Q2 • 2023


13


that will deliver the highest return on investment to ensure their brand maintains— and surpasses—its marketplace position.” In fact, some would argue that you


should even compare your business with those outside of your market. “There’s so much you can learn when looking outside your competitive set. Inside the competitive set, there’s much of the same,” says Nicole Bond, Associate Director of Marketing Strategy at marketing intelligence firm Comperemedia. If you’re, say,


an insurance firm that markets


largely via direct mail, your mailpieces are competing for attention not just wit mailings from other insurance comp but also with supermarket flyers, catalogs, nonprofit letters, and else they share space with And just as your aud


are receiving your dire receiving hundreds of oth messages daily from multipl channels. Ideally, then, you sho competitive research and analysis multiple channels, not just the one you the most resources on or the one seeing the greatest decline in performance. “We tend to see brands testing on less expensive channels. Connecting those dots can give you the big picture [regarding competitors’ overall strategies],” Bond says. Beyond helping you hone your strategies


and tactics, competitive analysis can reveal new markets. Bond cites a client in the financial sector that was losing share of voice in the student market. “They knew it was going to a competitor, but not why,” she says. “So, we stacked up products and compared. What became very clear was that our client was speaking to students as if they were 10 years down the road—talking about credit scores, buying a car—whereas their competitor was


focused on right now and things like how they could earn cash back now.” The client could have used that information


simply to overhaul their messaging so that they could better compete in the student market. But they decided to dig even deeper and see what age groups were being targeted by other competitors in the financial sector. “We were able to identify this white space of unmet customer needs of people over 55,” Bond recalls. “The client focused on them with discounts, creative, etc. and were able to get out ahead of their


Ideally, then, you should conduct competitive research and analysis among multiple channels, not just the one you spend the most resources on or the one seeing the greatest decline in performance.


Diving into Direct Mail Decades before the internet and AI, direct marketers maintained libraries of print catalogs, sales letters, and other direct mail pieces to keep an eye on the competition and seek inspiration. Who’s Mailing What! (WhosMailingWhat.com), an online database of direct mail, began as one such repository in 1978, but it now uses data technology to facilitate speedy comparisons and analyses of mailings going back several decades in nearly two dozen business categories.


“By comparing your competitors’ previous campaigns with their current solutions, you can identify what didn’t work for them before so that you don’t repeat their mistakes,” says Who’s Mailing What! (WMW) President Jill Corcoran. Similarly, by identifying mailpieces that competitors have used repeatedly—controls and


grand controls, in WMW parlance—“you will save time and money by learning


from their experience and replicating


successful mailings for your own brand.” First, though, you need to identify your


competitors. Regardless of the medium— direct mail, social media, or over-the-top content (audio, video, and other media content delivered over the internet)—a common mistake is “relying on perceptions of who you’re competing with for consumer or donor attention,” Corcoran says. “Oftentimes companies have their eye on their top or primary competitors. Without doing a regular market analysis, they can miss emerging companies that are creating impact or presence within their space.” When analyzing competitors’ direct mail,


Corcoran advises homing in on the following:  Copy — This includes both word count and tone. The latter can help you gauge the audiences your competitors are reaching out to. It’s not necessarily about “Is it working?” but also about “Why are they using this messaging? What does that tell us about their strategy?”


 Formats — Have some competitors switched from larger self-mailer catalogs to smaller physical sizes or formats with fewer pages? Perhaps your research has uncovered that your industry is using fewer postcards and more personalized, folded self-mailers. Keeping an eye on such changes can suggest which formats are trending and whether


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20