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The Most Common Mistakes That Beginner App Developers Make And How To Avoid Them

16 November, 2022/0 Comments/in eCommerce /by Sudip Mutt

The app development industry is incredibly lucrative, and many businesses, both small independents and large corporations can profit greatly from this business. There are many different types of apps out there being released daily, from educational and informative apps to games and entertainment apps and everything in between. Unfortunately, as with every industry, plenty of inexperienced and new developers fall victim to some of the more common mistakes in the app development world. The best way to deal with these mistakes is to understand them and avoid them. To help develop your understanding of the things that can go wrong during app development, we’ve listed some common mistakes so you can keep yourself on course and reduce the number of potential pitfalls in your path.

Not Planning Properly

The first mistake many developers can make is simply rushing ahead and failing to plan their business and projects properly. Of course, it’s understandable for people to want to jump into this industry headfirst and start creating some great software for people to enjoy, especially because of how profitable this industry can be. However, failing to plan ahead can bring your business to a screeching halt when you run into a problem that you just cannot fix. While planning won’t guarantee an infallible business model, it can definitely reduce the risk of you running into these issues. An in-depth mobile app business plan should include everything from market research and budgets to the development process and launch plans. You’ll want to spend plenty of time on this to ensure things go as smoothly as possible.

Allowing Feature Creep
One problem developers run into, whether for a big triple-A game title or a small independent app, is feature creep. This is where you will continuously discover new features you want to add to the game and prolong the development process. This is especially common when you aren’t limited to a specific timeframe. However, while delays are to be expected with the squashing of bugs and handling of unexpected setbacks, delaying a release so that you can add features that weren’t originally planned is just going to kill the hype for your product and frustrate your fans. This is especially problematic if you’ve drummed up a lot of interest via marketing and social media efforts, only to spring delay after delay onto your audience when you could have just released the app and updated it with new features later on.

Not Considering Security

A big problem for new developers is not taking the security of their apps seriously. Today, while security systems are becoming much more advanced and reliable, so too are hacking methods and software exploits. Due to the increased connectivity of software to things like the cloud, there are much higher chances of data breaches and other security threats. Vulnerabilities in apps can be exploited by hackers allowing them to gain access to sensitive information. This can be counteracted using things like application security testing, such as the types described in ForAllSecure’s guide. Software testing can put your app through its paces and flag up any potential security risks in the design of the software, allowing you to work to patch these issues and decrease the risk of a successful cyber attack after you release the app to the public.

Failing To Develop A Good UI

One of the more important aspects of software development, especially things like mobile apps, is the user interface. A hard-to-navigate interface with confusing buttons, hard-to-read text, and broken features are an issue for a few different reasons. First of all, your users are going to get frustrated and disappointed by this, as they’re not going to have a pleasant time trying to use your app, no matter how great the features are as a whole. Alongside this, it’s going to look very unprofessional if your app isn’t visually appealing and the user interface isn’t as clear as possible. If your business ends up looking unprofessional, this could impact your sales and reduce your potential profits. This is why it is critical to ensure that your customers will have a great user interface to use, improving the overall user experience.

Not Communicating With Their Team
If you’ve worked with a team before, especially if you’ve led a team, you’ll understand the importance of communication. Unfortunately, even with this understanding, proper communication isn’t always guaranteed, and many things can slip through the cracks. A lot of the problems that arise during the development process can easily be chalked up to a breakdown of communications, such as people being unaware of who is working on which part of the project. This can lead to certain things being left unfinished or people making critical mistakes. Reduce the risk of this happening by ensuring that you and your team over-communicate and don’t leave things to chance. Consider using project management software, too, so that everyone can be as clued up as possible on the progress of your project and understand who is working on what.

FB Group tips – invite a friend

27 July, 2020/0 Comments/in B2C, Social Media /by Rebecca Caroe

Invited by option for group memberships

I am a Facebook for Business group administrator and I’m delighted that they just added back an old feature.

