Spy on Your Competitors: Adopting Winning Strategies
Our growth hacker wrote the thorough and extensive guide “How to Spy on Your Competitors .” In it, he describes the manual way one could go about putting together a competitive analysis. Audienti automates this entire process, delivering you up-to-date intel on what your competitors are doing. But now what? Having a competitive analysis means not just knowing what your competitors are doing, but also how to weaponize your data against them. While some competitive analysis tools provide you with a snapshot of your competitor’s social media performance, they don’t connect the dots between their winning strategies and digital evangelists. Here are the best ways to make use of your competitive intelligence: 1. Determine which pieces of content your competitors created that are performing the best If your content marketing strategy isn’t working, simply pumping out more blog posts won’t get you better results. Competitive intelligence should tell you what kinds of content–blogs, videos, infographics, or photos, for example–your competitors are using, and what kind works best for them. For example, last Friday you saw them post a viral cat video that garnered 500 likes. But you can’t just post curated cat videos forever. There’s a good chance a cat video will perform better on a Friday than, say, a Tuesday. Take a look at how many backlinks your competitor’s blog post from earlier that week earned, and compare it against your own. If your Monday infographics aren’t getting the traction you expected, take a peek at when your competitors are getting engagement with theirs. Maybe your audience doesn’t consume content the way (and when) you thought they did. That’s the beauty of data: it’s doesn’t guess. Free Bonus: Download our free spreadsheet template to guide you through the process. Get it here. 2. See who is supporting your competitor the most, and determine if that influencer should become a target Does your competitor have a major blogger or journalist in their pocket? Does seeing them get backlinks on Forbes or Huffington Post frustrate the heck out of you? Audienti’s competitive intelligence can pinpoint who the most influential people are in your industry. From there, you can target that influencer with content or information about your product, or provide updated information about your industry if the journalist’s post is out-of-date. You can also reach out for product reviews, ask for feedback, or make a connection to be considered for future media pieces. Leveraging your competitor’s outreach strategy and optimizing it for your service or product takes the guesswork out of who and how you should pitch. 3. Find out what keywords get online users to their website A competitor is any website that takes traffic away from your own. Competitive intelligence should tell you a few things about how people reach your competitors online. What keywords are users entering to find them? That’s the first step, but there’s a lot more to unearth about the entire keyword strategy. How competitive is the keyword? Are there even enough people searching this keyword (or phrase) to craft a content strategy around it? You need a tool that can tell you exactly how customers are finding you, and your competitors, online. Ready to get started? Use our handy “Spy On Competitors” worksheet to get the most out of your competitive intelligence. Ready to supercharge your go-to-market strategy? Discover our consulting, training, and software for go-to-market growth businesses. Click below to transform your approach and drive growth today! Discover here
Political Marketing and Its Role at the Poll
While it’s nice to think that our voting decisions are based purely on how well the platforms of each of the candidates aligns with our own individual set of beliefs and values, it is far more likely that our ballots are cast based on the outcomes of carefully targeted and optimized political marketing campaigns. Initially, understanding that our actions are likely prompted by the calculated promotional efforts of external entities may be uncomfortable, but consuming the marketing of any product, service, or idea is how we make decisions about many things in our everyday life-from what peanut butter to buy to what clothes to wear-and that’s not a bad thing… especially in a country where every decision comes with so many choices. Political marketing is the process by which political candidates promote themselves and their platforms to voters through masterly-crafted communications aimed at gaining public support. As a business marketer, you may think that political marketing techniques and strategies don’t apply to you, but while the entity being marketed is different, there are many parallels between political marketing and the marketing of goods and services. Both business marketers and political marketers use media outlets to inform, remind, and alter the attitudes and behaviors of potential clients and voters (respectively), and they both employ similar tools when structuring campaigns, such as market research and statistical analysis. The primary and most important difference between business marketing and political marketing is that the latter is used to raise awareness and inform members of the public about critical issues and leadership choices within their community, state, and country. The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all John F. Kennedy Despite the presence of 24-hour news stations and 24-7 online news coverage, the general public remains under-informed on political issues and news. According to a Pew Research Center survey of 3,147 randomly-selected American adults, only 33 percent were aware that the U.S. Supreme Court has three women judges, only 52 percent knew the