Generally speaking, people have a negative view of stalkers.
And admittedly, most stalkers are creepy in the extreme.
But there IS one time where it’s OK to be a stalker–at least in a business sense…
When you’re doing competitor analysis in marketing mode. That’s the process of learning everything you can about your competitors in order to establish a winning position for your business in your field.
And luckily, you can do this kind of stalking without all the creepy stalker vibes.
Here’s how it works…
How to Use Competitor Analysis in Marketing
In my last post, I had you look at the Home Pages of 10 of your top competitors. I hope you found some good information there.
Now, it’s time to dig a little deeper by clicking some links on their sites.
What you’re looking to gather is some information about your competitors’ offers–what they’re giving away and what they’re selling.
The process is simple. You just…
Start by Joining Their Email Lists.
Most of your competitors will have an in-house email list and will have one or more ways on their website for you to opt-in.
Some of these will be a basic “fill out this form to get my weekly newsletter” kind of thing. Others will offer you something for free (a lead magnet) in exchange for your name and email address (I’ll talk about this more in a sec).
Once you’ve joined their email list, you’ll start getting emails from them. Some of these people will have an automated “welcome sequence” of emails that go out to new subscribers over a series of days. Others will just start sending you their regular (“nurture”) emails.
Either way, open every email you get from your competitors and click on the links in those emails to see where the links take you. You don’t have to buy anything if you don’t want to, but see what those landing pages (aka sales pages) are pitching. Take notes.
Next, download any free products you might want to examine in detail.
If their way of getting you on their email list is to offer you a free product (lead magnet) in exchange for your email address, then you’ll receive a link to this free product, probably in the first email after signing up. Download it and read it or watch it, if it’s video. See what they’re giving people in exchange for opting-in.
If you see any other freebies being offered on their site, grab those, too (some consultants offer multiple lead magnets). Again, take notes and save copies of everything.
Finally, if you wish to spend a little money to dig deeper, buy any paid products you’d like to examine.
These might be ebooks, books, online courses, or any number of other things. Read these materials to see what kind of information they’re selling people. Again, save everything you think you might want to look at in the future as models (of what to do and/or what not to do).
Build Up Your Swipe Files for Ongoing Competitive Intelligence
So, for today’s action step: Follow the steps above to create what’s called in business circles a “swipe file” (so you can “swipe” your competitors’ best ideas for your own use).
Do this with your top group of 10 competitors or so. Then, go into your database and add a column for “Offers.”
Add all of your notes from this exercise into the appropriate columns for each of your competitors.
Now you have a better idea about what your competitors are giving away, what they’re selling, and what they’re telling people in their emails.
At this point, you should be feeling like you’re getting a lot of great insight into what your competitors are doing to grow their audience–and you’re probably getting a bunch of ideas for similar things YOU could be doing!
So, if you’re serious about finding a niche in your field that you can dominate, do this work. I promise, it will pay off in spades down the line!
In my next post, we’ll take our “stalking” in another direction to see what else you can learn about your competitors from their social media presences.
Till then…
To Your Success,
Willy
P.S.–Back when I was in high school, our school had, as its motto, the old saying, “Knowledge is power.”
And while I could poke a bunch of holes in that argument (especially by pointing out that knowledge without action doesn’t accomplish anything), I’ll let that slide.
But I will say that knowledge at least gives you the opportunity of gaining power. And that’s what this competitor research we’re doing is all about. You’re gaining knowledge that you can then use to position your business perfectly to succeed in your field.
Without this knowledge, you’re just throwing darts at a dart board–backwards, over your shoulder, blindfolded–and hoping to hit the bulls-eye.
So hang in there with me over the next few posts. Do the action steps each time and continue to gather the competitive intelligence (knowledge) that you need to win.
Again, 90% of your competitors will never do this work, so, by doing so, you can quickly put yourself in that top 10%. You’ve got this!
Willy
