[OBO Digest] A Street-Level Guide to Competitor Research

How to identify, learn from, and stand out among your competitors (even in a highly saturated industry)

Online Business Owner • February 24, 2023

Welcome to the Online Business Digest. Today we’re covering competitor research, which can make or break your ability to step into and stay in the game.

Simply looking at what your competitors are doing and copying it won’t bring you long-term success; it could even land you in some hot water down the line.

A more important and much rarer skill is looking outside of your business, identifying gaps, and building something meaningful and new.

Every business owner has the potential to do this, and you don’t have to figure it out from scratch. That’s what we’re here for, giving you exactly what you need!

But before we dive in, don’t forget to share The Digest with your biz besties, clients, and friends so they too can be in the know about what’s happening in online business!

Enjoy,

The OnlineBusinessOwner.com Team

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Simple, Actionable Competitor Research

Here’s the version of competitor research most businesses use:

“Let’s see what X, Y, and Z company are doing... and get as close to that as possible. Then we’ll siphon off their customers!”

While of course there are plenty of examples of this working, these are the minority—and it further encourages the idea that what you offer and how you do it are not unique...

Which is the last thing you want as a business owner!

The most valuable part of seeing what your competitors are doing is seeing what’s already taken...

And how you can then iterate and offer something different or better.

In practical terms, this might mean a better guarantee, better service, or even cutting out services that “pad” the main offer but prospects don’t care about...

Allowing you to offer the same service at a lower price with higher margins.

But to really take it to the next level, you need to look for specific problems that still remain unsolved (or ones that are created by the solutions that are currently available!)

Or perhaps even better, finding specific people in the market who your competitors are unable to help and offering them something only you can.

Competitor research is best spent on finding holes and vulnerabilities, not copying.

And the business that best solves those is the one that gets the best clients!

With that in mind, here are a few practical steps to apply this idea:

1. Observe as much as you can about competitor offers, marketing, funnel structures, price points, etc. — and perhaps most importantly, how they speak to their audience.

2. Answer the question: “Are there unmet needs or underserved market segments among my competitors? What new and different offers can I make, or hungry niche groups can I serve?”

3. Redesign your marketing/offer to appeal to this specific problem or market segment and be THE business that serves them, building way more authority and relevance to a smaller core group.

Very few businesses are willing to go through this process, let alone understand that this is where the real money is.

But you know better … and by going through the steps above, you’ll be in the perfect position to build and scale!

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Social Media News + Updates

📸 Instagram’s new “Notes” feature gives users a new way to send messages to selected recipients
📸 Instagram tests new “Memory” prompt similar to its archive feature, giving users a new way to revisit their older posts
👻 Snapchat is still growing, having now reached over 750 million users despite previous setbacks
⏰ TikTok rolls out livestream trivia with cash prizes to boost engagement
🐦 Twitter is looking to make more pricing changes to its premium Twitter Blue subscription

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News + Happenings

Building a Comprehensive Research Plan

Did you know your competition will change depending on the marketing channels you use?

That’s right — for example, if you don’t put a concerted effort into SEO but a competitor does, they can dominate your space on that channel.

And they’ll end up taking a ton of customers and clients with them.

Likewise, if you step up your social media game and build a tremendous amount of organic traffic, even if you don’t have the best SEO you’ll still be able to grow if the same competitor doesn’t have a social media presence.

While this is typically less relevant to online businesses, geolocation also has a huge impact on marketing channels—potentially removing a ton of competition if your industry’s highly localized.

If you look closely, you’ll also notice the best companies present themselves differently on different platforms.

So how do you synthesize all this information into a cohesive competitor research plan you can apply to your business?

Read on and you’ll see…

Why this matters for online business

There’s no such thing as one-size-fits-all competitor research.

Every marketing channel requires its own analysis, and how your best competitors show up on each platform will likely change.

This means you need to do the same!

How you conduct organic competitor research will be different from paid advertising…

Which will differ from SEO, etc.

To discover how you can conduct an effective competitor research plan across every major platform, check out this great guide from SEMrush!

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Common Competitor Research Problems to Avoid at all Costs

Not all competitor research yields the same results.

It’s surprisingly easy to misidentify who your real competitors are... choosing the wrong ones to base your research on... not monitoring the news and staying up to date on what they’re doing currently...

The list of potential mistakes is long, but it can make the difference between a thriving business and one that always feels behind the times.

And even if your research is perfect, doing it once isn’t enough (even with occasional spot checks)!

Competitor research is a thorough, ongoing process that’s never finished.

Done right, it has the potential to completely transform your business and consistently put you ahead of the competition.

The ability to understand what your competitors do well and distinguish this from their weak points is one of the single most valuable skills you can have as an online business owner…

And it’s also one of the rarest.

So how do you build this skill and avoid some of the most common competitive research mistakes business owners make?

Let’s see how to get started!

Why this matters for online business

The quality of your customer research directly dictates the level of success you can have in the market.

Better research = a more powerful offer and marketing.

But the vast majority of research is either misguided or ineffective.

Not yours, though … you can discover seven of the most common competitor research mistakes in this article from Signal Insights!

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In Other News

💻  Good news for online businesses: data shows that remote work may actually improve company culture, not detract from it.
👜 Retail sales are up 9.4% above pre-pandemic numbers, signaling a massive shift in consumer behavior.
🤖 What ChatGPT really means for businesses and how it can improve (or detract from) your current operations.

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YOUR WEEKLY INSPIRATION

@ryanholiday

@justinwelsh

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