Checking Out Your Competitors
Now is the time to see who we share a space with – who are our ‘Niche Neighbours’ that offer the same or similar business solutions as we do.
Things to consider:
What are they doing right?
What are they doing wrong?
What is our value proposition?
What are the current customers within our micro-niche saying about our competitors?
What do we have to do to provide them the solutions they need?
Finding Competition
Search Engines
The first place I check is good old Google and start by searching keywords I think my target audience will be searching – for ‘Seas of Solitude’ that will be phrases such as: Luxury Travel, Luxury Solo Travel, Luxury Vacation, Luxury Resorts – you get the idea!
I then need to see what populates in the Google search and find any luxury travel blogs (my niche neighbours) – I am only checking which luxury travel blogs populate on the first page of Google for my search term as this is where you should be looking to take your blog, and these are the highest ranked blogs within your micro-niche.
Make a list of 5-6 competitors:
My ‘Niche Neighbours’ are:
1. A Luxury Travel Blog
2. The Luxury Travel Expert
3. Mrs O Around The World
4. Carmens Luxury Travel
5. Pocket Wanderings
6. Ultimate Luxury Traveller
These were the Top 6 luxury travel blogs that stood out to me.
What To Do Next?
Armed with this information I now look through each blog one by one and start an audit process.
Things I am looking for:
What do I think they’re doing right?
What do I think they’re doing wrong?
What is their value proposition?
Are they providing it?
What are their products/services?
What free giveaways or offers do they have?
Give each blog a general audit and write it all down in a Word document.
How do your competitors sell – and does it work?
Browse the products/services your competitors sell – analyse competitor pricing and how they structure the product.
Go through a purchasing sequence if you can buy something off their website , Add a product to your cart – abandon shopping carts, do you get an alert? –
Experience the whole buying process from start to finish as a customer – this way you see how items are packaged, shipping times and cost, also if anything happens to your order you can see how they deal with queries.
– if my competitor was selling a physical product then I would also look at shipping policy, return policy.
Subscribe to their newsletter and read through emails you receive looking at what type of content they create and how often it is sent out.
Customer Reviews:
Read through customer reviews, comments and complaints – what have your competitors got wrong?
How can you solve their unhappy customers problems?
Style of their website:
How many images/videos are they using?
What’s the style? (moody, white background)
What’s the layout of the page? (does it have ads, comments section)
What’s the copy like? (long, short, descriptive)
What product/service information is included?
What other elements are on the page?
Is there suggested products or reviews?
How does that compare in the market?
Social Media:
Which social media platforms do they use?
How often do they post?
What type of content – (carousels, reels, videos, stories)
What time of day do they post?
What are their ad campaigns like? have you noticed any sponsored ads or unpaid ads.
What is the average number comments/likes?
How do they engage with their audience and what’s the tone of the response?
All these bits of information regarding your competitors is vital in knowing what works and what doesn’t within your chosen micro-niche.
Write Each Audit
Take your time in building out each competitors audit.
Does the same problem keep cropping up?
What is the most general complaint people have?
You should have a pretty good idea after this exercise as to which direction you will take your business as you’ll know what people want and what works compared to what people are asking and still not getting?
Forums
Another thing I do is look in forums (in this case it will be travel forums) and see – what questions people are asking – can I find any useful bits of information in here.
Conclusion:
Armed with all this information it’s now time to spend some serious time piecing it all together and creating a content plan:
- What’s current?
- What are people asking for?
- Are your competitors missing anything?
- What can you do better than your competitors?
- Which angle of your niche can you exploit to get eyes on your business?
- Why are people going to come to you?
- Are there any new problems to solve?
- What do your competitors do well – can you better it?
Come up with your own questions and answers to see how you will make an impact within your niche.
In the next lesson we will look at planning our web pages so when you’re ready I’ll see you in there.