Hello, and welcome to the Monday Morning Marketing Podcast.I'm Esther.
And I'm Melanie.
And today we're talking about competitor analysis, how toperform a competitive analysis against your competitors. So let's break itdown. First of all, who are your competitors?
Well, anybody who does stuff like you do, basically.
So it can be exactly the same or really similar. I mean,Melanie and I could be classed as competitors in some areas, not in all areas,because she does things that we don't do and we do things that she doesn't do.But instead of competing, Melanie and I have decided to collaborate, which isalways a good idea. But if we were to be competitive, Melanie and I, we wouldneed to start looking at a few things. First of all, we'd have to identify ourcompetitors. So when you identify you could go online to do this. You could goto your local Chamber of commerce, you could go just to the Yellow Pages,golden pages, whatever they're called. And you could just search throughbasically a simple Google search of what your main keyword is. So if you selljewellery, then you would want to put in jewellery makers or jewellery sellersnear me and that expression of "near me", then that narrows it downto your local area.
I've also got a suggestion over here in the Republic,there'll be one wherever you're based as well, where you can register companynames. And you can also do a search through registered business names and alsothe types of business they are. You can do a search there as well.
And is that costly?
No, that's free. You can do the search for free. It's onlyif you want to get further information that you pay. Yeah.
Because basically, we all know that everybody's informationis free for all on the Internet these days. Even what the government has onyou, you're allowed to do that. So identify who your competitors are, how closethey are to you, what they're actually selling, how they're selling it. Andbasically, if your next door neighbour is doing exactly the same as you, maybethink of doing something slightly different.
And sometimes having an understanding of the type ofpresence that they have online gives you an understanding of the type of peoplethey're targeting as well. If you find that they're targeting all of theirpromotion, all of their reach on maybe one or two particular types of channels,it also helps you understand the type of audience they're trying to go for aswell.
Yeah. And it might be exactly the same audience that youwould be going for. So take a look and see what's working for them. Do not copythem. Do not copy them. Okay. Can I repeat that a third time? Do not copy them.Everybody has their own unique selling point, which is themselves, which isyour way of speaking, your way of photographing your goods if you sell physicalproducts. Everybody is different. Do not copy.
Yeah, but this is the problem, okay, because sometimes youdon't appreciate that you are doing an awful lot similar to them. So how do youavoid copying people when there's only so many things you can do with yourbusiness?
Well, going back a few years now, whenever we first started,there were people who were literally copying our photographs and saving ourimages and reusing them in their own marketing.
Bad form.
Yeah. So that's what I mean by do not copy. Take your ownphotographs, make your own images, use Canva if you need to, but do ityourself. Like put your own Mark on it. Yes, you might be. It might be an MLMmultilevel marketing, and you all have exactly the same products to sell, andyou all have exactly the same sales pitch to use. But you can always find a wayto put your own spin on it.
I guess the other thing is that something I've spotted overthe years, quite genuinely is some people will say, oh, I wish you could dothis as well. You can see online reviews. You can see. I wish you couldincorporate this or add this. I'm so pleased that you've done this. And this ispart and parcel of your offering, let's say. So actual online reviews can helpyou better appreciate the good things, and bad things that your competitors aredoing or not doing as well.
Yeah. And if there are people saying some bad things aboutthem, then that can give you a boost to go, okay, I'll do that differently.I'll do that aspect going back to maybe you're making candles, and people say,oh, I prefer if it had two Wicks and the candles are three Wicks. Make candles withthree Wicks in them, like longer lasting burning Wicks. There's so many things.But then how many people actually go online and review? That's the other thing.You have to be very careful. It could just be a very small percentage of peoplewho are going on.
And people only tend to feel compelled doing reviews whenthey got something negative to say.
And even then sometimes they get mistaken by the business.They think it was your business, but it was actually somebody else's name. Butit's very similar, and they find you online and not the other people in yourshoulder.
Yeah, I've got a review on my Facebook page. Actually. It'snothing to do with social media or marketing at all. I have no idea why it'sthere. It's still a very good review, but. It's nothing to do with my business.
That's why you kept it.
You can't remove it on Facebook, can you? No, unless youremove the whole thing. And to this day, I still don't know why it's there.
Yeah, well, I've been watching a few videos on TikTok andgoing down the rabbit hole, and there's this girl who's Localish to me. She'shere in Northern Ireland. And she was saying that she got some really badreviews and people were complaining about her product. Wow. And then sherealized it wasn't her product. She asked them for photographs of the productand it was a totally different brand. Like I said, they just jump on the firstthing they see and go, yeah, your product is rubbish. And people are going, no,I don't think I ever sold to you. But anyway, how about if you could talk toyour competitors customers?
How hard would that be then?
It depends on the industry you're in. I think there's a lotof agricultural shows that are on, right. So like Farmer's daughter here FYI,in case I haven't mentioned this before, but agricultural shows are somethingthat I grew up with. So when you're at an agricultural show, you have all thebig brands that are there on the day they're showing their stock or they'reshowing their tractors. And all the customers are generally there, too. Soobviously, if you can get them to come to your stand and talk to you, then youcan find out why they prefer or why they've bought from the other guy and findout what they don't like about the other guy. But maybe they're just buyingfrom them out of loyalty. This would be for big, huge ticket items, like,obviously. Smaller ticket items people don't seem to be as loyal anymore thesedays, but when you're talking a big ticket item, like a tractor, like, I knowin my family, the farm has only ever had one type of tractor on it. My mum anddad have only ever driven one brand of car as well. So, I mean, they got intotheir customer loyalty from a very young age and they've stuck with them. Why?I don't know.
