Start Your First Competitive Research Project

Here's a template to let your team (or your bot) do your first competitive market research. Capture all answers below in a Google Sheet so you can compare the competitors.

1. Research the company website and clearly describe their product and the benefits, and the audience. I suggest the following data points:
   1. Who's it for?
   2. What's it for?
   3. What is the #1 product they sell? Provide a short description, and the benefits
2. Do the same for their #2 and #3 product/service (if applicable)
3. Research the pricing for their products and services.
   1. Record the published pricing from the website
   2. Contact them through email/chat/phone and get their "real" pricing
   3. Bonus...for the PRO: Contact their clients (you can probably find them through the testimonials published) and ask them what they ended up paying (street price)
4. Test their "reachability" through chat/phone/email. Send them a note and record how long it takes them to get back to you. Rate the customer experience 1 to 10, 10 being the best.
5. Rate the overall design/user experience of the website 1-10
6. Document the top 10 key "features/benefits" that the company claims is great about them.
7. Run a digital audit for the online presence. For example, run a Semrush report:
   1. In semrush, go to "domain Analytics"/Overview and run the domain overview report for the domain
   2. Enter the following data points into the spreadsheet: Organic Search, Paid Search, Backlinks, Display Advertising, # of top organic keywords and top 5 organic competitors
   3. Run the "view full report" under the organic section and save it in a google folder with the name of the company (this will help

Do the same steps named above for all your top competitors (as your sales team who they are if you don't know), and for your own company. 

Bonus:

For each competitor, find 5 of their customers and come up with common characteristics and how they are different or similar to your customers. Does this provide you the opportunity to go after customer segments that you don't address today?