Category & Competitor Intelligence

Week 3
Overview
Competitor and Category Intelligence
• Conducting a market category analysis on digital
• Conducting a competitor analysis on digital

including
• Marketing Segmentation - SWOT Analysis
• Other useful research & data resources

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PART 1 Category Intelligence
• Before embarking on any digital marketing plan, a brand must
understand its customers
• Category intelligence is about the consumer! Not the brand!
• Category Research allow brands to understand consumer
behaviours and perceptions in a given product category:
o Feminine care (beauty, personal hygienes)
o Finance (banking and insurance)
o F&B - Food & Beverages (soft drinks brands, alcohol brands)

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Category Intelligence
• From Research finding using digital tools, markets and
brands will make conclusion that turn into insights

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Using digital tools:
Tailored Information
• Paid tools from Facebook & Google for your specific category (Google
Analytics, Google Ad, Facebook Ad Managers)
• Research agencies: TNS, Nielsen, Cimigo
• Self-Serving platforms: Socialbakers, SEMrush, Rival IQ, SimilarWeb
• Brands and marketers will largely buy or subcribe to advanced research tools:
o Social Media Behaviour: via Social Listening (Hootsuite, Brandwatch)

o Device Behaviour: Mobile/Destop/Tablets (Comscore, Emarketers)

o Content Consumption Behaviour: News, Forums, Industry Thoughts
leadership portals

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Using digital tools
Google & Facebook

• You want to know what consumers are searching for?

o Google tools

• You want to know what consumers are saying?

o Facebook tools

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 Google: What people are searching
• Billions of searches happen TOOLS BY GOOGLE
every day.
o Think with Google
• Understanding what people are
searching for, helps you o Adwords Keyword
understand their intent, and Planner
what’s important to them.
o Google Trends
• It also demonstrates which
brands are top of mind for the (Youtube
keywords consumers search for. Search/Search
Trends)
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 Think with Google
Think with Google is a compilation of Insights, Inspiration and tools for Marketers

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 Think with Google
Macro Trends & Customers Intend : Knowing your consumer's intent means you can
meet them in the moments that matter and deliver helpful content

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 Micro Moments (a concept by google)

• “When someone has a want or need, they turn to their smartphone for
help—whether it's a karate newbie watching an expert do a move on
YouTube or a mom looking for the best deal on a pair of sneakers. When a
need arises, people turn to search and YouTube to look for answers,
discover new things, and make decisions. We call these intent-filled
moments, micro-moments. And they're the best opportunity marketers
have to connect with people at the exact moment they are looking for
something.”

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 Think with Google Example
Google Micro Moments

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 Google Ads Keyword Planner
• With the keyword planner you can find new keyword
ideas for your campaigns that are relevant to your
product service and target customers – it will show you
historical statistics such as search volume data for the
keywords. This makes it a very valuable tool for
category and competitor intelligence.

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 Google Adwords example

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 Exercise 1 – use the keyword planner to find
out about search trends

Google Keyword Planner:

1. Activate your Google account (personal or corporate)
2. Choose your country and language

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 Example of how it works
[Video]

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 Google Trends
• Google trends provides insights in overall search trends
• The site https://trends.google.com.vn/trends is self
explanatory

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 Exercise 2 Google Trends – use this tool to find out more about sport
shoes related searches

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 Example of how it works
[Video]

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 Facebook: What people are saying
• Billions of conversations and interactions are
happening every day on Facebook.
• This is a gold mine to understand the topics, attitudes,
and sentiment consumers have around your brand and
product category.

