Modern market environments are incredibly competitive, with businesses constantly seeking any advantage they can find to bring in more customers and turn a greater profit.
Promotions are a common approach to this goal, with nearly every business using some form of price drops to reach more potential clients and make more sales.
However, the proliferation of promotions and sales means that your competition can quickly undercut you – especially if they offer similar products in the same niche. So is there anything that could be done to give you an edge and make you stand out from the crowd?
Below, we’ll discuss the art of competitive promotion monitoring – perhaps the best way to position yourself for success and guarantee a competitive advantage over others.
Key Takeaways
- Competitive promotion monitoring is essential for businesses seeking to stay ahead in a highly competitive market environment.
- Competitor promotion monitoring offers a number of advantages to businesses, including but not limited to more informed pricing decisions, greater customer retention, increased competitiveness, market awareness, and improved profitability.
- Manual tracking methods, such as observing competitors’ websites and subscribing to newsletters, are time-consuming and inefficient. They should be used only in emergency circumstances.
- Automated solutions like Brandly360 offer comprehensive sales monitoring capabilities, providing real-time insights into competitors’ pricing strategies. Brandly360 can also monitor banner ads and discover hidden price reductions, allowing you to fine-tune your promotional strategies and maintain a strong market position.
What Is Competitive Promotion Monitoring?
Competitive promotion monitoring is the process of tracking and analyzing the promotional strategies, price drops, and sales offered by your competitors to ensure that your business stays ahead in the game.
This involves keeping a close eye on the market and gathering information about your competitors’ every relevant move – from their pricing patterns to the types of discounts they offer to the duration of their sales events.
Gaining insight into your competition’s promotional activities allows you to make more informed decisions about your own tactics and pricing strategies.
source: https://unsplash.com/photos/UcI5OAPD820
Is Promotion Monitoring Necessary?
You might be wondering whether promotion monitoring is really necessary for your business. The answer is complicated and depends on the pricing model dominant in your niche.
If all of your direct rivals employ an Everyday Low Pricing (EDLP) approach and adhere to its rules very strictly, then indeed, you might not need to bother with monitoring their promotions. After all, the EDLP strategy is all about offering consistently low prices, without any special sales or discounts.
However, there is a caveat: even if all of your competitors use an EDLP pricing strategy, it’s still a good idea to invest in a dedicated competitive intelligence solution.
You never know when one of them might break ranks and start offering promotional discounts to gain additional customers – and if you’re not monitoring their activities, you might miss the chance to react in time and defend your market share.
The situation changes drastically if most of your competition relies on the High-Low pricing strategy – under this approach, retailers will regularly create sales and discounts to attract customers.
In this case, it is absolutely essential to keep an eye on the competition’s promotions and price drops – any lapse in vigilance could result in you missing out on huge profits and even losing customer loyalty.
Want to get set up with competitor monitoring, price tracking and even more?
Book a free demo to monitor any e-commerce competitor pricing and get instant info of important price movements and more!
Benefits of Competitive Promotion Monitoring
Promotion monitoring is a highly beneficial practice for businesses of all sizes and industries.
| Advantages of competitive promotion monitoring | |
|---|---|
| Informed pricing decisions | Knowledge of competitors’ promotions enables strategic discount offerings and optimal pricing adjustments. |
| Greater customer retention | Swiftly responding to competitor deals helps maintain customer loyalty to your brand. |
| Competitive edge | Real-time insights into rivals’ pricing strategies ensure a competitive advantage in a saturated market. |
| Market awareness | Promotion monitoring reveals industry trends and consumer preferences, allowing the adaptation of offerings and marketing strategies to changing needs. |
| Boosted profits | Timely reactions to competitor price drops and targeted promotions lead to greater profits. |
How Can You Monitor Competitors’ Promotions?
The process of promotion monitoring can be done manually, although this is generally not recommended due to the amount of time and effort required. Nevertheless, if you have no other choice, there are a few methods you can use:
Observe Their Website
One of the simplest ways to track your competitors’ promotions is to keep an eye on their websites. This involves periodically checking their online store or website for any signs of sales or special offers.
If you notice that a competitor has launched a new promotion, take some time to analyze it and see what kind of discount they’re offering.
This method is far from perfect, as it requires constant vigilance and can be time-consuming.
Infiltrate the Sales Funnel of Your Rivals
Another way to track your competitors’ promotions is to “infiltrate” their sales funnels – that is, to subscribe to their newsletters, follow them on social media, and browse their blogs.
This way, you’ll be among the first to know about any new sales or discounts they might be offering.
Most businesses these days have some presence on social channels, so this is a great (if tedious) way to stay up-to-date on their latest promotions.
Simply follow your competitors on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and any other relevant platform they might be using, and you’ll be sure to see any announcements they make about sales or special offers.
