Legally spying on your competition is critical to the success of your online business.
If they’re making moves in a certain direction you need to know and find out why, if they appearing in the search engines under more keywords than you, you need to find out how and again why.
What do they know about your customers that you don’t?
Are they about to launch a new product that kicks your product to the curb? Are they partnering with anyone else? How many other websites are promoting their products?
These are important questions to ask if you want to increase your market share.
The problem is this kind of competitive intelligence (legal spying) is very time consuming.
What’s the easy solution?
[vlock border_size="1" border_color="#b7d5f5" corner="" bg_color="#f0fafe" message="For instant access to the complete article click on the +1 button below!" font_color="#0074f1" count="" size="" url_custom="http://"]
First you need to know where to look for the information you need, then you need to create a procedure others can follow to extract this information from those places you’ve found.
(There’s another side advantage to this kind of competitive intelligence, when you’re looking at what your competition is doing you’ll get ideas on how to make your own products better. You’ll also get ideas for new products, need I say any more?)
Here’s what you need to have your outsourced worker do for you…
Create a spreadsheet that lists out who your competitors are, what products they’re selling, how much those products are sold for and what position they have in Google for the main keyword phrases in your niche market.
The very first thing you should have them do is go to Google, then type in your keyword phrases. The results that come back tells you who your competitors are exactly. It’s quite likely (but not guaranteed) that whoever has the number 1 position is also the market leader because they get most of the traffic.
Whilst you’re in Google looking at your top 10 competitors also look for paid ads in those Google search results pages(otherwise known as AdSense ads).
If you don’t see any ads then you’ve either not used a keyword that people use when searching to buy or you’re in the wrong niche market.
The fact there’s ads there tells you that people are making money with the keyword phrase you typed in simply because they have to pay “x” dollars or cents every time someone clicks on their ad.
Once your outsourced worker has the list compiled they should visit each site in the list and find out what products they’re selling and how much they’re being sold for. Also look for things like do they have an affiliate program?
Next go through this list of sites, again looking for the top 5 competitors in each networks and list out the products they’re selling and for how much they’re being sold for.
Search using the top keywords in your target market and find at least 5 results to products that you would buy.
Again do a search using your main keywords again, this time you’re looking for affiliate programs. Those affiliate programs will reveal products your competitors are selling
This is a massive affiliate network containing products in just about any and every market including companies selling physical products.
Go to those 3 networks and uncover competitors and find out what they’re selling exactly.
Once your outsourced worker is done with Google and the 3 websites above start looking for forums and groups in Google and Yahoo with your main keywords. What we’re looking for next is what your market is saying.
Create a new spreadsheet for this one because what your outsourced workers needs to do is to copy and paste the sentences and phrases your potential customers are using that tells us what they’re thinking and feeling about the subject.
You’re also looking for product ideas that solve common problems, just find common questions being asked. Your next product could very easily answer those common questions found being asked in the forums and groups your outsourced worker finds.
The legally spying strategy I’ve outlined above is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to competitive intelligence. You could go even deeper and look at things like what content is published in the market, what are the most common income models used (perhaps you’ve missed one).
I’m sure you get the idea.
Managing your competitive intelligence (legally spying) gathering can be complicated, you’ll need to use email, text documents and spreadsheets just to keep it all together. You’ll probably need to create some videos too that show your outsourced workers exactly what you want them to do.
. Just install it on your website, load up your assignments, invite your outsourced workers and everything else is taken care of for you.
[/vlock]
Click and Try OutVeo
