Monitoring the competition is more than simply keeping tabs on what your competitors are offering. Running brand tracking that compares your brand to the key movers and shakers in your market is not only good business but also a matter of keeping up with competitors. Here’s why.
Related content: How to track, measure and improve your brand health
1. Make more informed decisions
With regular brand tracking, you can monitor your brand’s performance over time, giving you the ability to continuously improve and fine tune your brand. By adjusting your creative, messaging, and strategy, and then measuring the results, you can keep building your brand building rather than guessing which creative, messaging or strategy was more effective. More important still, this level of insight can inform important make-or-break decisions for your brand—from the strategy you use to grow to how you strategically invest your budget or capitalise on opportunities in the market.
2. To remain competitive
Understanding what your competitors are offering and to whom will help you ensure that your business remains an attractive option to consumers. Are your offers in line with the rest of the market? Are you charging more or less than a rival? Is your quality of product/service equal, less than or greater than other businesses? Knowing the answers to these questions are critical for keeping up with your competition.
Just as important is to also know who your competitors are appealing to, how that may overlap with your own target customer(s) and how that affects your business. Are customers churning in favour of your competitor—or vice versa? Has a rival business’ new product captured a large part of your younger customers? By keeping track of these on an ongoing basis, you can respond and adapt to changes in the market before your rivals.
Read more: Understanding your audience
3. Identify white space opportunities
Another benefit of including competitors in your brand tracking is being able to identify gaps in the market. If you have an in-depth understanding of your market, its customers and the services/products on offer from your competitors and who they are targeting, you may find a particular niche that has not yet been served. You can use this information to aid your product development and potentially as a first step towards researching new growth areas.
4. Better define what makes your brand unique
Similar to unearthing new white space opportunities, competitor analysis and tracking will help you understand where your brand sits in the market and what its points of difference are. Over time you may decide to grow or change those points of difference—and you will be able to track any ripple effect this might have on your competitors and the market overall.
5. Learn from their mistakes—and successes
Whether it’s a poorly executed marketing campaign, a new product flop, or a PR gaff, competitor tracking allows you to see and learn from your competitor’s mistakes. Likewise, competitor tracking also reveals when your competitors are succeeding and, to a degree, how. You can explore these failures and successes to understand why they failed/worked, then apply your learnings to your business.
A healthy brand is a profitable brand. Learn the ins and outs of brand health with our complete guide to tracking, measuring and improving the performance of your brand.