When FB introduced the new interface for Group Admins about 9 months ago, the “Invited by….” feature was missing.

I sent my feedback that this is really useful and I wanted it…. Today it reappeared.

Why is this helpful? We have screening questions for the group and if you don’t answer them, we don’t let you in. BUT if introduced by an existing group member, that allows the applicant to bypass this step and still get accepted. Without knowing if they’d been invited or not, I couldn’t work out who to refuse or accept.

Now I wish they’d allow me to filter group applicants by “have they been invited”.

Is Guest Posting Dead?

1 August, 2019/0 Comments/in Blogging, Digital media, Direct Marketing, Local Marketing, Marketing, Social Media /by Sudip Mutt

In 2014, Matt Cutts, former head of the Web Spam team at Google, wrote the following:

“Okay, I’m calling it: if you’re using guest blogging as a way to gain links in 2014, you should probably stop.”

Ever since the state of guest blogging has been debated heatedly. Indeed, guest blogs with low-quality content have truly been dead for decades.

On the other hand, high-quality blogging is an effective strategy to create backlinks, and drive traffic to your website. Even Cutts eventually published a correction, and said: “There are still many good reasons to do some guest blogging (exposure, branding, increased reach, community, etc.)”

So, the question is, how can we create quality guest blogs every time?

Here, we have outlined three easy and effective strategies to create guest posts that are sure to attract links, and bring in traffic:

The Robin Hood Technique

The Robin Hood technique, as suggested by SEO Gold Coast, is a quick and effective way to write guest posts with good quality content. This technique involves recreating great content from popular blogs and offering them to platforms with a low ranking, and less credibility and traffic.

Keep in mind, however, that this does not mean plagiarizing the content – instead, you must only take inspiration from the blog to recreate ideas for your own post.

The following steps can be undertaken for this technique:

Ahref’s Content Explorer Tool contains one billion pages and can be used to find blogs you can write a guest post for

Source: ahrefs

Enter a keyword corresponding to your chosen topic to find similar articles
Check the “one article per domain” box to find unique blogs related to your keyword
Sort the results according to Language, Shares, Domain Rating, Organic Traffic, and Number of Words to truly find a customized blog post idea

Note the importance of Domain Rating (DR) that showcases the popularity level of a backlink, based on a scale of 1-100.

While it is tempting to only work with high DR blogs, low DR blogs are also worth investing your time and energy in, as they usually have a niche following and are bound to grow.

What’s more, low DR blogs usually receive fewer pitches and have less strict editorial standards – thereby making it easier to get featured or published.

Finally, you can move on to step 4:

4. Read the content of your chosen blog piece, and recreate it by adding a unique spin to it – conclude by pitching it to low or high DR blogs through email outreach

Splintering Content

Another effective way of guest posting is by splintering or breaking existing blogs into shorter, but authoritative posts.

The point of splintering content is to dive deep into a topic that you have already researched before, as it is easier to recreate, revise, or rewrite.

After writing detailed individual posts, you can then pitch the pieces to online magazines and platforms that would publish it as guest posts, whilst still re-directing the reader to your original blog post – thereby creating quality backlinks.

The Perspective Technique

A small change in perspective can lead to a completely new, and unique piece of writing.

The trick here is to use a previously written blog post and turn it into multiple guest posts by simply tweaking your overall perspective.

For instance, if your previous blog post was on the “The Future of Link Building” – you can now write on a variety of topics by changing your viewpoint, such as:

Future of link building for small business
Future of link building for E-commerce
Future of link building for startups, and so on

Effective Guest Posting

The techniques outlined here are a good way to get you started. Keep in mind, however, that once you start pitching your guest posts, you may be faced with some problems.

For instance, editors and bloggers may routinely reject your pitch, negotiations may take months, or the link to your article may be taken down suddenly and without prior notice.

