Everyone Hates Marketers | No-BS Marketing & Brand Strategy Podcast · Louis Grenier | Marketing & Branding

Know Your "Enemies" — A Practical Guide to Competitive Intelligence

·53 min·3 clips

Buyers compare you to 3-4 competitors whether you like it or not—so shape the narrative first.

The host opens with a strange experiment: a new YouTube channel and a free first episode. It runs about thirty minutes. The point is to make something that feels entertaining and practical at once. He rents an old 17th-century cottage in rural Ireland. Then he brings in three freelancers who are struggling to stand the fuck out. They are copywriter Rob, e-commerce designer Laura, and book coach Vicky. He keeps them there for two days. The goal is straightforward: fix the things that are holding their businesses back. That means tearing into their offers, messaging, branding, and the rest of the setup. The whole thing plays more like a live teardown than a polished lecture. He tells people to watch it with coffee, breakfast, lunch, the bus, or the gym. He also asks for the usual support if they like it: likes, comments, shares, and word of mouth. The conversation then moves into competitive intelligence. The first practical question is what to do if you do not have a sales team. For local businesses, the answer is to Google the category plus "near me." He says to pay attention to competitors, especially pricing. The discussion then shifts to B2B SaaS and the lean version of building a competitive-intel program from scratch. The guest says the first move is to talk to a lot of people and learn how they see the category moving over the next three to five years. Not everyone will have a strong opinion, but leaders like the VP of Product, VP of Sales, the founder, and the CEO usually will. The host keeps pushing for the best opening question, and the guest lands on a blunt one: ask who they think the biggest competitors are.

As heard by us

Practical competitive intelligence advice that keeps strategy tied to real business questions.

This episode treats competitive intelligence as a practical business skill rather than a theory exercise. It follows a new YouTube channel and uses the setup of three freelancers in a rural Ireland cottage to examine offers, messaging, branding, and the rest, which gives the…

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Why you'd press play

You need a lean way to figure out who your real competitors are before you keep guessing.

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