Competitive analysis: Familiarize yourself with your targeting and positioning

[Ehsanuls55]

Remember the example of cafes versus restaurants? Although both sell food and drinks, they do not compete with each other because their orientation and positioning is different.

This is an important point. You need to know who your competitors are selling to (target segment) and how they want people to perceive your product and brand (positioning). Only then will you be equipped to position yourself, reach and attract the target segment that interests you most.

How do you do this?

The first stop is your competitor's homepage.

Competitive analysis and mailchimp

Just by looking at MailChimp’s homepage, we know that they provide marketing tools to SMBs. That’s chief vice president marketing officer email list their primary segment.

To dig deeper, you can read interviews with their C-suite where they often mention who they serve. Product and pricing pages can also help, as some companies name their pricing tiers based on target segments.

Ads also offer useful information. They have no room for fluff, making them a great place to learn about a company's ranking. To get started, look at their search ads. You can do this by clicking on the ads report in the paid search tab in Site Explorer.

Mass marketing channels such as TV commercials and billboards are another source of information, as their main job is to make the viewer aware of the brand and associate it with certain assets.

In the digital world, your second best source is Facebook ads .

You can see the Facebook ads any business is running when they visit your Page. Just scroll down to Page Transparency and click “See All.”

mailchimp 2

Then click “Go to Ad Library.”

Finally, select a country or apply even more filters to see your ad variations.

After going through the steps above for MailChimp, it’s clear that SMBs are their main target segment. What’s also interesting is that they’re now positioning themselves as an all-in-one marketing solution, not just an email marketing app. That provides leverage for my imaginary company.