Study Your Customers, Not Your Competitors, for Better Marketing Results

In the fast-paced world of business and marketing, it’s tempting to keep a close eye on competitors. After all, if they’re successful, it seems logical to replicate their strategies. However, this approach can lead to missed opportunities, stifled creativity, and a disconnect from your own customers. Instead of obsessing over competitors, businesses should prioritize studying their customers to drive authentic engagement and sustainable growth.

The Pitfalls of Studying Competitors Too Closely

1. Imposter Syndrome and Loss of Identity

One of the biggest risks of focusing on competitors is imposter syndrome. When constantly comparing your brand to others, it’s easy to feel inadequate or pressured to change your approach just to “keep up.” This can lead to a loss of authenticity, causing your brand to blend into the market rather than stand out.

2. Mimicking Without Understanding

Copying a competitor’s marketing tactics without understanding why they work can be dangerous. Just because a competitor launches a flashy new campaign doesn’t mean it’s right for your audience. What works for them may not resonate with your specific customer base, leading to wasted resources and ineffective marketing efforts.

I’ve personally worked for a company that constantly looked at their competitors to see what they were doing, which resulted in numerous website updates to ‘keep up’ with the competition—without any actual evidence that the competitors were right or successful. This cause the brand to constantly change, which can lead to a loss in brand trust.

3. Chasing the Wrong Goals

Competitor-driven marketing strategies often prioritize industry trends rather than customer needs. This can result in businesses chasing vanity metrics (such as social media followers or website visits) instead of focusing on meaningful customer engagement and conversions.

4. Misinterpreting Success

Seeing a competitor’s campaign go viral doesn’t necessarily mean it was profitable or effective in the long run. Without access to their analytics, you’re only seeing the surface-level impact, not the true return on investment.

The Benefits of Studying Your Customers

1. Authentic Engagement

Understanding your customers allows you to craft marketing messages that truly resonate with them. This builds trust and fosters long-term relationships rather than short-term trends.

2. Better Product Development

By studying customer pain points and behaviors, you can create products and services that genuinely meet their needs, rather than playing catch-up with competitors.

3. Higher ROI on Marketing Efforts

Marketing strategies tailored to your audience’s preferences lead to more effective campaigns and a higher return on investment. When you know what your customers want, you spend less time and money guessing.

4. Stronger Brand Loyalty

Customers appreciate brands that listen and respond to their needs. By focusing on your audience rather than competitors, you cultivate loyalty and advocacy, which leads to organic growth through word-of-mouth marketing.

How to Actively Gather Customer Data

1. Conduct Surveys and Polls

Platforms like Google Forms, Typeform, and SurveyMonkey make it easy to gather direct feedback from your audience about their preferences, pain points, and buying behavior.

2. Leverage Social Media Listening

Monitor conversations about your brand and industry using tools like Hootsuite or Sprout Social. Pay attention to what customers are saying in comments, reviews, and discussions. This does not simply mean to make any generic post on social media and wait for a comment, share or like—engagement on your part is key.

3. Analyze Website Behavior

Use Google Analytics to track user behavior on your website. Look at metrics like bounce rates, session duration, and conversion paths to understand how visitors interact with your content. This is ESSENTIAL to understanding your customers. Where did they go on the site? Where did they arrive from? What information were they searching for? and most importantly, did they convert?—and if not, where did they drop off?

4. Engage in Direct Conversations

Speak with customers directly through support channels, community forums, or personalized email outreach. Customer service interactions can provide valuable insights into recurring issues and customer desires.

5. Utilize Heatmaps and Session Recordings

Tools like Hotjar and Crazy Egg allow you to visualize how users navigate your website, showing where they click, scroll, and drop off. They even show you ‘rage clicks’, which show you what customers THINK they can click on that don’t actually work—which can solve or point out an issue in your customer journey.

6. Monitor Customer Reviews and Testimonials

Platforms like Trustpilot, Yelp, and Google Reviews offer unfiltered customer opinions. Look for patterns in praise and complaints to improve your offerings. Keep in mind that sometimes while negative reviews can come from a place of anger (more often than not on the customers part), take the opportunity to always review them, because you just might find an actual issue with your product or service that you should solve.

7. Track Email Engagement Metrics

Use email marketing platforms like Mailchimp or HubSpot to analyze open rates, click-through rates, and customer responses to different email campaigns. Keep in mind when setting up email campaigns, you need to first think of a goal and a way to actually track engagement. Solely sending an email and seeing if it get’s opened just doesn’t cut it anymore with today’s email screening apps that can skew your data. Use proper tracking methods with click-through links in emails with UTMs (UTM links, short for Urchin Tracking Module links, are URLs with added parameters that help marketers track the performance of their digital marketing campaigns by identifying the source, medium, and campaign name of website traffic.).

Useful Tools for Researching Customer Engagement

1. Google Analytics – https://analytics.google.com/
2. Hotjar (Heatmaps & Behavior Analytics) – https://www.hotjar.com/
3. Hootsuite (Social Listening) – https://hootsuite.com/
4. Sprout Social (Social Media Insights) – https://sproutsocial.com/
5. Typeform (Customer Surveys) – https://www.typeform.com/
6. SurveyMonkey (Customer Feedback) – https://www.surveymonkey.com/
7. Crazy Egg (Website Behavior Analytics) – https://www.crazyegg.com/
8. Mailchimp (Email Marketing Analytics) – https://mailchimp.com/
9. Trustpilot (Customer Reviews & Insights) – https://www.trustpilot.com/

Recap and remember:

While it’s important to be aware of industry trends and competitor movements, your primary focus should always be on your customers. Studying competitors can lead to imposter syndrome, lack of originality, and wasted marketing efforts. Instead, by actively engaging with and understanding your audience, you can create authentic, impactful marketing strategies that drive real business success. The brands that win are the ones that truly listen, adapt, and innovate based on their customers’ needs—not their competitors’ strategies.