Thread by @GrowthTactics

You can find all of the marketing tactics other companies are using.

Here’s how to see and replicate them for your startup.

THREAD 👇

1/ Here's the benefit:

Competitive analysis de-risks your own growth experiments: Adopt the best growth ideas and avoid the worst ones.

Testing the right things quickly —> faster growth.

2/ Important:

This IS NOT about repurposing another startup's hard work. That's stealing.

Instead, analysis is about:

• Identifying the right companies to study
• Learning from their successes and failures
• Then prioritizing growth tests using your learnings

3/ Find the right companies to study.

Look for those that:

• Have a similar audience to you: e.g. small business owners
• Have a similar business model to you: e.g. self-serve SaaS
• Face the same growth challenges as you
• Have sustained high growth rates for a long time

4/ Here are 4 tactics you can use to source their growth ideas

1. Study their A/B tests
2. Analyze their ads
3. Reverse engineer their best blog content
4. Audit their onboarding funnel

Let's look at each.

5/ #1 Study companies' A/B tests.

Goal: See which A/B tests other companies are running and back into their hypotheses.

• Turn on your browser’s incognito mode, hit their landing pages, and repeat.
• Take a screenshot every time you see a visual change. That's a test.

6/ Then compare the variants. Are they testing:

• New value propositions?
• New product imagery?
• New social proof (e.g. testimonials)?
• A different way to show pricing?

Determine whether it’s worth testing similar hypotheses for your own company.

7/ #2 Analyze their ads. FB and IG:

Skip the Facebook Ads Library. That'll show you ALL of their ads.

You want their BEST ads:

• Visit the company’s site (w/o ad blockers)
• Then head over to Facebook (also w/o ad blockers) and wait for their retargeting ads to hit you.

8/ Look for retargeting ads w/ the highest engagement—a signal of high frequency, which usually means they convert best.

Identify the hooks that compel people to click.

Read comments: What questions do people have about the product? Use these to create your own ads.

9/ Google:

Use Ahrefs to audit competitors' paid search keywords. You can find their click costs, search volume, & associated ads

Take note of the keywords they consistently spend $ on—these are likely winners

Conversely, consider deferring keywords they briefly spent money on

10/ #3 Find top content.

• Use Ahrefs (again) to find companies' high-volume keywords & blog posts.
• Then use BuzzSumo to find stats on their post’s social media shares.

Find the overlap between high-volume & highly shared posts. Consider writing about these topics too.

11/ #4 Audit onboarding funnels.

For companies with similar audience & business models:

• Sign up for their newsletter/free trial
• Buy their product
• Engage with their emails

Note their attempts to reach out to you: emails, ads, & sales outreach. What do they get right?

12/ Once you've used comp analysis to source and prioritize growth ideas, try this:

1. A/B the best new ideas

2. Measure if an A/B did well and whether it's worth implementing

Lesson: You don't have to start from scratch. Study competitors.

Want more actionable growth tactics?

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