One of my favorite things to do on a Saturday morning is to go to our local Farmer’s Market to buy some fresh produce to use in some of my recipes for the week.
Since I go regularly, I know exactly what will be available in different seasons.
Especially good right now are the fresh herbs (basil, cilantro, and the like). I love to chop up some fresh basil to top a plate of spaghetti. Soooo good!
Anyway, this email isn’t about Farmer’s Markets. It’s about competitor research and analysis.
Which means we need to talk about markets–in the sense of the market for your consulting work.
You see, there’s the massive education market, in which all education products and services are sold.
And then, farther on down the chain, there’s the smaller market of consulting services for schools and conferences.
And even further down the line, there’s the market for your specific field of expertise.
And that sub-market is the market you want to be focusing on as you do your competitor research.
If you’re a math consultant, you’re not competing with language arts consultants…or science consultants…or leadership consultants…or anyone else in the broader “consulting for schools and conferences” market.
You’re competing with others with an area of expertise similar to yours–other math consultants.
And, if you’re going to be successful in attracting a lot of good business for your consulting work, you need to know who else is in your market, what they do, who they do it for, and what they charge (and lots of other things about them).
Armed with this information, you can find the perfect niche inside your sub-market and the perfect marketing approach that allows you to stand out from all that competition.
Competitor Research and Analysis: A Huge Opportunity
Now, if you’re thinking, “Shoot, I’ve never done that kind of market research about my competitors. I’ve kind of just been winging it,” well, don’t fret. It just means that you’re in the same boat as about 90% of your competitors.
Because the truth is, probably 10% or less of the consultants in a sub-market have ever done the kind of competitor analysis we’re talking about in this blog post series.
And that’s good news for you. In fact, it’s FANTASTIC news!
Because it means that, with just a little work on your part, you can easily put yourself into the top 10% of your field in no time.
Now in my last post, I had you create a simple “starter list” of keywords that describe the work you do. In today’s action step, I’ll have you put that list to good use to identify a bunch of competitors in your field.
Identifying Competitors: The Process
The process is simple (though I’ll warn you, it’s also a bit tedious). You just…
1. Take the words on your keyword list and, one at a time, enter them into the search field in Google and hit Enter.
2. Then scan down through the results, looking for other educational consultants’ websites, social media profiles, and products. Open up those sites and see if the person looks like a competitor or someone in your field you should emulate.
3. When you find someone you’d describe as one of your competitors (whether you knew about them prior to this exercise or not), add them to the database you created for your keywords in my last post.
4. Go at least two pages deep in the search results for each of your keyword terms. Go as much as five pages deep if a keyword is delivering really good results.
That’s it. That’s your entire action step for today.
Now, it only took me a minute to type up those directions. It will probably take you 5-10 hours to slog through all those results pages. But once you run through your whole keyword list with this process, you’re going to have an excellent database of competitors to work with, and you’ll be able to mine that database for crucial information for your business for years to come.
If you can find 20 good competitors, that’s probably good enough to work with. If you can get up to 50, even better.
Because in the final analysis, the more you know about the people you’re competing with in your field, the better you’ll be able to use that information to win.
It’s kind of like me knowing exactly what I’ll be able to find at the Farmer’s Market at any time of the year. When you have deep knowledge about your market, there are never any surprises.
And I don’t want you to ever be surprised or confused about what you need to do to capture a big chunk of the business in your market.
In my next post, we’ll start using some of the competitors in your database to take your competitor analysis to the next level.
Till then…
To Your Success,
Willy
P.S.–As I said above, this process is a bit of a “slog,” but don’t let that discourage you. And don’t let it keep you from moving forward with the process I’m laying out in this blog post series.
If you only have an hour or two to devote to this step between now and when I post again, do what you can do and then set your keyword list aside for now. Take the competitors you come up with now and move forward with your next action step from my next post.
Then, you can go back later and complete this process with the rest of your keyword list. But at all costs, keep moving forward. The work you do over the next week or so will pay off for you in increased work for years to come!
