
back to a web site) and/or how many Usenet/Newsgroup posts are being
made about your company, products or services? Usenet/Newsgroups can
in fact be an extremely valuable resource for unearthing competitive
intelligence about a direct competitor's products or services
-
"Usenet/Newsgroup mining" certainly works well for United,
IBM,
Microsoft and many other corporations.

These digital touch points fill in competitive intelligence gaps and
you don't need to have an advertising budget in the 4-6-figure
range
complemented with a large staff to consistently monitor your
competitive position. You can do much of this by hand, and or use
free tools (small plug: we offer a free and low cost Competitive
Intelligence service via our web site) offered by many of the search
engines or portals.

But, be forewarned, if you don't use some technology to leverage
yourself it can take a great deal of time to assess these metrics,
but well worth the effort. In the end you will know what your online
market presence is - providing you with actionable business
intelligence that enables you to understand how to maximize your
marketing dollars by knowing where you need more of an online
presence. And, most importantly as Sun Tzu once said, "if you
know
your enemy and yourself, you will win every battle." Sound advice
from a master tactician who had no idea his pearls of wisdom would be
shaping the digital age!


About the Author Lee Traupel has 20 plus years of marketing experience He is the co-
founder of a Northern California and Brussels Belgium based,
privately held, Marketing Services and Software Company, Intelective
Communications, Inc. http://www.intelective.com Intelective focuses
exclusively on providing services to small to medium sized companies
that need strategic and tactical marketing services. He can be
reached at Lee@intelective.com