To address this concern here is what you can do:

Focus on creating good quality content for your blogs
Pitch to multiple blogs at the same time
Include links to your other guest posts to generate more traffic
Keep exploring and writing for new platforms and sites

In short, by following the techniques outlined above, you can defy Matt Cutt’s claim that guest posts are dead. Indeed, guest posts are thriving and can be used to generate traffic and brand awareness for your business in the long run.

4 simple (yet effective) ways to drive traffic to your eCommerce site

3 October, 2018/0 Comments/in Marketing /by Sudip Mutt

In eCommerce, the amount of traffic that comes to your site is going to determine your overall success. After all, if you don’t have anyone coming to your site, you can’t possibly generate any sales.

Unfortunately, launching an eCommerce shop is easier than ever these days — and people know it.

As a result, the competition is only getting tougher, and standing out enough to convince people you’re the brand they should trust is proving to be just as difficult.

In fact, 61% of marketers claim that generating traffic and leads is their top challenge, and only 22% of businesses cite satisfaction with their conversion rates.

So, there seems to be a lot of work to do.

But driving traffic to your online store doesn’t have to seem impossible.

In this post, we’ll share with you some of the best ways to generate more traffic (and high-quality leads) to your eCommerce shop.

So, let’s get started.

Evaluate Your Current Traffic

The only way you can successfully drive more traffic to your eCommerce shop is first to determine just how much traffic you’re currently getting.

One of the best ways to do this is to sign up for a free Google Analytics account and connect it to your online store so all sorts of helpful data, including site traffic, can be tracked and monitored.

Audience Overview

If you go to Audience > Overview, you can get a great idea about how much traffic your site sees on a regular basis.

Also, check out metrics such as:

Users
New Users
Sessions
Sessions per User
Pageviews
Pages/Session
Average Session Duration
Bounce Rate

And this is only the beginning.

If you really want to gain a deeper understanding of your customers’ purchasing journey, learn how monitoring cross-channel reports in Google Analytics can reveal how people behave as they switch between eCommerce channels.

You can also check out tools such as SimilarWeb and Alexa to learn about not only how much traffic your eCommerce shop sees, but how popular your site is, where site visitors are coming from, and what search engines people use to find you.

Alexa Traffic Ranks

How to Drive More Traffic to Your eCommerce Shop

Now that you have a good idea where your site stands in relation to others, and how much traffic you’re currently getting on a daily, weekly, or even monthly basis, it’s time to look at ways to ramp up your efforts to get more.

1. Invest in Google Ads

One of the fastest ways to drive more traffic to your website is to pay for it. And it just so happens that Google Ads (previously known as Google AdWords) is an easy way to do just that.

Create ad campaigns that display in Google search results whenever someone searches for a term related to your ad.

Google Ads

When someone sees your ad and realizes you offer what they’re looking for, they’ll click on your site and check you out.

Not only will you get paid for every click your ads receive (yay for site monetization), you’ll reap the benefit of the added traffic.

And, since the person clicking your ad saw something they liked, the chances of them making a purchase once on your site are much higher than someone who just happened to come across your website.

2. Ramp Up SEO Efforts

Understanding the role SEO plays in driving traffic to your site is crucial to your success.

If you don’t focus on SEO, you run the risk of two things happening:

Showing up in the wrong results. You might rank well in Google search results, but if it’s in results that have nothing to do with your online store, no one will click to visit. And even if they do, they’ll abandon your site immediately when they realize you don’t have what they need.
Not ranking well. You might show up in relevant search results, but if you haven’t done your keyword research, chances are high you’ll end on page 2, or 3, or worse. Since 95% of all web traffic goes to those on Google’s first page, you’ll have no one clicking on your site to visit.

If you notice that your eCommerce conversion rates are low, check out these SEO best practices that will help you show up in the right search results so better leads land on your site and buy:

Include keywords in your online shop and blog content
Externally link out to authoritative sites
Create a Google sitemap so your online store indexes properly
Add keyword rich product descriptions to all images
Include detailed meta descriptions
Internally link to your own website, so Google indexes everything you have

And lastly, optimize your eCommerce shop for speed and performance.

