Competition Hacking: How To Hijack Your Competitors To Save Time, Money And Effort And Increase Profits

Facebook wasn’t the first social networking site, Myspace was.

Google wasn’t the first search engine, Yahoo! was.

It’s much harder to invent something new; then it is to copy something existing.

And it’s usually better to be a fast follower than a leader in this instance.

This method works as the competition has tested for you as you don’t need to re-create the wheel.

You can do the same for your business and grow.

Sorry to say this, but that you are not Steve Jobs.

The likelihood of your creating a million dollar invention is slim.

To prove my point, if you were Steve Jobs, you wouldn’t need this guide.

But no all is doom-and-gloom!

It’s possible to be a fast follower and be really successful, and that is what this guide is about.

Specifically, you will be a fast follower of a wildly successful:

  • Product, service or solution; or
  • Marketing campaign.

Depending on where your brand is currently.

You are going to do this by hacking your competitors.

This guide is for two types of people:

  1. Those with a new product, service or solution; or
  2. Existing product, service or solution.

Why Competition Hacking Is Important

So, why would you want to hack your competitors?

Simply because it will save you time, money, effort and increase profits.

Sounds great, right?

Sure does!

What Competition Hacking Is

In broad terms, you are doing competitor intelligence.

Or put another way, you will be doing a marketing hack.

A Hack could be defined as:

“Using something to make it do what you want.”

Or:

“To obtain unauthorized access for gain.”

We will be doing both.

A marketing hack is therefore:

“Using your competition to save you time, money, effort and increase profits by obtaining unauthorized access.”

Sound fun?

Let’s get started.

How To Hack Your Competition

To give you a board picture, we will find what your competitors are doing that is currently working well for them, that is, making them money.

We will then redirect existing traffic that is already there, from the internet firehose to you, instead of going to your competitors.

This works because, if there is competition, especially if the competition is purchasing advertisements, then that competitor is making money.

The existence of advertisements means a brand is making or has an advertisement spend.

If they are spending money, they, by default need to be making money.

Not to be consumed with profit, as the sales may be loss leaders.

But nonetheless, this still means it’s a proven market with proven sales.

Where there is competition , there are customers.

Of course, there are acceptations to this, but this is a rule of thumb for this guide.

With that in mind let’s explore the step-by-step method…

The first step we come across our first decision tree.

We want to know who you are.

We need to determine if you are a startup business or an existing business.

If you are an existing business (with a product, service or solution, then skip this first step and move on to step 2 Hack Competitors.

If you are a startup business (without a product, service or solution yet), you need to Find Products, Services or Solutions.

This process follows:

  1. Find Passion;
  2. Find Advertisements;
  3. Find Products; and
  4. Profit decision.

Let’s start with…

1) Find Products, Services or Solutions

1a) What is Your Passion

The first part of Find Products, Services Or Solutions, is to find your passion.

1b) Find Ads

The second part of Find Products, Services Or Solutions, is to find advertisements.

Not just any ad, ads for products, services or solutions that you are passionate about (Step 1a.)

Here is how to find ads.

You can:

  • Search Google for keywords related to your passion;
  • Scroll through your Facebook feed;
  • Etc.

Then you need to click on the ad and find the retail price.

1c) Find Products

The third part of Find Products, Services Or Solutions is finding products and suppliers.

You need to determine what type of product it is.

Here is the next decision tree:

Is it Physical or digital?

Depending on your answer you need to find the product in the original advertisement.

Once you have found the products retail price, if it is a physical product, you need to then go to search Google for the following:

site:http://aliexpress.com + any keyword that explains the product.

Or:

Save the product image and Google reverse image search for it.

If it is a digital products or service, go to fiverr.com and search for the products keywords.

Find a service provider who offers the same service or multiple services providers that you can bundle to be the whole service.

If you can’t find suppliers you need to abandon that product, abandon it as it will be too hard and start again at 1b.

If you can find a supplier, then you need to find the wholesale price from the supplier or manufacturer from these sites.

1d) Profit Decision

The fourth part of Find Products, Services Or Solutions is a decision if you should pursue this product, service or solution.

There is a market, but you need to know if it is profitable.

Margin is revenue take costs.

Margin is the difference between the retail price and wholesale price.

Mark up is cost multiplied by a factor to give revenue.

Mark up is the wholesale price as expressed as a multiplier or percentage.

Don’t worry about margin, so aim for a 10x mark up to be profitable.

Based on this, you need to decide if you want to pursue that product, service or solution.

If it is not at least 10x markup, then abandon it as it will be too hard.

If it is unprofitable, then you need to repeat this step until you find a product, service or solution that is profitable.

If it is profitable, then move on to step 2, Hack Competitors.

2) Hack Competitors

The most important factors for Hacking Competitors is knowing the following:

  1. Pipeline;
    • Landing pages
  2. Brand and Marketing and Sales Communication;
    • Ads
  3. Content;
  4. Traffic sources; and
  5. Engagement.

