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A black hat review is a competitive assessment to address who the competition is and their strengths and weaknesses.

The back hat review scores a company and its competition against specific evaluation criteria. The techniques for acquiring and assessing competitive intelligence are many. One of the more common initial methods of evaluation is called SWOT, which stands for:

  • Strengths –The characteristics of the business or project that give it an advantage over others.
  • Weaknesses – The characteristics of the business that place the business or project at a disadvantage relative to others.
  • Opportunities — Elements in the environment that the business or project could exploit to its advantage.
  • Threats — Elements in the environment that could cause trouble for the business or project.

SWOT analysis is intended to specify the objectives of the business venture or project and identify the internal and external factors that are favorable and unfavorable to achieving those objectives.

Users of a SWOT analysis often ask and answer questions to generate meaningful information for each category to make the tool useful and identify their competitive advantage.

In a competitor analysis, marketers build detailed profiles of each competitor in the market, focusing especially on their relative competitive strengths and weaknesses using SWOT analysis. It then goes to the Marketing managers who examine each competitor’s cost structure, sources of profits, resources and competencies, competitive positioning and product differentiation, degree of vertical integration, historical responses to industry developments, and other factors.

Often it becomes necessary to invest in research to collect the data required to perform accurate marketing analysis. Marketers employ a variety of techniques to conduct market research, such as:

  • Observational techniques like ethnographic (on-site) observation
  • Quantitative marketing research such as statistical surveys
  • Experimental techniques such as test markets
  • Qualitative marketing research such as focus groups

There are those who believe that the black hat information gathering process should only include those individuals directly involved in the capture and opportunity intelligence processes, or those who have specific knowledge about the competition.

The best Blackhat outcomes are when you involve people in your company who used to work for the company you are doing the black hat analysis on.

Want to know more about black hat methodology? Tonex offers The Black Hat Workshop, a 2-day course that replicates a potential competitor of your business and helps you take all required steps and actions to determine the possible ways the competitor might beat your bids or proposals and then will help you to neutralize those strategies to stay ahead of your competitors.

Besides Black Hat Training, Tonex offers nearly five dozen other courses in Business Skills.

Additionally, Tonex offers 120 different courses in a dozen categories in Leadership training. For more information, questions, comments, Contact us.

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