Monitoring your site’s desktop and mobile speed is easily done using Google PageSpeed Insights.

PageSpeed Insights

See how fast your pages are loading and receive recommendations from Google for optimizing further.

After all, even a 1-second delay has the potential to derail your site’s conversion rates by as much as 7%.

3. Submit Guest Posts

It’s likely you know who your biggest competition is.

And, while it’s natural to want to beat them when it comes to traffic, conversions, and sales, sometimes it’s a good idea to network with your competition too.

One great way to expose your brand to a broader audience, and drive more traffic to your site, is to scope out industry leaders in your field and ask if you can submit a guest post on their website.

Doing this does many things:

Gives you the opportunity to offer their audience a solution they may not have
Shows people you too are an industry leader
Gives you a chance to include backlinks to your website within the content
Nets you an author profile that links back to your website
Allows you to interact with a new customer base in the comment section and on social media when the post goes live and people engage

Although guest posting is a time-consuming thing, the benefits you receive are tremendous – including the fact that it helps you drive a whole new group of people to your store to buy.

4. Add Video Content to Facebook

We all know that social media plays a vital role in most marketers’ lives.

But what you may not know is how powerful Facebook advertising can be in the digital marketing world when you add video content to your arsenal:

By 2020 video ads are expected to account for nearly 80% of all internet traffic
Facebook is the number one social media channel for video content, including ads
4x as many customers state they’d rather watch a video about a product than read about it

Amazon

If your target audience is found on other channels such as Twitter, Instagram, or YouTube, you can expect the numbers to be similar, even if on a smaller scale.

Using social media and video content helps build brand awareness and drive traffic to your online store in ways many other marketing efforts can’t.

Final Thoughts

Whether you’re a startup looking to build brand recognition, or an established online retailer looking to grow your business, you’re always going to face challenges when it comes to driving traffic to your eCommerce site.

Luckily, there are many ways you can help increase traffic, conversions, and sales on your site.

All it takes is using some of the above-mentioned tips and tricks. Trust us, with enough focus you’ll see your numbers continue to rise, along with the quality of your leads.

6 Ways To Successfully Grow Your Business

4 September, 2018/0 Comments/in Marketing /by Sudip Mutt

Growing your business can be challenging if you do not know where or how to start. Your financial survival depends on it, but what are you doing to grow your enterprise?

Photo by Alesia Kazantceva on Unsplash

Growing your customer base is one solution, but how do you attract more customers? What will convince people to purchase products and services from you as opposed to someone else?

Scaling a business is difficult, but the following steps and strategies will help you.

1. Innovate Your Product or Service

The products and services that you are creating should be innovative and unlike anything else that exists on the market. It will take some trial and error, but don’t be afraid to take risks if you are creating a new product.

Ask yourself whether or not this meets a need in society, and how it is different to everything else that exists in that marketplace.

2. Know who your customers are

Outline who your customers are from the start because every product or service you are developing will be targeted at this individual.

Remember to ask for customer feedback, and listen to it. Good customer service will create loyal consumers that will spread the word about your company to their friends and family members.

3. Use social media to your advantage

Social media offers you the possibility to communicate with your customers on a daily basis. You can receive insight into your target audience, and find out more information about their behavior and purchasing habits. There is no easier way to attract new customers than through posting quality content and engaging with them online.

4. Network and build relationships

Attend industry-relevant networking events that will allow you to build relations with key players in your market. This could include customers, clients or investors.

5. Protect your reputation

Your company’s reputation is essential for strong employee relations, for customers to purchase products from you and for clients and investors to trust you.

You should remain transparent and be realistic about the promises you are making to the general public. You should be able to deliver on them, after all.

Do you know what to do if your reputation is brought into question? What if one of your employees makes a fraudulent injury claim, and they are demanding an excessive amount of compensation for it? Look for red flags that would state the injuries are fake; such as exaggerated pain from minor scratches, and contact the legal injury attorneys at Charleston Law to represent you.

