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One of the most important things you should be doing for your business is keeping up to date not only with what your competitors are up to, but what's happening within your industry too.
As I write this I'm on my way to the annual Technology for Marketing exhibition at Earls Court in London. I'm not exhibiting, but I like to go along to some of the internet marketing exhibitions from time to time just so I can find out what the big online marketing agencies are doing, if they're changing their services, check out their marketing (of course!) and attend some of the free seminars.
Finding the time to go to some of these exhibitions can be quite difficult, but there's quite a lot you can do online to research what the competition is up to. Make sure you visit competitors' websites every few months or so and note any impressions you have about their site. Do you like the site? Can you find relevant information? Which products / services are they offering and have any of them changed? Do they publicise a newsletter, have a blog, have press releases on their site? Is the site actually kept up to date, are they running special offers? The list could go on, but there's lots of information you should be able to find that can give you ideas for your own marketing.
Next, check out the links to their website, which will give you information as to who's linking to them. You can find out how active your competitors are at promoting their site by their links as well as whether they're doing any PR, writing articles etc. Go to www.linkpopularity.com and when you go through to the page asking you to click through to the different search engine results, choose Yahoo! This is the most reliable search engine to check backlinks as Google doesn't publicly show all backlinks to websites. You can download the list of backlinks from Yahoo as well, and see which sites may be worth approaching for links, or find out where your marketing activities could be enhanced.
Doing these activities every few months or so not only will ensure your offering is as good as or better than your competitors', but you can stay one step ahead with your marketing!
