Keeping Your Enemies Closer: The Importance Of Competitor Analysis

There are many competitive industries out there, and big brands are continually improving, trying to force their way into the market for a bigger slice of the consumer attention and loyalties. The best way to project your brand image in the marketplace is through professional television, radio, video and out-of-home advertising. It’s not always the best idea to dive headlong into the advertising world without a carefully designed strategy, so market research goes a long way to improving your advertising campaign.

Another useful (sometimes considered sly) technique is that of competitor analysis. This involves finding out more about your competitors’ advertising campaign, assessing their adspend, the success of their strategy, their voice, and how much recognition a particular campaign has attracted. Take a look at some of the reasons why competitor analysis is such an important part of developing your own advertising strategy.

What’s Trending?

A trend can be broadly defined as a general tendency, and in the advertising sense, a trend can be measured in both competitors as well as your target market. Finding out more about the advertising trend among your competitors can prevent you from being left behind with regards to new developments, or it may hint toward ways that you can break the mould, and reattract a market segment with some clever, original advertising techniques. Otherwise called ‘share of voice’, is it worth sharing a similar advertising space with your competitor, or going your own unique way?

What’s Being Spent?

As a brand, it is important that you analyse the adspend of your competitors within the market. This will allow you to incrementally raise your adspend in relation to your competitors rather than spend fortunes on television advertising when your strongest competitor is only tentatively dabbling in radio advertising. It helps you save money, and it also assists you to work out an accurate budget.

Region and Time?

Doing a bit of competitor analysis will grant you insight as to where your competitor is targeting customers. Which cities, towns or provinces do they perform better? Furthermore, these trends can be analysed according to demographics such as race, age and culture. Timeslots regarding advertising campaigns by your competitors can also assist you in evaluating your ‘share of voice’ and whether you are targeting unique channels or the same channels as your competitors.

There is no denying the fact that research on any given subject will assist you in conducting business in a particular market. Advertising is no different. By implementing a competitor analysis campaign in relation to your competitors’ advertising strategies, you are better equipped to project your brand in what is an otherwise very noisy and busy marketplace.

For the best advertising competitor analysis in South Africa, don’t hesitate to contact Adcheck today. Hit the link to be taken to our contact us page. Alternatively, take a look at our competitor review services here.