6. Research the competition

Know who your competitors are so that you can create products and services that are different. How do they market to their customers? What do they price their products at? Learn from their mistakes to improve your own performance.

Growing a business takes effort and it can be mentally exhausting. No successful enterprise was built overnight, and no one said it was easy, but with strategic oversight and dedication, you will start to notice results. All of your hard work will pay off when you see your business steadily growing and generating more profit as time goes on.

How Online Fantasy Sports Companies Market Their Platforms?

3 July, 2018/0 Comments/in Marketing /by Sudip Mutt

Online fantasy sports are experiencing huge growth and are even rivaling online betting platforms. For those who don’t know, online fantasy sports platforms allow users to create fantasy sports teams and join competitions to potentially win cash prizes.

For example, users can create their own NBA basketball lineup packed full of stars such as LeBron James, Stephen Curry and Kyrie Irving, and then enter a league against other players to see how their teams match up. As the real life result roll in, scores are calculated based on your team selection, and your league standing is based on this score.

Due to the huge boost in popularity of online fantasy sports, their marketing techniques have had to improve and diversify. Popular platforms such as DraftKings, FanDuel, and PlayOn have to compete with each other and try to bring in customers through clever marketing. DraftKings is currently on top, with bettingsites.me.uk reporting that 50.6% of all players currently use the app.

Social media are playing a huge role in fantasy sports marketing. Both FanDuel and DraftKings have a huge following on Twitter, for example (FanDuel – 212k followers, DraftKings – 244k followers), and use this network to post game highlights and interact with customers.

If you scroll through DraftKings’ Twitter feed, you can see it posting videos of MLB games and clips, uploading player profiles of top sporting personalities such as Cristiano Ronaldo, and even cheat sheets to help its user base improve their fantasy teams.

FanDuel alternatively regularly post WNBA highlights, show awesome MLB home runs, and also funny sports bloopers and memes. All of this gives content to its users and helps get them excited about the world of sport, as well as encourage interaction with their respective fantasy sports platforms.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Affiliate marketing is also hugely important for online fantasy sports platforms. Both DraftKings and FanDuel operate an affiliate program through which customers can gain commissions. In essence, a customer promotes the fantasy sports platform by using a special hyperlink. If someone clicks on this hyperlink and registers an account, the customer gains a small fee.

This is a clever form of marketing. The fantasy sports platform doesn’t really have to do anything and it benefits from increased exposure and more customers; all it has to give in return is a small percentage fee.

These are just two examples of fantasy sports marketing and there are many more. It is clear that marketing plays an important role in the promotion of fantasy sports and that it allows platforms such as DraftKings and FanDuel to gain a competitive edge in this ever increasing market.

The infographic below offers further insight into the world of fantasy sports:

Four Major Mistakes You Don’t Want To Make With Product Landing Pages

12 June, 2018/0 Comments/in Marketing /by Sudip Mutt

Landing page mistakes, avoid errors on wordpress,

Product landing page mistakes to avoid

Designing a landing page is no easy task. There are many moving parts to consider, including copywriting, design, social media, and CTA placement. And with so many decisions to make (both big and small), it’s no wonder that mistakes can easily occur. In many cases, business owners fail to take the proper precautions to ensure their landing page is up to par, both in terms of design and functionality. Sometimes, they even let simple mistakes slide.

However, because humans have shorter attention spans than goldfish, you need to be able to capture their interest almost instantaneously. Within just a few seconds, a potential customer will move on to the next best thing because of an error you may have thought was trivial. Here are five mistakes you don’t want to make with product landing pages:

Choosing The Wrong Platform

There are many platforms available, and choosing the right one is crucial. WordPress is touted as one of the best lead-generating landing page platforms because it’s simple to set up, and creative freedom is nearly endless. You can choose from thousands of free and premium themes, and even install plugins like Elementor to build your product landing page with drag-and-drop functionality.

