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When you launch a new business you need to conduct three types of research. These include market research, audience research, and competitor research. Out of all these, competitor research is probably the most important one. 

Digging deep into what your competitors are up to will unearth heaps of useful data that you can use for many purposes within your businesses. To show you the importance of competitor research, we have listed some of its benefits below. 

Helps create better products

A big mistake some amateur entrepreneurs make is creating products simply because the entrepreneur needs them. Sometimes this might work because the general public also had a need for the product, but a lot of the time it fails. 

This is why the easiest way to be successful in any industry is to create products that are similar to what your audience is already buying, only making it better or more affordable. This will give it an edge and help you sell more, and it’s something that smart brand managers know how to do well.

When you are determining which products to offer, you can simply go to your competitors’ websites and see what products of theirs have the most reviews, and who they are targeting with their advertising. You can also use a company research tool to obtain further details. 

Research tools can unearth information such as the keywords your competitors rank for on search engines, which web pages they send the most traffic to, how much they spend on ads, and which influencers they work with. 

If they are spending a lot of money to promote certain products on their website, it’s definitely one of their best-selling ones. You should think about creating something similar, but better. You can use the data from the audience research to see what your audience wants and incorporate features that will satisfy them and make your product different. 

Sometimes you might want to think about removing features and making the product cheaper as Amazon did with its tablet. When Apple launched the iPad, everyone was trying to make a better tablet and beat Apple, but they were all failing. Amazon, on the other hand, made a cheaper tablet with fewer features and drove a ton of sales, because this is what their audience wanted. 

Makes it easy to create better offers

A lot of people think that the success of a company chiefly hinges on how much traffic it generates or how much social proof it has. These factors matter, but they won’t work well enough if your product offering doesn’t resonate with your audience. You’ll struggle to get clients to sign a contract or even be noticed in a crowded niche. 

When a brand has a poor offer, it disappears in the sea of competition.  

If you have a good offer, you will generate the highest ROI no matter which marketing method you use. This is why you should conduct some competitor research to figure out your top competitors’ offers and then adapt their offers to your own sales strategy. 

Here are the different things to look for while assessing an offer:

• Product: As discussed in the first point, you need to create products similar to the ones your competitors are selling, but with key differentiators that are communicated clearly. You also need to make sure there is an audience that wants to buy them.
• Price: Your product needs to be at the right price. If it’s cheaper than your competitors’, you will naturally generate more sales, but you might drive away customers who think that it is cheaper because it’s inferior. So, think about this and come up with a price that shows that you are selling a good product. Also, make sure that you generate a minimum 10% profit. Don’t price yourself out of the market. 
• Benefits: Your offer messaging needs to display the benefits of your product in a unique way, especially when compared to your competitors. So, look at the way your competitors present their products and use that information to inform your unique selling proposition and sell it with good copywriting. 
• Bonuses: If your competition is giving away bonuses for buying their products, you should too. For best results, give buyers something that complements the product. 
• Guarantee: When your product has a guarantee or warranty (or both), it makes potential customers feel more confident about the purchase. It shows that you believe in your product so much that you are willing to give a solid guarantee such as a no-questions-asked refund or a free replacement. Analyze the guarantee your competition offers and come up with something that will ensure you outdo them. 

Discovers threats

Nowadays, the market is constantly evolving. Many of the products that sold like hotcakes just a few years ago aren’t even available anymore, and the marketing techniques that worked are today considered invasive or easily ignored. 

Regularly keeping tabs on the competition will help you figure out how to adapt and survive in the short term and in the future by either coming up with new products or modifying your marketing strategy. 

Sometimes you will also learn about companies you can acquire and quickly grow your business. 

Helps you set benchmarks

One of the keys to business success is setting the right benchmarks. Quite often people don’t consider the industry benchmarks and set unrealistic goals and end up disappointed when they don’t reach them. 

One way to ensure that you set realistic goals is by checking out the industry benchmarks. There are tons of studies like this one from GetResponse on email marketing statistics, that show you the targets that you can aim for. 

You can always do the research by yourself and start from scratch, but studies like this can give you a headstart. Your first goal should be to reach average performance levels for your sector. You can later focus on exceeding them. 

Improves your marketing

It takes time to get successful marketing correct. Very few people get it right the first time, as you need to conduct several experiments with techniques such as A/B testing to see which landing page converts better, which ads generate the most traffic, and which copywriting style generates the most sales. 

This will usually take up months. But you can cut short the time by copying some of the techniques that your competitors are using. This won’t help you always get it right the first time, but it can help you reach your marketing goals quicker. 

For example, if you want to use SEO to market your business, you can analyze your competitors’ websites to see what they rank for and try to rank for the same keywords. Before trying to organically rank for these keywords you can also take advantage of features such as responsive search ads and see if traffic obtained from these keywords converts. 

Moreover, if you are using ads, you can see which ad creatives and landing page design styles are working for your competitors. 

Now invest in competitor research

If you aren’t doing any competitor research, it can negatively impact your business. This is true whether you are just launching or are already established. As you can see above, there are many strategic benefits of doing competitor research. 

Yes, it does take a lot of time to do the research, but this is what separates the top companies from the rest. They regularly analyze their audience, the industry, and the competition and modify their products and marketing strategies to stay relevant and thrive in the ever-changing business atmosphere. 

