How to perform a competitive analysis

Oct26

Whether you’re a multi-national corporation or a small business that’s just starting out, there isn’t much that will serve you better than a competitive analysis. A competitive analysis will assess your past, affect your present and dictate your future. In fact, it could be the difference between success and failure.

A proper competitive analysis will cover seven key topics:

  1. Your company’s competitors
  2. Competitor product summaries
  3. Competitor strategies and objectives
  4. Competitor strengths and weaknesses
  5. Future market outlook
  6. A SWOT analysis
  7. Future strategy recommendations

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Five unknown Google tools your business really should be using

Oct16

We all know that Google is a vast company, whose forward thinking and creative mentality means that they try their hand at a whole lot more than just maintaining a search engine (driverless cars, Project Loon and Google Sky being more prominent examples).Google Tools

But many simply aren’t aware of the work Google does to assist businesses online. They have a plethora of tools, apps and resources – (almost) all free – that give business owners a leg up in their pursuit of online marketing success.

We’ve put together a list of the five that we feel all businesses should have used, or be using on a regular basis, as part of their online strategy:

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Competitive Analysis Checklist: Getting to know your online competitors…and learning how to beat them

Oct08

As web use continues to grow, more and more online channels are standing out to businesses as new opportunities for customer acquisition. They offer lots of promise and potential, but the market is flooded and it can be hard stand out from your competition.

A simple competitive analysis goes a long way to demonstrating exactly where a particular brand can beat the competition, but many business owners simply don’t know where to start.

With that in mind, we’ve decided to publish the online marketing competitive analysis checklist that we use when weighing up campaign strategy for clients – along with the tools we use to make these assessments:

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Marketing Magic: BMW and Audi show us how it’s done

Sep30
With the growth of technology and the internet, marketing is one of the industries that has been inundated with new players. Additionally, there are so many tools, platforms and tactics to use, while we are also able to increasingly filter out our target audience.

Such progress provides a structure for marketers to be incredibly creative and unique with the campaigns they create.

We are also now in a world that relies on sharing content, which results in almost unlimited information for marketers to tap into. While in some ways this is brilliant, I feel it also leads to a lack of unique thinking. With so many sources of information available about how to succeed on Facebook, how to write a marketing plan, or best practices for digital campaigns (to note some common examples), I tend to see a lot repetition.

The marketing world is flooded with generalities and common practices, and yes, it’s because we know certain processes work and consistency provides value. But at the same time, with so much competition and noise in the marketing industry, there is more and more need for marketers to be original and creative. Continue reading “Marketing Magic: BMW and Audi show us how it’s done” »

My Twitter rant: why not delete inactive accounts?

Nov26

ADDITION Feb ’12 – due to a lack of response from @willrussell, I changed the handle to @willrussellmktg to move in line with the creation of Will Russell Marketing.

I have a problem – an inquiry, if you like, into the Twitter policy on inactive accounts. If you can shed any light, please do!

My problem goes like this…

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