Cody Lardizabal

Process Owner Carl Lardizabal Status Completed Category Client: On-Boarding Control Number SOP-COB-001 Document Title Market Research and Competitor Analysis Date Created May 23, 2017 Contents Objectives Tools Needed Free Online Tools Paid Online Tools Detailed Process Identify your biggest competitors Identify your ideal buyer and improve ad targeting Identify the 5 pieces & pricing your funnel Discover the best performing ads in your market Where to buy physical products for your funnel Final Checks Objectives Market research is the process of collecting, analysing and presenting useful information about consumers. To achieve this, one must consider the elements of the marketing mix and the wider marketing environment including competitor and supplier/distributive environments. Digital marketing has come of age as the Internet has enabled individual impact upon the research process through speed and access to information. In particular the emergence of “Big Data” and all sorts of digital tools have made information processing more accessible to a small business owner. Using the tools present in this digital environment, the following questions may be answered comprehensively for your product or service to market online: 1. 2. 3. 4. Who are your biggest competitors? Who is your target market and where are they operating? What kind of ads, ad copy and creative is working best to sell things to that market? What a) lead magnets, b) tripwires, c) core offers, d) profit maximizers and e) return paths are working the best. Together, we call items 4(a)-(e) the “5 Things.” 5. Where can you source any physical products you may need for any of the Five Things. Having the answers to the above-mentioned questions will enable the business owner to understand the target market and tailor-fit products for this audience. In this information-rich age, every answer will be based on actual data and purchasing behavior. The answers to these questions will be based on real money spent by competitors to run real ads that the customers you want actually clicked on and made purchases from. Tools Needed There are various online tools for digital market research, both free and paid. Many of the free online tools already provide useful information for your analysis, but if funds allow for it, paid tools also give an added premium in your research. Free Online Tools The following are some of the free online tools: Client: On-Boarding: SOP-COB-001 By: Carl Lardizabal, Project Owner ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● Google SimilarWeb Quantcast Alexa Google Adwords Keyword Planner E-Commerce Related sites: Amazon and Ebay Clickbank the Jordan-Whitney Greensheet Follow.Net iSpionage Google Images and Pexels TinEye AliBabe The most polular of them all - Google! Paid Online Tools Paid research tools or software are enumerated as follows: ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● SEMRush SimilarWeb Compete TowerData FreshKey Merchant Words Terapeak Follow.Net iSpionage AdBeat WhatRunsWear AdClarity BuzzSumo ImportGenius. A primer on how to use these tools are part in the discussion in the following sections. Detailed Process Client: On-Boarding: SOP-COB-001 By: Carl Lardizabal, Project Owner This section discussion the process flow for digital market research. Several steps highlighted give the details on how to perform each task. Identify your biggest competitors The objective of this task is to identify your top 10 competitors and their keywords. Relevant tools to use are Google, a free service, and the free and paid versions of SEMRush. I. Using Google for identifying the top organic and paid search competitors a. Open Google in a browser and type your primary keyword. b. Look at the top 10 results in the organic section of the search engine results pages (SERPs). The 10 websites that appear on page 1 of those results are your biggest organic search competitors. List them down in a separate sheet as your ​Organic Search Competitors. c. Look at the sponsored ads that appear above and to the right of the organic search results. These are advertisements that people are paying to have appear whenever someone searches for the keywords that you just typed in to get these results. These paid search results can be useful later as we do more in-depth research, and they can help ferret out successful competitors that don’t show up in the organic search results. List them down as your ​Paid Search Competitors. It is quite possible that no paid search competitors will appear. If no one is paying to advertise to people searching for the keyword(s) you typed in, then it is a good indication that your initial keywords are not commercial. II. Using SEMRush for in-depth keywords and competitor research a. Go to semrush.com. This is a paid tool used by SEOs to do keyword research, track positions, identify links, and other SEO items. The free version shall be used for this step. b. On the right side under Organic Research click the bar so you can see the dropdown box. Click “Competitors” and then type in your website or the website of whoever you think your biggest competitor is. The resulting visual will tell you who your biggest competitors are in terms of number of keywords that relate to your site. Client: On-Boarding: SOP-COB-001 By: Carl Lardizabal, Project Owner List down your ​Top 10 SEMRush Competitor Figure 1​. Screenshot of SEMRush search page. Figure 1​ presents the different features of the search page: (1) is the Organic Research Area. (2) shows you where to click to bring up the competitor screen. (3) is the search box where you type your or your biggest known competitors’ website. (4) is the competitor visual showing you your competitors and their relative strength