Here are the slides from our recent Competitive Intelligence event with the Newport Interactive Marketers. (Be sure to check out the free gift at the bottom!) In this presentation Tony Guarnaccia, CEO of Big Fish Results, shared how you can learn how your competitors are driving results online. We also included a gift for all our visitors and you as well. Get a FREE trial of our top competitive analysis too, SEMrush, as well as a competitive analysis evaluation at: www.BigFishResults.com/NIM

1. “Secrets of Your
Competition”
Learn how your competitors are
driving results online
By Tony Guarnaccia
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2. You Will Leave With…
• The 3 Questions You Need
to Answer
• Intelligence Process
(my best secrets)
• The tools and resources I use
• Best Practices
• Give you real life examples
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4. Why Competitive Intelligence?
• Forecast Competitor Moves
• Make Better Decisions
• Identify Opportunities
• Learn from Competitors
• Benchmark Your Business

5. CI Answers Questions Like:
• How much traffic are you getting versus
your competitors?
• What is your competitor’s advertising
budget?
• Where are competitors gaining the
majority of their traffic from?
• What search terms are driving traffic to
your competitors’ sites and not yours?
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6. The Solution
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7. The Process
• Ecosystem / Industry
• Competitor Acquisition and Behavior
– Traffic Trends Key Metrics
– Visitor/Audience Profiles
– Traffic Sources Incoming and Outgoing Traffic
• Search and Keyword
• Display Advertising
• Social Strategy
– Content and Creative
– Onsite Behavior Key Metrics Analysis
• Site Analysis

8. The Tools

9. Industry > Google Trends

10. Industry > Google Trends > Top

11. Industry > Google Trends > Rising

12. Industry > Google Keyword Planner

13. Industry > Compete > Leaders

14. Traffic Trends > Visits & Avg Time on Site
What to look for?
• Compare long-term performance - Trends
• Identify surprising peaks and dips - Look for why
• Create benchmarks - Identify changes in your marketing mix/strategy

15. Visitor/Audience Type Profile
What to look for?
• Demographic & psychographic profiles - Interests and targeting
• Categories of content & topics covered – content strategy
• Websites visited - targeting, content and landing pages

16. Traffic Sources
What to look for?
• Understand where they are coming from!
• Big picture inbound marketing recommendations - Referrals, Search, etc.
• Benchmark Sources – Understand gaps

17. Incoming and Outgoing Traffic
What to look for?
• Incoming Traffic – display advertising, relationship-building, etc.
• Outgoing sources – more expensive, broken links, checkout, etc.
• Trends – Identify impact of changes

18. Search Performance
What to look for?
• Overall Search Traffic trends – organics vs. paid
• Organic – new SEO strategy?
• Paid Search – budgets increasing or decreasing?

19. Search Keyword Performance
What to look for?
• Who are your online competitors – many times different than offline
• Keyword Overlap – in what areas do you compete?
• Paid Search vs Organic – often different competitors

20. Search Keyword Performance
What to look for?
• Set benchmarks – increase traffic by x %
• Create goals – rank more results in top 3, rank these precise keywords
• Make specific recommendations - SEO changes or new PPC budget

21. Social Media
So, what do you do with this data?
• Learn what content appeals to your target audience
• Identify channels that are more effective for your competitors
• Determine best times to post

22. Display Advertising
So, what do you do with this data?
• Quantify the implications of current display strategy
• Create a specific and targeted list of categories and domains to target
• Create content to match interests

23. Marketing Content and Creative
So, what do you do with this data?
• Look beyond keyword lists! What ad targeting is working
• What is the ad content and what are the landing page strategies
• Determine how you can differentiate

24. Onsite Behavior
So, what do you do with this data?
• Look for big deltas – positive or otherwise – in behavior.
• Visit your competitor's websites and identify reasons for the whys
• Make recommendations to improve user experience
• Create benchmarks to index your own performance.
• Look at behavior metrics a couple months after your key competitors have made big changes
Key Metrics
• Bounce Rate
• Time on Site
• Pageviews per Visit

25. Site Analysis > Built With
What to look for?
• Technologies – Identify best practices
• Determine changes - Look for why
• Leverage best practices - See how you can incorporate into your strategy

26. Site Analysis > Archive.org
April 2014
April 2015
What to look for?
• Identify trends - Determine how often designs change
• Determine changes - Look for why
• Create benchmarks - See how you can incorporate into your strategy

27. Best Practices
• Always segment
• Look at trends
• Benchmark
• Filter
• Exclude Brand Keywords
• CREATE ACTION

28. How is the Data Collected?
• Toolbars
• Panels
• ISP data
• Search engines
• Self reported
• Scraped/indexed
• Hybrid
• External Voice of the Consumer

29. Need Help?
Get SEMRush and
Competitive Analysis at:
BigFishResults.com/NIM

30. What If
You Knew the Secrets
of Your Competition?
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