Marketing Checklist

We get so caught up in the day-to-day crises of our jobs we often forget the communications basics.

Use this checklist at the beginning of each week to keep tabs on your company and your competition.

Your Company

• Check all the links on your website to make sure they are still live
• Search your company on Google, Yahoo, etc
• Search your company on blogs through technorati or blogsearch
• Update Google Alerts
• If you are using paid search like AdWords, test different terms. Test ad content.
• Monitor web traffic
• Update your blog
• Determine what to post to Twitter this week
• Update your Facebook page

Your Competitors

• Check your competitor’s websites
• Check your competitor’s web traffic on Compete.com.
• Search your competitor’s on Google, Yahoo, etc
• Search your competitor’s on blogs through technorati or blogsearch

Starting the week off following this checklist gets this out of your way and, more important, gives you time to work on anything you might discover.

Check Out Your Competition’s Web Analytics

 Sorry about another quick post this week, but I came across a service that has me very excited.    It is called Compete.

Compete is a website that allows you to not only track your company’s web analytics but also check your competition’s web activity.  It does so by gathering information based on IP traffic.  

Compete’s subscription service is pretty robust and can run anywhere from $200 – $500 a month , but even using its free tool you can still get a lot of information like:

• monthly visitors
• monthly unique visitors
• average page views
• average time per visit

This is not a perfect science but it is pretty close.  I compared the web analytics of some of my clients with the data received by Compete and it was off by about 5% – 10%.  So while it is not the end-all in web analytics, it is a great tool to help you monitor trends.

For example, if your competition launches a new ad campaign you can track any upticks in its unique visitors to measure the impact.  More important you can see what type of comparative impact it has on your site.

Compete also provides you frame of reference.  You may think having 5 web page views per visit is a good number, now you can see if it really is and map out your plan accordingly.

Understanding your competition and having an industry frame of reference are key tools to being a better marketer and now Compete.com helps you market smarter.