The number one rule in Internet marketing is: Target your market.
This is good advice. If you don't know who your target market is, you will have a lot of trouble selling your products or services. However, before you can determine who your target market is, you need to know who your competition is.
My Mom always told me, "Actions speak louder than words". What she was saying is that you can listen to what other people are saying, but if you really want to know what they are really thinking, you need to watch what they are doing.
A lot has been said about Internet marketing gurus, and how they will never tell you their real secrets to Internet marketing. If they did, you could easily become their competition. You don't have to reinvent the wheel, just market better, and offer more value. This is how you put your competition out of business.
I believe this is true. I also know that many of the top named Internet marketing "gurus" took offline marketing techniques and adapted them to the Internet, and used these techniques to catapult them to success. They also continue to use the same techniques offline.
Understanding what your competition is really doing is your first, and most important step, to success.
So, how do you get started?
First, you need to do a search in the search engines. I use Alexa for this because Alexa delivers a lot more information about websites than standard search engines. To me, Alexa is a marketer's paradise because of all the information it offers.
Start by selecting the market your site fits into. You can be as general or as specific as you want to be. However, the more specific you are, the more likely you are to nail down your market.
For example, if you sell fishing equipment, put the search term in quotes and then do a search for "fishing equipment". This will help you really narrow down the sites that will be your competition.
Article comments