As a marketer you know that you should keep an eye on your competition, but you can do more than just see what they are up to. You can actually learn a good bit about what potential clients want, what the current trends are, and how your competition is thinking. Here are five things you can do to learn from your competitors.
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Almost every site has a blog or posts regular articles. Spend some time looking over what kinds of information others in your business are providing potential clients. These will typically have comments posted to them, so you can get an idea of what topics are popular and how others are reacting. If you like the content or some of the points, you can develop the ideas further than your competition. Make sure to subscribe to the blogs and content that get the most hits so you can stay on top of what is trending.
While you need to learn what others in your business are saying and how they are marketing, you don’t want to be exactly like them. Find out their different marketing strategies and make sure that you are not following something that is too similar. The best thing you can do is make sure that your approach is unique so that potential customers remember you.
Find out what social media is the most common for your particular area, then see what others are doing to draw more attention and customers. You are likely already on things like Facebook and Twitter, but so are all of your competitors. Seek to branch out on sites like LinkedIn, which is dedicated to making it easier to network. Too often people consider these kinds of professional sites as places where people stay connected, but that is also the ideal place for businesses, particularly marketing, to network.
This is likely one of the best areas to learn about your competition. While they are going to post the positive reviews on their sites, sites like Yelp and Google can give you a much better look at how people honestly feel about a place. People are far more likely to take the time to post after a negative experience, so by checking them out on a regular basis you will be able to see what your competition is doing wrong. It is also a great way to see how they handle negative feedback.
No matter how good your company is, there is always something to learn from others in the business. Finding the good and the bad about them will help you learn the best tactics to use to show that your company is the best.