Part 1 | How to compete and market online in a hyper competitive market
There are new businesses popping up all the time and you want to get in on the action. Problem is, the market you are interested in is super competitive.
A competitive market is a pre-existing market that sells products/services that people are already aware of and that other brands already stand out as claiming that space.
Here, I will show you how to compete online in a competitive market.
This is part 1 of a 3 part series.
As a side project I wanted to get into real estate investing.
I started 77 Realty Solutions as a home buying company in order to purchase distressed properties. This seems like one of those Industries where everyone and their dog are trying to get in. My goal was to setup some rental houses which I could use as my retirement savings.
I've been able to do a few deals but it's been really hard and a lot of work. Much more work than I ever anticipated.
Real estate is really fun for me but its high stress and the work to get a good deal on a house is incredibly taxing.
Most investors tell me that I need to send out letters to homeowners and a good rate on a return is .05%. Yeah you read that right. Point zero five percent. If I send out 2,000 letters to homeowners I can expect to close 1 deal. 1 deal! What is your return on investment rate?
100 = 1%
200 = .5%
400 = .25%
800 = .125%
1,600 = .0625%
3,200 = .03125%
To say that this is a highly competitive market is an understatement and I’m definitely not interested in licking that many stamps. I’m getting cramps in my hand from thinking about the address writing.
Hearing those numbers made me gag but that is what they are. So I decided I would move to the web...but oh no, so did everyone else!
I’m in this for the long haul though. No get rich quick scheme but instead I was going to put in the work to make the web work for me.
So here are some thoughts based on my experience of getting into an online market that is highly competitive.
1) Know who your competition is.
I Googled a lot of terms like “sell my house fast” in order to determine who are the other players in this market. Page 1 results are always the big dogs. Page 2 are the medium guys. Page 3 are the ones trying to get in the game. I realized that in order to ever get on page 1, I need to beat out the page 3 people and then the page 2 people. My domain is brand-new, some of these domains have been around for 15 years and have put in a massive amount of work into them.
2) Research your competition now that you know who they are.
I used a free SEO analyzer tool called Ubersuggest to get some metrics on competitors sites.
How many pages are on each site? -- Are sites massive or should I stick to keeping the basics on the site.
Which words do they rank for? -- Finding the right keywords is imperative. If the competition already ranks for a ton of keywords, then you might see what words you need to rank for or at least what keywords will come up a lot.
How many backlinks do they have? -- The more links on other websites that link back to you, the higher Google ranks you because that tells Google that your site is important and valuable.
What is their Domain Authority (DA) score? -- Each site is ranked and given a score. At the time of this writing my score is 12 (out of a possible 100) but it started out at a 1 like everyone else. This isn’t a score against each other but just a “how good is your site” kinda score.
I looked for patterns and noticed that most DA scores on page 1 were in the 50s, page 2 were in the teens, and page 3 results were in the low single digits. So this tells me that I can compete with page 3 results from day 1 though Google had 20+ pages of results.
3) Establish your keyword list.
I'd write till I’m blue in the face about keywords but I will keep it somewhat basic. Keywords are the words or phrases people use to search.
Tip: write the keywords as if you were doing the search. “Buy your house” isn’t the same as “sell my house” even though it’s just a perspective change. In my case a good keyword list includes:
Sell my house
Sell my house fast
Cash offer on my house
Stop foreclosure
Quick house sale
Buy my house
This process can take a while so if you want some help you can see our process for creating website here.
4) Build out my site and make sure it has valuable content.
What does Google do? They provide you with links to informative sites that answer your question (oversimplify answer).
Google is an online collection of website links. They don't own the websites, they just own the ability to show the user links if Google feels this site has the answer to their question.
Does your site answer questions people in your industry may have? Why would Google want to show your site versus the other guy’s site?
If you put yourself in your target market’s shoes, would you find value in your site?
In order to rank well your site has to be informative. People must want to look at it to read it. The site has to have value.
If you come from that mindset then you'll have something to go off of. What does your site contribute and how does it help people in a way that other sites aren't already doing?
Assuming you already have a business plan that answers those questions, lets get that information on your site. If you need help with setting up a website then we can help you out.
This article will pickup on the next post.
In the meantime you can read some of our case studies about online marketing.