correct number of Republican and Democrat seats currently held by the U.S. Senate, and only 51 percent could correctly identify Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts Democratic Senator and former Special Advisor for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. This is why political marketing is so important-to raise awareness on current issues so members of the public can make informed decisions about what and who to support. The modern political marketing landscape provides myriad opportunities to connect with potential voters and shape public opinion, including cold calls, email campaigns, direct mail leaflets, radio spots, social media outreach, and television news and talk show appearances. There are also many tools available to gather data on voters and craft campaigns, such as factor analysis, discriminant analysis, conjoint measurement, and multidimensional scaling. In a nutshell, the importance of political marketing is how effective it is at spreading messaging and informing the public. Campaign messages and ideas are very easily and quickly consumed and shared, and this facilitates a better more organic way of raising awareness and generating a call them to action, whether that action is to join a campaign, lobby for a bill, or cast a vote at the poll. Ready to supercharge your go-to-market strategy? Discover our consulting, training, and software for go-to-market growth businesses. Click below to transform your approach and drive growth today! Discover here
The 10 Content Marketing Commandments
Follow these 10 Content Marketing Commandments to ensure content marketing success at your shop: Thou Shalt ListenContent marketing success entails more listening and less talking than traditional outbound marketing strategies. Join online conversations where your target audience is present and read their content. This tactic will help you learn and understand what’s important to the folks you are trying to reach, which is a vital ingredient when aiming to create content they will find valuable. Thou Shalt Pay Attention to QualityIn content marketing, quality beats quantity almost every time. Quality earns trust and trust creates organic connections with prospects. It’s as simple as that. Thou Shalt Practice PatienceYour content marketing plan wasn’t built in a day, so don’t expect it to impact your bottom line overnight. There are exceptions to this rule, but generally, content marketing is best at producing stronger results over a period of time. Thou Shalt Expand Content Beyond Promotional ContentWhile promotional messaging should be part of your overall content strategy, contemporary marketing best practices dictate the importance of establishing trust and community around your brand. The most effective and easiest way to do this is by broadening the types of content you share to encourage engagement and keep things interesting. Thou Shalt Refine MessagingWhen it comes to your strategy, remember the K.I.S.S. rule from grade school-“Keep It Simple, Stupid.” You will never be able to reach everyone, and trying to do so by spreading and thinning out your messaging is a waste of resources. Instead, keep your content marketing plan focused and uncluttered in order to build strong brand recognition and trust among your target audience. Thou Shalt Harness the Power of InfluencersInvest time and energy in locating and building relationships with online influencers in your market and adjacent markets. If you can convince them through your content that you are a respected, stimulating channel for valuable content, they may share your content with their followers, expanding your reach to a wider audience and strengthening your brand by aligning it with trusted influencers. Thou Shalt Manage Frequency of MessagingEmail messaging and social media updates don’t last long, but there is no universal best practice for what timing and frequency are most effective for every audience. Take time to understand how long your audience is engaging with and sharing content, then test out a few different strategies to see what works best. Thou Shalt of Acknowledge and EngageBuilding relationships is one of the most important parts of content and social media marketing success, and in order to do this, you must invest time in acknowledging and responding to users’ mentions, questions, commentary, etc. Engagement is also critical; promote engagement by posing questions (in the form of surveys or responses on social platforms) to encourage user interaction or by gamifying your content through incentivizing certain desired actions. Thou Shalt Make Content AccessibleAs a content marketer, you always want to ensure that your content is accessible to your users. One easy way to do this is through cross-promotion-be sure to link to your website or blog from your social accounts. Thou Shalt Keep Branding and Voice ConsistentYour online presence and all of your messaging and content serve as your “voice” or the outward extension of your brand, allowing that brand to reach many more people through a large network of experiences and engagement. Be sure to keep that voice consistent with your brand using tactics such as integrating the look and feel of your campaigns across all your communications channels, keeping your messaging focused on and tailored to your audience, and creating and adhering to brand guidelines. Ready to supercharge your go-to-market strategy? Discover our consulting, training, and software for go-to-market growth businesses. Click below to transform your approach and drive growth today! Discover here
Shine Bright Like a Diamond: The 4Cs of Content Marketing
