Its no secret ... ... ... has arrived. The IDC research group just released a study in late June of this year ... 99.9% of a survey of ... and ... said th 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. Manynever think to actively monitor what a company's competitive positionis vis-à-vis Search Engines or Directory Listings, the number oflinks they have pointing back to their web site or what type of "netbuzz" 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-figurerange 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 youknow 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! Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com