Photo by Michelle Moody on Unsplash

Everyone in his life has tough decisions to take from time to time. The business is not exception, too. And if you want to “survive” and take your business to the next level, you have to always check what others do, too.

ПРОЧИТАТЬ ЭТУ СТАТЬЮ НА РУССКОМ

1. Analyze how big players work in your niche.

• Search for competitors using search engines.

The most simple, but effective actions. Open Google in the web browser tab and enter the key request that you consider basic to your business. For example, if you are offering English courses, your customers are most likely to enter “how to learn English”. If you sell musical instruments – use in the search field “how to buy musical instruments”.

Start your search and look at the top 10 sites in organic listings. These are companies that have long experience on your market and occupy good positions. So it looks this way in practice for both examples:

English:

Musical instruments:

Filter out intermediate sites that are not related to your niche. It can be blogs like “all about everything”, message boards and so on. Save links to companies in a separate document with the title “Principal Organic Competitors”.
Use the template:   Name of the company     Link

• SEMrush Tool for Total Competitor Research

Now that you have the links, you can see the whole “inside out” of the businesses of your competitors. One of the best instruments for this if you are a professional is SEMrush . The best about this instrument is that is shows lots of statistics incl. keywords and backlinks of each site (incl. competitors), has additional tools that are updated regularly and it is really easy to be used even from people who are not speaking “digital marketing” language. This of course is the instrument that I use first together with Serpstat and the most important one comparing to all rest that I will offer here and that have very specific functions. This is a paid software, but there is also a free version, which will be enough to study ten competitors.

Enter the address of the site you want to explore in the appropriate line and select the country:

The service allows you to analyze keywords that competitors are promoting on the Internet, links to third-party resources, demographics and many other data.
Example information in the SEMrush account: 

Create a separate document and keep a list of the most effective competitor keywords related to your services or products.

Analog of this instrument is Serpstat.

2. Define your ideal buyer and create accurate targeted ads based on competitors.

• Using TowerData to create a client avatar

TowerData is a popular tool all over the world for calculating average customers. If you already have customers, upload them to a separate table and import it into TowerData. 

The software creates a demographic vision of your audience, which will help you to create the most relevant advertisements via social networks. The information also helps to prepare a quality marketing proposal for your customers. If you speak the language of your target audience, this will increase the trust in your brand.

If you don’t have a list of existing customers yet, the process will slow down a bit. But in this case you can determine the ideal buyer. Use additional tools as mentioned below.

• Alexa to study the target audience

Insert the address of the desired site and get all the information about its visitors. The first screen displays the total number of visits to the site for the selected period: 

One of the main indicators is the demography of the audience. The tool shows in which countries and regions you are most popular (in percentage): 

Check out the list of top performed keywords. This can be used both for analysis of one’s own resources and for “spying” on competitors:

Alexa’s advanced demographic data will help you better understand your target audience:

• SimilarWeb to determine “the habitat” of your target audience

If you know where your potential customers are concentrated on the Internet, you can create the most effective advertising. SimilarWeb will help you to find specific resources by analyzing the sites of successful competitors.

Register on similarweb.com and go to the Website Analysis section on the home page. Enter the address of the desired site in the line: 

Here you will also find detailed statistics about site visitors, including demographics. In this case, we want to know how exactly the people find out the website, so we go down the page and find the Top Referring Categories section. From the list you can see the sources of the visitors:

Some of them we will explore more. For example, in order to publish targeted ads, you need to know which social media is the most relevant for your target audience or where your customers are concentrated. Example:

Now after knowledge of this, we can start posting ads on the proven sites. But there is a chance that it will be difficult to compete here. In such case you can explore new markets. You can definitely find your  audience on every social network. Somewhere more, somewhere less. You can try for example some that your competitors do not use at all. Of course in such case, there is also a significant “but”: it will be more difficult to identify potential customers.
We have a special action plan and can help you with this. Do not hesitate to contact us.

3. Determine the cost of engaging potential customers to your sales’ funnel.

• Use the standard word planner offered by Google AdWords

Sign in to AdWords if you already have a Google Account, or create a new account. In the menu that opens, select the “Keywords” section. Or log in immediately to the keyword planner using the search engine.  
Enter in the line the main key query used by your potential customers and click the “Start” button. The system will offer a list of the most popular additional key phrases and immediately evaluate the cost of their display in contextual advertising blocks. Choose the keywords of the language you are interested in.

The same phrases can be additionally used in targeted ads as triggers that affect the audience’s decisions. For example, a person needs to learn English. See what search queries people use for these purposes. Include the most popular ones in the headline of your social media ads. You will find the “pain” of your customers, if you correctly configure the parameters of the audience. Export keywords and their approximate cost in a separate file and save it.

• Make a survey 

If you already have resources where potential customers are concentrated, use them to find out as much additional information as possible. This will help reduce the cost of clicks and ad impressions. The more accurately you designate the parameters of the target audience, the better will be your ads. Ad clicks will increase with the same number of impressions.

Try to ask targeted questions. For example:

“What is important to you in teaching vocals?”
“What delivery methods do you most often use when buying electronics in an online store?”
“How much time per day are you willing to spend to loose enough weight?”
Based on the information received, create an advertisement that fully meets the requirements of potential customers. Seeing the ad, a person should think: “But this is exactly what I was looking for.”

Consider the method. For example we regularly request feedback from the audience, we know its requirements and wishes, so we create relevant ads. This kind of ads bring a lot of potential customers. The final cost of the client depends on the conversion.

Communicate regularly with your target audience to determine the cost of advertising and lower it to a minimum. Examine your competitors’ numbers. Use BuzzSumo, SimilarWeb and similar tools to calculate the number of clicks on competitors’ selling sites. Compare the rate of visits and the percentage of clicks from a specific site.

For example, you know that 10,000 people visit a site per month. 50% of them click on ads on Google. Collect the keywords used by the company and determine their value using the Google Keyword Planner. So you find out how much contextual advertising costs to your competitor, and you can make an approximate budget for your own promotion.

• Test advertisements

In practice, the cost can radically differ from assumptions. You can determine that attracting one client from Instagram will cost $ 100. But when you start advertising, it turns out that the real price is 5 times higher. The reason – the ad does not match the quality of your competitors’s ads. To avoid this and maintain a budget, be sure to test advertising campaigns.

• common myths about A / B testing that you better get rid of

As soon as you understand that advertising is set up correctly and can produce results, increase your budget. But analytics is also required in the next stages of development. This will not only support the existing result, but also improve it.

• Find the best examples of advertisements in your niche

Follow.net
A great tool for a complete study of competitor resources. The main advantage – Follow.net can be used in absolute

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