Competition Analysis
Analysis of the competition’s PR activities is one of the key tools in communication research. This kind of reconnaissance helps track spikes in media activities of your rivals, identify trends and figure out weak and strong points in their marketing strategy, and compare it with yours to enable you to manage risks better and look for growth opportunities.
Our Advantages
To get the full picture, we gather information about your competition’s successful projects, analyze them and present the results in a comprehensive report for you to see how your competitors do communications, specifically:
- communicate messages to audiences, including what image audiences have of the company and/or brand;
- position themselves, what key messages they use, and how they distinguish themselves from others;
- use speakers, including in what outlets; and
- what areas they have caught up with you, where they have gotten ahead of you, and where they are still behind.
Competition analysis identifies benchmarks and industry averages that can be used to compare your company against rivals in the SWOT matrix to show you key areas for growth. This is especially valuable when you plan to enter a new market, launch a new product or service, and grow your media presence.
How do we analyze PR strategy?
Our analysts start by picking relevant pieces of coverage. Depending on your needs, we can do it using automated search technology with criteria agreed by you and then polish it up manually or do the whole thing manually weighing every bit of coverage in terms of tone, mentions of speakers, third-party comments and other parameters that only a human can properly evaluate.
We use the following metrics:
- amount of coverage (press rating) and share of voice to gauge the level of media activity and identify trends;
- theme and context of mention;
- PR activity, represented by the number of pieces you and your competition initiate to support a press release or an event, and the number of mentions of your and the competition’s officers;
- tone to see if the sentiment is positive, neutral or negative;
- types of outlets covering you and your rivals, including their specialty and reputation, to help evaluate your and the competition’s PR performance; and
- reach or the average number of people visiting a website, listening to a podcast, watching a program, etc.; going forward, this can be used to analyze the channels you and your competition employ to share news and pick the most effective ones for future use.
Our Awards
The above forms a large dataset (presented in Excel) our analysts use to compile a report for you. Repots can be delivered daily, weekly or monthly. Competition analysis can also be used for KPI tracking.
We believe visual representation is the most convenient and user-friendly way to present data, which is why our reports usually offer a combination of text, charts, diagrams and tables. We also offer custom formats to best suit your needs.