Then, there are other platforms designed to help you launch simple product landing pages, like LeadPages (which offers WordPress integration), Unbounce, and Instapage. These may offer a quicker set-up but are typically very limited in terms of design.

Think about your site goals before you choose a platform. For example, if you want to be able to incorporate certain features, like immersive photo galleries, you will need a platform that supports it. Or, if you think you’ll be using an independent designer or developer in the future, go with a platform that allows you to scale in that direction. Budget is another thing to keep in mind. If you’re just starting out or still growing your customer base, you might want to start with a cheaper option, like WordPress, which you can get for as low as $10 per month. Other lead-capturing landing pages cost anywhere from $30 to $200 per month, and even as high as $2,400 for platforms like HubSpot.

Stock Photography

Believe it or not, in most cases, people don’t like to see stock photography on product landing pages. It might be okay for your blog posts, but it requires special consideration for your landing page. A study conducted by MDG Advertising found that 67% of online shoppers consider quality images to be an integral part of their decision-making when it comes to purchases. The more vivid and authentic a photo is, the more likely they were to perceive ownership.

For software, beautiful screenshots are the way to go, and it would be fine to juxtapose humans with your software imagery. Sometimes, stock photography is the easiest way to mesh the two, but you might also want to add a high-res photo of someone actually using the software to add that extra touch of authenticity.

If you do use humans in your photography (whether stock photos or you your own), bear in mind that studies have shown that site visitors tend to look in the direction of the eyes that belong to the person in the photo. Therefore, you’d ideally want to have the person looking in the direction of your text.

No Clear CTA

Before you start working on your landing page, ask yourself, “What’s my main goal here?” One of the biggest mistakes people make with landing pages is cluttering it with too many options for the visitor. For example, it can be overwhelming to visit a landing page that wants you to read articles, sign up for a newsletter, purchase your newest product, watch a video, AND request a quote.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t have multiple points-of-purchase or ways to appeal to your potential customers. Instead, you should have a core goal that stands out above the rest, rather than blends in. Think about the singular action you want your visitor to take: this is called the call-to-action (CTA). Your call to action should be decently-sized, stand out, and be placed in the right area to attract the most attention. Use split testing software to help you choose between different types of CTA. This will help you choose the option that converts best.

Too Much Copy

Having too much copy on your landing page can be fatal. As previously mentioned, most people don’t have a very long attention span, and every small decision about your copy–from size to typography to color and word count–plays an important role. Too many words create information overload and dilutes the message you’re trying to get across.

Keep your sentences and paragraphs short and concise. Try to avoid using one of the pages to dominate the text. It’s best not to align left or right when you’re working on landing pages. Instead, you want to spread bite-sized bits of copy across the page evenly. You want your copy to be as scannable as possible, and clunky paragraphs make it very difficult to achieve this. For optimal results, try breaking up the text by using well-designed icons, mini-paragraphs, bullet points, color-coordinated sub-sections.

What the F(acebook)?!

11 April, 2018/0 Comments/in Advertising, Marketing, Social Media /by Creative Agency Secrets Team

WTF? That’s likely a thought running through many people’s minds as they hear that Facebook has just announced one of the biggest changes to the social media platform – ever.

With over 2.13 billion active users each month, there’s no doubt that this news has made a groundbreaking difference in the way that people and businesses use Facebook.

What’s the big news and what can we do about it? Below, we uncover what these changes are, how they will impact the way businesses use Facebook, and give suggestions on how you can adapt your Facebook strategy by creating meaningful content.

We will also share details of a seminar on how to stay up to date with the most popular social media platforms and their ever-changing algorithms.

So what’s changed on Facebook?

Algorithms, that’s what. Complex algorithms are what determines your unique experience on Facebook. Your news feed is catered specifically to you – based on what you like, how you interact and even search history from outside of Facebook.

