DMN3 Blog

As you try to reach your business goals, it is natural to focus on your company’s efforts. If you would spend a little more time gaining competitor insight, you just might get to those goals a lot faster…

In previous posts I have discussed how important Customer Insight is to successful marketing. You can find them here:

Customer Insight: Why A Little Research Pays You Big Dividends

Customer Insight: Marketing Research You Should Be Doing

You can learn a lot from your competitors. While there are some things to be gained from competitors doing poorly, there’s a lot to be gained from studying competitors that are successful. We should know the difference before spending a lot of effort analyzing a competitor.

Insight about the operations of successful competitors can provide a lot of information regarding such things as:

• Customers, i.e., market segments to which they are marketing
• Unique Selling Proposition/Value Proposition
• Products
• Pricing
• Messaging
• Market trends
• Strengths and weaknesses
• Your Competitive Advantage
• Keywords targeted
• Online advertising
• Etc.

In the online marketing world, many Search Engine Optimization (SEO) firms define “competitors” as those organizations that are competing for the same keywords in search engine rankings and for Pay-Per-Click (PPC) keyword advertising. Keyword competitors are very important if search engine rankings and contextual (keyword) advertising are part of your strategy to achieve your business goals.

What is more important is having a clear understanding of those organizations that are competing with you for the same customers. Based upon the customer insight you gained from your efforts to understand your potential customers, you have a particular market segment in mind for your products or services. You will find that you have direct competitors that provide the same products and services that you offer to the same market and geographic area. You will also have indirect competitors that provide a different solution to the same customer problem or situation.

Where To Begin:

Keyword Competitors: Perhaps the simplest way is to search on various search engines to determine what Web sites rank high for the keywords you wish to use as part of your marketing efforts. I’m assuming that you have already done your homework to refine your keywords to distinguish between commercial terms (targeting customers) from non-commercial terms (used by those researching subject matter).

This process is relatively easy and can provide you the information you need. It requires that you visit the Web sites for the sites that rank high to determine if they are direct competitors, as well as keyword competitors, and to obtain a sense as to why the rankings are where they are. The latter requires a basic understanding of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

There are also many commercial tools that can provide you comprehensive reports on your keyword competitors. These tools provide a list of rankings and their analysis of why the site ranks high for those keywords.

Direct Competitors: Internet search the descriptive terms (products, services, market) for your organization and its products and services is a simple way to locate direct competitors. You can refine your search further by various parameters you are targeting.

Visit Competitors’ Web sites: If there is a single easy-to-access place to gain competitive insight, it is their Web site. Make a habit of visiting your competitors'  Web sites periodically.

There is much to be learned from your competitors that can help you be successful:

• Visiting successful competitor Web sites can provide insight into your potential customers. What value proposition are they marketing? What emotional gratification mode and purchase preference modes dominate the site? If they are very successful, they probably already know the various customer profiles and segments and how to position their product in the mind of the customer.

For larger volume sites, there are tools you can use to gain insight into who is visiting their sites.

These third party applications, e.g., Quantcast and others like them, provide inference data on visitor profiles to the competitor's Web site. There are many other competitive intelligence applications available to you - compete.com provides site traffic and engagement metrics, as well as keyword and search strategies. Another example is Spyfu.com, which analyzes keywords and pay-per-click advertising, including estimated PPC costs and budgets.

Also, don’t forget simple resources  like Google’s Alerts, following your competitor on Twitter, subscribing to their newsletters, etc.

As Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese military strategist, noted in his treatise on the Art of War, “if you are ignorant of both your enemy and yourself, then you are a fool and certain to be defeated in every battle."  I