The Importance of Competitive Monitoring in Public Relations

Public Relations is a fast-paced field. As good as any PR plan is when it is created, the world and therefore the news cycle will change quickly after a plan is created. Rather than always executing a plan in its original form, PR professionals must be adaptable to current events and trends. While we can plan ahead for holiday pitching and product launches, keeping up with current news and trends is critically important to ensure your media outreach is appropriate and relevant.

Part of keeping up with the news should involve competitor monitoring – specifically reading news about direct competitors or other similar companies in your industry, as well as adjacent industries. Below we will explore a few of the reasons that competitive monitoring should be part of your daily routine in Public Relations.

I. Understand Journalists Preferences

Monitoring the news and coverage of direct competitors and other brands in your industry provides a valuable understanding of what your target journalists are looking for:

• Competitor coverage can demonstrate what it takes to get a story published. When reading a story featuring a competitor, examine the article with an opportunistic eye, considering the different parts of the story and what made your competitor a compelling subject for the article. This can be used to your advantage in the future when discussing ideas with your client to uncover your next pitch angle.

• By reading competitor’s articles, you can get an idea of a journalist’s preferences and add them to your target list for future pitching. Searching for competitor’s news coverage is a great way to build a media list. If a journalist is interested in their product, there’s a good chance they might be interested in your client as well.

II. Stay Up-to-Date with Industry Trends

Another reason to monitor your competition is to keep up with industry trends. Understanding trends your competition is setting and trying to spot them early will help you stay on top of what’s popular and not lose industry relevance.

For example, in the wine industry, there is a growing bank of articles about sustainable packaging and lightening the weight of glass bottles. Some journalists are setting new standards for the types of wine packaging they will accept – excessively heavy wine bottles are highly discouraged by a growing number of writers. Keeping abreast of this trend and reading competitor news is invaluable in understanding what a writer might be looking for (or not looking for) in your pitches.

Following industry trends set by competitors can also help you identify opportunities to pitch your clients in ways that demonstrate them as relevant and timely. As another example, perhaps there is a feature your client’s product has that you have not been highlighting in your pitches but aligns with a new trend in the industry. With competitor monitoring, you may find that the product feature becomes a centerpiece of your pitch. 

You can monitor for these trends with tools like Google Alerts, social listening platforms like Meltwater or Muck Rack, and trade newsletters or Substack subscriptions.

III. Track Industry-Adjacent News for New Ideas

When monitoring your own industry news, it is also helpful to monitor news of other related and relevant industries. This could bring to mind new ideas for your own pitches.

For example, when monitoring wine industry news, also keep an eye on adjacent industries like non-alc beverages, liquor, and beer. Add new Google Alerts or subscribe to new industry newsletters to help expand your monitoring.

Here’s a few ways it can help your PR strategies:

• Reading headlines from coverage outside a client’s core industry can open the doors for creative thinking on new pitch angles. Is the whiskey industry talking about light glass bottles? Then it may be time to pitch your lighter-than-glass wine brand.

• Find media to pitch who might be interested in your client’s news based on their coverage of other news stories on adjacent industries. If they write about travel, there’s a good chance they will be interested in your boating client!

IV. Leveraging Competitive Insights for Trend Jacking

At Double Forte our morning routine involves an email called a “Daily Reading”. Team members are assigned one or two publications and scan the headlines each morning and share the 3-4 headlines that they think are important to our clients and their industries, as well as the news cycle in general. It’s not necessarily a revolutionary concept – but it is a clever way to keep up with the top headlines and news stories, and understand what is being discussed each day in the publications that are most important to our agency.

It is important to scan these headlines with a creative eye – not only for news from your competition, but for other ideas on how you can feature your client in a similar way. Find opportunities to “trend-jack”, or leveraging trending headlines or topics, to insert your client into the conversation to demonstrate timeliness and relevance. Even if the trend is just emerging, demonstrating how your client can fit into the trend can help catch attention for your client in an exciting way.

While it is important to monitor the news daily as a PR professional, it is just as important to keep a close eye on not only industry news, but the news of your competitors and adjacent industries. It will help you stay up to date or even ahead of trends, craft creative pitches for your clients, keep your clients visible in the news, and adjust your PR strategy or plan on a moment’s notice when needed. Be sure to incorporate competitive monitoring into your strategy to create ongoing success in your campaigns.

By Alexis Karis