Without that, it will be very hard to hack them.

Well find these out by the following:

  1. Market Research;
  2. Collect Swipe;
  3. Find Market Trends;
  4. Out Do Competition;
  5. Implement Changes;
  6. Measure Changes; and
  7. Repeat.

Let’s start with…

2a) Market Research

The first part of Hack Competitors is Market Research.

Once you have a product, service or solution, you need to hack your competitors.

You need to search Google for your product, service or solution or industry keywords to find your competitors, both direct and indirect – those up or downstream from your product, service or solution.

Upstream means a product, service or solution that is used before your product, service or solution.

Downstream means a product, service or solution that is used after your product, service or solution, usually a next sell or affiliate offer.

You need to list all in a spreadsheet including:

  • Name of website;
  • URL of website;
  • Product, service or solution offered;
  • Direct, up or downstream from you; and
  • Contact details.

Each URL will, of course, give you following Hacking Competitors factors from before:

  • Landing pages (via URL).

Next, load each competitor’s URL into Similarweb (https://www.similarweb.com.)

Similarweb finds and collects intelligence about websites.

Similarweb will show you:

This ticks off the following Hacking Competitors factors from before:

  • Parts of Marketing and Sales Communication; and
  • Traffic Sources.

Of the Traffic Sources (Top Referring sites) listed on Similarweb, copy those URLs into separate browsers to find ads that run on those sites that lead back to your competitor’s site.

For example, a competitors site, abc.com, may have a traffic source from xyz.com, so you would go to xyz.com and find ads on that site that direct to abc.com.

You also want to know the answers to:

  • How much traffic does each competitor get?
  • Where do they get traffic from? Referrals? Search? Display – Ads/publishers? What search Terms? What Social?

2b) Collect Swipe

Swiping is the marketing term for collecting competitors marketing materials.

The second part of Hack Competitors is swiping all their Hacking Competitors factors from before:

  • Pipeline;
    • Landing pages;
  • Brand and Marketing and Sales Communication;
    • Ads; and
  • Content.

This means you need to start swiping and collecting data on everything via screenshots.

You will start by going to publishers/referrals site, clicking on a competitor ad, then follow their entire marketing and sales pipeline:

A pipeline usually goes like this:

  • Ad with offer;
  • Landing page with offer (such as an opt-in or purchase);
  • Upsell/email follow-up offers;
  • Purchase Thank You page; and
  • Remarketing on other sites, you visit.

Basically, you are following their entire marketing and sales sequence, including purchasing, to see exactly what your competitors are doing to get, keep and grow prospects and customers, so you can reverse engineer and copy (without breaching copyright) to save you time , effort and money testing to see what works the best for your business.

Purchasing is important because after the purchase there are many things that occur for customers only and aren’t available to the public (AKA prospects).

The purchasing ticks off the final Hacking Competitors factors from before and allow you to go behind closed doors and see what else they do for:

  • Engagement.

Finally, you want to ask to join their affiliate program, again there are many things that occur for affiliate only and aren’t available to the public (AKA prospects).

Once you have done this, you need to repeat this for the rest of your competitors.

2c) Find Market Trends

The third part of Hack Competitors is to find trends in the Market.

Once you have completed your market research, you then need to start looking for trends and common denominators among all your competitors:

  • Pipeline;
    • Landing pages including Upsells;
  • Brand and Marketing and Sales Communication;
    • Ads including Retail Price;
  • Content;
  • Traffic sources; and
  • Engagement.

Capture all of these trend insights into a document with the same headers.

2d) Out Do Competitor’s

The fourth part of Hack Competitors is out doing your competitors.

Once you have found market trends, you then need to work out how your business can be better than all of these.

This comes down to a better value proposition, but also specifically:

  • A more premium brand ;
  • More persuasive Landing pages;
  • More compelling Brand and Marketing and Sales Communication;
  • More persuasive Ads;
  • More valuable Content; and
  • More valuable Engagement.

But it shouldn’t be on price.

2e) Implement Changes

The fifth part of Hack Competitors is implementing these changes you identified to outdo your competitors.

Once you have outdone your competitors, you then need to implement the changes.

This includes setting up:

  • Ads, paid content, affiliate or referral offers on the same referral and display site they do;
  • Setting up the same SEO keywords and backlinks on your pages they do;
  • Insert the same SEO keywords into your internal content;
  • Setting up same social media platforms and distributing content they have;
  • Setting up similar landing pages;
  • Setting up similar pipeline sequences for Engagement and Marketing and Sales Communication;
  • Etc.

2f) Measure Changes

The sixth part of Hack Competitors is measuring your implemented changes.

After you have implemented changes, you need to measure that your new changes are actually working.

You do this through split testing.

2g) Repeat

Now that you have finished this, it is a never-ending process of split testing, so you will repeat by going back to 2a).