When crafting your marketing message, you need to know your customers better to demonstrate how your product or service solves their problems. It would be best if you also considered your competition.
Studying your competition will gain profound insight, enabling you to sharpen your marketing strategy and create compelling marketing messages.
Understand Who Your Target Market Is
Studying your competitors can help you gain insights into your target market.
To help you better understand your shared audience, check out what types of content your competitors share with their audience.
- Do they talk about their audience’s pain points?
- What does their specific messaging say?
- How are they promoting their products and services to the market?
The goal here is not to steal their ideas but to use their content to refine your existing messaging.
Distinguish Yourself from the Competition
Your marketing message aims to explain how you uniquely solve people’s problems. In other words, what makes your offering different from other offerings on the market?
Therefore, you need to understand what your competitors are offering so you can set yours apart from theirs.
Keep An Eye On Your Competitors
It’s good to know how well your competitors are serving their customers. You can do this by checking out any questions and negative feedback they receive and how they address these issues on social media.
You can also check out online reviews of their products or services on Yelp or Google.
Knowing your competitors’ weaknesses is an opportunity for you to help your audience solve their problems and speak to your unique solution with your marketing message.
Learn About Market Trends and Threats from Your Competitors
Being aware of emerging trends and changes is crucial for your business to remain relevant in a competitive marketplace.
Your competitors can be a source for learning about industry news and lingo. Why? They may know something you don’t know. For example, they might expand into a new segment or use a new industry buzzword in their messaging.
Likewise, your competitors can alert you to potential threats that could negatively impact your business. The earlier you are aware of issues and changes, the sooner you can prepare your business for continuing to be positioned as an industry expert.
What’s more, the vital information you learn from your competitor regarding industry threats, trends, and issues can be used when crafting your marketing message.
Use Your Competitor Intel To Inform Your Content Strategy and Messaging
Keeping track of your competitors' actions can help you determine your marketing strategy.
Knowing what types of content your competitors create, how they incorporate their marketing message, and what channels they use can help you determine the best strategy for promoting your product or service.
If you know what your competitors are doing, you can better decide what you will do. For example, you may discover your competitors aren’t using Instagram, a social media channel you love to use. Therefore, this may be a perfect choice for one of your social platforms.
However, keep in mind you need to know why they use specific social media platforms and not others. It could be that your audience doesn’t use that particular social media platform. To maximize your results, you want to be where your clients are!
It takes time and resources to understand your market, know your client, and be aware of your competitors. But if you take the time to research and plan, your marketing strategy and messaging will pay off!
Is your marketing message not getting the attention you need? Download my report, 5 Reasons Your Marketing Message Doesn't Resonate With Your Audience.
