Working on the Online Competition Review

In my last blog I had mentioned that one of the important parts of the planning for the Digital Campaign is doing a complete competition review. I am now mentioning it in details on what are things we should definitely look into to get the complete insights for the brand.

We need to identify first who are really the competition for that particular brand and believe it can be a little different as far asthe competition in the offline space. For Example: If I am planning a campaign for Educational Institute and I see on the Offline space he offers the same set of services and is also present in the same vicinity. But, in the online space you may find that he has no presence at all and there is another Institute which is a little far from the vicinity but heavily present on the online space. He is actively using all the Active Online mediums to get in touch with his prospective customers online. You might have to build your strategy then according to his activities.

So first and foremost, try to do some offline search through "Just Dial" or some local search engines in your area to identify the competition in your area.

Once you have identified the competition who offers similar set of products or services work on them one by one. The first step would then be to list down all the mediums you need to look for the competitor. Here are some of the mediums you should definitely consider:

1. Talk to some of the publishers and ask for the competition's details on the Ad Spends and the properties used. You can also ask them to share some case studies which will give you the insight on the results and the objectives of there campaign.

2. Next is to find the website and look for the strengths and weaknesses as compared to your brand. The strengths are something you need to work on with your brand and weaknesses are good to know just of the information sake.

3. Search for the Videos / Virals / TV Commercials on You Tube. You will get a lot of idea on the positioning as well as the product specific details.

4. Go to Blog Search Engines like Technorati / Blog Pulse which will give you the insight about what people are talking about the competition and what are there issues and concerns. Also it will give you the idea on the brand popularity.

5. Look out for the brand on Social Networking Sites like MySpace, Orkut and Facebook. Search if there are any groups, communities which are present and how popular they are.

6. You can also look into some of the specific review sites like Mouthshut, Yahoo Answers etc. which might also give you the reviews good or bad about the competition brand and product.

Once you have done the detailed research in these areas you can definitely create a synopsis of all your finding and put a perspective in your strategy for your brand.

Insights on Digital Campaign

Digital Marketing as we call it requires lots of things to be worked upon when doing a campaign for a brand. These are some of the points which one should definitely look into while working for a campaign in Digital Marketing. Now I am not talking about the 4 P's or the 4 C's as people talk about it most of the time. It is something much more than that. I think it is definitely worth mentioning as it gives you a complete insight on what you are doing with the brand.

1. The First Step is PLANNING.

Now there are various aspects which goes into planning a campaign. You need to understand the brief as there can be different objectives in planning as well once you have a specific goal you need to achieve through Digital Marketing.

• Start by always laying down the OBJECTIVES of the campaign. Example: If there is a campaign for Automobile getting launched then your objective could be - "Create the buzz and generate more visibility of the product". If there is a campaign where you need to sell like a Real Estate property then the objective could be - "Get leads and generate interest / intent for the user to purchase the property". Always make sure that your objective will lead you to the overall strategy of your campaign.

• This is the most common but somewhat difficult in the online space as the availability of data is a little difficult. This part is understanding the TARGET GROUP (TG) / TARGET AUDIENCE (TA). I am highlighting the fact of it being difficult in the online space as you have more mediums where your TA is present than any other medium you are catering to. For Example: In case you want to do a TV AD you already know that either your audience is consuming it while at home or at the friend's house. In case of the online space the audience is either consuming it at home, office, cyber cafe or may be through a mobile. There might be some exceptions but we cannot generalize them. With my experience of doing campaigns for lots of TA like Women or Kids we sometime need to rely a lot on the publishers data or through some assumptions which might be correct or wrong. But still outlining there behaviour as well as there consumption patterns help us a lot in establishing our strategy.

• The next phase of planning is COMPETITION RESEARCH. This is also a bit tricky but definitely much more accurate and visible than the TG / TA part. Specifically on the online space with Social Media being helping a lot. How to go into in detail is something I will take up some other time.

• Once we have done all these activities the next step should be to summarize all this research and put them in perspective with the brand and the campaign strategy. It's definitely an art but still doing all these in the planning phase will definitely bring the credibility in your over all strategy.

2. The Second Step is to map the Buying as well the consumption pattern for the Target Group you have identified. This is the toughest and most helpful part in working on the complete digital campaign.

Establish what are the different media activities they are most likely to consume and then identify the pattern of their engagement with these mediums in each of the customer engaging and buying cycles.

• The first is the Intention to Purchase. Example: Here mostly the user is looking to research for the product he/she intends to buy or know more about. Example: Few of the media which we can choose is "Search Engine Marketing".


• The second is the user looking for some promotional / offers for the product: Example: The user might want to purchase the product but looking for some offers which he can benefit from. Display Advertising as well as the offers mentioned on the website are the most common mediums he may be targeted with.


• Purchase Online / Offline: The reason I am also mentioning Offline is typically because for some of the products it is totally not feasible to purchase online. Automobiles, Real Estate are some typical examples. In the online case e-Commerce enabled site really helps but in the offline you can empower your site with enabling the user to fill a simple form or call your call center for the nearest dealer / reseller in the area.


• Opportunity to Service and Create Loyalty: Your customers are your brand ambassadors and it is now very easy to engage them through the power of social media as well as through CRM activities. Email Marketing as well as making them interact with your service teams through blogs and discussion forums helps a lot.

After establishing the media as well as the behaviour consumption pattern we now go into the detailing of the mediums and what activities we will do in each of the specific mediums.

In case the strategy has the new Website to be built then we should try to showcase some of the layouts. In case it is a Search Campaign then we should go for a complete Keyword as well as the Search competition analysis. For the Display Ad there should be a detailed media plan with some benchmarking in terms of number of visitors / leads we expect from it. The Social Media strategy should lay out the engagement as well as the moderation details in order to maintain the control.

4. And the Last not the least is Measurement and Optimization: You should set up the goals and always benchmark your results based on that. In case you need to go detail refer to the link here http://www.kaushik.net/avinash

Hope this blog helped you in getting some insight on going and creating a Digital Campaign. Will look forward for your comments and suggestions on the same.