1300 766 665COMPETE! How to Take Advantage of Search and Social Media and Smash the Big Boys
From inception right through to becoming a market leader, the concept of 'competition' is a fundamental pillar of business. One of the keys to managing a successful business is to identify where your company might have a competitive advantage over its competitors and exploit it for its own gain. In other words, what are your competitors' shortcomings? And how can you outperform them? In a previous era, small and medium sized businesses were unable to realistically tackle these questions with much gusto or bravado. A company's growth was somewhat limited to their marketing budget. The 'big boys' in the industry had massive budgets and could advertise across a number of different mediums - television, radio, direct marketing, and billboards, to name a few - getting their message out far and wide. The advent of the phenomenon of what academics have termed the "information society" or the "information revolution" has smashed the assumptions of the big fish-little fish mentality that used to dominate marketers' thoughts. We are witnessing seismic shifts to rival those of the industrial revolution and the agricultural revolutions of times gone by. Online marketing has effectively leveled the playing field, meaning small fish can take on the big fish and swallow up their market share. The basic principle of how you do that is easy. By analyzing their different online marketing techniques, discover where they are faltering and improve on them to outperform them. However you need more than a basic principle. Your company needs a strategy to implement. This whitepaper aims to identify a strategy to help small and medium sized businesses smash the big boys. There are 3 stages to this strategy.
1. Competitor Analysis: A Pillar of Successful Online Marketing Campaigns
As outlined previous, in any form of business competition is key to a company's success. It should come as no surprise that across the board the industry leading SEO companies will provide their clients with an extensive competitor analysis to identify where there are gaps in the market for the company to grow. Many companies even offer a competitor analysis as their central sales pitch. Figure 1 is an overview of what an extensive competitor analysis should look like. Looking at how your competition has positioned their website and how they have gone about it can offer valuable insights into where opportunities exist for you to position your website and grow your presence. A general rule of thumb exists as to how you can utilize a competitor analysis - it is effectively a process of one-upmanship:
There are three elements to analyze your competition - 1) An overview of your competitors, 2) On Page Factors, 3) Off Page Factors.
An overview of your competitors is likely to consist of indicators of popularity of their website. The tools of Google Page Rank and Alexa Rank - whilst their significance is greatly disputed - are great barometers to see how stiff your competition is. PageRank ascends from 0-10 for the most popular. Meanwhile for the Alexa rank, the smaller the score the more visited a website is. From this starting point, specific factors are drilled down into.
On Page Factors are extremely easy to optimize for the simple reason that you have complete control over them. You have the ability to change several factors of your website in line with the best web standards including content strategy, title tags, meta tags, meta descriptions, internal link structure, number of internal pages and keywords to name just a few pertinent ones. If your competitor has a sizeable website, unique and targeted titles and tags, a sophisticated internal linking structure, and a variety of content, then competition is stiff. If any of these factors are lacking, then there is the opportunity to exploit their weaknesses and get one up on them.
Off Page Factors are, as the name suggests, factors that are external to your website. The popularity and presence of a website is affected significantly by the links that point to that website. But not all links are created equal and the specificities of links need to be drilled down into to discover where opportunities exist to trump your competition. When analyzing your competition you need to assess the strength of their links and their overall link profile. How many links does a website have? What is the Page Rank scale of those links? Are the links coming from multiple sources? Are the links keyword targeted? Knowing the answers to these questions is paramount when planning your line of attack.
Volume of links is important as the more links you have the more popular you will be. However, one link from a PR 6 site for example, would carry exponentially more weight a link with far lower PageRank. Links should also come from a range of sources. You need a rich level of IP diversity because the weight of huge volumes of links from the same source will eventually be discounted. Similarly, anchor text is a fundamental pillar in getting your off page optimization right. Links ideally should be hyperlinked with the keywords that you are targeting your pages for. By building keyword rich links from a diverse range of sources from popular sites, you can get one up of your competition.
Competitor Analysis is fundamental to a successful online marketing campaign but times are changing fast and Internet usage is rapidly diversifying across Australia and across the world. However if you want to smash the big boys, then you need expand into areas that your competition isn't for maximum exposure.
| Figure 1 |
| On Page Factors |
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| Off Page Factors |
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| An Overview of Competitors |
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2. Holistic Online Marketing: Take Advantage of Universal Search, Social Media and Growing Trends of Australian Internet Usage
Whilst Australia is approaching maturity in terms of the penetration of Internet consumption, the online environment is still rapidly changing beyond measure. This marks both a significant threat and opportunity to marketers focusing on search. Traditional methods of search and SEO practices are still effective, but if you fail to take advantage of the new methods in line with Internet behavior, they can only take you so far.
Figures from leading Internet ratings and research company Nielsen NetRatings released in March this year highlight some of the shifts internet behavior in Australia.
