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Review and alternative websites to promote your startup

review alternative websites promote startup

January 17, 2018| Razvan

Entrepreneurs tend to work on improving their product and not priorities for promoting their website after the launch of their startup. Some start building the product without even thinking how much effort does it take to attract visitors. “Build it, and they will come” … right …

After launching your website, you should look for easy tactics to get some visibility on your website. This is the first article that will tell you where you can easily promote your website … and some results.

Review & alternative to websites

Finances Online – Excellent position in Google, badge award if you qualify to give your brand some credibility;
CrozDesk – Nice UI, nice team
G2Crowd – maybe save this for last, it’s popular, and it may require some user reviews to get on top. Approval takes 1-2 weeks;
Capterra
GetApp
AlternativeTo – very popular, also ranks well in Google
SaaS Genius – Specific for SaaS startups, a good place to submit your website, and easy to get approved.

An easy thing to do if you want to be listed first on the category pages with your competitors: Try to get some of your initial users to give some reviews and like your product on those pages (social accounts are required to prevent abuse).

New logo update to help my startup take shape

December 12, 2017| Razvan

When I started Competitive.Business from scratch, it helps me to have a visual identity; it makes sure the colors used in the interface are balanced, according to the created brand, it helps insert small visual images that are brand-related (like the blue dot or the unique shape that represents the logo).

Now that I am planning to redesign the homepage and prepare for a public launch, I spent more time redesigning the new identity.

I know it may not seem vital to focus too much and spend time at this stage on the visual identity, but for me, it helps.

I am not a designer, but I have designing skills 😉 (I know Photoshop and Illustrator). I also had some help from two designers.

Pitch feedback for Competitive.Business

November 9, 2017| Razvan

I almost always try to go to events that I think can help Competitive Business. I invest some time, but the focus, the feedback, and sometimes the buzz around my startup always helps.

I’ve been selected to pitch at Rockstart Answers organized by Rubik Hub in my town.

Pitch preparation

The team at Rubik Hub did a great job preparing all of the selected startups for the pitch event. We had a few training sessions with a lot of feedback on how to present.

It’s not my first pitch experience, not at all. I’ve pitched at several startup events with my last project; I know how valuable pitching events are: you are in the spotlight; it’s all about your startup.

At 4:00 am, I had to prepare the video training pitch (in my pajamas).

Final pitch video of Competitive Business

Sadly, they have filmed only the end and the Q&A.

… and the pitch deck.

The actual pitch text

Image you are the CEO of a startup.

Your job, as the CEO, is to make strategic decisions. You are more likely to make the right decision if you are well informed, correct?

———

So, for 6 years, on my previous startup, I’ve been manually watching over competitors to check out their strategy on social media or ads, their pricing, their copywriting changes, lead nurturing and it paid off: I had the right product, the right price, the right strategy so I made a profitable startup.

Let me tell you why knowing your competitors can be good for your business:
It will help you position yourself and differentiate from the competitors in the user mind (most of the users will ask why should I choose you and not your competitor).
price changes of your competitors can affect your revenue (think of some seasonal offers or maybe a discount if the user did not convert after the trial ending)
investors ask in a pitch deck to have competitors slide and say why are you better? How easy it would be for your competitor to do what you do.
know where your competitors promote themselves, find out influencers, affiliates, webinars and so on

Keep in mind while you develop your business, the competitors are doing this as well. Don’t fall behind.

—-

Competitive.Business will deliver by email on a weekly basis your competitors’ online activity. It will only take a few minutes of your time to review any key insights and help you make strategic decisions with your team.

This is how it currently looks, simple interface with powerful filters so you can immediately see only what you are interested in.

Now think that if you would manually visit competitors from time to time, you would have to remember what you have seen last time and if they changed anything. You may visit them for nothing or even miss some of their moves.

Competitive.Business alerts you only when something new happens. All the key information will be delivered to your email and you may visit the website for more information.

—

We are currently in private beta.

2 weeks ago I invited 50 startup founders. We’ve done a lot of bug fixing and received good feedback.

I plan to launch publicly in December.

—-

My question to validate and improve the product is: What public information about your competitors would you pay for? or would you be interested in?

Feedback on my pitch

At the end of the event, I’ve received 43 written feedback from the audience.

While in 3 minutes, there isn’t enough time for anyone to fully understand the business, when a lot of people write the same thing, it’s something you should focus on and see if you can do something with it.

To address some feedback that kept repeating:

You should monitor price changes on e-commerce websites.
I don’t want to monitor price changes, there are a lot of startups and well-established businesses that do that very well (not that there isn’t enough space to make another one), but I targeted people with a different need, those who want to have an idea of their competitors strategy, what works well for them and what doesn’t.
Budget spent on ads; keywords that help my competitors convert
Very happy to see interested people in ads & keywords. The feature should be available on Competitive Business in a month or two.
I am interested in user acquisition/sales strategy
We are already monitoring competitors account emails/newsletters, social media and soon ads

Do you have a pitch prepared for your startup? Have you ever pitched at a startup event? How was it?

