A secret way to improve your local business competitive advantage on the web is to spy on your competition and then simply outdo them. In this article we will look at how to do that using Google Trends.
Google Trends is often used to get trend information on hot topics and searches, but you can also use it to investigate the performance of your competitor’s website over a period of time.
Follow these three steps to get data on your competition:
Go to Google.com/ trends
In the search term box, type in the website address of your competition. You can compare two or more competitors by adding their website addresses.
In the new window that appears, click on the Websites link
Google Trends shows you the following data:
Daily Unique Visitors
The daily number of unique visitors that visits the site over a period of time is shown using a graph. You can change the time frame using the pull down menu titled “all years”.
By analyzing this data, you will be able to tell what years, months and days attract the most or least number of visitors and also if the traffic to the site is increasing or declining.
Regions
A list of countries where the site is most visited will also give you pointers on your competitor’s popular markets and you can even know which regions in a country attract the most traffic by simply clicking on the country link.
Also visited
This list shows other websites visited by the same people who visit your competition. This gives you insight into other sites your local business is competing with. You can use the same process to investigate them too.
Also searched for
This list gives you search terms that are used most by those visitors. You can use this list to add new keywords to your content to draw in more visitors to your website. Browse our Digital Marketing Services at https://www.RedCowAdvertising.com/
A final resource that helps you spy on your local business competition is the website called Alexa. Alexa is most popular for its ability to rank websites based on traffic flow.
Go to Alexa.com and type in your competitors website address in the search box and you will be given the following data upfront:
Alexa traffic rank
Traffic rank in the US
Number of sites linking into the website
To get more detailed information, click on the ‘get details’ button and you’ll uncover more secrets about your competition such as:
A brief summary of the products or services they offer, the percentage of traffic that comes from search engines, the number of years the site has been in operation, the demographics of the visitors they appeal to, how long each visitor takes on average on each pageview and to the site in total.
In-depth analysis of various categories such as:
Traffic stats- unravel the sources of their traffic
Search-find the top search terms driving traffic to the site from search engines
Demographics-discover who their most popular visitors are by age, gender, race, education and location
Contact- find out who owns the site, their contact and the size of their company
Reviews- check out positive and negative reviews about the site
Related links- shows the link network they have developed
Clickstream-shows you the sites visitors go to after visiting the competitors site (downstream) and the sites they visited immediately before landing on their site (upstream)
I hope that this series of articles on how to legally spy on your competition has given you the tools to measure the strengths and weaknesses of your competition and enabled you to compare your local business to theirs so that you can outsmart them. Browse our Digital Marketing Services at https://www.RedCowAdvertising.com/
If you have been struggling to improve your rankings and wonder why your competition always seems to outrank you, there are resources available that will unmask their strengths and weaknesses. In this article we look at how to do this using Quantcast.
The beauty of Quantcast is that it offers your local business great insight into the demographics of your competition. Demographics reveal the characteristics of your target market so that you can customize your marketing to reach out to them.
To get you started, go to Quantcast.com and type in the website address of your competition in search box at the top of the page. Quantcast will then show you some interesting information:
1. Traffic
The estimated monthly number of visitors per month in the United States. You can also view the number per day or week and the trends over 1 month, 3 months, 6 months and 1 year.
2. Demographics- the demographics are divided into the following categories
Male and Female
Age bracket-3-12,13-17,18-34,35-49,50+
Race- Caucasian, African American, Asian, Hispanic and Other
No kids and Has Kids from age 0 to 17under the age of 18
No kids and had kids from age 0-2
No kids and has kids from age 3-12
No kids and has kids from age 13-17
Annual income brackets $0-30k, $30-60k, $60-100k and over $100k
Educational level: no college, college and graduate school
To get a simplified overall view of your competitors demographics, click on the ‘demographics’ tab and Quantcast will display the people your competitor’s site is most popular with in the various categories.
Armed with this information, your business can tailor its marketing efforts to appeal to the same popular target markets and imitate the success of the competition. In our next article we will look at a third resource to spy on your competition called Alexa.
Browse our Digital Marketing Services at https://www.RedCowAdvertising.com/
If you have ever wanted to advertise your local business using the Google Adwords program, this article will show you how to create an Adwords account in three easy steps. It should take you not more than ten minutes to set up a new account.
Go to google.com/Adwords and follow these three steps
Step 1 Create an account
Create Google account: this is where you create a new account. Google asks you if
you have an email account and password that you use with its other services like Adsense, Gmail, Orkut or iGoogle or
you do not use these services
Chose the second option b) to create a new account.
Choose an email address name
Type in a password
Re-enter your password
Fill in the captcha section
Click ‘Create account’
Step 2 Set Time Zone and Currency
Note that you cannot change your time zone and currency and they remain permanent so think carefully as you choose them
Choose your time zone by selecting your preferred country and the right time zone for your location in the country
Choose the currency you would like to use to pay Google and the one Google will use to display all money values in your account
Click ‘Create’
.