When it comes to using Facebook for business, many strive to create content that resonates with their audience. Competitions, giveaways, new products – these are all important business updates that are shared on Facebook everyday. Techcrunch reports that there are over 50 million small businesses that use Facebook’s Pages app. For many companies, Facebook is one of their key business assets.

However, Facebook has made some drastic changes that will affect business pages on the platform. On January 11th, 2018, Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook announced algorithm changes that may indicate the start of what Michael Stelzner calls a “Facebook apocalypse”:

Personal posts from friends and family will have preferences over posts from groups or pages in your news feed
Videos will get less views – this is because video is content consumed passively
Focus will be on meaningful social interactions, so comments will be valued more than likes
Links to external pages will get less visibility

Source: https://blog.bufferapp.com/facebook-algorithm

As you can see, this is possibly one of the biggest changes that Facebook has ever made to the platform. Zuckerberg himself has even stated that he expects the market price will drop due to these changes. On the one hand, it appears that these changes are purely to improve user experience. But, it can also be debated that these changes are a move to encourage more businesses to turn to paid Facebook advertising to get the traffic they want. And, it’s highly anticipated that Facebook advertising costs will increase following the surge in advertising campaigns.

What does this mean for businesses?

These algorithm changes will start with your news feed, but this is only the beginning. Likely, it will be an update rolled out across all Facebook products.

For businesses, there are a few changes that will invariably happen – something to take into consideration when adapting your marketing strategy to adopt this algorithm change.

For pages that thrive on short, viral videos (think LADbible), they’re likely to be affected the most. Bloggers will also see a hit in organic reach, as will pages that exist purely to share memes, quotes and ‘tag-worthy’ photos.

How to create meaningful content on Facebook

These changes all hold one key goal in mind: to promote meaningful interactions. It’s more than just getting your audience to tag their friends or liking a picture. Meaningful, by Facebook terms, involves interacting with friends, family and other users in insightful conversations.

Here is what will no longer work:

Asking people to comment
Short text posts
Quote graphics
Videos

Basically, posts that exist purely to gather likes will be phased out from your news feed.

What can you do to create meaningful content?

See first – prompt your audience to change their news feed preferences to see your page’s content first
Post less frequently, but with more relevant content
Start discussions on your posts that encourage your audience to talk to one another
Use Facebook Live to reveal exciting updates and news
Adopt a Facebook advertising strategy

This all seems fairly straightforward, but as Facebook continues to make these changes to more than just your news feed, it will be more important than ever to understand these each and every one of these variables that will be affected.

Ultimately, your audience on Facebook isn’t yours – it’s purely borrowed from Facebook. And now that Facebook has set the ball rolling, who is to say other social platforms such as Instagram and Twitter won’t follow suit?

Stay up to date with social media changes

We have a seminar coming up that will cover Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and even Snapchat. There will be an insightful analysis on the algorithms that prioritise content, and what you can do to stay ahead of the crowd when it comes to creating meaningful content.

Click the button below to secure a ticket.

Event info:
WTF Happened to your Social Media Traffic?

Date: Wednesday 18th April, 2018, 7:30am – 9am
Where: Ponsonby Community Centre, Glue Pot room – 20 Ponsonby Terrace
Cost: $30

BOOK NOW

How to do a super simple competitor strategy analysis

8 November, 2017/0 Comments/in Case Studies, Marketing, Marketing ideas, Strategy /by Creative Agency Secrets Team

When it comes to a marketing report, you may dread the idea of seeing pie charts, bar graphs and numbers floating around. That’s not to mention the accompanying dry, boring analysis of these results, written in what looks to be a different language.

If you think this, you’re so very wrong.

Recently, I wrote up a competitor strategy analysis for a client, Living Goodness. The results took no longer than 30 minutes, there were no graphs, and the report reads just over a page long!

Read on to find out exactly how I accomplished this – it’s super simple, I promise.

How to do a competitor strategy screenshot 1

Seriously, this is 97% of my report – short and simple!

