Mastering Competitive Analysis in Jewelry Marketing

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Ready to break free from algorithms, vanity PR, and money-sucking ads? My name’s Laryssa Wirstiuk, and I’ve learned in 7 years of jewelry marketing that content is the crown jewel. My agency Joy Joya takes a holistic approach, leading with laser-focused storytelling, impactful content creation, and strategic content distribution. This method has worked for the solopreneur as well as the multi-million-dollar company, and now I’m sharing these systems and tactics with you. Here’s to standing out in the Sea of Sparkle.

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This is Episode #230, and today I’ll be building on the episode on content marketing in #228. I’ll be explaining how you can analyze your Competitors and their content to go from being in a Sea of Sameness to standing out in a Sea of Sparkle. I’m tired of seeing the same, same, same in the jewelry industry. Aren’t you, too? This episode is a call to action to do something different – and not be afraid to try something new. We need more entrepreneurs who aren’t afraid to take the bold step of standing out. Because being an original is the best path to becoming a legend. I’ll be covering: What is a Competitive Analysis, and why is it important? What should be included in the Comp Analysis? How can you find and identify your Competitors? How can you apply these findings to your marketing? From now through early July of this year, I’ll be rolling out a free (yes FREE) six-month, podcast-guided program called “Jewelry Marketing Jumpstart” which will involve weekly audio and video lessons as well as companion PDF downloads for each new episode. If you want to sign up for the FREE full program right away and get the companion PDF download to this episode, visit joyjoya.com/jump. Link in show notes as well.

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But before we get to the solid gold, I’d like to take a moment to remind you that this podcast has both audio and video. So you can either listen on your favorite podcast platform, or watch on YouTube by searching Joy Joya. Actually, if you’re not already subscribed on YouTube, I highly encourage you to go do that. Because I’ve been sharing some short video tutorials lately that are not connected to the audio version of this podcast. I recently shared a tutorial about how you can use the AI tool ChatGPT for jewelry marketing.

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Okay, my sparklers without further delay, let’s get into the next installment of Jewelry Marketing Jumpstart. This one is all about competitive analysis for jewelry content marketing. As I mentioned earlier, you can go to joyjoya.com/jump to sign up for the companion worksheet, which has a template for building your own competitive analysis. So first, I need to address the question, what is a competitive analysis? And why is it important? In last week’s episode, we talked all about knowing your audience personas, and how you should always be speaking to an audience of one in your marketing. That helps you be laser focused and attract the people who matter, the people who will love your brand for life. Though, arguably, maybe it’s not as important as creating your audience personas because I really believe that customer is everything, the competitive analysis that we’re talking about today is still so super important when you’re starting out with your content marketing journey. It’s not so much about knowing what your competitors are doing so you can do the same or maybe something they’re doing but just a little bit better. And sidenote, you’ll notice as we go through this episode that the overarching theme is a rant against sameness. So I don’t want you to do the same thing or even the same thing but a little bit better. Instead I want you to see where the opportunities lie for your content and start zagging where other people are zigging.

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So what aren’t your competitors doing? So you can fill that gap and stand out in a new and glorious way? How are they choosing to tell their stories? How are they speaking to their customers? How are they communicating their magic, and then distributing that magic? You want to acknowledge, appreciate, maybe be critical, and then go in a completely different direction. So when most people sit down to think about their competitive analysis for their jewelry brand, they’re only considering their direct competitors. And usually this is done when you’re writing your initial business plan. You’re doing this to aid in product development and pricing to see where you can be competitive in the market. It’s approached from like an inventory building perspective. Now, while that take on competitive analysis absolutely matters, and should definitely be done as part of a comprehensive business plan, my take on competitive analysis for the sake of content marketing, is a little different, because it considers the marketing of your competitors, the brand identity, the brand storytelling of your competitors. And it doesn’t only look at your direct competitors. Hold on to that thought, more on it in just a moment.

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Competitive analysis is so important, because you may be ignorant about how unique or not unique your content truly is. Every once in a while I’m on a discovery call, or meeting with a jewelry entrepreneur who thinks that what they’re doing with their brand and their storytelling is unlike anything else in the marketplace. But in reality, I can tell that they’ve never really done a deep dive or bothered to challenge that assumption. Because as someone like me who studies jewelry brands all day long, I can probably name at least three brands off the top of my head who are doing exactly what that person thinks has never been done before. And I’m not saying that, like, you know, hate on that person. But I’m saying that as a cautionary tale that you really need to be thorough with this. And you need to be brutally honest with yourself about what else is out there in the marketplace. You need to take off the blinders and take a real hard look at the market and what already does exist. But I promise you that even though this exercise may be difficult, and even a little bit painful in how eye opening it is, it ultimately will be in your best interest and help you build that legendary brand that you want to become.