versus you in terms of keyword dominance. (5) tells you how many competitors in total are included in this research Identify your ideal buyer and improve ad targeting Now that you know who your competitors are and the keywords that are the most important to them, it’s time to find out who your audience is and where they hang out. I. Use TowerData to profile your buyer’s list For an existing buyer list, TowerData (towerdata.com) will run an analysis to reveal their demographic and psychographic profiles. You may then target them using Facebook, AdWords, Twitter and Pinterest audience targeting tools. Client: On-Boarding: SOP-COB-001 By: Carl Lardizabal, Project Owner Simply create an account and upload an email list. TowerData will then perform analysis and give results, the data of which may be used for your targeted ads. II. Use Alexa to profile visitors Use Alexa’s 7-day free trial to profile visitors to your page. Simply create an account and input your website URL. Alexa will then give you a profile of your page and its visitors. It will provide information on your global and country page rank, top keywords associated with your primary keyword from search engines, and some audience demographic. III. Use SimilarWeb to find out your audience viewing habits SimilarWeb will tell you where your audience hangs out in the world wide web. a. Go to similarweb.com. Pull out your ​Organic Search Competitor List, Paid Search Competitor List, and SEMRush Competitor List. b. Type each competitor name into the SimilarWeb search box and press search. Figure 2​ illustrates an example of a search page. Figure 2.​ SimilarWeb search page: Figure 2​ presents the different features of the search page: (1) Shows you that these are the results for the competitor site you entered into Client: On-Boarding: SOP-COB-001 By: Carl Lardizabal, Project Owner the search box. (2)Shows us that we are in the “overview” display mode. (3) Gives us an estimate of the monthly visits to the site. This is a good very broad frame of reference but is frequently not completely accurate. (4) Gives us an estimate of the engagement level for the site by showing time on site. And, last but definitely not least (5) Shows us “Referrals” or inbound and outbound traffic. c. Click on the greyed out buttons to see a list of results, illustrated in Figure 3. This information is extremely valuable as it can tell you a lot about your audience. It can also reveal additional competitors you didn’t know about or compatible interests that you can use for targeting your ads. Figure 3.​ Clicking the greyed out buttons should yield a similar feature as illustrated. The first column with the red circle numbered: (1) Shows you all of the sites that people went to just before coming to this site. The second column with the red circle numbered Client: On-Boarding: SOP-COB-001 By: Carl Lardizabal, Project Owner (2) Shows you all of the sites that people went to immediately after leaving the site. d. List down your results in an ​Inbound/Outbound Traffic Intelligence List. ​Write down any ideas you got from looking at the traffic to and from your competitors’ sites. You can use a different sheet for each competitor URL or just use one sheet and write all your ideas down in one place. The important thing is that you are beginning to let data about actual customer behavior shape your funnel. Identify the 5 pieces & pricing your funnel Having researched information on your competitors and your audience, you may now move forward to craft your 5 Things Funnel and eventually start to buy paid media to drive traffic. This information should enable you to specify the types of purchases of your audience and the prevailing market prices or rates. It is also a good time to find out their primary objectives or what is pushing them to buy similar products. I. Using AdWords Keyword Planner AdWords is a free webtool that may be used for your 5 Things Funnel. a. b. c. d. e. Log on to adwords.com and create account. At the top of the page, click on “Tools”. Click “Keyword Planner” from the drop-down menu. Click “Search for new keyword and ad group ideas” field. Type the URL of your biggest competitor in “Your landing page” field and click the “Get ideas” button. Google AdWords will run an analysis on the webpage, results of which can help you identify your 5 Things Funnel. Correspondingly, you may conduct the same analysis with other competitors and even your own page to gather data and trends that will give ideas on your Lead Magnets, Tripwires, Core Offers, Profit Maximizers, Copy Benefits/Fear Items and Joint Venture and Affiliate Ideas. Clicking the “Get ideas” button will lead you to similar graphic illustrated in ​Figure 4​. Client: On-Boarding: SOP-COB-001 By: Carl Lardizabal, Project Owner Figure 4. ​Sample page (top portion) for “Get ideas” button. The graphical illustration of cyclical or seasonal trends are found in the top of the results page, as illustrated in ​Figure 4​. This temporal cycle is analyzed throughout a 12-month period. The lower page of the “Get ideas” button is presented in ​Figure 5​. Client: On-Boarding: SOP-COB-001 By: Carl Lardizabal, Project Owner Figure 5. ​Sample page (bottom portion) for “Get ideas” button. In ​Figure 5​, search results for a particular keyword is seen in: (1) Sorting data according to preference is preview (2) Average monthly searches (3) Shows you the ad groups by relevance according to Google’s users’ searches – a extremely useful feature as now you can get ideas for your funnel based on actual user and prospective buyer behavior. (4) Shows level of competition II. Using Amazon’s Best-Seller’s List to shape your Funnel While Google’s AdWords provides information on what your target audience are searching or looking up, Amazon’s Best-Seller’s List gives you vital data on what they are actually buying. A sample page of the Amazon Best-Seller list is presented in ​Figure 6. Client: On-Boarding: SOP-COB-001 By: Carl Lardizabal, Project Owner Figure 6.