Why you should study competitors advertising activities?

Advertisers' decisions often revolve around their own goals, their own key performance indicators (KPIs) and, of course, their own advertising budget. This focus is important and correct, but why should you capture and analyze your competitors' advertising activities? In the following, you will learn 5 reasons why we, the MMT Business Intelligence Team, ideally include competition in our analyses.

Table of content

1. Locating your brand in the advertising environment

2. What benefits the entire industry

3. What and who works against your success

4. How you can learn from others

5. Efficiencies in purchasing

6. Summary

1. Locating your brand in the advertising environment

Year after year it’s always the same scheme, the same flight, the same genres - "our advertising already works.” Often, one market participant is underestimated until the whole industry is shaken. Share of voice (SoV) analyses are an important indicator that show how present your campaign is in a competitive environment. These analyses support media strategists in making decisions regarding flight and channel combinations as well as when it comes to perception in very competitive market situations.

Competitive analyses are the foundation of any corporate strategy. But many times your market situation may be different from the advertising market. The category leader usually has to spend more in order to stay ahead of the competition. On the other hand, the best known and most widespread brands usually benefit more than most from the overall growth of the industry. However, it is even more important to be able to use the advertising market as a competitive advantage if demand remains the same or even declines. For this, you need to know where your own brand stands.

3. What and who works against your success

Each euro used for advertising is unfortunately not always equal to the other euros being spent. You might even consider whether the money might not be better off elsewhere. It is also important to consider whether proximity to competing products is favorably impacting your goals. No matter which insights you gain, information about your advertising competition can release potential that is not to be underestimated.

4. How you can learn from others

Sometimes the question arises as to whether you should extend your advertising activities to other genres, especially if there are few options for increasing performance in your current genres. In order to be able to make forecasts as to which genre is more promising, we also analyze other factors such as our competitors. This can give us insight into the potential performance of a new advertising genre even though we do not have any historical data on our own brand.

5. Efficiencies in purchasing

Including knowledge about your competitors in your analyses is advantageous when it comes to budget allocation. It also makes it possible to uncover "hidden" costs or discounts. Special promotions in non-relevant months or focus placed too strongly on your brand’s seasonal sales peaks can put a great deal of pressure on budget efficiency. When optimizing campaigns, we take a very close look at these periods of time. You can get even more out of your current advertising budget by investing in optimal periods or media types.

Summary

Collect as much advertising data about your competitors as possible. This includes performance data in your advertising target group, gross spending, placement, tracking data, brand funnel KPIs and general metadata about advertising activities in your market. If you haven't already, you should start today.