How do you go about your audience and competitors research? Do it yourself, or is it done for you?

Question

Nermin Zejnilovic · Accepted Answer

Hey, Judith, should I write my post from LinkedIn here.

Last week I sent a similar strategy that I'm mostly using.

In Miro Boards, I create mood board with the startup team that I work with, and we all engage from different aspects. This will be a longer list, but we go in this order.

- Write a list of your top 5–10 competitors. Include the biggest names in the industry, even if you’re a small brand.

- Visit each site and make sure you accept all their cookies.
- Turn off your ad blocker, or surf around in incognito mode.
- Head to Similarweb and figure out where your competitors get their traffic from
- Take a look at their social channels;
- Head to Facebook Ad Library and check out their ads
- Are they using images or videos?
- What are they promoting? Is it content or a direct link to a store?
- Are they using specific landing pages? (They should)
- Do the same for Twitter Ads Transparency
- Research banner ads;
- Go to SEMrush and search for your competitors. Take a look at their ads.
- Take note of their design; 
- Which colors do they use? Are the ads animated or static?
- What are the headlines? 
- What is the offer?
- What is the CTA (Call To Action)?
- What is the problem they are addressing (Important)
- What's the value proposition they talk about (Important)
- Take notes on their design

Follow the marketing funnels as far as you can, and take notes/screenshots along the way.

Remember that You can be certain that big brands already have tested all the steps, and they know they work.

Of course, you shouldn’t just blindly copy everything from your competitors. Add your own USP’s and design, but keep the strategies.

Also, I would set maybe Notify for keywords that I'm interested and see what people are asking or commenting.

Paul Richardson · Answer

I copy reviews of competitor websites/products from sites like Capterra into a spreadsheet. This gives me an idea of the target audience (job titles, industries, etc.).

I then copy and paste the reviews into ChatGPT and ask it questions about likes, dislikes, problems it solves (or does not solve), etc.

Answer

I do both.

Florian Meffre · Answer

We had a benchmark made for us early on to help us kickoff targeting a good audience.

But very quickly we did most of the work ourselves using similar audiences and doing test and learn. 
We now have two people working full time on audiences and experimenting (team of 12 people).

We're constantly looking at our competitors and their actions online. 
Furthermore, we have some help from a freelance for our SEO/SEA campaigns.

Answer

@paul_richardson 
I like your approach.

Are there other research tools you use aside from ChatGPT?

Paul Richardson · Answer

@judith_amarachi_

I've used SparkToro to view key texts and hashtags that my competitors use - and that their followers use.

See the great comment from @nermin_zejnilovic He uses Miro Boards, I use MindMeister which is similar.

Answer

@patrick_sao_e14 That's great, too.
The project determines, I guess.

Florian Meffre · Answer

@nermin_zejnilovic what he said! 🙏👌

Answer

@nermin_zejnilovic Thanks for sharing this. I will use this.

Answer

@nermin_zejnilovic That's an interesting approach
There will be no stone left unturned with this approach.

Answer

@florian_meffre That's interesting!
I love that your team is seeing it as something that is progressive.
With this approach, they would capture trends in the market early

How do you go about your audience and competitors research? Do it yourself, or is it done for you?

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