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And then there’s also the flip side of that coin, the opposite extreme of that person who thinks they truly do have a unique brand. There are sometimes jewelry entrepreneurs that have no idea how unique they are, and they’re not capitalizing on that enough as they should be. So it really is good to be aware of how same or special you are whichever side of the coin that you’re on.

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So what should you be including in a competitive analysis? Again, you’ll want to go to joyjoya.com/jump. To sign up, get the free companion worksheet, it will have a template with all of this so that you don’t have to furiously write notes as you’re listening or watching. So my take on competitive analysis is unfortunately not an original idea. I got this idea a few years ago from somewhere on the internet, who knows I went while I was preparing for this episode, I wanted to try to go find the original source. I could not find it. So somewhere someone gave me this thought. Basically I split it up into three different categories. That’s direct competitor, the one most people would be familiar with, different approach, and different customer.

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So let me talk about what each of those three things are. So direct competitor means you’re providing the same feeling to customers by offering a similar product at a comparable price point. Different approach means you’re providing the same feeling to customers by offering different products and likely at a different price point. And then different customer means you’re providing a similar feeling with a similar product or price point. Maybe not price point, a similar kind of like aesthetic, but for different customers. And you’ll notice that I say feeling that you’re providing like a similar feeling. When we talked about brand identity and storytelling a few episodes ago, I explained that storytelling is all about igniting a feeling in your customers. So jewelry, no one buys it because they want to have a piece of metal on their skin. Okay? People buy jewelry, because they want to feel a certain way to summarize that they want to commemorate a memory, they want to honor a loved one, they want to feel luxurious, they want to congratulate themselves or make them feel special about something they want to feel elevated, it goes on and on, there are a lot of feelings.

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So in competitive analysis, when you’re looking at marketing, it means that you and another brand are kind of giving that same or similar feeling in the same category of feeling. But the thing that’s different is either the products that you’re offering, or the customers that you’re serving. And the reason that I like to look at this is because it’s targeting direct and indirect competitors. You could also look at indirect competitors in other ways. Like maybe you don’t think it’s your competitor, but your customers do. Or maybe it’s an aspirational competitor, like, say right now, Tiffany and Co is not your competitor. But that’s like where you would like to be. So you see it as an aspirational competitor. And I like to look at all these different categories, because then you really get a nice cross section of what other people are doing in the marketplace. Even though you’re not necessarily competing for exactly the same customers, you can kind of understand how other people are doing it, and how you can be different.

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So for each of these competitor categories, you want to figure out who is likely the target market for this brand? What’s the pricing range as well as like the average sweet spot price? Where do they sell? So what are the sales channels? In a few sentences how would you describe the brand’s personality? What are some highlights from their brand story? And also, what seems kind of boring about it? How are they communicating the story and through which platforms? So social media, email marketing, content marketing, like a blog, videos, in person events, PR outreach, partnerships, influencers? etc? And then from what you’re able to see, as an outsider, what seems to be resonating well with their followers and fans? What surprises you about this brand? And what questions are you left with about the brand? Or where did you see inconsistencies? And document all of this somewhere. It doesn’t have to be like a fancy presentation. You can have it in a notebook, you can have it in a Google Doc. But it’s good to like keep stock of what you observe.

