At the heart of any offer and/or promotion lies market research. If you don’t know your customer well, you don’t know how to sell to them.
So if you can get your hands on more sources of customer data and information, it follows that you can potentially make more money.
With that said, here’s a hidden gem you could use to amp up your market research:
Your competitors.
Ok, that’s obvious.
What I meant was your competitors’ email lists.
Competitor email lists are great because they give you better insights into customers and help you find tons of great marketing angles.
Customers
Sure, a competitor’s dream customer might not be the same as yours. But they might be similar enough in certain broader pain points, dreams, goals, and whatnot for you to learn a bit more about your own favorite customers.
The best way to do this is to look for commonalities. For example, if your competitors all talk a certain way or use specific words, that’s a strong sign those resonate with your audience. After all, multiple distinct brand voices won’t use the same words and phrases without reason.
You could also hunt down common pain points, goals, dreams, and so on mentioned among your competitors — especially if you notice them over longer periods.
The longer and more often you see a theme, the more likely it’s making your competitors money.
Copy Angles
On the angles point, of course, don’t copy your competitors. It’s bad, and it won’t always work — even in the same market. Every business is a bit different in brand voice, personality, and so on.
But you can use these angles as inspiration for your own copy.
For example, if a primary competitor writes an email giving their unpopular opinion on something in your industry, you could try the same thing.
Your “unpopular opinion” might be different, but you can use the same general idea to create a little drama and emotion that increases loyalty among your favorite customers.
This also works for automated sequences, like welcome autoresponders. Study what kinds of emails they send, how many they send, when they send them, and similar stats.
Helpful With a Grain of Salt
Now, take your competitors’ marketing with a grain of salt. Here’s why:
Your competitor might be flopping with every email they push out. They might be driving no sales despite constantly blasting their audience with emails.
You don’t want to draw inspiration from those brands, or the same thing might happen to you.
The best way to do this is, again, to look for trends among your competitors. If you notice, for example, they all mention the same book throughout some of their broadcasts or automated sequences…
That might be a book your target market is a fan of. Might be worth a read. Might be worth studying the author, too. That way, you gain yet another avenue with which to connect to your target market.
Once again, though, use this alongside other research. Your competitors may all be doing it wrong, for all you know.
Anyways, if you want help studying your competitors’ lists and creating genius marketing/copy ideas with that information, reach out to me today!