The Real Value of Monitoring the Media about Competitors

 

Businesses monitoring news and social media almost always monitor for mentions of their own company and brand names. Many don’t think to monitor competitors. As a result, they may be missing valuable competitive intelligence.  

Monitoring competitors’ social media activity can reveal much competitive intelligence: marketing activities and strategies, consumer reactions to their brand and products, and their marketing successes and shortcomings. Gaining such insights into the competition can help your brand reach strategic marketing and product-development decisions.

Even when companies monitor for competitors, the market intelligence it produces often remains in the public relations department and is not shared with marketing, sales or other departments that could benefit from the information. As a result, many businesses fail to capitalize on the valuable competitive insights provided by media monitoring.

Another reason to monitor competitors: Your competitors are probably monitoring your company and brands.

Analyzing a competitor’s social media marketing strategy can be especially beneficial for brands that are just starting or planning to ramp up their social media presence. Competitive monitoring can measure growth of competitors’ social media followers, trends in engagement levels, product messaging, and many other metrics. The market intelligence helps the company set its own social media marketing goals and plan social marketing strategies.

Although the most valuable data aggregates over time to reveal important trends, it’s also possible to find a prized “needle in the haystack” of market intelligence right at the get-go. Most all media monitoring services have examples of “eureka moments” where clients uncovered a vital piece of market intelligence through media monitoring. That information’s value increases algorithmically when shared across departments.

Many companies make the mistake of only analyzing the data and pretty charts produced by media monitoring services. While aggregated data and trends certainly help in assessing competitors, media monitoring insights based on content are usually more valuable than the data. The content, not the data, better identifies the strengths, weaknesses and key issues of competitors. Assigning knowledgeable staff – emphasize knowledgeable — to review the content of media clips is the only way to assure optimal competitive intelligence analysis.

Here are some of the major insights to be gained by analyzing the content in news clips and social media posts about competitors.

Product Issues

Social media has given consumers a voice; many consumers use that new capability to point out the shortcomings of specific products. The content of media monitoring results identifies the problem; the data reveals the extent of the problem. Together, that information often identifies the competitors’ Achilles heels. It can also provide a roadmap for marketing initiatives and messages.

Favorability Rankings

Analyzing your competitor’s positive mentions versus favorable mentions of your own brand helps you determine consumer acceptance and uptake of marketing messages. If a competitor’s positive mentions rise significantly, beyond a short-term blip, while your positive mentions slide, the competitor may be winning the marketing battle.  Even more important is identifying the reason for positive mentions – and that information is in the content, not the data.

Customer Service Issues

Social media has emerged as a primary channel for customer service. Complaints on social media offer opportunities to rectify customer issues – and to demonstrate in public to all customers the company’s commitment to customer service. Using media monitoring to “keep score” of customer service complaints provides clear indications of how the company performs compared with competitors. Added note: the data have little value unless shared with the customer service department.

Social Media Activity

Monitoring competitors can reveal their social media activity and performance. That includes the number of posts, volume of online engagements, and number of online responses. Sudden increases in social media activity about a competitor may point to a new product introduction or new product features causing major satisfaction or dissatisfaction. That’s worth following.

A competitor’s social media activity can create customer relationship openings for your own brand. The sales department can watch for media mentions of a competitor’s name along with a negative sentiment keyword, and then have the assigned account representative reach out to the customer.

Marketers can track the type of content about competitors’ that followers interact with most, and compare that content against their own. Mirroring competitor’s content that consumers react to favorably can boost your own brand.  Keep in mind: The mission is to learn what customers are saying, not merely to collect massive amounts of data.  Listening alone, however, doesn’t help. Action must follow based on the insights gained from media monitoring.

Trends in followers

Growth rate of your competitors’ social media followers and fans, a common social media metric, can be misleading. The number of “followers” does not necessarily indicate robust engagement or a successful marketing strategy. Still, it’s important to watch for significant increases or drops in number of followers to identify marketing opportunities or the need to take corrective action.

Bottom Line: Monitoring and measuring your competitors’ social media activity supplies windfalls of information. Both the content and the trending data offer important insights to help make strategic business decisions. To harvest the insights from content, it’s essential to assign knowledgeable staff (or a media monitoring service) to review and evaluate news clips and social media posts for competitive intelligence.