Day 03: Identifying Your Competition
Identify your competition is the last bit of your market research and analysis. In identifying and finding your competitors, you need to identify the providers that are dominating your niche online. The best way to do this is by doing a simple search engine query. Head to google.com or bing.com and Search for your niche keyword and location, then pick the following:
- Websites that show on the first page of search engine results.
- Social media pages and profiles on the first page of search engine results like facebook, twitter, linkedin, google+ or youtube, pinterest etc.
- Blogs on the first page of search engine results like blogspot.com, wordpress.com, livejournal.com etc
After you come up with the websites, blogs and social media profiles, do the following:
- Note the website address (domain name). This will assist you in selecting your domain name while developing your website.
- Go through the websites and look at their design and content. While designing your website, you will borrow from the websites.
- Check at their social media networks pages and profiles. Note the number of likes, followers or friends. This will be relevant in online marketing.
- Check the number of posts that each blog has.
- Note the websites that have their correspondent website address and their social media profiles and blogs on the first page of search engine results.
- Note of the competitor that has more than one page of its website on the first page of search engine results.
- Also note of the competitor that has listed on google places.
You have just identified your competitors and done a little analysis of them. This information will assist you in the next levels of your online business startup.
You can now record and save the above findings in a document. You will be referring the information as we move on.
The next session and the last one on the sub topic on Business planning and modelling will focus on Product delivery and payment.