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MARKETING
Performing in-depth competitor research
Ricardo Ghekiere shared an eBook which he and his team use to perform in-depth competitor research for his clients.
Here are some key components of the eBook and what you can expect to learn from it:
1) The 3 foundations of a competitor research
- Market Segments & Customer Profile (Who)
- Problems faced (What)
- Solution (How)
2) The 4 categories of picking your competitors
3) SEO & SEA Competitor Research
- Identify your top 5 organic competitors.
- Identify your top 5 paid competitors.
- Benchmark SEO & SEA keywords against your competitors.
- Identify relevant SEO keywords from your competitors.
- Identify relevant SEA keywords from your competitors.
- How to check your share of impressions and that of your competitors in Google ads.
4) Facebook Competitor Research
- How often are your competitors using Facebook ads.
- What communication angle are they using to convince leads.
- Are there any countries they are focusing on or excluding.
- How advanced is the marketing team’s usage of UTM tags.
- How to compile Facebook ads/posts from our competitors and use them to build our own.
- How are your competitors using their Facebook Pixel to track conversions.
5) Stack Competitor Research
6) Analytics Competitor Research
- How to see the Google Analytics of your biggest competitors.
7) LinkedIn Competitor Research
8) Reviews Competitor Research
- Review product reviews on review sites
- Review product reviews on YouTube
9) Extras
- Comparison questions to answer during research.
- Questions to answer during your research.
- Tools for competitor research.
- Tools for Company Profiles.
- Tools for Competitor Product reviews.
Check out the full eBook here.
Like it? Find it helpful and interesting? Say a little Thank you to Ricardo on his post here.
COPYWRITING
How to write copy that hits the needs of your prospects
Before hitting your audience with crazy angles, you should first understand the stage of awareness your audience is in.
What do we mean? Well, there are 5 different stages of awareness, and your prospect could be in any one of them. Eugene Schwartz firstly introduced this idea, and it is still highly valuable today. Here are the different stages:
- Unaware.
- Problem Aware.
- Solution Aware.
- Product Aware.
- Most aware.
Each stage of awareness is suited to different marketing approaches, and Csaba Borzási shared the type of content/copy you should be using for each one of these stages.
Let’s see what he suggests:
Unaware
These are the people who don’t even know they have a problem. They are right at the very top of the funnel.
Running a discount campaign to this audience is like selling iPhones to indigenous tribes. They don’t even know what you’re talking about.
However, you can educate these people and, eventually, convert them.
How do we do it?
Create in-depth blog posts and case studies for these people. The goal is to make them realize that they have a problem that needs solving…
Hook them with a pain point/problem.
Problem Aware
These people know they have a problem, but they don’t know how to fix it. Or, in other words, they’re not ready to buy (yet). Thus, trying to hard sell this audience will probably return unsatisfactory results.
Csaba suggests hooking them with a long-form PPC ad or piece of content that leads with their problem and agitates it.
Then, offer them a small measurable solution in the form of a lead magnet.
Solution Aware
Those people discovered their pain points and know how to get rid of it. They’re considered a middle of the funnel audience.
However, even though they’re “warmed up”, they’re still not ready to buy.
How can we convert them?
Given that they have been already “hooked”, you can give them a unique insight into the solution you’re suggesting. For example, a tour of your product, a video showing how your product works, specific case studies etc.
Product Aware
These people know what their problem is, know the solution and, most importantly, also know about your product.
So, now it’s time to showcase your offer value propositions with all the benefits that make your product special.
You can pitch to them more directly here and make use of retargeting in order to convert as many buyers as possible.
You can do this with an email sequence or a long sales page to warm them up even more.
Most Aware
This is the ideal situation that we all dream about. The “starving crowd” the famous Gary Halbert talked about.
Here, people know your product and are just waiting for a good deal to materialize before they start throwing their benjis in your direction.
There it is.
The moral of the story is: Adjust your message depending on the type of audience you’re hitting.
And you have two choices here: Start from the first stage (Unaware) and work your audience through the conversion funnel.
Or, start from a Solution Aware stage and make the traffic source do the work. In other words, find the audience first so you have an easier job converting them.
SPONSORED
How much is a great marketer worth to your team? Tell your HR about this 😉
We’re asking this question because, aside from you, there are about 7,500 marketers reading this daily email and we could put any of your marketing jobs in front of them!