How about the devil you know than the devil you don't.
Could be.
There's something we've actually talked about before, butwe've kind of only ever touched on it. And that is like a SWOT identifying.
You are a swat. Oh, no. Yes. Sorry. You mean strengths andweaknesses and opportunities and threats SWOT.
Yeah, that's the one. Once you've done all this otherprevious work, then identify not just your own strengths and weaknesses, buttheir strengths and weaknesses. Do they have excellent follow up? Do they havean email list that they can continue the relationship on? Are they respondingfrequently and actively to any queries or questions that's coming up on theirpage? Maybe their strengths are they're really good at doing visual content, ormaybe they're happy to go live more frequently than perhaps you would beprepared to that sort of thing?
Definitely more than I am prepared to.
I don't know where I got that idea from. So have a look atnot just your own strengths and weaknesses, but their strengths and weaknessesas well, because we're all ready to criticise our competitors all the time. Butthere will be some stuff that they're going to be much better at than you aswell and having a rounder picture of why they're better at it. Maybe they'vegot a larger team so they and they can afford better trained staff or somethingalong those lines and try and work out where you can sort of pull and push onwhat you have and what they have at the same time. What do you think of that?
Yeah, I mean, I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who hassigned up for a competitor's mailing list.
No.
Maybe using a different email address than my work one, butdefinitely have signed up just to see what they're doing, not to copy whatthey're not selling or anything, just to see how frequently they send outemails, what they would sort of send their emails. And just to see, like you say,what's working for them, what would attract me to buy from them, what wouldresonate with my audience as well out of what they're saying? Or how could Irepurpose or rejig this and make it useful for my audience? Because at the endof the day, especially the industry that you and I are in, Melanie, there isn'ta lot of things that we can do differently.
Honestly no.
Because the rules for Facebook and all the social mediaplatforms are the same, whether you're using it or whether I'm using it. Sothere's not a lot of different things that we can do or even say. But the waythat we said or the way that we can present it to our audience is where we needto be.
That's our USP, isn't it? That's what makes us stand out.
Yeah, definitely. And I mean, there's so many places thatyou can go and look for these things and research these things. Obviously, youcan't just turn around and ask someone, oh, what's your open rate, what's youremail open rate, and how many people respond? And it's really bad form to justrock up to another person in your industry and go, right. So I'm conducting acompetitor analysis, and I would really like to know how quickly you respond toemails and how quickly you send out your stuff. Sometimes it's not somethingthat obviously it's going to be like they're not going to want to tell youdirectly, but maybe if you ordered something from them, you could see foryourself, do a bit of research, do a bit of get someone else to phone them, sayHi, just wondering.
But there are tools that you can use as well.
Oh, absolutely.
You may not be as comfortable as us doing all of that. Sothere are tools that you can use, and some of them are very well known, likeSEMrush and BuzzSumo. And then one is less known, like SpyFu. Now, I've onlycome across that today in the research we were conducting today, an Owl Letter.
I haven't heard of those two, but the first two yes,
SEMrush and busumo and they would be industry known. Butthis research brings it across information available and tools available fromthe west as well. And as we know, our audience is over there as well.
Absolutely. And I mean, the world is so small, especially, Ithink, especially post pandemic. People just went all online and now realisethey can order from anywhere in the world and get it, especially if it is aservice. Your service based business does not have to be just confined to yourlocal area. If you're not comfortable exporting your products with a physicalproduct, then that's something that you'd have to look into yourself. But asfor services, there is no limit. Well, maybe language barriers would be youronly limit there.
Unless it's you, of course, because you know more than onelanguage.
Yeah, I know two of the top three languages in the world. Itcomes in handy whenever you can open yourself up to more markets. But guys, atthe end of the day, a lot of people think that a competitor analysis is justfor when you're starting out and you're trying to name your business and you'retrying to see what other people are doing. It's not I mean, here at IPA Group,we have rebranded a number of times and we have looked at our competitors andlooked to see what's working and what's not in terms of colour analysis andstuff. But it is a good thing to do every couple of years.
Agree to see I've done it every two years.
Yeah, because things do move along so quickly, especially inthe social media world. But if you're using social media as one of your maintools, which should be one of your main parts or should be a part of yourmarketing, Then you should really be looking and seeing what other people aredoing because social media moves really quickly. What worked last month mightnot work next month. So I'm not saying you have to do this monthly, but do itevery couple of years anyway. Okay. And if you have any questions or if you'dlike to know anything more, we are always available and love a good natter.
Do you remember we used to ask the Oracle? Do you rememberthat? Do you remember that? Yeah, you can't do that anymore.
No, you just Google it now.
You Google it.
There is "ask the public", though.
Oh, is there? Yeah, ask the public. Is that dot com?
I want to say yes? Just Google it. It'll come up whetherit's dot com or dot co dot uk. But seriously, guys, just get out there, do abit of fun research. Don't get dragged down into the boring stuff and seewhat's working for both you and you're competitors. And we'll be back nextweek. Just going Monday morning marketing until then, bye.