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So a very common question that I get is Laryssa, how am I even supposed to find these competitors? Okay, back up. Let me give you some tips. I think also people get in their own way. They think, oh, Laryssa is a marketing expert or insert whoever person’s name here. So they have like some magical knowledge, or some like magical secret password protected resource that I don’t so only they can know my competitors. That is not true. Very often, I’m doing the same kind of research that you would probably do, perhaps I see it from a slightly different perspective, and I have an eye for it. But I’m using tools that are very much available to everyone. So let me give you some tips. First, if you’re able to you definitely want to try to walk some trade shows or industry events if you have access to them. So for example, very recently, New York City Market week happened. So if you sell jewelry that fits the categories of the type of people who we would be exhibiting at shows like New York Now, or Melee, or other shows, then you definitely want to get yourself there. You don’t have to exhibit right away. But see who is there. This will be a hugely eye opening experience. You also want to be paying attention to industry publications like JCK, INSTORE, Naional Jeweler, you also want to look at consumer publications that you think your target market would be reading. So like, does your audience persona read Vogue? And this is why it’s so important to do those audience personas, what are they paying attention to? And what influencers, celebrities, whatever are being featured there? And what are they wearing? You can also ask your VIP customers, or close family members and friends who know your brand. What do they like, what has caught their eye in the marketplace? And even if they’re not avid jewelry shoppers, it may even be enlightening to learn about like, well what accessories do they like to wear? Or what apparel do they like to wear so that at least you can kind of start with parallel brands and then work your way from there. Definitely, the internet is your best friend, you want to search Google for many variations of keywords. So search for like, generally the types of products you have if you sell like charm bracelets, for example, go see who else searches who else comes up in search for charm bracelets. Search for things that inspire you like if you sell charm bracelets inspired by sports, maybe you can search for like sports inspired jewelry, or search for like charm bracelets under a certain dollar amount if that’s what you sell, or, like gold charm bracelets, if you sell gold. You can also search for hashtags on social media that perhaps you even use for your own brand to see what comes up under those hashtags as well.

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And then lastly, how are you to apply these findings to your marketing. So again, the theme of this episode is moving away from sameness. The ultimate goal of this exercise when you’re doing it if it feels pointless or silly, is you want to be different. So as you’re answering these questions, as you’re doing this research, keep coming back to the question, how can we be different? How can you fill a gap? What are they doing? Or not doing? What was unclear or confusing about those brands? And how can you bring more clarity to your customer? You’re going to brainstorm ways that you can be unique. Again, you’re going to zag where others are zigging. Okay, so that’s it for now, for this installment much more to come in future episodes. Go to joyjoya.com/jump for additional information, action items, exercises, and a template to do your own competitive analysis.

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Before we get into The Gold Mine, as well as my jewelry marketing news roundup, I want to share a case study that I think embodies what I just spoke about. Okay, so these are my thoughts about how I’d apply this lesson to a jewelry brand in the wild. If I haven’t said it enough already, this episode is all about being different. And it can be friggin difficult to continuously come up with the ideas that will help you set your brand apart from your competitors. I recently saw this article in JCK about some really fun and unique Valentine’s Day collabs that jewelry brands are doing with some unlikely pairings food businesses. And the reason I’m bringing this up is because if you’re really stuck on ways to be different, a collab with a brand that may feel unexpected, but still strategically make sense because you have overlap in your audience personas could really open up a world of creativity for you because now you are maybe venturing into a new industry or just trying something completely out of the box. So that’s why I like these examples.

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A few episodes ago in 228 I talked about one unique Valentine’s Day collab between Anna Sheffield and Chipotle that you may remember I mentioned. So founded in 2000 by Anna Sheffield, which is also an eponymous wedding jewelry brand, Bing Bang NYC creates minimal, modern, and timeless jewelry with a pinch of downtown chic. They partnered with Chipotle on a limited-edition collection of minimal, modern, and expressive jewelry, dropping only on Chipotlegoods.com. And Chipotle’s Creative Director said, the reason they teamed up with Bing Bang NYC was to create fun, fresh jewelry that fuels Gen Z’s passion for self expression. The jewelry also sports the word “extra”, which Chipotle has been incorporating into their other marketing storytelling.

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And these were some others that were mentioned in this JCK article. So there was a collab between Lorraine Schwartz and Serendipity3. So if you have never been to this place in New York City, Serendipity3 is famous for its frozen hot chocolate. They’re served in these giant like glass bowl cups. They’ve decided to partner with fine jewelry designer Lorraine Schwartz for her masterful eye for beauty, according to the restaurant’s chef and creative director. So together that restaurant and the jewelry brand co-created a diamond frozen hot chocolate made from 14 exotic cocoas topped with whipped cream and sprinkled with edible diamond glitter and edible 23 karat gold gilded chocolate shavings served with gold straws and Austrian crystals. It’s totally ridiculous, but of course it makes for fun pictures, really fun and compelling content, great for sharing on social media. Great to just like pull up to this blingy jewelry, this fun jewelry is playful jewelry is indulgent kind of vibe. And for her part of the collaboration, Schwartz designed a handmade 18 karat white gold diamond bypass ring with a natural fancy pink heart shaped diamond and a light blue pear shaped diamond along with more than one carats of total of white diamond pave. So this jewelry and hot chocolate together when you order it costs $250,000. Okay, I know it’s a little ridiculous. I can’t imagine that a lot of people would be ordering it, but as I said it makes for fun and eye catching content that no one else will be doing.