Looking for a media buyer? A Facebook Ads expert? A Google Ads addict? Copywriter? SEO whizz? E-commerce pro? Or just an account manager with industry experience?
All of those jobs are popular on Jobs in Digital Marketing – a simple, focused job platform. It’s the only way to feature your open positions in front of all WHAT THE AFF readers – daily!
This is not for virtual assistant search, it’s for actual marketing professionals!
We’ve put everything under tried and tested software with a clear focus on utility:
- Post or apply for jobs.
- Search resumes of job seekers who want to be hired.
- Have your job openings featured in a special WHAT THE AFF section.
- Feature on Google Jobs in search results.
- Manage your hiring flow straight from the platform.
- Lower price than all those broad, general platforms without an industry-specific audience.
Want to get your job featured in WHAT THE AFF for a whole month?
- Choose the WHAT THE AFF JOB listing from the product list.
- Create an employer profile with logo and company description.
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We’ll put your job in front of 7.5k+ of the most dedicated, smartest and up to date marketers in the world, from Monday to Friday, at 1pm CET.
Post your job and let us send you the perfect fit!
PS: Don’t forget to ping your HR about this and let us know if you have any questions.
E-COMMERCE
Scaling to $2M – it’s not about the ads
Scaling e-commerce shops to 7 figures is not easy. Otherwise everybody would be doing it, right?
However, there’s a veritable goldmine of information and value out there that you can use to your advantage. Basically, you just need to put in the effort and work your way towards those juicy figures.
The case study for today is from Nick Guadagnano.
What he shared is pretty uncommon, but also pretty easy at the same time.
What he suggests is basically this:
Test dropshipping products.
The formula he uses to test products is:
- $50 – $100 per product to test.
- $5 – $10 daily budget.
- Video Ads.
But the main lesson to learn comes once you find a best-seller. Import the goods into your country, or where your main business is running. Then, build an in-house fulfilment structure or hire a fulfilment company.
It sounds so simple, right? Use dropshipping to find a working product, and once you find it, build a whole business around it.
Of course, do not forget about upsells, cross-sells etc.
FROM THE CREW
Affiliate World Europe 2019 is a wrap!
… and The WTAFF Crew wants to give some thoughts on the event. These are the thoughts fresh in our mind right after the conference.
First off, the venue this year was impressive. Fira de Barcelona just looks and feels great as an attendee.
The beer garden with food trucks was definitely a nice addition to all previous Affiliate World Events, but the rain on Day 1 meant that not everyone could take advantage of it. We can’t really blame AWE for the weather though, can we?
We were already fans of the AW Labs idea and the return of the breakout stage, so that’s a definite plus in our book. Knowing what speeches and networking events to focus on for your topic made everything easier.
Last but not least, the sort of side-events and after-parties the event attracted this year tops everything before. We simply couldn’t attend everything we wanted to.
Maybe that’s one downside: Too many side-events mean that you can never attend everything, so you’re always missing out on something. That’s a pretty good problem to have though.
On the real downside, the confusion on Day 2 when the starting time was moved from 10:00am to 11:00am without proper communication aside from a sign on the door was a problem. There were a bunch of us waiting outside the venue for like an hour. That was a big disappointment, everyone expects better of AWE because everyone knows they can do better.
All in all, though, we were fans of the venue, the networking and content. We’re already preparing for and looking forward to AWA in Bangkok, that’s for sure!
PS: If you want to join The WTAFF Crew in Bangkok, check out the prizes for referring your marketing friends. At 250 referrals, you can get an AWA ticket (and a bunch of other goodies before).
Better start sharing now to make sure you reach the magic 250 in time!
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things affiliates like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
British Airways breaking the wrong records with a possible £183M fine
To make this long story short, British Airways was hacked, and the resulting data breach was significant.
Users who tried to visit the airline’s website were redirected to a fraudulent site, which then took the personal information of about 500k users. Not a small number, is it?
News first broke about this in September 2018. The UK Information Commissioner’s Office said that the airline had “poor security arrangements”, which ultimately made the breach possible.
And that’s also why they’re facing the possibility of this record fine.
You’re probably wondering what data was actually gathered… Well, there’s only one bit of good news. No travel and passport details were stolen, but the bad news outweighs this small relief.
Things like CC numbers, expiration dates, three-digit codes, emails might well have been compromised.
Oopsie!
Here’s what you can get if you share us with your marketing friends!
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