#1. Find your competitor

If you’re running a business and have no idea who your competitors are, you need to remedy this quickly.

Open up your internet browser in incognito mode and Google search a few keywords on what your business is about. Why incognito? Well, the search results will be personalised to your search history so you want to find a competitor that is worth analysing.

Living Goodness sells sauerkraut, so I typed into Google, “sauerkraut nz”. Google has been working on improving localised searching since around 2015. While obvious searches such as “Italian food” will bring up local restaurants, I needed to localise Living Goodness keywords so that Google knows I want to buy this product from a local store, as opposed to just needing a sauerkraut recipe.

Living Goodness ranks on the front page for “sauerkraut nz” (yay!) but so does a competitor. This will be the target of my strategy analysis.

Third place on the front page of Google! Yay Living Goodness!

In a new document for notes, I made three subheadings:

Website
Facebook
Instagram

You’ll need to adapt these to suit the media platforms of your client.

#2. Website

From the competitor’s website, I can see all their social media buttons on the top right. This is the first difference I note. Living Goodness’ social buttons are in the footer of every page, but that requires scrolling down to see. Placing additional social links somewhere on the homepage where they will be visible to visitors is the first thing I make note of in a section called “suggestions”.

There’s not much above the fold on the Living Goodness website…

I embark on a journey across the competitor’s website, making note of what they have and what Living Goodness don’t have on their website.

Along the way, I kept asking, “why?” For example, the competitor lists recent recipes on a sidebar on their landing pages. Why is this? Well, as a mere consumer searching for sauerkraut products, I can see that it will prompt me to head to the recipes page, especially if there’s a delicious concoction that catches my eye.

A sidebar can easily be installed into websites as an automated widget – this means any new recipes uploaded will reflect in this sidebar without additional action, thus providing fresh content for each time I visit their website.

#3. Social media

Next, I compared the social media platforms of Living Goodness with their competitor. I pulled up their Facebook and Instagram pages, and scrolled through like a scorned ex-girlfriend.

How often did they post? What sort of content were they posting? Did they do something different on their social media pages that Living Goodness didn’t do?

Who had more followers? Why and how? These were all very important questions that I needed to ask.

I also compared the hashtag activity because everyone knows that behind every successful Insta-famous account is a strong hashtag game (also pretty photos, of course). As this competitor sold products that were pretty similar to ours, I derived a list of hashtags that our client doesn’t use but should do.

Living Goodness’ products are very visually appealing, so their Instagram needs to reflect that.

#4. Suggestions

Of course, I didn’t want Living Goodness to copy their competitor post for post. This strategy was merely to boost their digital presence, just based on my observations of their competitor.

One important thing I had to keep in mind at all times was objectivity. I had to see Living Goodness’ competitor from the eyes of a hungry 20-something-year-old who just wanted buy sauerkraut.

This allowed me to cruise through their website and social media platforms from a fresh perspective. What would I first notice if I wanted to buy some of their products? What would annoy me if I were trying to see their stockists? If I needed to read reviews of their products, was it easily accessible?

With this frame of mind, I also turned my attention to Living Goodness’ own platforms to see what needed to be changed.

From all this, I wrote out a brief but very useful competitor strategy, using clear subheadings and bullet points. Easy to write, easy to read!

I all but stalked the social pages of Living Goodness. As you can see, this is a proven and justified technique.

#5. Client meeting

I scheduled a meeting with the lovely Fiona from Living Goodness and ran through this report with her. It was important that she took the same journey I did, so in a few cases, I got her to open up the social media platforms to see exactly what I was referencing.

Next time I conduct a competitor analysis, I could include screenshots to highlight my points. As it was, Living Goodness only have one major competitor, and as I had explained my strategy clearly, it wasn’t just another boring report to be tossed aside.

When it comes to working for a client, it can be too easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. This report showed that we like to keep an eye on the industry to boost the presence of Living Goodness.

Now are you ready? Here’s another article about How to Compare your Website with a Competitors