Step 3 Verify Account
Google congratulates you on opening your new Adwords account and requests you to open your email to click on the confirmation link they have sent you. They do this to make sure that the email address you provided is correct.
Go to your email account, open your inbox and click on the verification link sent by Google
Google confirms that your email address is correct and that your Adwords account is now active.
You can now go ahead and create advertisements with the Google Adwords program that will drive traffic to your local business website. Browse our Digital Marketing Services at https://www.RedCowAdvertising.com/
A common mistake business owners make in video marketing is to make a great video, upload it and then do nothing, and yet wonder why they never sell anything. The truth of the matter is that any self-respecting local business wants to ring up sales not just to entertain or inform people.
The problem is that we are often reluctant to pinpoint exactly what we want to accomplish. So as a business owner, ask yourself: what exactly do I want the viewer to do after seeing this video?
Do I want them to opt-in to my email list?
Do I want them to buy a product?
Do I want them to visit my blog?
Do I want them to join my Facebook fanpage?’
Do I want them to Tweet me?
Once you know the specific action you want your potential viewer to take, then tell them to do just that. Craft your copy to include your call -to -action message in these three areas of your video:
Within your video content
Within your annotation text
Within your description
Here are a few call- to- action sentences you may use:
This video shows just one use of our product. Get more free tips when you purchase this amazing product by visiting my blog at abc.com/blog
Click here to watch more cosmetic surgery videos
Sign up for our free newsletter on interior decoration by clicking this link
By doing this, you will be able to see tangible results from your video marketing. Better yet, you will be able to accurately measure how effective a particular video campaign helping you to know what works and what doesn’t work. For example you will know which copy works better, which videos bring in more sales conversions, which videos generate more opt-ins and so on. Browse our Digital Marketing Services at https://www.RedCowAdvertising.com/
“The money is in the list.” Almost everyone marketing online repeats this statement over and over again, but in reality the money is in the list only if people actually open your emails. If your subscriber doesn’t open his mail, your business will not make a sale.
The average person gets around ten emails a day and if he has multiple email accounts or forgets to open his emails for a couple of days, then he is in all likelihood going to be staring at an Inbox full of over 20 messages. Considering these facts, why would he open your business email and not those from others?
The secret to getting your emails opened is found in the title and first line of your message. These are the two parts of your message people see first as they scan the list of emails in their inbox.
Use these tips to create strong and compelling titles and first sentences for all your emails:
1. Use power words- these are words that are grab people’s attention
Create curiosity E.g. Did you get this product? Guess who’s coming to town?
Use Humor
Create shock factor E.g. Facebook overthrows Google
Stir Controversy
State Facts e.g. 10 people will die of cancer today, Fly to London for $500 this month
Employ Boldness E.g. New, important, Open now, Here it is, Free, Discover, Secret
2. Format your title
Use Brackets or parentheses. Believe it or not, these actually double your open rates.
For example instead of writing your title as-
Important garden chairs on sale, you would rewrite that as
Important (garden chairs on sale) or (Important) garden chairs on sale
Capitalize one or two words in your title. Using the above example, the title would now read (IMPORTANT) Garden chairs on sale
Use quotes to also get attention. E.g. New “Italian Cooking” EBook.
3. Short titles. Use no more than 40 characters and make sure your title hits your subscriber’s sweet spot of need. Keeping your title short enables it to be read faster and keep the readers attention.
I hope you now realize that your business’s emails have to be captivating enough to grab your subscriber’s attention and that it only takes a little creativity to increase your open rates.
Browse our Digital Marketing Services at https://www.RedCowAdvertising.com/
An email list is a great way to create a continuous stream of income for your local business because you can automatically communicate with a targeted list of people over and over again without starting the whole sales process from scratch.
But how exactly does one build that coveted email list? First one needs to drive traffic to your squeeze page and secondly one needs to get them to sign up on that squeeze page.
Here are ways to drive traffic to your squeeze page:
Social media- you can drive your Twitter and Facebook followers to your squeeze page through your tweets or your business’s fanpage. The wonderful thing about generating leads this way is that your followers can help you drive even more traffic for free due to the viral nature of social media.
Article Marketing- this free method works by submitting articles related to your business to article directories and providing a link to your squeeze page through the author resource box or through anchor text links.
Video Marketing- uploaded videos on YouTube or other video sharing sites should have links that direct people to your squeeze page
Pay per click – if you can afford it, this is a very quick way to drive traffic to your squeeze page. You can place ads on search engines, social media sites or specific websites that have high levels of traffic in your target market.
Affiliate traffic- you can sign up affiliates who will do the work of driving traffic to your squeeze page in exchange for a fee per signup. You obviously have to consider the cost to benefit ratio before you use this method.
Having driven traffic to your squeeze page, it is now time to persuade people to sign up. How to do that is covered in our next article, “How To Build Your Local Business Email List: Part Two- Super Squeeze Pages”
Browse our Digital Marketing Services at https://www.RedCowAdvertising.com/
