Stay Ahead By Monitoring Competitors’ Coupon Strategies

In business, the term “competitor” signals one thing: another company seeking to win over your customers. It’s one of the primary concerns of a manufacturer, especially when a patent is nearing expiration and other firms may begin mimicking your product.

That’s when keeping a close eye on your competitors’ marketing strategy becomes particularly important — and their coupon strategy is often where it shows up first. Competition varies from region to region and industry to industry, but ignoring the way a rival company advertises its products is a significant oversight regardless of your market. Your own coupon strategy needs to be top-notch, and monitoring your competitors’ tactics gives you the advantage of not just matching their promotional approach, but potentially surpassing it. Here are five ways to do it.

1. Identify Your Competition

Before you can outsmart the competition, you need a clear idea of who they are. There will be some obvious opponents, but you may find competitors you weren’t aware of before.

• Define your niche. You might sell the same products as a big-box retailer, but that doesn’t put them in your niche. Assess what you sell, your company goals, and how you market your products, then compare that to companies doing the same — those are your most direct competitors.
• Identify target customers. Your competitors share your target customers. Analyze data about their shopping habits, browsing history, and past coupon redemption to determine where else they shop for the products you sell.
• Ask your customers. Incentivize customers to take a survey about the other places they shop for your products — most are willing to share if a coupon or discount is involved.
• Define indirect competitors. Major department and chain stores that carry your products may not be direct competition, but knowing who they are helps you develop a plan to bring customers to you instead.

2. Search Online

Unless your company provides products or services that can’t be shipped, your biggest competition will likely be found on the internet — including competitors who ship directly to a customer’s door. Start with a simple search to get a general sense of the coupons, discounts, and promotions your competition is running, then check their blogs, websites, and social channels to see what they’re currently offering.

3. Tap Into Social Networks

Social media is one of the most common ways companies share coupons, discounts, and promotions, and it offers a direct window into what other companies are offering. By analyzing what’s worked and what hasn’t for your competitors, you can avoid repeating their mistakes and go straight to what’s productive.

4. Conduct Surveys

One of the best ways to learn about your competitors’ promotions is to ask your customers directly — how often they use coupons for a given product, where they typically redeem them, where they find them, and what they’re usually worth. Distribute surveys through your email list or offer an incentive for completing a short phone survey; in both cases, an incentive drives much better response rates.

5. Use Online Tools

A number of competitive-intelligence tools can help you monitor competitors’ couponing strategies — often the same tools you’d use to track your own performance:

• Google Alerts — find out which companies are ranking highest for your keywords to determine your primary competitors.
• SpyFu — monitor competitor keywords and advertisements, including how well their ads and coupons appear to be performing.
• What Runs Where — watch the performance of rival advertisements, with alerts whenever a competitor launches a new ad or publishes new content.

A business is often only as good as the tools it uses. Monitoring your competitors’ couponing performance with the right tools is one of the smartest ways to avoid mistakes in your own strategy — and once you have a clear picture of what they’re doing, you’ll need a solid production strategy of your own to keep up.