How to Do a Marketing Competitive Analysis - Inside the mind episode 12

Hey, What’s up Guys, welcome to Inside The Mind, where we talk about online marketing strategy, what it is, why it’s important, and why you should care. In last week’s episode we talked about Overcoming Resistance and in this week’s episode we’re going to do something a little different and do a competitive website review for our friends and subscribers over at RazorCoast.com Ian over at RazorCoast says: We have changed direction a couple of times so it was hard to get our message right. We're now in the middle of changing our website. We mainly contract out trainers to run digital marketing/social media courses and as a side business of that build some facebook apps. We'll end up building technology (our background) but the training pays the bills. We don't have an effective strategy as we tried many things before working out that managing all the training worked for us. Now we need to figure out the best content for this! The first thing I want to recommend Ian is that you should really shift your focus back to tech development. For two reasons really, first, tech development generally yields higher price points per sale, giving you maximum profitability. And second, contracting outside trainers means they’re operating under your name, and if anything goes wrong between client and trainer it’s your name that’s on the line. I know the training is what pays the bills right now, but tech development is something that people really need as well. Through good use of paid media, and some of the lead generation techniques we talked about in episode 10, you can get the right people into your funnel and start offering the training as add on to your tech company, not the other way around. With that in mind, let’s take a look at some of the other websites in the tech dev industry and see what we can learn from what they’re doing. First up is Buddy Media. The first thing you notice is that they have a slider of their most recent work front and center. This gives us the viewers a very clear idea of the action they’d like us to take. I want to also note that the site itself uses a lot of white space, and only adds color to where they want their calls to action to be. Using color sparingly does two things. First it draws the user’s eye exactly to the places that require the most attention, making their click path all but pre-determined. Second, it gives a subconscious impression that the software they build is also “clean” and “easy to use” because the design is free of clutter. Next up we have GraphEffect.com. This is a single focus site, so their call to action is pretty clear. Take a tour, or get started. Underneath, you’ll notice an impressive clientel which gives the proof that if some of the biggest names in the market are using this software, than it should work for you too. Subconsciously it’s also price anchoring, which can repel businesses who might be looking for a cheap software solution. If you scroll down the page, you’ll see only a handful of calls to action, each one giving you more information about the product, easing you into becoming more comfortable signing up for a demo. Also note the use of white space and how they make their calls to action incredibly clear through vibrant colors. Finally, we have optim.al which again uses lots of whitespace to give “breathing room” for their two main calls to action which are a product tour and the Get Started button. They’ve also got this neat little scrolling ticker of their clients which makes the page more dynamic, but in an unobtrusive way. I’m also a fan of optim.al’s blog, which showcases interesting uses of their technology like predicting oscar winners, the top 25 interests of Facebook’s employees, and industry news that’s relevant to only their business. Something I noticed on your blog is that you talk about other tools and tech, and while it is relevant to the community, it isn’t helping your business. Without going into too much more detail for time’s sake, I want you to take a look at optim.al ‘s blog as well as the other blog’s I’ve linked in the description. And this isn’t just for RazorCoast, you should be checking in on your competitors on a regular basis, at a minimum every 3 months. You want to adopt the techniques that you see working for them, and improve on the areas you see their weak. Doing this exposes what Scott Stratten calls “The Experience Gap” in his book UnMarketing, and allows you to become a better business for your customers. Alright, that’s all I’ve got for this weeks episode of Inside The Mind, thanks so much for watching. I’m on Facebook Twitter and Google + Please be sure to like this video and favorite it for easy viewing. If you have a question please be sure to leave a video response by clicking on my face or ask in the comments below, and subscribe if you want to know when the next video comes out.