Another tactic you may try is subscribing to your competitors’ newsletters. By doing so, you’ll receive all of their promotional updates directly in your inbox. This can give you a head start in adjusting your own pricing strategies to stay competitive.
Browse the Blogs
Many businesses maintain blogs where they announce new promotions or discuss upcoming sales events. Regularly reading these blogs can provide valuable insights into their promotional strategies and help you stay on top of the latest promotional trends and developments.
Want to get set up with competitor monitoring, price tracking and even more?
Book a free demo to monitor any e-commerce competitor pricing and get instant info of important price movements and more!
Leverage Google Alerts
Setting up Google alerts for your top competitors’ brand names, product names, or specific keywords related to promotions (e.g., “discount,” “sale,” “price drop”) can help you stay informed about their activities without spending too much effort on it.
If you’re unsure about the keywords worth following, do some market research or use Google Analytics to discover the best-ranking ones in your niche.
Bear in mind that Google alerts are an imperfect solution, especially if your business operates outside of the United States. Tracking may be limited to the US only, so you might miss some important information about your competitors’ overseas activities.
Even more importantly, Google alerts are entirely dependent on Google Shopping – if your rivals don’t sell their products through the Google Shopping platform, you won’t receive any notifications about their promotions.
source: https://unsplash.com/photos/xuD3gqHy8lk
Manual Tracking Is Inefficient
As we’ve seen, manually tracking multiple competitors is a temporary solution at best. The more businesses you have to keep an eye on, the more complex and time-consuming the process becomes.
Additionally, manually tracking promotions is a reactive rather than proactive approach – by the time you learn about a new sale or discount, it might already be too late to take action and defend your market share.
In other words, manual promotion tracking is simply not an effective long-term solution for businesses that want to thrive in a competitive market.
Automate Your Promotion Monitoring With Brandly360
Fortunately, there is a better way. Brandly360 is a powerful price intelligence solution that can help you automate the process of promotion monitoring.
Armed with a wide array of features and capabilities, Brandly360 is a far cry from the methods we’ve discussed above. Efficient, quick, and easy to master, it is exactly what you need to monitor pricing and give your business the edge it deserves.
To give you a taste of what Brandly360 can do for you, let’s take a look at some of its key features.
Want to get set up with competitor monitoring, price tracking and even more?
Book a free demo to monitor any e-commerce competitor pricing and get instant info of important price movements and more!
Brandly360 Has Comprehensive Sales Monitoring Capabilities
Brandly360 uses advanced algorithms to monitor your competitors’ sales and promotions, providing you with accurate, almost real-time information about their pricing strategies. With Brandly360, daily updates are a thing of the past – any changes to the promotional activities of your rivals might be collected even every 10 minutes!
This allows you to stay one step ahead of the competition and make informed decisions about your pricing and promotional efforts. No longer will you have to worry about missing out on important sales or discounts – with Brandly360, you’ll always be in the loop.
In addition to tracking price drops and promotions, Brandly360 can also monitor banner ads displayed in online stores.
As banner ads are routinely used to announce important sale events, this feature provides valuable insights into your top competitors’ advertising strategies and helps you identify trends in their online promotional activities.
Are you worried that your own banner ads might be inferior in quality to your rivals’? Brandly360 is fully capable of comparing the visibility and quantity of banner ads across multiple businesses. It will also determine which of your banners are most (and least) effective at driving conversions, so you can fine-tune your promo ad strategy.
One of the most significant advantages of Brandly360 is its ability to uncover hidden price reductions.
By monitoring your competitors’ product listings, it can detect instances where they have reduced prices without announcing a promotion or sale. This enables you to respond with an appropriate price drop of your own before the customers take notice.
source: https://unsplash.com/photos/jBK5235avoE
Final Thoughts
Competitive promotion monitoring is an essential practice for businesses looking to thrive in today’s highly competitive market. By staying up to date about your competitors’ promotional strategies, you can make well-informed decisions about your own pricing and promotions, maintain customer loyalty, and ensure the safety of your own market share.
Although manual methods of promotion tracking can provide some insight, they are time-consuming and inefficient.
Instead, investing in an automated solution like Brandly360 can vastly improve your promotion monitoring efforts.
With its comprehensive sales monitoring capabilities, banner ad tracking, and ability to discover hidden price reductions, Brandly360 is the ultimate tool for dominating the promotion game.
So, why wait? Make the smart choice for your business and start leveraging the power of Brandly360 for competitive promotion monitoring today. Your rivals won’t know what hit them!
Want to get set up with competitor monitoring, price tracking and even more?
Book a free demo to monitor any e-commerce competitor pricing and get instant info of important price movements and more!
Manager with experience in leading team of software developers and testers during implementation of internal and external IT projects. Ceo of Brandly360.com.
