How to compare marketing campaigns?

Comparing marketing campaigns, either with your competitors or within your company, should be an intrinsic step in your marketing strategy. Comparing marketing campaigns will help identify pieces of content that reach the higher number of potential customers in the most cost-effective way.

Comparing marketing campaigns will bring actionable insights into your future campaigns. However, the comparison of two marketing campaigns is often overlooked while preparing a marketing campaign report.

Including comparisons into your marketing strategy will bring many benefits, for example:

• reaching your target audience much faster
• comparing your campaign to specific competitor to become an industry leader
• compare the cost per lead of different campaigns
• comparing different content marketing tactics
• comparing marketing channels performance

The goal of a marketing campaign is to attract a potential customer and offer him or her more value than your competitor. Another aspect you should take into account is the cost-effectiveness of the campaign.

Compare marketing campaigns. Set up your project (no credit card required).

In this post, I’ll show you what the benefits of comparing marketing campaigns are and how to perform the comparison easily. 

Here’s our itinerary for today:

Why should you compare marketing campaigns?

What metrics to assess while comparing marketing campaigns?

Compare different marketing projects

Why comparing the effectiveness of marketing campaigns is important?

Why should you compare marketing campaigns?

You probably spend a lot of time, effort, and money on marketing campaigns. Just as your competitors do. 

Comparing and tracking the results of your marketing campaign to your competitors brings some undeniable benefits, such as:

1. Learning from your competitors’ mistakes. They might have already invested in a marketing campaign that didn’t bring any substantial results. Analyse them in-depth and assess what went wrong. Was it a misguided decision to be present on a particular social media platform? Was the quality superior? Did the audience interact with the content? By analysing your competitors’ marketing campaign, you will have a general idea of where and how to promote your company. 
2. Spotting the right marketing channels to execute a campaign. Your competitors might have invested in a particular form of marketing that works well for them – it increases brand awareness, boost sales, or reduces churn. Depending on the goal they went for influencer marketing, dedicated publication, or a landing page. Tracking the results of a marketing campaign will help you establish the tactics that work well in your business niche. 
3. Establish and exploit your competitive advantage. There are digital marketing activities you perform better than anyone else in your industry. Being aware of your strong suits let you leverage them over your competitors and establish your position as an industry leader. 

Although everyone knows they should compare the results of marketing campaigns to their competitors to spot emerging threats and opportunities, the process itself is quite complicated and time-consuming. 

What metrics to assess while comparing marketing campaigns?

That’s where a social media monitoring tool comes in handy. I strongly recommend Brand24, as it’s one of the most robust media listening tools on the market. At least, that’s what Buffer said. 

The very first step in marketing campaigns comparison is setting up at least two projects. Each of them will be dedicated to different marketing campaign. 

Compare marketing campaigns. Set up your project (no credit card required).

What keywords should you use?

Think about:

• the name of a company
• the name of a specific product or service
• a campaign-specific hashtag
• a branded hashtag
• CEO’s name

You don’t have to put all of them in a single project. It is a good idea to separate projects containing branded hashtag and a campaign hashtag. 

The former will give you information on how people perceive the brand in general; how often do they talk about it, which social media platforms do they use, or what’s the sentiment around the brand. 

The latter will be useful to assess the impact of a specific, usually time-bound campaign. You will be able to see how many people have seen your competitors’ posts, whether the response was positive or negative, or what type of interaction the content sparks.

In other words, you could assess the impact the campaign have had on branding or potential customers. 

From that moment on, Brand24 will start gathering all the mentions containing your predefined keywords. 

Social media listening tools, in general, don’t collect historical data, that’s why it’s important to set up a project the moment you realise your competitor is starting a campaign.

Compare marketing campaigns. Set up your project (no credit card required).

Brand24 will not only collect the mentions, it will also analyse them and put the results in the Analysis tab. 

Let’s see what in there for you!

The volume of mentions and sentiment analysis

Volume of mentions shows how many results containing the keyword were published within a specific timeframe. 

That’s a starting point of every market research. An increase in the volume of mentions can signify new marketing campaign on the way. 

Monitoring your competitors for a longer period will help you spot seasonal differences. Maybe your competitors start a campaign before certain holidays? 

Once you know that, you’ll be able to prepare in advance and counterattack your competitors’ efforts. 

Combine the volume of mentions with sentiment analysis and get even more accurate results. 

A high volume of mentions is not necessarily a positive outcome. It can be caused by a social media crisis.

That’s why it’s important to combine the volume of mentions with sentiment analysis. 

Compare marketing campaigns. Set up your project (no credit card required).

Sentiment analysis will help you assess whether the talk around a brand or a marketing campaign is positive, negative, or neutral. A high volume of mentions and positive sentiment indicates a successful marketing campaign. 

But if the sentiment is negative, it usually means that social media crisis is on its way. It’s a great way to jump into conversation and offer your services or prepare a RTM campaign. 

Estimated social media reach

Social media reach is the backbone of every marketing campaign evaluation. 

This metric will tell you how many people have seen posts with a certain keyword. After all, that’s the main aim of almost every marketing campaign – to reach the biggest audience and spread a certain message. 

Type and number of interactions

As sentiment analysis gives context to the volume of mentions, the type and number of interactions is a complimentary metric to the estimated social media reach. 

Social media are all about being social. That’s why it’s important not only to reach the biggest audience. It’s also vital to spread your message to the right people. 

The type and number of interactions will tell you whether people like or dislike certain type of content. The more interactions (likes, comments, and shares) a content sparks, the more engage audience is. 

That could mean two things:

1. there’s a specific type of content (images, videos, infographics, pieces of written content) that your desired audience reacts to. In this case, you should focus on implementing the content into your strategy;
2. there’s a certain platform that is more popular than others. If you haven’t explored the platform yet, it might be a good idea to do it now. 

Influence of social media authors

Many marketers have a love-hate relationship with influencer marketing. 

On the one hand, many influencers lack credibility (do you remember Fyre festival fiasco?). They often promote products that don’t go with their overall image, promote some dodgy products, or neglect their followers during the campaign. 

On the other hand, a well-executed influencer marketing campaign can be enormously beneficial to your business. It will drive sales, boost your brand awareness, and help reach new audiences. 

Compare marketing campaigns. Set up your project (no credit card required).

The key is choosing the right influencers. 

A social media monitoring tool will analyse the accounts of people already talking about a certain topic and provide you with some interesting metrics, for example, the share of voice or influence. 

That way you could poke the most valuable influencers before your competitors get a chance and gain a competitive advantage. 

Compare different marketing projects

From a technical point of view, comparing different marketing project using an Internet monitoring tool is a piece of cake. 

All you have to do, is go to comparison tab, choose the time range you’d like to analyse and voilà! A nice comparison of sources and sentiment analysis for chosen projects. 

Does it sound interesting? You can try during your 14-day free trial (no credit card required!). 

Why comparing the effectiveness of marketing campaigns is important

Marketing is one of the most important departments in your company. It’s responsible for finding and converting new clients, rising your brand awareness, or establishing your position as an industry leader. 

The results of your competitors will help you establish the benchmarks you need to assess your market position. You might be doing well or poorly. You’ll never know unless you perform a competitive analysis. 

Examining the results of your competitors marketing campaigns you’ll be able to avoid the mistakes they’ve already made. You’ll have a general idea on what works and what doesn’t in your industry.

If two or more of your competitors tried an Instagram marketing campaign and the results were mediocre, then preparing a social media plan for Instagram might not be a great idea. 

If you don’t feel fully convinced yet, you can see it for yourself! The trial costs nothing but might be a great addition to your marketing stack!

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