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The next example they mentioned was a collab between Kendra Scott and the Museum of Ice Cream. So to promote this Valentine’s Day campaign they had called “Sweet on You”, Kendra Scott partnered with the Museum of Ice Cream. And in the flagship store in Austin, you can find this Museum of Ice Cream like installation in the store. There’s a lounge area, a letter writing station, sweet treats, and of course, jewelry. And there’s also a philanthropic element of this. So through the collab, there are surprising schools in Austin, Chicago, and New York with ice cream parties, an ice cream truck making project, and an Amazon gift card for the teachers to offset the cost of school supplies for that teacher’s classroom. So again, really unexpected collab, but they are approaching it with the goal of elevating the customer experience, doing something unexpected, and then an additional element of finding a way to take this and actually try to do something good for the community. So what do you think about these collaborations? Can you see how they spark something completely new that will be unlike what competitors are doing with their marketing content? Again, you can check out the links for yourself in the show notes.

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Okay, let’s get into The Gold Mine. This week’s topic is all about sameness in marketing – and how you can resist the urge to hop on the jewelry industry bandwagon. The topic is inspired by a blog post by Tom Fishbourne of the Marketoonist (I’ll link that in the show notes if you want to read it). So in this blog post, Tom references another writer Ian Whitworth, who said AI-content only produces “infinite words nobody wants…ChatGPT is here to make us all the same… The Great Same-ening is upon us…ChatGPT, Jasper and all the rest are powerful conformity machines”. If you’ve listened to the last few episodes of this podcast, you know that I’ve mentioned AI tools a few different times, especially in the news roundup. Also if you’re subscribed to the Joy Joya YouTube channel, you may have seen my recent tutorial “How to Use ChatGPT for Marketing Your Jewelry Business”. I’ll put the link to that in the show notes also, if you want to check it out.

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As a marketer I’m welcoming AI with open arms because I think it can help us save time and actually open us up to be more creative by allowing us the energy and space to work on brainstorming new ideas and forming solid new strategies rather than getting caught up in the drudgery of writing first drafts and actually generating the content. I do believe that AI needs a human touch to be extraordinary. If you’re lazy and let AI do all the work, then yeah you’re going to be boring as all heck. I recently overheard a jewelry entrepreneur say that they could just use AI tools to scrap the Mejuri website of keyword and content ideas and basically duplicate that on their own website with a slightly different presentation. Ugh that’s where I don’t think AI is useful. Okay, yeah, you could do that. And maybe you’ll find some success for a short period of time by copying what Mejuri is doing. But in that way you’re falling into the trap of letting AI push you out into the Sea of Sameness where you’re eventually going to drown and be forgotten. You can look to what others are doing as a starting point – and you can borrow some inspiration from that, but ultimately you want to do the hard thing, the thing that AI can’t do, at least not yet. You want to stand out and create your Sea of Sparkle, where no one else can shine as brightly as you. So yeah, you’re going to hear that criticism about AI tools making everything feel the same. But I think long before AI tools, entrepreneurs think the answer is just copying someone else who’s successful and riding that train for as long as possible. Sameness has been an issue for a very long time, especially in this industry. Maybe you can find some short-lived success this way, but it’s not going to lead to you becoming a legendary brand. So it’s up to you what you want to be: forgettable – – or truly extraordinary. Tell me in a YouTube comment or podcast review if you can relate to this. Have you ever tried to push your brand to be extraordinarily different? Do you find yourself wanting to copy other successful jewelry brands? Hey, no judgement. I know it’s hard out there. I know it’s hard to be different. There’s so much out there. It’s very difficult to reinvent the wheel, but I’m offering this as a challenge.

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Okay, let’s get into my marketing and jewelry news roundup. And if you want the links, you can find them in the show notes. So the first article comes from PLANN, which is a an Instagram scheduling, analytics and strategy tool, they have an official blog, and they shared an article called “10 FAIL-PROOF WAYS TO GENERATE NEW CONTENT IDEAS”. Because as you probably gleaned from content marketing, you regularly need to be coming up with new ideas. Do you struggle in this area? Try some of these tips. So tip number one, crawl social media, follow hashtags that inspire you and pay attention to accounts that capture your attention. Spend some time on their profiles and make notes about things that seem interesting to you and/or that you can adapt to your own marketing. But again, with this spin that you are doing it according to your brand. Repurpose your content. Don’t think that once you’ve posted about something that you can never share it again. Constantly think about how you can say the same things in new ways, especially if it’s related to a holiday event or season that happens regularly related to your business. Ask your audience what they’d like to see. You can also check out discussion forums related to a niche that caters to you. For example, if you sell beach themed jewelry, you can look at a Reddit sub related to beach travel or people who love the beach. You can also see what’s trending or popular on YouTube and TikTok, and then explore creative ways to take that direction and adapt it for your brand to make it work. So my main takeaway is yes, keeping up with idea generation for content can feel like a grind. But if you make it a top priority, you plan ahead and you have fun with it, then the world is truly your oyster, there’s no limit to the types of content you can create.