Developing a marketing campaign that resonates with your target audience requires a carefully thought-out marketing map, and even more planning if you want it to elicit the ‘calls to action’ you desire-whether that’s consumer buying, social following/sharing, or enhanced brand awareness. But getting on the radar of your target audience requires a strategic and creative marketing plan. Back to Basics Sometimes it’s necessary to get back to basics when developing a new marketing strategy or reinvigorating an existing one. We’re all familiar with the four ‘P’s of marketing: product, price, place, and promotion. These pillars make up the foundation of any solid Marketing 101 plan. However, within the ever-evolving marketing landscape, the 4Ps often don’t provide us with the breadth and depth of guidance that we need to really reach and engage audiences-creating room for the consumer model to take center stage. In our hyper-digital, and social media-driven world, we have seen a shift toward consumer-centric marketing and the benefits to be reaped from such a strategic approach that appeals to their wants and needs. The 4Cs of Marketing At the core of consumer-centric marketing methods are the four ‘C’s: consumer, cost, convenience, communication. Whether your business is in the initial stage of designing a marketing framework, trying a new strategy, or assessing an existing marketing plan, the 4Cs can serve as a regular checkpoint to ensure you’re meeting the goals of your business. As digital technology continues to transform the way consumers interact with content and media online, businesses-both small and large-must be able to adapt and leverage their communications and marketing efforts accordingly, so they aren’t left in the digital marketing dust. The 4Cs of marketing have surprising parallels to the 4Cs of diamonds: cut, carat, color, clarity. The 4Cs are the benchmarks used in determining a diamond’s cost and value, but above all, the most important considerations stem from the view of the lucky one who will be flaunting the ice-and similarly, it’s a marketing essential to keep the preferences of the end-user in mind. Using a consumer-centric approach within marketing campaign can help your business outshine the rest. 24-Carat Content “Content is king” continues to resound in today’s marketing trends, highlighting the essence of content marketing in most current marketing schemes. Constantly generating new and engaging content can be like finding a diamond in the rough, so a planned content marketing strategy is important for ensuring that you’re getting the best ROI for the content you curate. Consider these 4Cs of marketing in order to produce quality-rich content that draws consumers toward valuable ‘calls to action’ that generate inbound leads. Consumer (Cut): For a brand that illuminates among markets and enlightens a broad spectrum of audiences, it is essential to consider the first C of marketing-consumer. The consumer is the most complex and important consideration, as it directly affects its counterparts. Think of ‘consumers’ like you think of the ‘cut’ of a diamond-there is no single “cookie-cutter” audience, but rather numerous, unique consumer groups that respond to and have varying degrees of susceptibility to marketing efforts. This is why it is important to design marketing initiatives with specified audiences in mind, and to constantly assess and adjust strategic planning toward their preferences as technology, trends, and targets change. Targeted marketing requires taking a look at your different audiences to develop content and communications that cater to the unique characteristics of each type of audience. Cost (Carat): Cost is another important element to consider in framing your marketing approach, both in terms of price and perceived value. Taking the costs into consideration is important so that you are planning the price of your products or services based on the consumer, and not vice versa. The perceived value by specific audiences for your products/services directly affects how consumers interact with your brand. Convenience (Color): They say that beauty lies in the eye of the beholder … and when it comes to convenience, this statement rings especially true. In the fast-paced world we live in, time is of the essence-a convenient product/service is a valuable one, and consumers perceive value based on personal preferences and backgrounds. Knowing how the target audiences prefer to receive content and purchase products/services guarantees more effective marketing and more convenient buying. Communication (Clarity): Effective communication is vital to a successful marketing plan. Considering your target audience is important when choosing the type and mode of communication, channel, style, and other aspects of engagement. Targeted content opens up the lines of communication, and builds consumer confidence that drives sales. Communications should also be interactive and creative, and this is where social media is a powerful communication tool. Clarity is just as important to the quality of a diamond as it is to engage consumers to make your branded marketing shine, it has to reach far and be relevant to a broad spectrum of audiences. Ready to supercharge your go-to-market strategy? Discover our consulting, training, and software for go-to-market growth businesses. Click below to transform your approach and drive growth today! Discover here
10 Marketing Myths That Are Costing You
