←back to Blog

Using Your Competition Against Themselves

If you have read this site for any length of time, then you know that you don’t just sit down and “knock out” an advertisement. Fact is a good amount of detail should go into each of your ads. But if you are having trouble designing and developing ad copy on your own, then use these quick tips to get off to a good start and use your competition’s ads against them!

  1. Study what part of your business you are going to advertise from the consumer’s point of view –  In other words, you know everything there is to know about building a deck or finishing a kitchen, except what the triggers are that make the consumer pick up the phone and call you. So find out how, what, why, where and when your competitors are advertising a similar product or service as yours. You are not doing this to steal copy points or ideas, but to see how the consumer sees or “consumes” the ad message.
    1. Now I want you to go to the Google keyword tool and put in the broadest search term for your market to understand how people are searching in Google for what you and your competition does. Doing this is the most compelling way to understand how buyers view your product or service. But be careful, you can spend all day drilling down deeper into the minds of your customers, but for now, I just want you to make a note of the broad terms they use to find you instead of how you should market to them.
  2. Now I want you to go back and review all the advertising your competition is doing, paying special  attention to the following:
    1. How are they positioning their company against the market – and you!
    2. What are they saying in their ads?
    3. Where are they advertising – make sure these are not one-off ads, you want to know that they have advertised in these mediums for a while.
    4. Who are they targeting
  3. Compare their ads against your findings from your keyword research. Is you competition hitting the mark, or are they blindly dropping ad dollars on campaigns that don’t SPEAK TO BUYERS?
  4. Now I need you to start talking to those buyers. This can be anyone from former leads to family to strangers on the street. You want to get an idea if they will buy, what they will buy and most importantly, how much will they pay for it. Determine the pain or pleasure (these two factors are THE leading reasons why people buy) your product or service provides and you have the makings of a solid ad program!

Now, let’s say you don’t have the time, energy or money to put all this together for one little ad, then go ahead and place the ad…and you too can be part of the “50% of my advertising works, I just don’t know which 50%” club!

Point is…Do Your HOMEWORK BEFORE YOU ADVERTISE!