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The next article comes from Retail TouchPoints. And it’s called “How Benefit Cosmetics Turned a Product Launch into an Event (and a Major Marketing Win). Not a jewelry brand but a beauty brand, Benefit Cosmetics was recently featured in in Retail TouchPoints for their adept handling of a product launch promotion. So as I’m talking about this, even though it’s outside our industry, think about how you can apply it to when you have your own product and collection launches. So last year Benefit decided to replace a current line of blushes with a new range. They were really concerned that their customers would be disappointed about the fact that they were discontinuing something that people did like. So they looked for ways to turn this moment of the release in an exciting event that would delight loyal fans and also bring in new ones. Ultimately, the results said product launch emails saw 50% higher click through rates than their typical campaigns and generated 40% higher revenue than similar emails throughout the year. So how did they do this? First, they created a lot of buzz for the launch. And this is a common mistake or missed opportunity that I see especially with smaller brands. They think saying something once or even twice is enough. But you have to come to buzz with this with full enthusiasm and excitement, and you kind of have to be your like own hype person. You have to say it multiple times. And you have to say it early and very often. And there’s also usually a multi step process involved. So what Benefit did is they had a pre-launch waitlist that they promoted across several channels, so that people can sign up, be on the waitlist to get first or early access to the launch. They were also able to save the date to their calendars, so they could remember exactly when the product line was launching. And then once it got closer to the launch date they were able to utilize with their email marketing, additional segmentation so they could space out emails to customers who were on the waitlist, and then people who weren’t on the waitlist, but segmenting those out between VIP customers, and then people who have purchased blush in the past. So using those segments, and using this like multispace highly planned process, they were able to personalize their email campaigns based on customer behavior and interest, meaning that customers saw emails that were relevant to how they shop, and what they want to see. So my main takeaway is to be successful in a product or collection launch, it’s not rocket science. You just have to plan ahead, leverage your data, be your own hype person, say it more often than you think you need to, repeating your message multiple times and focusing on giving each customer what they want, as much as you possibly can.

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And then the last article comes from Social Media Examiner, and it’s called “How to Drive More Local Foot Traffic With Instagram”. Do you have a brick and mortar presence? Do you sometimes do in person events like trunk shows or pop ups? Do you hope to do any of these things in the future? If so, then you’ll definitely want to try some of these tips about driving more local foot traffic with Instagram. So first, of course, and these tips are small, they’re easy things you can do in like an hour or two. And then even ongoing as you post, you’ll want to optimize your Instagram profile for local business by adding location details to your bio, setting up an action button, which is great if you take appointments, whether that is for like a temporary event or an ongoing event, and then geotagging all your feed content. So making sure everything you post is connected to a physical location. You can also research and use local hashtags, and connect them to your posts. If you want to try getting your customers to transition from interacting with you online to getting them up off their couches and visiting you in person rather than just creep on you, offer exclusive in store or in person only coupons or discounts. You can create reminders for events to get people excited about the things that you’re hosting. And then when there are influencers or really enthusiastic customers who visit your store, you can tag them, take photos of them with their permission, or ask them to share user generated content with you. And then you should definitely highlight other local businesses and perhaps even reshare their content in your stories, or consider doing collaborations with them. My main takeaway is sometimes getting your jewelry in front of people in real life is the best way to show them the details of the pieces and the overall impact that they have. If you don’t have a brick and mortar store location, you can definitely consider doing trunk shows pop ups, other live events and then optimizing your social media presence to let it be known to your target market that they can see your jewelry in person.

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That’s it for today. Do you have any questions about Jewelry Marketing Jumpstart? You can always email me Laryssa that’s laryssa@joyjoya.com. If you love this podcast, please share it with a friend who’d appreciate it. And don’t forget to subscribe as well as leave a review on Apple Podcasts. If you’re completely new to digital marketing for jewelry, then you’ll want to purchase and read a copy of my book Jewelry Marketing Joy. Visit joyjoya.com/book for more information.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai