How to track competitor promotions, and build a promotion calendar

A competitor’s prices tell you where they stand today. Their promotions tell you what they’re planning. Brands that track promotions consistently stop being surprised by a rival’s sale, and start timing their own campaigns around it.

Where promotions show up

Most promotions never change the price on the product page. To catch them, look in all of these places:

• Site banners and pop-ups: sitewide sales, “extra 20% off sale items”, free-shipping offers.
• The cart and checkout: automatic cart discounts, “buy two, save 10%”, gift-with-purchase. Shopify alone supports amount-off, buy-X-get-Y and free-shipping discounts, applied automatically or by code.
• Email and text messages: subscriber-only codes and early access. Sign up to competitors’ lists with a dedicated inbox.
• Social media and ads: influencer codes and paid-social offers.
• Marketplaces: coupons and deal events.

What to record about each promotion

The last row matters more than it seems. Without a dated record, it’s hard to tell later whether a promotion really ran when you think it did.

Turn records into a calendar

After three to six months, lay the records on a calendar, one row per competitor. Patterns appear quickly:

• Competitors who run a sale at the same point every month, often around paydays.
• Who leads on big events such as Black Friday, and how early they start.
• Who discounts deeply but rarely, and who runs constant small offers.
• Which categories they discount, which often tells you where they have too much stock.

A year of records is enough to predict most of a competitor’s calendar.

Use it to plan, not to copy

A promotion calendar is most useful for planning your own campaigns:

• Avoid clashing with a rival’s big sale when your offer would be weaker, or go first when you can.
• Prepare a response in advance for the events you know are coming, so you’re not deciding under pressure.
• Hold your nerve on short promotions that won’t last long enough to matter. See how to respond to a competitor’s price cut.

When you do run your own promotions, make sure any “was” price you show is genuine. In the US, the Federal Trade Commission’s guides against deceptive pricing say a former price should be one at which the product was genuinely offered, in good faith, for a reasonably substantial period of time.

Remember the price at checkout

A free-shipping promotion can change what customers pay more than a percentage discount. When you compare, use the price at checkout, not just the discount headline.