Displaying “Alternative to” competitors is good for business

September 15, 2017| Razvan

Many people are afraid to say to their users who their competitors are, but if you do it and do it right, you can convert users that would choose your competition if they are undecided.

You don’t need to send the users a message telling them who your competitors are. Still, you can create pages on your website where you show the advantages of using your business vs. your competitors (remember that you control your website content, so you can write whatever you want that will gain the visitor trust).

Keep in mind that you, as the business owner, know very well your competitors, their strengths, and weaknesses, but the average user is not focused as much as you to know all of this. They will believe what they read.

Visitors arriving at those pages want exactly that, to see the differences, the advantages of using your software.

Be sure to include what features you have that your competitors do not write in your own words, what do you do better, compare the price, and if it’s higher, explain why. Make a list of Pros and Cons to be easier to read, add a few screenshots, and maybe 3rd party review sites if your score is higher.

Your page should always end with a call to action so the visitor can register to your website or subscribe to a newsletter so they can enter your onboarding funnel.

Benefits for displaying your competitors

A lot of people are searching on Google for alternatives: “alternative to“ or “vs.” or “compare.” They are either unhappy with their current solution or want to see if there is a cheaper solution or just undecided.

Those users are either unhappy with their current solution or want to see if there is a cheaper solution or just undecided.

Websites like Alternative To and G2 Crowd rely on people searching for these keywords.

Make sure you create a page on your business website so you may rank in front of Google, so visitors arrive on your site.

Examples of websites that display their competitors

Chargebee comparing to Chargify and others

Address the pain point of the visitor in the first paragraph: “Looking for a Chargify alternative?“
3rd party reviews from G2 Crowd
Feature comparison
Clients testimonials that say why did they switch to Chargebee (very smart).
Other clients highlight
Links in the footer with the competition (benefiting a lot for search engine traffic).

Other good examples of businesses showcasing their competitors on their website (in a smart way).

Drift as Intercom alternative – they rank #4 on Google on keyword “intercom alternative,” in front of AlternativeTo.net

drift intercom alternative

Chatra as Drift alternative – ranking #2 on Google for “drift alternative” (probably until Intercom decides to create a page to showcase the alternative of Drift). They have a nice image in the header.

chatra vs drift

Intercom as alternative to Zendesk for Customer Support – intercom is also targeting the market, adding “customer support” (Zendesk Alternative for Customer Support | Intercom) or “live chat” (Olark Alternative for Live Chat | Intercom)

Startup strategies to keep track of your competitors

June 24, 2017| Razvan

I remember when I started my last startup, Monitor Backlinks, that almost every day I was tracking my competitors’ websites, blogs, social media and try to figure out what they are up to, why did they do the things they were doing.

You have to be honest with yourself; competitors know a lot more than you do about your niche; they have been working for years trying to optimize their business, increase leads and conversion rates, while you are just starting. You don’t need to copy their every move, but at least stay up to date with what they do so you don’t waste time making the same mistakes or optimize your website and startup faster.

Strategies that will help you decide what can you learn from your competitors

Tracking your competitor site changes

You only need to review once most of the pages of your competitor, to get an idea on how they organize the information they publicly display to their visitors. Some pages will require you to come back and figure out if they have changed anything.

From my research, I saw that the homepage and pricing page could change every month (usually small stuff, like adding a testimonial, a certificate or an award badge, a copy of the text …). As an entrepreneur, you will most likely try to remember everything in your head, but you can also try Competitive.Business tool to track the website changes and have a clear history (visually and text) on what changes; also, you will get alerted via email when something changes.

Monitor the blog and social media accounts

The blog and social media are where your competition marketing employees will write articles about their niche (so your niche).

Do not think that this is random text, to have some content on their website; the topic of the articles are usually well planned, targeting specific keywords that are well researched to get high keyword rankings on Google and drive free inbound leads that their sales team can work.

You do not need to read all the articles from beginning to end carefully. It’s enough to scan their headlines and try to figure out if that article was written to target specific keywords to rank in Google or if it’s a very long article, to be very well documented and their audience will find it excellent and link to them, boosting their startup website.

Also, your competitors’ will announce new or improved features on their blogs and social media. That means that you are already a step behind when you read that article, but it’s better to know and think if it’s worth implementing for your startup or not. And don’t worry, you are working on something else that your competitors are not working on while they improved their app.

Trial emails and their newsletter

Create an account on your competitor website and keep track of what emails they are sending. You will learn their free trial conversion funnel and apply some of the strategies to your startup. Commonly, they might offer a discount after the trial ended, or invite the user to a 1-on-1 demo call.

Also, their newsletter may contain invitations to webinars. If they are doing this, it is a confirmation that that marketing channel works for them.

Takeaways for your startup

All of the above strategies are free to do manually, and they provide a ton of knowledge, you have no excuses if you don’t do it!

There is a lot more to talk about when tracking your competitors, but remember, knowledge is power, but also, knowledge is time-consuming. Find a balance, focus on building your startup while keeping an eye on your competitors.