Video and Audio Behaviour and Trends
In 2010, of Online Australians aged 16 and over 70% of them engaged with audio-visual content in those twelve months. Of those, 35% engaged on a regular basis. The watching of videos is up from 41% in 2009 to 60% in 2010. These figures illustrated in the graph courtesy of Nielsen below indicate a significant opportunity for brand engagement tailored to more multimedia/audiovisual content.
Social Media Usage and Behaviour
In 2010, more and more Australians who are online are engaging with brands in social media settings. The effect of this is that conversations about brands are taking place irrespective of whether a brand has an online presence in social media. What this shows is that it is imperative for brands to be part of their own conversation by listening and engaging with their customers and potential leads. The figures illustrated in the graph courtesy of Nielsen below indicate just how much consumers are interacting online through social media including social networking sites, blogs, product review sites and more. Of the online Australians in 2010, 73% have read online comments, discussion and reviews relating to brands, products and services. Of those, 26% do it on a regular basis. 13% regularly create comments and engage in discussion about brands and products, 17% regularly like companies on Facebook and a significant 7% post their own reviews on specific brands and products. This marks a significant and increasing trend.
How Pervasive is Social Media in Everyday Life?
It is clear from the evidence that brands need to start engaging in spaces where their customers are hanging out. But what is the exact scale of social media and how pervasive has it become in our everyday lives. Eric Qualman, author of the seminal work on social media Socialnomics, has scoured some of the best Internet research companies to show just how pervasive social media is. Some of the significant landmarks include:
- Facebook topping Google for weekly traffic in the US
- Social Media overtaking pornography as the #1 web activity
- Based on Facebook's users, if it were a country it would be the world's 3rd largest
- Fastest Growing Segment on Facebook is currently 55-65 year old women (showing it is just not for young people)
- YouTube 2nd Largest Search Engine in the World
Google Universal Search
Whilst the vast changes and pervasiveness of social media have received much of the hype, you should not be mistaken just how much search marketing has been transformed during this same period. Back in February 2004 when Facebook was launched, a Google Search Engine Results Page (SERP) looked remarkably different to how it does today. In May 2007 Google search results undertook what some have coined the most radical change it has ever had. The "Universal Search" system started to blend listings from its news, video, images, local and book search engines among those it gathers from crawling web pages. Suddenly your #1 ranking could be found underneath an entire list of local results or alternatively behind a couple of videos of your competitors. The following screen capture was unimaginable in 2004/5.
Whilst web pages are still a fundamental asset to promote using solid SEO techniques, the whole process has got more complicated and sophisticated. Rather than focusing solely on webpages, you now need to focus on each element of what Mark Jackson of Search Engine Watch has termed "digital assets" and ensure they are optimized. These include the following elements:
- Webpages
- Blogs
- Youtube
- Google Local Listings/Places
- Google Images
- Google News
- Google Shopping
- Google + (with positive signs of its launch to date and an impressive adoption rate)
If your competition is not taking advantage of the plethora of communication channels available at their disposal, then this marks a vast opportunity for you to yet again get one up on your competition.
3. Leverage Your Industry through Thought Leading Content
Back in 1996, Microsoft Founder, Bill Gates coined the expression that "content is king" in an essay of the same title. Ever since its inception, the phrase has spread like wildflower and remains a mantra that all Internet marketers seem to adhere to. It represents a meme so big that it rivals LOLcats, Rickrolling and other Internet phenomenon.
When someone visits your website chances are the primary thing they want is information. Contrary to what you'd like to think, their final objective might not be to buy your latest and greatest product offering. Prior to buying your stuff, they need to know a few things such as what it is, how it works and why is it superior to something they could buy from your competitor. Content is fundamental to this important role.
Content not only provides vital info for your visitors, but it also creates rapport between you and them, performing the desirable outcome of conveying your reputation of your brand and products. And if you've written your content in an engaging and accessible manner, giving your visitor tons of ideas as to how they can use your services, you are on the right track to achieve your ultimate goal: turn visitors to your site into customers who dig your brand.
But there is the potential to take such a strategy to the next level. Let me explain.
How to Leverage Your Competitors' Brands and Create Customers Who Aren't Even Searching for You
Taken on face value, this statement might seem a little bit far-fetched. However after closer examination it makes perfect sense for "small fish" to take advantage of the brands possessed by the so-called "big fish". But how can it be done? The big boys spend thousands of dollars a year in creating their brands across a broad range of media including radio, television and billboards besides online marketing. Customers are likely to be aware of their brands and be aware of their product offerings. The knock-on effect of this is that when searching for products and services online, browsers are very likely to search for brand related keywords. This aspect of search can be exploited in your favour by creating content that provides the information to all the questions outlined previous.
By providing visitors with industry-based research during their researching stage, you are able to build an instant rapport within your industry and raise awareness of your brand. Information that analyses the strengths, weaknesses and key differences of each brand is valuable for would-be customers. Outlining exactly what your edge over the competition is in terms of product offering, service or price can turn your competitors' would-be customers your way. Furthermore, by creating such engaging content your website is likely to start getting ranked for, and start getting traffic from, those brand related keywords spent so much time and money building.Making your money go further
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