The post 5 ways competitor research can benefit your business appeared first on noupe.

The year’s already begun, but it is not too late to plan the rest of the year out and ensure you achieve the best results for your business.

There is still plenty of time to create a strategy, execute and generate impressive results this year. 

To help you achieve this, I have shared a list of steps that will ensure 2022 is the best year for your small business.

1. Collect data from your previous activities

The key to finding success with anything is to gather data from your previous efforts. Your business activities from the previous years will help you to prepare for the new year. 

You should not just assess your marketing efforts, but also other KPIs such as cash flow, accounts receivable collections, productivity, attendance, etc. Sometimes you will need to do surveys to unearth this data, but if you are already using software for accounting, bookkeeping, project management, and spend management, you might already have all the data you need. 

Even if you do have data from all this software, I recommend that you combine it with a survey of your audience as this will help you get even more information. You can create a fun quiz to get more people to answer questions. Data makes it easy for you to assess where you are and set realistic goals your business can reach. There are many online form builders that help create surveys and quizzes quickly. 

2. Create a strategy

Once you have a goal, the next step is to create a strategy that will help you achieve it. Use the data from your research to ensure you get this right the first time. Make sure you offer detailed instructions on this strategy, as your entire team should be able to understand what you show them. Even if someone new joins the team, they should be able to quickly decipher what you cover in the strategy. 

After you create your strategy you can organize a Q&A session where employees ask you questions and you answer them. You can then create one to five-minute explainer videos based on these questions. 

Anyone who joins the team later can go through these videos instead of you explaining them again. But of course, it is essential to maintain an open-door policy so that they can contact you if they have any other questions. 

Sharing some templates that help people quickly apply what they learn will be extra beneficial. 

3. Add TikTok to your marketing mix

TikTok was called a fad just like Facebook and Twitter. But it has become the quickest social network to reach 1 billion users and it has helped many influencers and businesses earn millions. 

Instagram and YouTube see it as a big threat, that’s why they are releasing and promoting features such as Reels and YouTube Shorts respectively. 

These new features do make Instagram and YouTube more effective, but the number of people you can reach on TikTok is higher than on any other platform. If you want 2022 to be your best year ever, this network should be part of your marketing. 

So, start creating more short videos and posting them on TikTok. These could be entertaining videos or tutorials. People are generating thousands of views by sharing financial advice, excel tips, recipes, and so many other helpful things. An example is the @miss.excel account Kat Norton shares excel tutorials. 

Think about what your audience’s biggest problems are and then solve them with videos. These could be screen recordings or videos where you explain the tip in person. 

4. Build an email list and Facebook group

Social media and search engines are good for driving traffic. But to drive sales, you need a list of customers you can nurture. The best option for this is to build an email list, but a Facebook group can work too. So, if you aren’t already building an email list, start now. 

To get the most subscribers, you should create a lead magnet or a video course and give it away in exchange for signups. It’s a lot more effective than asking people to sign up for your newsletter like everybody else. 

Getting them to sign up to your email list is only the beginning though. After they sign up, you should nurture them with more content that will help you build a strong relationship. After that, you can promote your products in the newsletter and generate sales. 

For some ideas, on how to get this right check out Digital Marketer’s website. You can sign up for lead magnets like these Facebook ad templates. 

After you sign up, Digital Marketer nurtures you with more content and promotes relevant products. 

5. Incorporate paid marketing techniques

Less than 50% of searches on Google result in a click and social networks are constantly changing their algorithms to lower your reach. 

If you want to get the same results you did in the past, it is not sufficient anymore to depend on organic marketing methods only. 

You need to supplement it with paid methods. You can get an average of 2.5X return for every $1 you spend on ads. Wouldn’t you be happy with earning more than double the amount back for every dollar you put in?

This is why if you aren’t already using ads, you should start now. You can start with something as simple as retargeting as these ads tend to have the highest ROAS (return on ad spend). You can retarget people who visited your website, signed up to your list, or viewed your videos. 

After you get some results with warm traffic methods such as these you can begin driving cold traffic. 

At the beginning, create simple ads with images. You can take a background texture and slap some persuasive text and your logo over it. But after you get a hang of it you can create more video ads as they generate more clicks. 

Another great paid marketing technique you might want to try out is influencer marketing. Some influencers will also promote your products for free. However, you might need to give your product to them for free so that they can try it before posting.

6. Track all your efforts

The only way you will know if your business is improving is if you track your efforts. So, use tracking tools or pick software with built-in analytics to measure your productivity, revenue, and happiness. You can use the data you collect to improve your business strategy later in the year or in the next year. The goal shouldn’t be just to ensure that 2022 is the best year. You need to build on it in 2023, 2024, and thereafter. 

Now work on your business’s 2022 plans

This is the step-by-step strategy you can use to grow your business. It will work whether you are just launching your business or already have one. 

Always start with the data collection, follow this with choosing a primary goal, and then create a strategy that will help you reach it. Finally, you can execute your strategy and track it to make sure you reach your goals. This can take up some time, but it’s worth the effort. 

The post 6 Ways to Ensure 2022 is the Best Year for Your Small Business appeared first on noupe.