​ Amazon Best Sellers sample page for books. a. In ​Figure 6​, select your chosen field in (1) (e.g. “books”) and input your keyword in (2). b. Click on “Best Sellers” (3) and select your categories for refinement as in (4) and (5). c. The results of the search are shown in (6), (7), (8), and (9). d. If the product or book has a “Look Inside” feature, click on a chosen book. Look for anything that might be useful in your 5 Things Funnel. For example, subtitles and book description may provide keywords for ads, sales, and marketing. e. Item (10) corresponds to current trending topics while (13) gives an idea on what the audience generally wants. III. Using Ebay to determine demand While Amazon may also provide pricing for products, Ebay is still one of the best places for sourcing information on product pricing in the online market. a. Head on to ebay.com. b. Type your primary keyword in the search bar and press enter. A typical results page is presented in ​Figure 7​. Client: On-Boarding: SOP-COB-001 By: Carl Lardizabal, Project Owner Figure 7​. A typical Ebay results page. a. In the results page, you’ll see “Related” items as identified by Ebay (2). This may be useful in calling out buyer interests. b. The Categories in (3) shows the different categories that Ebay associates with the keyword. You may this as additional idea for your 5 Things Funnel. c. Click on the “See all categories” button to find out more ideas of interest. d. Configure (4) to show “All Listings”. Additionally, you may filter geographic and time settings in (5) and also determine sold or selling items in (6). A new search page based on your chosen filters should look similar to ​Figure 8. Client: On-Boarding: SOP-COB-001 By: Carl Lardizabal, Project Owner Figure 8​. Filtered search results page in Ebay. e. Scroll through the filtered results page to gather information on product pricing. Do this for as many of your primary keywords as you like, and you will end up with actual customer purchasing data and product pricing information. IV. Using ClickBank to determine demand ClickBank can also be used as your source for product pricing and customer purchase. There are many webpages offering ClickBank data, but in this section we chose to illustrate CBengine as the data site. Client: On-Boarding: SOP-COB-001 By: Carl Lardizabal, Project Owner a. Go to cbengine.com b. At the lower right portion of the page, type your keyword in the search bar and press enter. c. Click on any of the results to get information about each product. A sample page is presented in ​Figure 9. Figure 9.​ Sample product page from CBengine. d. In ​Figure 9​, (1) provides information on product summary, useful for your marketing ideas. e. (2) is a shot of the actual site while (3) provides the link to the site. f. Click on (4) to find information on payouts, etc. g. If you are a paid member, clicking on (5) will give you information on refund pricing and rates. h. Click on (6) to find out the number of affiliates promoting the product, while (7) gives information on the commission paid to affiliates. V. Using television commercials and infomercials to determine demand While digital marketing is growing its base, the mass market still consumes most of traditional marketing techniques in television. Thankfully, access to television marketing data can be found online via Jordan-Whitney Greensheet. Client: On-Boarding: SOP-COB-001 By: Carl Lardizabal, Project Owner a. Go to jwgreensheet.com b. Click on “Infomercials” and the best-selling ads. c. If there are related results to your keywords, click on the results and take a look at their data provided such as offer and pricing models. Similar information may also be secured from Media Analytics report (IMSreport.com). VI. Using FreshKey, Merchant Words, and TeraPeak to determine demand While a lot of data can be gleamed from the above-mentioned free tools, paid tools may also augment your research if you have enough funds for this avenue. The following sites have user-friendly interfaces that are similar to the free online tools, so only a brief discussion is presented here: a. Freshkey (freshkey.com) is an Adobe Air software product selling for about $50. Keywords on Amazon, Ebay, Etsy, etc. can be researched using this tool. b. Merchant Words (merchantwords) is an Amazon research tool for $300 to $900 per month, depending on your subscription plan. c. Terapeak (terapeak.com) is the most useful of these three paid tools as it provides more information on a keyword. Discover the best performing ads in your market Having developed your Lead Magnet, Tripwire, Core Offer and Profit Maximizers based on digital market research using online tools, the next step is to strategize an effective selling methodology. I. Using Follow.net Follow.net is a competitive intelligence tool. It has a free version but a paid version is also available for $37 per month. This premium paid service will provide you with 100% of their data with 20 different follows. Other subscriptions are available for increasing number of follows. Follow.net culls data from most of the top competitive intelligence services like iSpionage, AdBeat, AdClarity, WhatRunsWhere, Compete, SimilarWeb, Quantcast and Alexa, at the most basic level. If you have enough funds, it is highly recommended to subscribe to one or more of the full services. Client: On-Boarding: SOP-COB-001 By: Carl Lardizabal, Project Owner To use the engine, do the following: a. Enter your top competitor’s URL in the search box of the