As per McKinsey, one in five consumers switched brands, and seven in ten tried new digital shopping channels. This emphasizes the importance of evaluating competitors and best-in-class brands to re-adjust your business and marketing plan. Audience intelligence is the foundation for a successful digital marketing campaign, and it is vital to analyse audiences belonging to you and your competitors. Even though audience research is costly, this article explains the research techniques to discover the audiences for two known brands in India. Competitor analysis, persona analysis, audience research, and SWOT analysis are critical components of a situation analysis which is the first step to building a multi-channel marketing strategy.

Nykaa and Mamaearth have distinct audiences and marketing strategies. Evaluation of both brands will give us a different perspective on their marketing activities and guide us to analyse other brands to derive similar insights.

Nykaa is an online store that sells various goods in beauty, hair, skin, and other areas. On the other hand, Mamaearth, a direct-to-consumer company with headquarters in Delhi, provides a wide range of products in the hair, skin, and body categories.

Table of Contents

1. Traffic comparison
2. Audience analysis
3. How to derive audience insights for a brand
4. Creative comparison

1. Traffic Comparison

Nykaa website generates around 12 million web visitors on average. 92% of traffic comes from India. 53% of traffic comes from google searches, while 37% of users directly visit the website. Half of the Google search traffic is generated via paid campaign efforts. Surprisingly, Nykaa receives only 6% of traffic from social media, while 77% of that comes from YouTube.  

On the other hand, Mamaearth holds traffic of about 7 million on average. Traffic from India is similar to Nykaa as 94% of traffic is from India. Traffic distribution is similar to Nykaa, 50% from Google search, 35% from direct traffic, and 11% from social media. 50% of search traffic is from paid campaigns, and 85% of social traffic is generated via YouTube.

2. Audience Analysis

An in-depth analysis of your audience and competitors’ will lead you to provide a unique experience to your customers. Personalizing the customer journey improves every metric you obsess about.

Customer affiliation with International Brands

Mamaearth customers are more interested in international cosmetics brands than Nykaa. On average, 80% of Mamaearth customers are interested in international cosmetics brands, while it is only 40% for Nykaa.

Customers’ Lifestyle

Nykaa customers value the quality of life and well-being more than Mamaearth customers. 68% of Nykaa customers are engaged with interests similar to the quality of life, while it is 29% for Mamaearth. Nykaa can focus on generating user-generated content to demonstrate the correlation between excellent cosmetics brands and quality of life.

Food and Cooking

Nykaa customers are more into food and cooking. On average, 76% of their customers are engaged with food and cooking-related interests. But it is only 45% for Mamaearth. Nykaa can create competition around cooking and recipes thus, it increases the brand engagement with potential customers. In addition, a brand can highlight a value proposition that matches people who are into cooking.

Engagement with Celebrities

Mamaearth customers are more engaged with Indian celebrities. 83% of Mamaearth customers are engaged with the top 3 celebrities in India, while it is 47% for Nykaa. Mamaearth content team can produce content around these celebrities to increase engagement with their audience. This improves social media engagement and content marketing efforts while it is beneficial to SEO efforts as well.

Travelling Behaviour

Nykaa customers love travelling, and 60% of them are frequent travellers, while it is 23% of Mamaearth customers. Nykaa has the opportunity to introduce a product or a product bundle that resonates with travellers.

Demography  -  Parents

9.7% of Nykaa customers are parents, while it is 6.2% for Mamaearth. It seems the current audience is younger, and their marketing activities are more convergent towards that. Both brands have the opportunity to tap into this new market with personalized offerings and unique selling propositions.

3. How to derive audience insights for a brand

Alavi.ai uses Facebook data to compute audience intelligence for a given brand. If you link your brand to Alavi, it shows your customers’ interests, behaviour and demography. Moreover, it reveals the interests belonging to a competitor or a brand. It is free to use. Signup now and spy on your favourite brand.

4. Creative Comparison

Comparison of creative reveals the brand/marketing messaging and USPs. This gives a hypothesis to carry out experience to improve ad performance. The Facebook ad library is a valuable resource for spying on ads belonging to your competitors.

Right now, Nykaa is on a sale called “Pink Sale”. If you are competing with Nykaa with identical products, it is essential to adjust your marketing budget as most buyers could fall due to the discount. For instance, the paid campaign performance could be distracted due to significant sales happening with a known brand. It is advisable to wait patiently instead of making significant changes to the campaign structure.

Mamaerath, on the other hand, focuses on highlighting value propositions. Mainly they highlighted the natural and toxic-free products. Moreover, they discuss the user problems than preaching the products such as control oil on your face. If you have a competing product, you should focus on bringing a better value proposition than Mamaearth, like showing guarantees certificates. If you are unable to beat their USPs, then you might have to build a strong brand presence or go for a price cut.

Conclusion

A well-crafted marketing plan is vital to accomplish business and marketing goals. SOSTAC framework is a well-known structure which is solid guidance for building a sophisticated multi-channel plan. The very first step of the plan is to assess the current situation, and it contains understanding the current metrics, customer analysis, competitor evaluation and resource analysis. This article explained new ways to spy on your competitors or customers to draft a marketing strategy.

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