If you’re like many entrepreneurs, when it comes to your competitors, you’ve got eyes in the back of your head. But even though you might sign up for their newsletters and keep track of their promotions, events, and launches, it can still feel like you don’t have the whole story.
Good competitive analysis helps you make informed business and brand decisions – like deciding whether to discount products, or to invest in a pricey web redesign. Many entrepreneurs think they need to conduct such a high-level project themselves, but they don’t have the time to do the job right. So, this crucial step is often left incomplete.
Fortunately, Fiverr freelancers can help you with exactly these types of mission-critical, research-heavy projects. They can work on tasks big and small, from gathering data to performing the analysis itself. That leaves you with custom-designed research that you can use to make strategic and informed decisions.
Read on to find out how to effectively outsource all, or nearly all, of the steps of a competitive analysis on Fiverr so your business can reap the benefits.
1. Create a short-list of competitors
You’ll need to give your freelancer some guidelines, so first, decide for yourself how detailed you need this research to be. Make a list of all your known competitors. Then, narrow it down to direct competitors who sell a similar or identical product in the same geo. Finally, narrow down your list to your top 3–5 competitors and hand that off to your freelancer to start the research. You can expand the scope later.
2. Define your research categories
Make sure your freelancer understands what matters to you. When you’re telling your freelancer what to research, consider your final product. It should give you insights into your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, and what customers think of those competitors, and it should help you position yourself against them. To get to those conclusions, ask your freelancers to look into your competitors’ basic operations, content, and SEO.
The basics: No matter what kind of company you run, getting a thorough look at your competitors’ basic operations will be helpful. Ask your freelancer to report back on the following:
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- What range of products do they offer?
- Are they profitable?
- How long have they been in business?
- Are they expanding or contracting?
- What are the key components of their marketing strategy?
- What pricing structure do they use?
The content: 88% of B2B and 76% of B2C companies use content marketing, so it’s important to have your researcher find out what your competitors provide via their content. Have them report back on the types of content being published. Are there blog posts, white papers, videos, social postings, cases studies, FAQs, or testimonials? When new speciality gyms open up in a neighborhood, for example, you’ll notice that not only do they enter the market with a strong social presence, but they’ll often have a blog where they post all the latest research showing that CrossFit or HIIT or Zumba, is the ultimate fitness solution. If you’re an existing fitness center, you may want to fight back with the same weapons.
There are lots of talented writers and researchers on Fiverr who can give you a full report on the quality, location, and frequency of the content. Ask them to tell you if it’s good content, or if it’s fluff. What do they write about? How often do they publish? What channels do they use for distribution?
The SEO: SEO specialists can conduct your research for you and tell you what you should be looking for. At the very least, find out what your competitors are ranking for and who is competing for the same search terms as you are. Think about the top 25 searches your ideal customer would conduct to find you on the internet. Give your researcher that list and ask them to find out who else is ranking or trying to rank for those terms.
3. Synthesize and strategize
When the research portion of this project is complete, you’ve got a couple of choices. You can spend some time with the presentation yourself and extract insights from it, or you can use the professionals on Fiverr to draw conclusions, make recommendations, and help you see your business from a new light.
How do you use insights from your competitors in your business? Have you been surprised by what your researchers have taught you about your industry? Tell us about it in the comments!
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