Learning from your competitor – your first step towards marketing success

Getting a peek into your competitor’s online activities helps!

Marketing your business and its offerings to your target customers is critical to its success. Creating awareness about your business offerings is not an option but an absolute necessity for your survival as an entrepreneur.

You might already be aware of this truth, but where do you start? Today there are a thousand options and channels to promote and market a product, advertising, public relations, trade shows, SEO, SEM, Social Media – the list is getting denser everyday and  so is the confusion.

A quick search on the net will throw-up a lot of unsolicited advice from various experts and bloggers, including me – but how do you know, what will work best for your kind of business?

Bingo!! the answer is simple – see what your competitors are doing. Agree or not – today online marketing is an aspect companies can rarely ignore, in fact there are companies who market themselves only on the Internet channels. And in the realm of the internet there are no hidden secrets..

In the offline world keeping a tab on your competitors and their activities can cost you a bomb, you might have to hire an agency to monitor your competitor activities to know on how they are promoting their business. Online this can actually be done for free, with the help of some tactics and tools. Thanks to the search engines like Google, Yahoo and others – our footprints online are all securely stored in their huge databases and its legal to access them

In a two part blog series I will cover two aspects of doing competitor analysis, answering two very important questions – Part I -Why do it? and Part II- How to do it?

Part I -Competitor analysis – Why do it ?

Competitor analysis can help you and your short – staffed marketing team in many ways.

1. Clears the confusion

If you think your competitor is doing better than you, when it comes to creating awareness and brand recall, then this is the best way to check out the channels they are using, the influencers they are engaging with, the directories they are promoting themselves on and more.

You and your competitors have similar offerings and the customer profiles you want to reach out to, is also quite similar – in such case, a competitor analysis can give you a head start on the areas you need to cover to reach your potential customer base. Channels you can use, websites you can use for advertising your product, media you can use to pitch your product story to, social media channels used by your target segment and ways to engage them.

This is the best way to get information on tried and tested methods that work for your industry. You will have all the info you want, without actually digging the dirt yourself.

2. Gives you Direction

How did your competitor Launch their product, what story angles did they pitch to the media, what kind of messaging did they use for their ads, all is great information to have, especially if you and your team are new to this space.

Hiring an agency or a marketing professional does not always solve the problem – to give instructions and get the best out of your vendors – you yourself need to know what you want for your business.

Going through your competitor’s body of marketing work – will give you a lot of idea on how you want to position your offerings in the market, which are the product features you will highlight to establish your supremacy. Most importantly, it will tell you how to showcase yourself differently from those already existing in your market.

3. Provides you with a Benchmark

From day one – you will know what you are up against, where do your competitors stand and the brand recall they enjoy. This will help you in setting your own goals, it could be anything acquiring x number of customers in next 12 months or increasing the number of coverages by x numbers for your company in the next 6 months or acquiring a higher ranking for a critical keyword on google in next 3 months, whatever be your goal or set of goals – competitor analysis can provide you with a benchmark for success – vis -a-vis your competitor.

But before you start analyzing your competitor’s body of work – remember competitor analysis should not be used to blindly ape what your competitor is doing. If you do that – you are bound to jeopardize the future of your business.

No two business’ are the same, the set of people driving them are not the same and the talent pool at each ones disposal is not the same – hence it is good to be realistic in your approach – competitor analysis should only be used as a guidance for your own marketing plan. It helps you do away with the ambiguity and provides you with a set of actionable items for your  plan – which should be customized as per the needs of your own business.

To know how to do competitor analysis and how to keep a constant tab on your competitor for more useful insights – watch out this space for my post next week – Part II – Competitor analysis – How to do it?

'Intent -Driven' Sales & Marketing Campaigns – The New B2B Buzz Word!

Marketing Automation as an industry has witnessed some phenomenal growth in the recent years. The existing solutions have changed the way B2B companies do business today. Traditional, B2B marketing techniques like  cold calls, direct mails etc. now have more data and insight to support. Also, the B2B websites have transformed into a fertile ground for companies to find interested prospects.

In many ways marketing automation solutions have added the much needed momentum to a sector which has a lot at stake, when it comes to making a sale.

The other area in which marketing automation solutions have added value to B2B companies are by helping them measure some aspects of their marketing ROI – especially the contribution marketing makes towards the sales in an organization.

In the last two decades, the marketing automation industry has evolved and found solutions for many problems faced by the B2B sector. Finding more qualified Leads, deploying customized Lead nurturing programs and overall better Lead management is now a reality.

However, the advent of social media and the availability of content rich information has changed the way people buy and sell these days. Marketing itself has undergone a sea change with marketers engaging prospects on a one-on-one basis. B2C companies quickly adapted to this change and have thrived on their new found closeness with their customers – but B2B companies are still not there. They need a more substantial solution to deepen their engagement with their prospects and customers which in turn will generate more business opportunities.

LeadForce1 Offering an Integrated Marketing Automation2.0 platform

LeadForce1 a marketing automation2.0 solution which was launched today,  is a solution which will help B2B companies cope with the changing dynamics of B2B marketing.

LeadForce1 offers the unique benefit of being able to determine an online visitor’s interests and intent, using advanced behavioral analysis. Marketing and sales teams can now precisely manage lead nurturing programs and effectively target messages and offers that are customized around the interests of each individual lead. The result is marketing campaigns with greater impact, larger sales pipelines, and improved sales productivity.

LeadForce1′s greatest differentiator is its ability to find the intent of a website visitor – this information and deep insight into a prospect’s mind, challenges – the existing process of generating, qualifying and nurturing Leads. With the intent of the visitor known, each of these processes take lesser time, are more accurate and customized and promise better results and higher conversions.

The other problem LeadForce1 tries to address is the marketing & sales divide. It provides both the sales and marketing teams with a single opportunity or ‘Lead View’. Giving ‘intent’ – driven insights on individual Leads and Enterprise Leads (gives single view of the behavior patterns of different visitors from the same enterprise).

The solution also offers elements of Web2.0 by incorporating the benefits of social networking and single platform collaboration – allowing all stake holders in a company – the marketing guys, the sales guys and other decision makers to collaborate, share, discuss, deliberate and decide, in real-time – ensuring shorter sales cycles and perusal of only qualified business opportunities – thereby maximizing the ROI.

As a PR & Marketing professional, what I personally liked about LeadForce1, is the fact it can accurately measure not only the ROI on marketing spends but also provide enough data on which marketing channels, what kind of marketing content is bringing in the Leads. This is a great add on for those B2B companies whose marketing spends are focussed on attracting Leads and prospects to their sales funnel. Also, knowing which channels of communication best serve my Company’s needs is great information to have – not only to optimize my reach but also to ensure I achieve my end goals as a marketer.

There are many players in the Marketing Automation space, each offering something – LeadForce1 – is a platform which integrates all – ‘from identifying a visitor to making the live connect’. How the new solution and the 2.0 platform will change the marketing automation industry is yet to be seen, but one thing is guaranteed, B2B companies can now think of engaging with their elusive prospects on a one-on-one basis. Reading their minds, and providing them with sales pitches and lead nurturing materials which will be relevant and truly assist in the decision making process.