Content Marketers: Stay Ahead of the Competition

Your objective in Content Marketing is to attract prospects to your company and to help turn these prospects into customers.

Yes, a big part of that comes from information you write and how it connects with the best prospects for the product or service your company offers.

Another critical piece is how you get that information out there – your website, blog posts, emails, articles, case studies and white papers.

The One Critical

Most Overlooked Piece

There is one critical piece most marketers overlook which may lead to prospects not being interested in what you offer. That is the marketing done by your main competitors. Their marketing may be better than yours. They may be doing a better job of connecting with prospects and turning them into hot prospects ready to buy.

If your competitors’ marketing is better, you can have what you think is great marketing and still not turn many prospects into customers.

How Does Your Marketing

Compare to Theirs?

You need to analyze your competitors’ marketing. On a regular basis, you need to look at the marketing each of your competitors has and compare it to yours.

Is their marketing equal to yours?

Do they do a better job of letting prospects know what their product or service offers?

Are they better at explaining to them why their company is the best to provide the product or service to them?

If the marketing of any of your competitors is better than yours, you need to change your approach. You have to change each piece of your marketing and make it better than theirs. It doesn’t have to be significantly better. Marketing just a little better will result in more prospects being attracted to your company.

Here Is What to Review?

Sit down with your staff and critically review all facets of each of your competitors’ marketing. Grade each piece on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being best

Start with their website.

How well constructed is it?

Does each page focus on the prospect’s needs?

Does each page hold the prospect’s attention?

If you were a prospect, would you want to find out more about what they offer?

Next – read their blog posts.

Do these have great information about their company and the product or service they offer?

If you were interested in what they offer, do they give you enough information that you would want to find out more?

Read any articles they may have published online or in magazines.

Did they give you more information about their company and what they offer in a way that you would want to know more?

Check out any white papers they have. They may require an email address before you can get them. If that’s the case, ask one of your sales reps for help in getting them.

Are their white papers easy to read?

Do they give you more information about the product or service?

Do they hold your attention or are they too technical and difficult to get through?

Next – check out case studies they may have.

Do they show how their product or service helped a customer to resolve a problem they had?

Do they show how much money the company earned after purchasing their product or service?

Do they show how much money the company saved by eliminating work?

Last check out whatever else they have – video sales letters, webinars, etc.

How would you rate these at building interest in and selling the product or service they offer?

After you review each of your main competitor’s marketing, do the same with yours. Very quickly you will see if your marketing is the best. If not, you will know where you need to improve it. Revamp your marketing pieces to be better than theirs.