In your career as a marketer, there will be plenty of folks who just don’t “get” what marketing is or why it is so important. They have heard chatter about what marketing is or have had some brief experience with it in the past. Some of these people confuse marketing and advertising; others believe that marketing solely involves designing logos and giving away free stuff to attract new clients, and some people even believe that marketing is a simple task that anyone can do. The reality? Marketing is an integral, and often complicated, aspect of any successful business. That is where you come in. You are the master of moving a qualified lead from the top to the bottom of the buyer funnel. You know how to target your audience with tailored content. You are constantly reading blogs and articles to stay abreast of the hottest and most effective marketing trends. You are a lean, mean, marketing machine… But sometimes, having the skills to know what NOT to do, and having the evidence to back this up when the non-marketer is pushing for the company to make a bad marketing move, is just as important as all the other tools in your repertoire. Market like a pro and avoid the advice in the below marketing myths. Thanks to the internet, there are virtually no limits to the amount of content you can publish and share. But just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Think about someone in your life that talks a lot… too much, in fact, to the point that they annoy people around them. Do you listen to everything they say? Or, at this point, anything they say? Don’t let your company be that person. Stick with great content tailored to your audience and delivered in a consistent and nonintrusive way. Your audience will appreciate it. This is just plain bad advice. Marketing costs time and money-especially if you want it done well-and weak marketing practices can negatively influence your brand. Unless marketing is well-planned, smart, and you can justify it with a substantial projected ROI, your shop may not be ready to start marketing. While marketing does cost time and money, it can be done well with just one or the other. Investing in a high-tech marketing program capable of executing many marketing activities at once and contracting or hiring experts to run this setup for you is an excellent plan if you have the budget to do so. However, small businesses don’t have to break the bank to establish good marketing practices. There are many effective ways to achieve marketing success on a modest budget, but they do take time. Wrong. Sales and marketing the two most important aspects of your business, and they need one another to function successfully. Be sure your salespeople and marketing folks are speaking the same language. Yes, there is a difference between selling and marketing, but there two different jobs need to work together like a well-choreographed dance; the marketers priming leads, the salespeople ensuring that the leads are digesting the marketing content and moving them down the funnel towards closing. While the marketers create the content, the salespeople can be champions of the content, keeping a campaign alive and in the minds of potential buyers. Do you want to know why there are so many social media platforms out there? It’s so folks with different interests and different tastes for how they want to receive their content can find the platforms that suit them. Just because crop tops are having a moment right now doesn’t mean that your grandma should wear one, right? Good marketers use data to identify which platforms are driving the most traffic to their site, and leave the other networks alone. Quality is important, but don’t undervalue targeted reach. More fans and followers mean you’re gaining access to their fans and followers, and this is especially lucrative if they’re an influencer. Influencer followers and fans can pump your content and brand with marketing steroids, making your already great content seem even more fantastic in the eyes of the influencers’ followers. Not to mention, their clout with your target audience transfers to you by association. Monday through Friday may be your idea of a “work week,” but that doesn’t necessarily correlate with when your target audience is using social media. Don’t sell yourself short by assuming that the weekend is time off for your social media marketing campaign. Do your research and find out if weekend tweeting or posting is needed to help boost your campaign… your competitors are doing the same thing. Believe it or not, can actually generate value beyond just engagement from social media. Social media drives leads and customers. According to the “Social Media Update 2014” report from the Pew Research Center, 73% of online adults use social networking sites. In the “2014-2015 State of Inbound Marketing” report from HubSpot, social media lead conversion rates are shown to be 13% higher than the average lead conversion rate. The same HubSpot report also claims that 74% of all marketers say Facebook is important to their lead generation strategies. An article on the Nielsen newswire claims that roughly 46% of online users use social media when making a purchase decision. While some products are purchased based on price alone, perceived value is often just as powerful as actual price. Just look at the diamond industry if you need a reminder of this. Set a price that your bottom line can live with, but focus on marketing the value of your product or service if you want to foster customer loyalty. You set your marketing plan into motion. Congrats! However, the job is only half done. Marketing strategies are iterative and evolving. To be truly effective, marketers must watch, analyze, and tweak their content and messaging based on how their audience responds and interacts with it. Ready to supercharge your go-to-market strategy? Discover our consulting, training, and software for go-to-market growth businesses. Click below to transform your
How to Better Manage and Motivate Your Virtual Team
