In a highly competitive industry like communications, where the lines between services offered by agencies are increasingly blurred and clients are becoming more strategic in choosing partners, competitive intelligence has become a key tool for business development teams.

It’s not just about tracking trends or drawing inspiration from competitors: it helps agencies position their offers more effectively, anticipate market needs, identify growth opportunities, and craft more compelling value propositions.

What is competitive intelligence?

Competitive intelligence, from a business development perspective, means analyzing the activities of other agencies or companies in the field: new mandates, target clients, service offerings, partnerships, won RFPs, public speaking engagements, etc.

Why is it crucial for a Biv Dez team?

1. To better calibrate your own offers

Understanding the market allows for a constant reassessment of your packages, sales language, and pitch priorities. It helps better align with client expectations.

2. To identify untapped niches

Attentive monitoring helps spot underserved or poorly served client segments, emerging industries, or underused strategic angles. These become entry points for differentiation.

3. To anticipate competitor moves

By tracking public appearances, new hires, or major projects at other agencies, you can infer their strategic direction and adjust your own accordingly.

4. To fuel prospecting efforts

Knowing which clients or sectors are being served by others allows you to better target your outreach, by offering a different approach, responding to a change in supplier, or positioning yourself as a more tailored alternative.

How to conduct effective competitive intelligence?

With the right tools

• → Google Alerts, Mentions, Social Media: to track announcements, hires, nominations, new businesses

 

 

• → Websites, press releases, newsletters, RFP platforms: to spot recent or recurring mandates, business growth, change in positioning of certain industries

 

 

• → Project management platforms or good old Excel sheets: to structure a database of competing agencies and monitor their evolution

 

 

Active and Shared Competitive Intelligence

 

 

Competitive intelligence shouldn’t be a passive activity. It fuels our outreach strategies, proposals, internal discussions, and brainstorms. It can be shared through a dedicated internal channel each week or summarized monthly to help guide decision-making.

 

 

More importantly, it strengthens our ability to better serve both current and future clients. It helps us understand why some organizations have been disappointed by past agency collaborations, often due to a lack of engagement stemming from budgets that were too limited for the agencies to truly invest the time and resources needed for success. These insights push us to continuously improve the way we structure projects, communicate, and ensure that each mandate receives the attention it deserves.

 

 

Competitive intelligence is a precision tool that powers business development. It sharpens our positioning, informs our practices, and increases our chances of turning opportunities into strong, lasting partnerships.

 

 

At tök communications, it’s an essential part of our growth strategy, always in service of our clients.

 

 

Jeremie Romain

Account Director