4 price monitoring tools to keep an eye on prices and competitors
In a hyper-competitive environment, e-tailers, brands and B2B service providers need to constantly monitor the market to adjust their pricing policies and stay competitive. One of the best ways to do this is to set up a business intelligence platform that includes competitive intelligence , sales intelligence and pricing intelligence. Already mentioned in our marketing intelligence comparisons, these different types of intelligence are essential to stay one step ahead. Focus on price monitoring and the best monitoring software and tools on the Internet.
SUMMARY
What is price intelligence?
Price watch is a marketing technique and business intelligence tool that enables you to monitor prices in a given market on a regular or permanent basis. It can be used to monitor the prices charged by competitors, but can also be used in e-commerce to monitor the prices charged by distributors on its products.
By setting up a price watch unit, you can keep yourself better informed and constantly align your prices, so as to be referenced at the top of price comparison sites, and thus increase your sales.
Traditionally, price monitoring has been carried out through point-of-sale price surveys . Today, however, it can be carried out automatically via a technology watch that extracts price data from the Internet. It can be based on Google, Hootsuite or Netvibes alerts.
Competitive pricing intelligence, a step ahead of the competition
Competitive marketing intelligence consists of researching, analyzing and exploiting data relating to your company, its competitors and its sector of activity, in order to increase your productivity and competitiveness. Competitive intelligence can serve several purposes:
- make more effective decisions ;
- monitor the market and potentially public opinion;
- assess the competition and the company's brand image (e-reputation);
- improve current company operations and procedures;
- anticipate competitors' actions to better prepare its own strategy.
As part of this competitive intelligence, price monitoring makes it possible to combine marketing strategy and business intelligence (as KB Crawl does, for example) to better understand competitive pressure and define more relevant pricing strategies.
Why and how should I use competitive intelligence and pricing information? In digital marketing, for example, price intelligence enables you to gain greater control over your competitive environment and activate new growth levers. If you run an e-commerce business, you can use this monitoring of your competitors' selling prices to trigger impulse purchases of your products.
Price monitoring as part of a sales strategy: an important conversion lever
Sales intelligence, also known as marketing intelligence, is a more global term for the collection, processing and dissemination of product and market information. In particular, it enables us to anticipate new markets or prepare new product launches. Market intelligence is essentially based on :
- market research (quantitative or qualitative) ;
- observation of distributors, subcontractors, suppliers, customers, competitors, influencers, etc. ;
- analysis of data from search engines and natural referencing tools (most sought-after keywords) to understand consumer expectations.
As part of this global sales strategy, price intelligence acts as an aggregator, enabling you to differentiate yourself from your targets in a collaborative way. Whether you charge a lower or higher price than your competitors, you can better profile your competitive advantage: lower price, better service, and so on.
As part of a forward-looking e-mailing campaign or in content marketing, for example, price monitoring with a commercial objective helps you find customers and optimize your loyalty rate by positioning your offer correctly. In addition to price monitoring, this also includes monitoring commercial practices in the sector and calls for tender.
E-commerce price monitoring: choose the right monitoring software!
Automating your e-commerce price monitoring enables you to stay reactive, save time and therefore money! Whether you opt for free or paid price monitoring software, there are a number of business intelligence tools on the market offering practical features for faster, more relevant information processing. Here are four of the best web intelligence solutions currently available:
- PriceComparator (BSWEB): a Saas webmarketing intelligence solution to optimize strategic decisions for e-tailers, brands and manufacturers. This collaborative monitoring software automatically extracts daily prices, promotions and stocks from competitor sites and marketplaces, as well as from your distributor network, to help you control your image. As a bonus, it also monitors e-mailing offers and social networking strategies.
- Price Observatory : a price monitoring and aggregation tool for real-time monitoring of prices charged on all Internet merchant sites. All monitoring actions are automated, and data is transmitted to the user via the tool's dashboard, a browser extension, email or an API.
- PricingAssistant : a suite of web intelligence solutions enabling e-tailers and brands to optimize their information search, marketing strategy and pricing in relation to their competitors.
- Paarly : a "pricing analytics" type of price monitoring software for analyzing the entire market. This pricing intelligence tool automates information processing to monitor your competitors' prices, stock levels and assortments.
1 of 4
 PriceComparator |  Price Observatory |  Pricing Assistant |  Paarly |
|---|---|---|---|
| For companies with more than 1 employees | For all companies | For all companies | For one-employee companies |
| See software | See software | See software | See software |
| Learn more about PriceComparator | Learn more about Price Observatory | Learn more about Pricing Assistant | Learn more about Paarly |
PriceComparator.pro
- ✔ Product matching
- ✔ Alert on competitors' special offers
- ✔ Multiple currency management
- ✔ Social network monitoring
- ✔ API integration
PriceComparator
Price Observatory
- ✔ Product matching
- ✔ Alert on competitors' special offers
- ✔ Multiple currency management
- ✔ API integration
Price Observatory
PricingAssistant
- ✔ Product matching
- ✔ Alert on competitor special offers
- ✔ Multiple currency management
- ✔ Automated bidding on Adwords
- ✔ Automatic repricing
- ✔ API integration
Pricing Assistant
Paarly
- ✔ Product matching
- ✔ Alert on competitors' special offers
- ✔ Multi-currency management
- ✔ Automatic repricing
- ✔ API integration
Paarly
How to set up a price watch?
In concrete terms, price, marketing and strategic intelligence means choosing the right monitoring tools and implementing a real strategy. Whether you're an e-commerce player, a retailer, a brand or a service provider, whatever type of monitoring you're considering, think about your competitive edge. When it comes to price monitoring, business intelligence and digital strategy tools give you a global view of the prices charged in your market, so you can stay competitive. They also provide you with good examples of competitive intelligence reports. Make the most of them!
Article translated from French