In 2015, more companies than ever before are offering flexible workspace alternatives for their employees, such as hoteling stations and the option of telecommuting. In fact, the 2014 National Study of Employers, conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management, found that roughly 67 percent of the U.S. workforce reports telecommuting at some point each week. Telecommuting has been proven to offer both emotional benefits for employees, like flexible hours and improved work-life balance, and real operational benefits for companies, including improved productivity, less employee turnover, and reduced overhead costs. When engaging in telecommuting best practices, offsite teams are able to collaborate efficiently and effectively, remain focused on projects and daily tasks, and stay organized. However, many employers are still skeptical of the benefits of telecommuting and fear that offsite employees will result in an increased cost of sale instead of an overall reduction in expenses. In an article on Forbes.com, Anne McGurty, president and founder of Strategize and Organize, says “There’s much to be desired about working from home, but even if you have managers and coworkers you’re accountable to, there are still temptations that can easily sap your productivity and motivation.” So, how do you ensure that your offsite operations are running like a well-oiled machine? Structure Work Processes for Remote Workers Different teams often require different working parameters, and your offsite team is no exception. Special processes and practices should be put into place to ensure that remote employees are given the tools and structure they need to be successful. Measure outcomes, not hours. Because remote workers can often be more productive than their office-based counterparts, hours are generally not the most accurate form of evaluating performance. A common best practice for assessing offsite employees is executing performance reviews driven by project results instead of conducting focal reviews. Keep employees in the know. Be sure to keep virtual teams informed of all company news and organizational changes. Special training for managers. Managing offsite employees requires different skills than overseeing an in-office team. Invest in training management-level employees in the skills and best practices for supervising remote teams. Allow for full remote access. Ensure that remote workers have full access to all in-office work systems, including databases, intranet systems, and email. Establish regular check-in times. Communicating with your reports regularly, even without an agenda, is extremely important for satellite teams and helps to establish routine and structure. Acknowledge holidays. Schedule projects to allow breaks for celebrating holidays. Build a Virtual Team Culture Lack of team cohesiveness is a common concern when managing remote teams as it often leads to serious problems—loss of focus, employee rivalries, and increased stress levels and burn-out—that can poison an offsite team’s success. To overcome this challenge, it is vital that managers create a virtual team culture. Allow casual, friendly, non-work conversation to occur. Employees often need the support of meeting with colleagues to commiserate. While this may sound counter-intuitive, in an article from ComputerWeekly.com, Sarah-Anne Bray, of Acer Technology, defends this practice by stating that, “You could call it gossip, but there needs to be easy contact at an idle conversational level with colleagues. This is possible despite infrequent face-to-face meetings and vast distances between individuals.” Promote givers, discourage takers. “Takers” are employees who are compulsively self-promotional and are routinely trying to score points against co-workers, and these folks can kill your team culture. Instead, encourage and reward “givers”, or individuals who contribute to the team without ulterior motives, to help foster a cohesive and supportive team culture that will keep employees happy and motivated. Do not allow arguments to happen over email. Email quarrels are not effective for resolving issues and reinforce poor communication practices. Instead, encourage your team to call one another and work out problems or miscommunications. Assign team mentors. These individuals will serve as secondary managers and confidants in charge of guiding the team through cultural, technical, working relationship issues. Trust your team. If you don’t trust your reports to deliver good work on time, then you don’t have the right employees. Invest in Technology There is a veritable smorgasbord of new software options available to help offsite managers and employees optimize their virtual workspaces. In order to fully leverage this new technology, be sure you are choosing technology that empowers collaboration, such as instant messaging, web conferencing, and file sharing. Products that create virtual meeting space make it easy for managers and staff to work collaboratively and get projects completed on schedule, and converged voice and data products give home offices communication capabilities of more conventional work settings. Ready to supercharge your go-to-market strategy? Discover our consulting, training, and software for go-to-market growth businesses. Click below to transform your approach and drive growth today! Discover here
Great Tips to Watching Competitor Activity
