Do you know how you stack up against your competition?
Do you even know who your competition is? Or what your target market is so that you can define your competition.
Once you have a yardstick to compare you against your competition you have a way to measure
- where you are now,
- where you want to be,
- how fast you are getting there.
So, how should you measure?
Well, what counts the most?
- How much money you make
- How many clients you have
Both of those may be a bit hard to get statistics for your competition. But, you can see several things that you can compare yourself against.
- What search engine position you have in comparison to your competitors
- How much traffic you have in comparison to your competitors.
I have found it extremely beneficial to know how much traffic my competition gets to their website. I assume that they are getting maybe 1% or less of that traffic calling them. So, if, as I have discovered most of my competitors are getting fewer than 100 visitors a month, at best they are getting about 1 call a month from their website. And, that makes me feel pretty good knowing that I get lots more than that, lots.
But, on the other hand, I also know those coaches who are getting tens of thousands of visitors a month and hundreds of new clients a month. Some are getting hundreds a month, some are getting hundreds a week. Yes, that’s correct. And because I know who they are I also know what they are doing. I’ve adjusted my own marketing to put myself into those brackets that I have identified.
That’s why you should be holding that yardstick up to measure yourself and those around you. There is a lot to learn, and a lot to benefit from.
I have several goals for my own coaching business, for local coaching, and for nationwide, and I want my own clients, coaches and small business to baseline themselves against their competition the same way.
Local, around the Kansas City area, around Missouri and Kansas.
I already have a #1 search engine position for “Small Business Coach Kansas City” and I want to hold that, although there are several making a run on my position.
No matter what your location is, frankly it should be easy to get a search engine position mainly because most coaches don’t have the skills necessary to hold a very strong search engine position. Getting a search engine position for your metropolitan area should be easy.
You SHOULD have one of the top three positions in your metropolitan area for the type of coaching you do, and for several other keywords based on the problems you solve.
But what does that say about the traffic, and the number of new clients this brings to you?
You can measure the traffic for everyone on page 1 (the top 10) for your local coach listings. The easiest way to do that is use http://siteanalytics.compete.com/
Once there, click on Profiles, Site Profile, Compare Sites and then enter your own site and at least 4 other site URLs from the search engine. (NOTE: Make sure that you type in the URL of only real coaches,not directories. The directories of hundreds of thousands of visitors that aren’t even related to coaching, so only enter those coaches that are real coaches.
You will quickly see where you stand in comparison to other coaches in your area. It might surprise you seeing that some you think are very successful and how little traffic they have, or some that may have more than you expect. I any case, now you have a way of comparing where you are against your competition.
Do the same for your national competitors.
That is the traffic IN to their website.
Here are some other guidelines to help you estimate how many clients that brings to them.
A well designed site should be delivering between 5% and 10% of that traffic to them either as signing up for their list, calling them, or some other first step into their marketing funnle (not necessarily a sale).
However, I will tell you that most coaches actually end up much closer to 0.1% website conversion. So, if they don’t have a sign up form and a freebie giveaway,assume that they are getting 0.1% or less as an estimate. Now take their traffic times 0.1% and you have a rough estimate of what they are likely getting from their website.
Now,what conversion rate do you get from your website? That’s website output divided by traffic in. Are you getting 5% to 10%?
And where does that leave you in comparison to your competition?
What are you going to do to drive to
- The top search engine position in your local market, and in your nationwide market
- Get higher response rates, and new clients from your website?
Do you get a dozen calls or more from your website on a monthly basis? Or maybe it’s been months since you did get a call.
What are you going to do about it?