Guessing your way through marketing and business is expensive. Here's what many businesses miss: Your competition is already showing you what works and what doesn't.
They are running live experiments with real budgets and real customers. Their wins and failures are data you can use without spending a dime. So…don't just track competitors, decode them and learn from them.
The 3 Intelligence Goldmines
Customer feedback is your secret weapon. Check their Google reviews, social comments, and testimonials. What do customers love? What makes them complain? Those pain points are your opportunities.
Look at their social media channels. What are they posting about? Do they have formats that are performing better than others? What is the engagement like and how does it compare to yours?
Research their ad campaigns by visiting ad transparency centres for Google Ads and Meta. By looking at which ads are running you can determine if there are messaging angles that are giving better ROI, especially if the ads have been running for a longer period.
NB!! Don't copy what they're doing. Study why it works, then do it better. Their messaging shows you what resonates. Their channels show you where your audience lives. Their mistakes show you what to avoid.
This week's action steps: Pick your top competitor. Spend 1 hour this week reviewing 20 recent customer reviews. You can feed the information into a tool like ChatGPT or Claude and ask it to write down three things they're doing well and 3 pain points that are appearing in the data. Take this information and think about how you can use this to improve your own strategy.