Keep your friends close, but your competitors closer. As we’ve said before, one of the biggest mistakes a company can make is neglecting to keep an eye on competitor activity. Never underestimate the potential of a single product rollout or service launch. Within weeks or even days, a company can really surprise you. Additionally, a thorough and updated competitor analysis can teach you a lot about industry trends, as well as give you an idea of what’s working with your target audience and what’s not. With competitor analysis, you can avoid your competitors’ pitfalls and emulate their successes. But don’t take our word for it. Read on for what some leading marketing experts have to say about the importance of competitor analysis. Competitor Activity Tip: Watch Facebook Pages Per Greg Miller, CareerBuilder’s global social media strategist and a contributor to Social Media Examiner, using the Pages to Watch feature in Facebook insights is an easy way to compare your competition’s social media strategy with your own: Pages to Watch is particularly handy if you want to see what’s working for your competitors or similar niche pages. You can see exactly what content they’re posting, how often they’re posting, and when they’re posting-and the resulting engagement. Armed with that information, you can tailor your own updates accordingly. You can watch any brand page on Facebook you want – you don’t even have to like the page. If you have 100 to 10,000 fans, you can create a list of up to 100 pages to watch. Competitor Activity Tip: Ongoing Assessment Is Key So you’ve done a competitor analysis: great! Unfortunately, it’s not a one-and-done activity. Keeping your competitive research up-to-date is a great way to deepen your understanding of the current industry landscape-no matter the size of your business. “Everyone really needs to do competitive research. The difference is scale,” says independent brand strategy consultant Michele Levy in an Inc. magazine article. “You really need to keep your eyes open regardless of how large you are or what you are selling.” Competitor Activity Tip: Consider Hiring a Consultant “They will do things that wouldn’t occur to you,” he says. “They have probably done hundreds if not thousands of these analyses. They know how to do them in a systematic way. And they’re probably also pretty good at getting senior management to tell them what it is they want to know and what is the scope.” Competitor Activity Tip: Research Keywords Carefully Keyword research is time-consuming, but it’s important. You need to understand what key words and phrases people are using to find your products and services. In its three-part series on SEO competitive analysis (the whole thing is worth a read), Search Engine Watch describes the basics on finding out what keywords your competitors are using. “It’s not necessary to begin keyword research with competitors, but it’s easy!” writes Ben Goodsell, senior SEO technician at Rimm-Kaufman Group. “It also increases understanding of the space. For example, many brand keywords would seem to be non-brand if you’re not familiar with competitor names or offerings.” Competitor Activity Tip: Identify Your Competitors’ Strengths and Weaknesses Knowing in what areas your competition is vulnerable is an essential part of a competitor analysis. Per Entrepreneur magazine, “a competitor’s strengths and weaknesses are usually based on the presence and absence of key assets and skills needed to compete in the market.” Concentrate your efforts in four areas: 1. The reasons behind successful as well as unsuccessful firms 2. Prime customer motivators 3. Major component costs 4. Industry mobility barriers Ready to supercharge your go-to-market strategy? Discover our consulting, training, and software for go-to-market growth businesses. Click below to transform your approach and drive growth today! Discover here
An Introduction to 1:1 Marketing
It seems like every few months there’s a new trend in digital marketing. While 1:1 Marketing is trending, it’s not going anywhere, and we can’t get enough of it. Here is an approach that puts customer service and the customer’s experience at the top of the marketing priority totem pole. If you’re a B2B company, pay close attention. Zoom into the behavior and metrics of each individual and the results will positively impact your reputation and sales. What is this 1:1 Marketing everyone is talking about? Before we delve into the highlights of 1:1 Marketing, let’s start with the basics. TechTarget crafted an on-point definition: “One-to-one marketing (sometimes expressed as 1:1 marketing) is a customer relationship management (CRM) strategy emphasizing personalized interactions with customers.” The operative phrase here is “customer relationship.” As a marketer, it’s in your best interest to have as crystal clear an understanding of your customers’ needs as possible. The more you understand your target audience, the better suited you’ll be to hand them content that makes them successful. The second you stop seeing your clients as individuals you risk compromising that relationship. [Tweet “Each customer is different, their needs are different, their pain points are different.” via @danielnewmanuv] “People buy from people they like. People buy from companies they like. There’s no easy button for this, but it’s not hard. You just need to care enough to want to build relationships,” explains Daniel Newman in a forbes.com article entitled B2B Marketing Must Focus on 1:1. Treat other companies the way you would want to be treated. If you are listening to relevant conversations across all channels and come across a business in need, help them out! Impart your expertise, even if it won’t directly result in a sale. The long-term effects will show as you position yourself as a thought leader and a company that cares. How to become a 1:1 Marketing Pro Embracing 1:1 Marketing may be a new concept to you, but that doesn’t mean it has to be a challenge. By looking at your customer base and respective data under a microscope, you can more easily identify the channels that render the best leads and the content that brings them to your doorstep. In an equally helpful article on B2B Community, Big Data And Omni-Channel Pave The Way For 1:1 Marketing, Newman notes, “In today’s B2B marketing world, personalization of customer data will let marketers build actionable