If your company has a website and extensive internet presence, chances are your business rivals are observing your every move and gathering competitive intelligence. 

Industrial espionage is a fact of life in business.

Whether it’s looking at a competitor’s price sheet in one of their outlets or website, using a mystery shopper to test buy a product or service online, making an email inquiry or even liking a Facebook page, companies all over are gathering competitive intelligence in order to survive.

Expanding and enhancing your business`s online presence is a double-edged sword: you spy on them, they spy on you too. The million dollar question is:

Who is doing a better job of gathering and denying information to the competition, you or your rivals?

Why You Need To Protect Your Information

As you create and distribute more information about your company, its products and services all over the web, your competitors get to easily pick up and monitor your activities online.

Just like in real life warfare, if your competitors know much about your activities and plans, they can try to make competing offers and other counter moves to neutralize, at the very least, the effects of your offline & online campaigns.

Imagine all the hard work, time and money wasted to develop a product and campaign only to get mediocre results because your competitor was able to outsmart and outmaneuver you in the market place.

Business Counter Intelligence strategy

Given these challenges what strategies should companies adopt so they can minimize giving vital business information to competitors but still give prospects everything they need to make a purchase decision?

Before considering any business counterintelligence strategy, there should be a top to bottom awareness of the need to protect vital company information that’s openly available as well as confidential ones.

Awareness includes identifying which information is to be protected & which ones can be released to the public.

Management and distribution of content is another critical area that needs to be addressed. This includes choosing which information can be posted in the company’s website as well as in various Social Media assets and which ones are considered for internal consumption.

You may also want to conduct a review of your website and see if its properly  optimised as well as checking the content itself to see if it’s sharing unnecessary company, product & service information that creates little or no value to your clients.

And then, there is the creation of the content itself.

What medium should you chose to deliver your message?

What about filters to ensure your video, article or web page don’t give away any of your secrets and competitive advantages to your competitors without coming across as too ‘distant’ and stiff to your clients and customers at the same time?

Those are some of the challenges you will be encountering as your business gets more and more immersed with the online ecosystem.

Fortunately, just like everything else, these bumpy roads can be overcome with the right tools, information and mindset.

It also pays to have experts who have the experience & expertise to help you with these types of business development issues at your side.

How about you? Are you worried about being spied upon by your rivals?

How do you feel about competitors gathering information on your business?

Please share with us your experiences and thoughts by posting a comment.