Media scanning and competitor analysis © Jeff Miles

It is important to pay close attention to your competitors' marketing campaigns. If you discover a change, you will then need to thoroughly re-evaluate their business and how their change may affect your business.

This change in your competitors' marketing campaign could indicate a management change, a new strategy, a change in their target market, increased pressure from competitors, etc.

Your competitors will go to almost any lengths to guard their marketing strategies. But sooner or later they will be made public because they run ads, re-design their web sites, or make presentations and sales pitches.

You need to be tuned in to the signals your competitors are sending through these strategies.

It's crucial that you constantly monitor your competitors' marketing strategy and ad campaigns for two reasons.

1. First and foremost, this is the only way you can determine how they are promoting their products and positioning their company in the marketplaces. This is how you will find out whether or not your own positioning strategy is unique.

2. Also of great importance is that a new marketing message is a signal that something might be changing in your competitor's camp.

Once you have determined how your competitors are positioned, you need to remain vigilant. Continue to monitor on a regular basis their marketing campaigns, Web site content and press releases. If you detect a change, it signals the need to thoroughly reevaluate the competitor and how the change affects your marketing and sales.

It could be a clue that will help you compete more effectively, and stay one step ahead of the competition.

When performing a competitor analysis, media scanning can sometimes be an important element.

Media scanning is the study of competitors' ads. You can learn a lot about your market by scanning competitors' ads. Ads reveal much about a business’s marketing strategy and their target market.

Changes in ads can reveal the following:

* New products.

* Changes in ad strategies.

* New production techniques.

* New branding strategies.

* New positioning strategies.

* New pricing strategies (such as product bundling, price skimming, penetration, etc.).

* New distribution strategies (such as new distribution partners, more extensive distribution, change in geographical area, etc.).

 

A competitor's media program also reveals:

• Budget distribution and line items
• Segmentation and targeting strategy
• Focus and selectivity.

From a tactical perspective, it can also be used to help a manager implement his/her own media plan.

By keeping an eye on your competitors' presence in the media this will help you time your own media campaigns so they don't occur at the same time as your competitors’.

Other things worth keeping an eye on are trade shows, patents, customers that you have in common, annual reports, and trade associations.

 

While you're at it, you should also scan your competitors' websites. This is as important as studying their ads.

First take a look at their source code. What keywords do they use in their meta tags? You should also look at who is linking to their sites.

You can create a Google Alert or other similar alert for each of your competitors’ names and the names of their products. Google Alerts is a powerful tool and it's free.

It should also go without saying that you should create Google Alerts for your own name, business name and product names too.

You can then use the information from the alerts to adjust your Pay Per Click or other ad campaigns.

Or if you have affiliate marketing partners you can notify them of any changes in your competitors so you can team together to make adjustments in your strategy.

You can also find data on the search engine optimization histories of your competitors by looking at their Alexa rankings, link lists or blog rolls, Google page rank, etc.

Of course, even if you gather all this data, you need to know how to respond to whatever strategic moves your competitors make. In some cases, you might want to remain quiet and respond discreetly so that you don't tip your hand to your competitors and let them know what you know about them.

Also take a look at what your competitors' customers are saying about them. Look at blog comments, comments on social bookmarking sites, blog posts about your competitors, reviews on Amazon and other review sites. Knowing what customers think about your competition is just as important as knowing what your own customers think about your business.

Don’t forget to search your industry for new potential competitors every month or so. Web-based IPOs happen frequently and it's hard to keep up with them. Putting together a list of competitors and a comprehensive description of their motives could take weeks.

Keeping up with everything on the internet can be overwhelming. Use a site like RentACoder.com or Elance.com and outsource this work if you can.

You need to synthesize your competitor reports and descriptions into information you can actually use. A consultant can do this work for you as well.

This will give you the ability to take action to counter your competitors’ moves into your turf rather than just passively watching their strategies from the sidelines and failing to take action.

Above all, remember that competitors can be useful sources of information and can be your allies. You can't be a friend to everyone, of course, and you should not be naive.

Keeping a keen eye on your competition's ads and websites can yield rewarding insights into your market and target audience. Of course, while it’s tempting to view any local merchant in your industry as an obvious rival, remember that competitors can also prove to be helpful sources of information and even support in difficult economic times.

While the web may seem like the Wild West it really isn't an "every man for himself" environment. Befriending your competition can neutralize rivalries and help both parties involved divide up the customer markets more efficiently.

Who knows, maybe even some joint ventures will evolve from this.  Keep this in mind as you scan and study your competitors' actions.

What do you think?