From the earliest age, humans are taught to listen first and act second. The same is true for your business and marketing. You need to listen to your data, your customers, your colleagues, stakeholders, etc. You also need to listen to your competition!
Your competitors are one of the most influential forces on the success of your business and its marketing strategies. If the competition is doing well, then it is more than likely that your business is not doing that well and vice versa. There is only so much money in the market!
It is crucial that you pay attention to the competition and use their efforts to your advantage. In particular, you can learn a lot about optimizing your own conversions based on how they are approaching the market.
Become Their Customer
It’s time to go undercover! In order to know how your competitors approach leads and market themselves to audiences, you need to become their newest prospective customer. You should try and engage with their business on every possible channel.
Social Media
If you aren’t following your competitors already, then you absolutely need to start now. Social media is often the first place that businesses go to update customers about the latest changes and other news. By maintaining contact with their accounts, you’ll stay in the know and avoid any potential surprises that may disrupt your own conversion efforts.
Also, pay attention to how they interact with other followers. This includes the types of content they publish to social media, how they react to comments, and more. You can use these insights to inspire your own social media accounts, while also ensuring that you create a voice and social media persona that is unique to your business.
PPC Ads
Search for terms relevant to your business. If you see any paid results from your competitors, pay attention to how these ads are structured. What offers do they highlight? Is there a call-to-action? How does the ad grab your attention? You may want to screenshot the ad to refer back to later. Once you’re done, click the ad.
Now, you’ll be brought to their landing page experience where you will ask the same set of questions. You also want to consider the overall feel and design of the page. By understanding their entire ad experience, you can determine what’s working for them and what you need to do better or different in your own PPC campaigns.
Newsletter
Definitely signup for your competitors’ email marketing lists! This is another key contact point where news, offers, and other important details will be disseminated to audiences. Pay particular attention to how they write their subjects. Is it an enticing message that makes you want to click and read? Remember, your own email messages may appear right next to theirs in inboxes. So, you want to find ways that you can distinguish yourself and produce a better subject line!
Consult Reviews
The Internet is rich with user reviews. You can find reviews on anything, including your competitor’s products. This is an incredibly valuable resource that you absolutely need to use. Not only will you discover what audiences like and dislike about your competitors’ products, but you’ll also gain insight into the types of features and services that your target audience cares about.
As you’re reading reviews, you’ll notice patterns in what customers like and dislike. If the price is important, many users will mention this in their review. Similarly, if customer support is an issue with a competitor’s company, there will be plenty of users reporting it. Thus, it is important to look at how frequently different topics or features are cited.
Your competitors’ biggest weaknesses are your best opportunities, while their greatest strengths represent difficult obstacles for your company to try and overcome. Identifying these will give you a clearer vision of how to approach customers in ways that drive conversions.
Find What Your Competitors Value
As you’re looking at your competitors’ marketing strategies, try to identify what they place the most emphasis on. Do they care about offering the most comprehensive customer support possible? Or, are they interested in offering the lowest cost solution on the market. No matter what it is, it should be easy to pick out because they’ll mention it repeatedly.
There are two reasons why this is important. First, it will let you know what your competitors are focused on and how they separate themselves from another. This will help you find your own unique selling point that audiences haven’t seen yet.
Second, this focus isn’t random. They’ve likely conducted lots of market research to determine a trait or feature that customers really care about. By discovering their primary focus, you can piggyback on this research!
Counter And Be Different!
All of these insights are allowing you to see a more complete view of the playing field. When you compare all of the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors against what you learn about audience sentiments from reviews, you start to discover gaps in the market. These gaps will allow you to move through the field and reach the goal line with fewer obstacles and setbacks.
Gaps occur when there is a user want that hasn’t been satisfied or a pain point that hasn’t been resolved. They are massive opportunities to improve your conversions! Your job is to fill these gaps and use them to establish your own footing in the market.
In this regard, it is important that you choose strategies that are different from the competition. Don’t walk the same path, carve your own! Audiences don’t want a lookalike to what they’ve already seen and experienced. They want something new and different!
Conclusions
To optimize your conversions, you need to know what matters to the audience and what sort of offers, features, and traits they care about. Your competitors have everything you need to gain insight into these motivations.
By analyzing how your competition approaches customers, you’ll know what sort of offers your target audience is used to seeing. This will help you detect gaps in the market and deliver an experience that is more likely to generate conversions!