Top Five Ways Trademark Filings Can Boost Competitive Intelligence
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Top Five Ways Trademark Filings Can Boost Competitive Intelligence
When we hear the word ‘trademark’, we often think of catchy jingles and lawsuits. But, trademark filing data can be a marketer’s friend. It can offer big clues about what your competition is up to and can illustrate new marketing trends. As a marketer, keeping an eye on the competition and tracking trademark filing activities in your industry can be an effective way to make sure you’re in the loop. Here are five reasons to incorporate monitoring trademark filings into your overall marketing strategy.
- Trademark filings usually predate product launches or web mentions—sometimes by months, even years. In most cases the first action item after a company decides on a new brand or campaign is to file a trademark. Getting a “heads-up” on competitors’ trademarks gives you time to consider your next move. Since trademark filings are accompanied by a Goods & Services description, you can pick-up small hints as to what the new product might be—is it a spin-off of a preexisting product or something new and different that your company hasn’t considered?
- Trademarks offer a great way to gauge new trends. By tracking trademark filings over a period of time, you can follow new industry buzzwords or pick-up on product variations that seem to be gaining in popularity. Trend watching with trademarks piggy-backs onto all the market research your competitors have already done!
- Trademark filings can tip you off to new players in your industry. Aside from monitoring trademark filings to see what your existing competitors are up to, a search by industry can reveal new companies entering the market that you should be on the lookout for.
- Measure Activity. As a marketer, you’re responsible for market research and keeping an eye on the competitive landscape. That can be tricky. Monitoring competitor’s filings and comparing them with historical filing servers as a good metric of you competitor’s overall financial and creative health. How many trademarks do they usually file within a given year? How does this year compare with previous years? Of course, filing a trademark is not a huge investment, and some companies have filed trademarks and then gone out of business shortly afterwards. But, more often than not, seeing a new filing indicates of a sign of life.
- Monitoring trademark filings easily integrates into existing Competitive Intelligence activities. Ad-hoc methods of keep track of your competitors’ latest products (clippings, bookmarks, RSS feeds, etc.) is involved, time consuming and reactive when it should be proactive. Trademark filing dates, along with categorization and owner information, are designed to be archived and so are easy to attain, read and interpret. Whether you need to get the “big picture” or are searching for targeted information, mining trademark filings for competitive intelligence should be part of your marketing strategy.
Attention Trade Show Exhibitors: Do your Homework!
You’re going to a trade show as an exhibitor. What should you do to prepare?
Well before the show, you should be able to access a list other exhibitors (or at the very least, the ones from last year).After a quick scan, compile a list of your competitors or other companies whose profile’s pique you curiosity.
Compile a list by owner of recent filings or add them to you watch list if you haven’t already. Looking at new trademark filings can give you insight into any new products you’re likely to see. They’ll probably be focusing on these new offerings at the show. For the most part, before companies spend money on ad material they’ve probably filed for one more more trademarks. Take the list with you to the show.
From experience, there’s a lot of down time (when potential buyers are off to various sessions, general meetings and so forth) use this time to walk around and see how (and if) some of those new trademarks, brands and so forth are being used.
Doing your homework can also help you decide what you may want to mention or focus on . With enough time you may even throw together a “me too!” component to what you’re selling!
Take Steps to Get to Know Which New Players Mean Business
It’s always interesting to track new trademark filings in your industry. To get an extra edge, try finding companies who’ve filed for the first time. By keeping an eye on recent trademark filings you can be the first to know about the new kid on the block.
Now, take this a step further. Gather all the trademark data you’ve collected over time (say six months) and see where those companies are at in terms of bringing their products to market. Have they done anything with their trademarks? What strategies have they used? Have they been successful? Voila, you’ve got a useful competitor tracking system.