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 Facebook IQ

• “Unlock the Insights that Matter: Facebook IQ offers

powerful consumer and advertising insights based on 2
billion people”.
• Check Insights to go

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 Facebook Audience Insights

• Demographic
• Audiences
Interest &
Population
• Page likes
• Location/Langua
ge
• Facebook Usage
• Purchases
Activities

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 Facebook Social Search
Manual & free

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 With these tools now, with the data and
information, we can answer

1. Your Consumers - what are their attitudes compared to the regular

populations, where do they go online? why?
2. How to Your Consumers engage with the Category? - what is their
attitude towards the products in your category, why? What do they
search for? why? what don’t they search for? Why not?
3. The Content Your Consumers like? - What kind of content do they
say they want from brands? What are the top examples of content
they have watched in the last 3 months?

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 After doing category review, we can answer

4. Your Consumers Conversation? - what are the topics, conversations,

keywords connected to the brand? Why? How are those conversation
keywords different from the competitor brands? Why?

5. Your Consumers technology - what are the top platform they use? How
do they currently use Mobile Messaging Apps? How is it different from
other users? What is their video consumption behaviour?
6. What Are Your Consumers Influenced by - What social channel? What
Influencers? What portals do they use? Why do you think they use them
and not others? Do they use branded portals and what for?

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 One important note about category
intelligence

• Ask yourself: What’s interesting about these

observations and data report?

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 PART 2 Competitor Intelligence

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 The importance of
Competitor Intelligence

Key reasons for monitoring competitors:

• Understand their offering (and how to differentiate)
• Identify their weaknesses (and how to exploit it)
• Undercut their opportunities (to gain an advantage)

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 Steps to Perform a Competitor Review
1. Define the specific objective and areas you want to focus your
competitive analysis on.
2. Identify the brands and platforms for your competitive analysis
3. Create a SWOT analysis and Map Market Segments
4. Provide an executive summary with key takeaways and
implications

* TIP: Collect the right sample of communication materials for analysis

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 1. Define Objective & Areas of Focus
Some types of competitor audits include:
• Website analysis - Digital tools or brand’s own framework, covering:
Traffic, page visit, time on site/page, bounce rate
• Brand Search Presence (Share of Search) and Social Share of Voice -
Google & Facebook search
• Consumers Experiences on the Branded Digital Assets such as Website,
Applications, Brand Fan Pages
• Brand Positioning – What are the key messages being communicated and
how are consumers responding to it.

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 Example Video – use of the tool Similar Web
Adidas vs Nike

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 2. Identify Brands and Platforms
• What is the market category, and which are the key
brands?
• What platforms are these brands relevant on?
(Website, Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, Forums, etc)
• Platforms can be relevant even without an official brand
presence if consumers are actively discussing them
there.

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 3. Create a SWOT Analysis
STRENGTH OPPORTUNITY

Things that the brand is doing Areas where the brand could
well in. build an advantage in

Things that the brand is doing Areas which could cause the
weak in. brand to face negative issues

WEAKNESS THREAT

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 3. Mapping Market Segments
Quadrant Charts helps map out the key attributes that matter to competitors
within the category, and also helps visualize and compare where each
competitor is in relation to each other.

Some Examples of Attributes for Chart Axes:

Benefits Target Consumer

Functional Emotional Housewives Working Women

Cost-Savings Value-Added Bikers Mechanics

Efficient Image-Enhancing Consumers Businesses

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 4. Executive Summary
• Summarize key observations (the what it is) and key takeaways
(the why it matters) across all competitors you have reviewed.
• Other supporting slides and materials can include:
a. Tables summarizing individual competitor’s campaigns and tactics.

b. More detailed snapshots of the messaging themes that have appeared

across the competitive set.

c. Timelines depicting competitive ads/campaigns as they have appeared,

in order to show new campaign launches and messaging shifts.

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 Other Intelligence Resources

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 Today we discussed
Competitor and Category Intelligence
• Conducting a market category analysis on digital
• Conducting a competitor analysis on digital

including
• Marketing Segmentation - SWOT Analysis
• Other useful research & data resources

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 Reminder
• Don’t forget the ”after class review sheet” and the
attached case study on “boost your run”
• For next class please prepare the readings

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