Page 57 - Social Media Marketing for Dummies

» Who they partner with.
This is an often-overlooked source of competitive information. Businesses
find synergy and partner with those who have similar audiences. Whom they
partner with tells you a lot about how they view their audience. Those
partnerships could also include where they advertise, people or organizations
with whom they have comarketing agreements, and partners who serve as
referral engines for them.

» Loyalty and other programs they employ.
Find out what programs are keeping their customers loyal to them, and see
how you can tap into the same vein with your own unique program. A recent
trend is the creation of Social Loyalty programs, which reward consumers for
social actions that they take on behalf of brands. This is something worth
paying attention to as well.
» Their online customer service efforts.
This one can be a secret weapon for you. If you see that your competitors
aren’t offering support through social media channels, you can distinguish
your company with a solid effort here. According to Bain & Company, a
customer is four times more likely to buy from a competitor if the problem
is service related versus price or product related.
» What they do offline to connect with customers.

Check out whether your competitors have special training programs or other
educational sessions available locally. This might be a way they are increasing
their customer base consistently.

If your competitors are already running marketing campaigns similar to what you
plan to do, yours won’t attract much attention. To prevent this from happening, a
combination of sleuthing and the following third-party tools can help you.

Setting up Google Alerts

You can set up these free alerts for keywords related to your competitors. These
keywords can include company names, brands, senior manager names, and part-
ner names. Every day, you receive a Google Alert in your email Inbox with sum-
maries of news stories and blog posts that include those keywords. It’s a good
starting point and completely free.

CHAPTER 2 Discovering Your SMM Competitors 41