segment your offline & online competitors brainy

Segment your offline & online competitors brainyThoughts on competitors

segmentation and tips for entering online market

Do you investigate your competitors?

Case Study #1. Nike, or when your partners turn smarter than you

Main Nike competitors:

• Puma• Adidas• Reebok

Case Study #1. Nike, or when your partners turn smarter than you

Strong offline presence does not mean a strong

online brand.Let’s see how it works in the Nike case!

Case Study #1. Nike, or when your partners turn smarter than you

All these brands sell running shoes. Let’s check the UK SERP for this highly competitive keyword.

Case Study #1. Nike, or when your partners turn smarter than you

This SERP for the UK does not have any pages of the competitors listed above.

All of the sites represented here are resellers.

Case Study #1. Nike, or when your partners turn smarter than you

For this keyword nike.com results are on 28th position in google.com SERP and off the top 100 for google.com.uk at the moment of writing this article.

Case Study #1. Nike, or when your partners turn smarter than you

Well, at a first glance it’s clear why:

• Keywords? Are you serious? • No point in placing 'Nike Store UK' at the beginning,

it’s better to move relevant keywords closer to the beginning

• Auto generated meta tags

Case Study #1. Nike, or when your partners turn smarter than you

That is how the product URL looks like:

No sign of a user friendly URL.

Not a big sin, but…

Case Study #1. Nike, or when your partners turn smarter than you

But just imagine the amount of traffic and additional online sales that could be brought by SEO here, provided Nike can afford a lot – just look at their SMM campaigns.

Case Study #1. Nike, or when your partners turn smarter than you

Conclusion:

In SERPs you have to compete with those who sell your goods and services and not with brands.

Case Study #1. Nike, or when your partners turn smarter than you

By the way, check this, you’ll like it:

http://store.nike.com/robots.txt

The sooner the betterThe more you wait, the more efforts will be needed to become a strong competitor.

While you are thinking whether SEO is the right choice for you, your rivals are overdoing you and conquering your audience.

Prices• Price building is different on the Web• You have to compete with your resellers• There are several resellers in SERP who sell

shoes even cheaper than the Nike online store

Case Study #2. SEO for Branding?

Case Study #2. SEO for Branding?

It’s important to be the first on SERP for brand

keywords!

Official Puma website is not in the top 10 for Puma

shirts keyword, but they have an ad for this SERP:

Competitors segmentationOnline competitors are not always industry competitors.Industry competitors are not always online competitors.

Steps to segment your competitors1) Set up a goal for your online marketing. 2) Connect it to the goal of your offline marketing, if any.3) Build a list of your offline competitors.4) Build a list of your online competitors.5) Find out which companies are in both lists (area 3 in the picture above). Here you need an advanced research.6) Do a standard investigation of your only-online competitors. 7) Pay attention to the possible keywords of your offline competitors.

Advanced online-offline competitors research

1) Compare the efforts they put in to offline and online marketing.2) Do they have the same target audience online and offline?3) Do they do brand activities or sell online?4) What type of ads do they use?5) Are they successful? This is a vital question. It tells you what to do: to implement some of their strategy points or use them as an example of wrong marketing activities.6) How deep is their online-offline integration? For example, how do they represent their offline campaigns on the Internet?7) How long are they online and offline? What have they achieved through this period?

Best practice for information gap

Imagine you would like to buy headphones. You can go to the store and try out some, compare how they sound, choose those that fit your head best. But the best way to compare the specific lists of features is to reach them online.

Conclusion: provide exhaustive descriptions on the website.

Not enough!

Good!

Best practice for information gap

Customers can try on clothes at the shop, but a website picture of the jacket itself provides poor information.Conclusion: upload pictures of the models wearing clothes in different positions, indoor and outdoor. Make HQ zoomed pictures for showing details of the item, provide an advanced size chart.

Not enough!

Good!

Best practice for information gap

A shop assistant at your store may help your customers to choose a PC mainly for graphic design software usage. How can they define a suitable PC on a website?Conclusion: provide suggestions ('This PC is the best solution for game players') or arrange online consultation via Skype, online chat etc.

Good!

Useful reading

The list of points that add to this customer information gap is huge and it influences e-commerce if compared with offline sales according to the Online vs Offline Competition part for the Oxford Handbook of the Digital Economy.

I have no friends and no enemies - only competitors.

Aristotle Onassis

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