How to steal your competitors audience

Starting a business is not that easy. Besides knowing who you are, what you and your company stand for, how you’re going to brand and position yourself, you also should have a slight idea to whom you’re going to sell your stuff. Who do you want to attract? What person do you want to become a customer of your awesome Halloween-glibber-candies? Who a your readers?

Yes, you got it. Another article about market research! You have to know who your targeted audience and market is. That means, you need to spend some time on researching your niche.

When I was about to start my blog mariamcisse.com, I already learned a lesson: “Just do it. But know what you do and to whom you do it!” To me, that means not just blogging the hell out of my mind without knowing whom I want to read my stuff, but to put a little bit of work in researching what my “competition” is doing and who they attract. So I started looking around for resources, where I could get some information about the people I wanted to be appealing to and find a tone they can relate to.

Playing the Quantcast game:

Each niche has its leaders. Those, who are known, and accepted as authorities. So why not looking at their audience and figure out a way to reach them? I’d like to use Darren Rows from problogger.net as an example:

According to quantcast.com (April 26, 2010) Darren has a daily global traffic of 8.7k visitors. So I think this is a good place to start. Let’s have a look at his demographics:

Who is Darren’s audience?

1. Gender

53% of his attracted visitors / readers are female. Why? Well, I can’t answer the question, but it’s obvious that you have to treat a female audience differently than a male. Think about this:

How do women speak or behave?
What words, graphics or packages do they use, like or feel attracted by?
You’re not likely going to be appealing to a female audience, when you try to pitch them bloody Rambo-style movies.

Get my point?

If you know what problogger.net is about, ask yourself:

Why are so many women interested in blogging or making an online income?
Do they want to be financially independent from their husband?
How do women handle business?
How are their decisions made? Emotionally or logically?
Do they look for a way to combine work and family life?
What might a woman’s motivation be to visit this blog regularly?

2. Age

The next point on the list is the audiences’ age. In this case, many young adults (18-34 and sometimes called the Gen Y) visit the blog. Why? Gen X (the “older version” of Gen Y ) and Gen Y are the dominating groups of Internet users. What does that mean for your type of business?

Young adults have the ability to adopt new technology very quickly. Maybe you should think about hiring one of them to help you with your business?

What services do they use?
How do they communicate?
What products are they buying? I for example (Gen Y) still buy books in the bookstore, but am very open for ebooks now, since I’m married with my passion of personal growth and blogging. Young adults want to change the system and many of them are hungry in terms of growth, development and change.
Are you able to serve their need? In this fast-living society time is rare for us because it costs money.
Can you keep up with the trends we are discovering each and every day?

3. Ethnic heritage

On problogger.net there are more African American visitors than average. What does that mean to you when you want to reach out for Darren’s audience?

Are they seen as a minority?
Do they try to live the American dream more than Caucasians or Hispanics?
What does it mean to be an African American?
Are these proud people?
Are they more skeptical?
Is it harder to pitch them?
Do they have special likes or dislikes?
What is their understanding of community?

4. Kids in household

Problogger also attracts more readers with kids at the age of 0-2.

Can you imagine what it means to have kids at this age?
In what type of products might this audience be interested in?
Do they have the time for a home study course?
How much money do they spend on products?
Where are they going to meet other parents?
When do they have time to focus on things like reading, yoga or a membership site?
At what time are they usually online?

Probably they’re more likely to buy stuff related to parenting than luxurious cruises or a yacht. Don’t you think so?

5. Income and Education

How could you be appealing to less affluent college graduates? This is another segment of Darren’s audience. Ask yourself:

What do they spend their money for?
What music are they listening to?
Where do they do for a drink on Friday night?
Where and how do they live?
What leisure activities might they have?
How do they dress?
What is more important to them, quantity or quality?
What are their dreams? Their fears?
What does it mean to always be aware of your budget?

Paint a picture

When you try to see the overall picture, you might come up with this:

Darren’s appealed audience is a less affluent college graduated African American woman with kids at the age of 0-2 in the household.

Is Darren serving his audience right? Well, he obviously does a good job If you’re about to reach out for his audience and “steal” a little bit of his traffic, take your time to find out, how your business might serve their needs and be appealing to them too.

Let’s discuss

Got the idea? How would you try to be appealing to this audience? Leave your comments below to let me know what you think.

Mariam

Hi Miguel,

For me investigating the "target audience" is an ongoing process. I try to keep an eye on this once a month. At the beginning I spent a couple of days the get a slight picture of this audience. One afternoon is not enough in my opinion, because there are simply put too much blogs out there.

Two hundred blogs to look at is too much I would say. But if you want to get a detailed picture of your potential audience it's probably worth the time spending on looking at 15+ blogs.

What to do with this information is a good question. Talking about the stuff in the same way they do is probably not your intention. Then the time you spent on researching your "competitors" is just wasted. You don't need to research them in order to talk e.g. about PC vs. Mac. Know what I mean? I would try to add something. Make more a debate or a conversation or try an other media. If they only post written blod posts, try doing podcast etc.

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Miguel Cura

I have a few questions:
How much time does it take to investigate the "target audience" of a blog? Is it an afternoon, a week, a month?
Is there a number of blogs that should be looked at? Two? Twenty? Two hundred?
And finally, once you have all this information, do you talk about the same stuff, or do you add more to the conversation?

Hey Jimi,

Thanks for your kind words. I had fun writing this article though it took me a little more time than usual. But it seems that it was worth it. I'm really happy to hear that you've been able to get something out of it.

Hahaa... did you just said smart? I think I like that ;) I'm glad you like the post. It's very new to me, that very known bloggers like you and Mike get something out of my post.

As I researched the niche I was surprised too. I always thought that blogging is something for men. Glad you like the post Mike.

Jimi Jones

Very insightful post, Mariam.
I learned quite a bit from this and enjoyed the read.
Nicely done!

Nathan Hangen

This is really smart Mariam. Wrote something similar in reference to Facebook, but this takes it to a whole new level. Great work.

Mike CJ

Fascinating post, and I was surprised to learn that more than half of Darren's readers are female. As I guest post there from time to time, I should have known that.