strategies. After the data is filtered and presented in a consumable way, the marketers can use it optimally to create winning plans that will drive better sales and give them bigger returns on investment.” You should be constantly evaluating your data on a smaller scale. If you aren’t generating leads on your social channels, don’t blame the medium. Fix your content and listen to what your customers are asking for. The effort you put into paying attention to your leads as people will show in long-term relationships based upon trust and human touch that unfortunately is absent in many business interactions. “One-to-one marketing seeks to reinvent marketing with the personal touch absent from many modern business interactions,” explains Margaret Rouse for TechTarget. Take advantage of all of the digital tools available. Email marketing and content marketing are just two examples of assets marketers have to listen carefully and hone personalized outreach. Don’t skimp on getting personal. Ultimately, 1:1 Marketing will set your business apart from the competition and will leave you with highly qualified leads and lasting business relationships. Ready to supercharge your go-to-market strategy? Discover our consulting, training, and software for go-to-market growth businesses. Click below to transform your approach and drive growth today! Discover here
Top 7 Competitor Research Tools
A marketer’s job is dynamic, demanding, and dependent on having a constant eye on your competitor research. Understanding and predicting industry trends is important, but maintaining your knowledge about the competition is even more so. Your competitors are wading in the same pool, so it’s your job to fish delicately for the right leads and to position your company be found by your target audience. Competitor analysis entails researching SEO, social media, PPC, and AdWords tactics. As written in an article on entrepreneurial-insights.com, How to Perform Competitor Analysis, “…conventional environmental scanning puts many such establishments at risk of hazardous competitive blindspots owing to their lacking in healthy competitor analysis (CA). Knowledge of how to carry out this analysis properly will help you devise strategies to seize market share from your competitors.” Given all of the factors that play into thorough competitive research, we’ve compiled 7 of our favorite competitor research tools. Using these tools will enlighten your stance on what makes your competitors successful and the area where your business can thrive. With the prevalence of tools that can aid you to outrank your competition, you have no business to not improve your business. 1. Alexa.com by Amazon The forefront of your competitor analysis should to understanding where your website ranks in comparison and measuring your traffic and website activity. Alexa’s site comparison tool makes it easy to rank your site against up to 9 competitors. Compare historical traffic trends, visitor engagement, and traffic sources Receive detailed analytics including audience demographics and bounce rate 2. SpyonWeb This research tool is a must-have for marketers who want to know the inner depths of their competitor’s online activity. SpyOnWeb will search for websites owned by the same company and provide page rank and IP address. In a review, ShopifyNation suggests to “Use it to find additional domains that are used by the same owner; sometimes you can find landing pages hosted on separate domains.” 3. Simply Measured This social media measurement software provides in-depth social media analysis reports to keep your social presence strong and effective. You can easily compare the competition social media reach and influence, and use it as a benchmark for your own social activity. Check out a sample report here. 4. Spyfu Analyzing the success, or lack thereof, of your competitor’s AdWords and SEO techniques makes Spyfu an invaluable tool for your analysis. Gather intel into how much your competitors are spending on their campaigns and for which keywords they’re ranking. Before you invest time and money into optimizing your content for a keyword, this tool will show you which other companies you’re up against. 5. Campaign Planner by Bing Ads Newly launched by Bing Ads, their Campaign Planner feature allows the user to choose specific industry verticals and review the competition’s ad coverage, industry benchmarks and keyword results. A September 18th SearchengineLand article by Ginny Marvin explains, Campaign Planner offers marketplace insights including search traffic trending and forecasting data, industry benchmarks, competitor performance and keyword suggestions.” 6. SEMrush This platform has a handful of tools, including ones that identify the keywords used by your competition and the websites linking to your competition. An exciting new tool (still in beta) is their Position Tracking. Per their website, Position tracking is available for you to monitor any daily changes in the positions of your competitors for organic and Adwords keywords in Google.” 7. Screaming Frog SEO Spider If you want your onsite SEO to beat out that of your competitor’s, you’ll want to download this UK-based desktop program. The ability to export SEO intel about a website into an Excel is ideal for relaying recommendations to your website developer. As explained on their homepage, It’s particularly good for analyzing medium to large sites where manually checking every page would be extremely labour intensive (or impossible!) and where you can easily miss a redirect, meta refresh or duplicate page issue.” Ready to supercharge your go-to-market strategy? Discover our consulting, training, and software for go-to-market growth businesses. Click below to transform your approach and drive growth today! Discover here