I mentioned the four X’es. Why do they matter so much? Because they are how you win a strategy game. Strategy games are simulations of war. Business is a civilized war.
So, lets talk about the first step, Explore.
Exploring means pushing back the fog of war. Means knowing, means learning, means hearing. On war, to explore would mean to send scouts, to know the lay of the land, to know any potential resources, fortified locations, camps of the enemy, quantity of troops etc etc. Whenever the enemy moves, you need to know about it. Whatever upgrades or special troops he has, you need to know about them. Whatever access to resources he gets, you need to know about it.
On big corporations, this step is taken very seriously. Yes, it is called industrial espionage. Now, on your small one man business, you cannot afford to hire professional spies. It would be silly, and an overkill. But the concept remains.
You need to know.
Knowing, means you need to read any news in your niche. You need to personally get familiar with some key people, in order to learn stuff before they hit the news. You need to know about the new tools, the new services, and the new competitors.
Of course, you also need to know everything about your current competitors.
And by everything, I mean everything. Become an e-stalker. What domains does he own, what kind of education does he have? How much money does he have available to throw into his business? Is he backed up by venture capitals, or is he alone? What other assets can he utilize to respond to your moves?
This is a very important step, because through the information you get now, you will weigh the importance of the competitor. You will assign a rank at him, and judge whether or not he is a threat.
Next come historical data. Those, you either collect by another source, or you create them yourself. The historical data instantly (at least in me) show a pattern (if you can’t make use of them, show them to an analyst). You can see whether that particular competitor is smart, stupid, following a long term strategy, or acting on a whim. How did he react to that problem a year ago? How did it work out for him? Was his reaction fast? What is too late? Did he simply pour money into the problem and solved it?
Of course, all of the above are a full time job by themselves. That means, you need to cut down on the crap info. You need to focus on your strong competitors, and in order to point them out, you need to know some stuff about them first. Yes, this step is inevitable.
And now, in order to get out of the theoretical stuff, lets talk about realistic solutions to this. What can you really do to explore?
- You can reverse lookup your competitor. I will not get into details, it is an art by itself. If you cannot do it, hire someone who can. It is basically private investigation online. Online assets, online profiles, online accounts, emails, whatever he does. This step, if done right, will give a ton of data to dig.
- Next comes the way back engine. It is an amazing tool to see the progress of some sites. Check out his sites over time. See the changes, the updates, the improvements, the growth.
- If you run ppc, use a keyword spy tool, like keyword spy (!) or ppc bully. Those are a non stop, automatic spy on your competition. Cross referencing the data with the ones obtained through other means will give you a very good picture of the “battlefield”.
- Use seobook’s rank checker, seoquake and spydermate to study his sites. Is he a good SEO? Does he have a weakness to exploit? Does he practice SEO full-time? (If your reply is, “how the fuck should I know?” then go read a comic book, kiddo.)
- Follow his affiliate links, and find out which offers he promotes heavily. Join the networks, some of them have a public table of the progress each affiliate has.Â
- Social engineering. You can learn practically anything you want.
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