follow.net homepage. b. You will see aggregated data about the site from Compete.com and Quantcast.com c. Scroll down further to see the Alexa information on the top keywords for the site. Free version will show you the 6​th​ to 10​th​ top keywords while the paid version will show you the complete list. This also applies to the other features in the results page. d. Scroll down to see the top competitors and top ad networks from iSpionage and AdBeat. You will also see the top placements and top banner ads as you scroll down further. e. Twitter mentions are also presented in this results page, the data culled from Quantcast. f. At the bottom of the page, you will see information about the site owner, registrant, and related information. II. Using iSpionage iSpionage is another paid competitive intelligence online tool. a. Go to ispionage.com b. Type your keyword in the search bar and press enter. c. The results page will show you tabs for “Summary”, “PPC Competitors”, “SEO Competitors”, and “Ads”. d. You may also choose which search engine for the data culling. Google, Bing, and Yahoo are the typical choices. e. For each tab, the data presented for the keyword are the following: days the keywords have been seen, the average monthly spends, and the number of keywords that each search engine is averaging. f. Scrolling down lead should lead to similar page presented in ​Figure 10. Client: On-Boarding: SOP-COB-001 By: Carl Lardizabal, Project Owner Figure 10. ​Scroll down in the search result of a keyword in iSpionage. a. (1) shows you the actual full copy for the top performing ads on Google for the keyword. If a website was entered instead of a keyword, it would give the top performing ad copy for that website. b. (2) is the “destination URL” also known as the landing page for each top performing ad, which is almost always either a lead magnet or tripwire offer. c. (3) is the number of other keywords being used for those ads in addition to the keyword’s. d. (4) presents the days that each ad has been seen, while (5) shows the date the ad was last seen. The longer an ad has been running, then it is more likely successful. iSpionage also lets you see some of the top performing landing pages for specific industries. Do this by clicking on the “Landing Page Gallery” at the top of the iSpionage site, and in that page you can select to view top landing pages by industry category. III. Using AdBeat While AdBeat is similar to iSpionage, it provides more information on ad, ad networks, and other related data. However, it provides less information on organic SEO and keywords. AdBeat is a paid tool and does not have a free version. a. Log into your AdBeat account and enter your keyword in the search box. Press enter. Client: On-Boarding: SOP-COB-001 By: Carl Lardizabal, Project Owner b. You will see the following information that will be useful for your research: ● Top ads for the keyword or website ● A list of all the advertisers for the keyword or website ● Actual ads for each advertiser ● Landing page for each ad ● Top publishers for each ad ● How long each ad has run ● Trend for the ad IV. Using BuzzSumo BuzzSumo culls data from social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Google+. A free version is available. a. Go to buzzsumo.com b. Type your keyword in the search box and click search. You will see a results page similar to that of ​Figure 11​. Figure 11. ​BuzzSumo results page. c. (2) is the time period of the posts that are filtered. d. (3) is the language option for results. Client: On-Boarding: SOP-COB-001 By: Carl Lardizabal, Project Owner e. f. g. h. (4) allows you to target countries for the results. (5) are added filters. (6) is a sorting mechanism based on categories. (7) shows the articles that have received the greatest number of shares by whatever means you sorted or filtered. The results provide you with knowledge of what people like and like to share, which may be used for your Lead Magnet. V. Using WhatRunsWhere WhatRunsWhere works like AdBeat. Use the steps outlined in the AdBeat section to navigate its features. VI. Using AdClarity AdClarity works like AdBeat. Use the steps outlined in the AdBeat section to navigate its features. Where to buy physical products for your funnel Armed with digital market research data, it is now time to find where to source your products or where to buy your products at wholesale prices. I. Find your products i. The easiest way to source your products at wholesale is to go to sites such as Alibaba.com or DHGate. j. Go to the Alibaba or DHGate websites. k. Type in your keyword and press enter. l. Scroll through the results for your choices of suppliers and/or distributors. II. Final Funnel Architecture With your data and information culled from the online research tools, you can now build a data-driven funnel using tools like Optimize Press, Lead Pages, Instapage or Click Funnels. Use your research data to buy paid ads targeting your audience in Facebook, Google Search, Google Display Network, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn. Client: On-Boarding: SOP-COB-001 By: Carl Lardizabal, Project Owner Use your Ad Network research to purchase ads on various ad networks, and use that information to purchase ad space at specific sites with promising incoming/outgoing traffic. Final Checks 1. Have you already gained full understanding on how Market Research and Competitor Analysis work? 2. For starters, have you gauged the usage of free tools? Have you already tried using free trial for paid tools to gain knowledge and comfort on using it? 3. Do you have have any worksheets or any tracking mechanisms to save the information as taken from your research. Client: On-Boarding: SOP-COB-001 By: Carl Lardizabal, Project Owner