Your competitors can teach you much about their best marketing strategies and tactics. Of course, they are not willingly going to take you by the hand and lead you down the yellow brick road to marketing OZ. But a good competitor analysis will reveal the advertising, marketing, media and promotions that work best for them.

If you're just starting a marketing program, adapting what your competitors are doing can save you money and time. Just adapt their advertising, marketing, media and promotional tactics to your business. Then track and test those tactics to siphon some of their magic to your business.

Are you constantly seeing your competitors ads in a journal targeting your market? Then placing an ad in that journal may well work for you too.

Are your competitors advertising on the same format radio stations? Maybe people that buy products like yours like that format and listen to those radio stations.

Do your competitors use social media? Maybe you should consider using it too. This type of competitor analysis can guide your advertising, marketing, media and promotional strategies.

Now don't just copy them. Do your own target market research to be certain that any advertising, marketing, media and promotional tactics work with your target market. The best way to do this is with market segmentation.

Before devoting your precious resources to advertising, marketing, media and promotions that your competitors use, determine that your target market responds positively to those tactics delivered through that media.

Every target market is different. Target market members use different media to get different kinds of information. If you know their first and second level media preferences, you'll know what media reaches them. If you know how they think and talk, you'll may able to structure marketing and advertising messages that will appeal to them.

For instance, generations prefer different media and different communication structure. Today's seniors, in the WWII generation, like getting information from newspapers. They trust them and are comfortable with journalistic style. On the other hand, Generation Y likes neither newspapers nor journalistic style.

Furthermore, your image and key message has to differ by target markets. So your brand and your message must be relevant to target market members.

Market segmentation research should reinforce what you learn through your competitor analysis. It will help you determine whether the advertising, marketing, media and promotions used by your competitors are appropriate for your target market.

By administering this kind of research, you can rest assured that your get a good return on your advertising, marketing, media and promotion investments.