Once you've determined which competitors to research, now the treasure hunt begins! In Part 2 of our discussion with Allison Tivnon, we outline how to efficiently assess the competition's online presence and what to look for related to brand personality, storytelling, and online engagement. With a clear understanding of your competition's online presence and performance, you can holistically create social media and website strategies that are 'right sized'—balancing finite marketing resources with the never-ending quest to have your firm genuinely stand out from the crowd.
CPSM CEU Credits: 0.5 | Domain: 1
Podcast Transcript
Welcome to The Shortlist.
We're exploring all things AEC marketing to help your firm win The Shortlist.
I'm your host, Wendy Simmons, and each episode I'll be joined by one of my team members from Middle of Six to answer your questions.
Today, Allison Tivnon is back for part two of our discussion related to competitor audits.
In part one, we were focused on the logistics of deciding to do a competitor audit, how to set up files and paperwork, the Excel file to track what you are exploring out there on the internet, focusing on differentiators, your own firm's differentiators as a starting point, but then what your competition is putting out there as their differentiators.
And of course, who to even look at in the sea of competition, who should you be focused on?
So we hit on all of that stuff and then saved some of the other components that fall into the world of the digital marketing, or what can you research and find online that would help you have an understanding of what your competition is doing.
Giant, giant topic that we are going to try to squeeze into 30 minutes here.
Allison, welcome back.
Thank you for continuing this conversation.
Hello.
It feels like we were just talking about this.
Uh-huh.
We were.
Yeah, the magic of podcasting.
It's not live radio.
So here we are.
Talk about the second piece of it.
Tell us where you start when you are looking at a client's or your own firm's competition.
The way we had talked about it before, we jumped into this podcast recording.
I think really sums it up as how do you harness the Internet without getting overwhelmed by the Internet?
because there is a lot of really good information to be found out there.
It's just not getting lost in the weeds, and there are unfortunately a lot of weeds on the Internet.
And I think that the best way to do that is to hone your search down to just a couple of things that you want to look for.
So we've got the, say we had the six competitors, we talked about that.
It's kind of being the max number that you want to look for information about.
And you requested proposals, you have those in hand.
The other part of it is how are they presenting online?
So if you have done the request for proposals, you know how they're presenting to the clients.
But how they're presenting online is just as important, if not more important in some ways.
And the website and their social media platforms are essentially the two areas where you should be spending the bulk of your time pulling down analytics on them.
I think we'll build in a little bit of time in this episode to talk about looking at affiliation websites, industry organizations, because there can also be some really interesting information there.
And then just standard good old fashion googling to see if they pop up in any news articles in the Daily Journal of Commerce or other industry type of publications, periodicals.
But I think the most return on investment you're going to get is by doing a deep dive in their website and their social media accounts.
In part one, you mentioned that when you go to a website, can you even tell what a company does?
That's such a good starting point.
What else are you looking for specific to the competitor audit when you're going to each of these websites?
Do you have a list?
Are you checking off the same thing for every firm and scoring?
Yeah, they expand.
Tell us more.
And let me just say full disclosure, Wendy, I can't stand the Internet.
What does Internet anyway?
Internet is that massive computer network, the one that's becoming really big now.
I am a total Luddite.
I have a flip phone.
I do look for listeners out there.
I had a smartphone for six years, and I just opt it out after that amount of time.
I really don't like being online that much.
It's not a love-hate relationship.
It's more like a tolerance-hate relationship.
I just want to know how do you listen to podcasts?
That is my question.
Well, I'm on a laptop at least 40 hours every week, so I do listen to my podcast there.
Very good.
But I do get the utility of the internet, and there are some things that are extremely helpful.
But I break it down into what it really is.
In my head anyway, a website, the whole point of it, the whole point of any website that's a professional services website like ours, is to give the visitor enough information for them to make an educated decision on whether or not you can provide a service that they need, and to convince them in the shortest amount of time possible to get off your website, pick up the phone and call you or send you an email.
It's basically a way station to the real relationship, which is them getting in front of you, or setting up the meeting, so that you can really get to know each other.
The website should paint a picture of your firm that makes you attractive to folks that are visiting it.
And I think the best way to approach a competitor audit is from the vantage point of two different angles.
The first one is potential clients, and the second one is potential future employees.
because if you think about it from both of those, you're gonna cover your bases really well on making sure that your website is providing the right information to resonate with both of those audiences.
And there is some overlap between those two audiences that I think is really important, especially when you're skating that line right down the middle of what company culture is, values, mission statement, things like that.
What are you looking for on each website?
Or does it really depend on what you started with thinking about the differentiators and what your competition is doing?
Or are there specific things that you want to see, just compare time and time again?
Like, I don't know, is it a responsive website?
Or are they showing people?
I don't know.
Tell me, more standard or is it specific to the differentiators?
Well, I think the first one that you got captures hasn't been updated.
I mean, updated to Circa Squarespace.
Like when Squarespace came out and now there's other companies that provide really user friendly templates that help you build websites.
Prior to that, they're really static.
Their back ends are extremely complicated.
You have to take classes to truly understand how to administer your website.
They look different.
They look old.
We have a lot of firms in our industry that still have websites that are old and are not configured to be mobile friendly.
And don't incorporate things like moving pictures, videos, drone footage.
They're just kind of static and they just sit there.
They look like a really old brochure.
You know, when you go to one of those websites where it's like not really filling out the page quite right.
And I don't know, just like the navigation.
It's not using any of the best practices, right?
So there's those things that when you go to a website, it's dating the company and I think implying some things that could be unintentional, like maybe you're not as innovative and tech savvy as you say in your text, because your website is showing the reality of like, well, you're not really kind of doing that in that space.
Or that other element when you go to a website, does it look alive?
Is the blog up to date?
Are things current?
Actually, they're like information, the news, the words of the people or are you wondering, has this business gone out of business?
Is anything happening here?
If it's creating that kind of question mark in your mind, that's not a good sign.
Well, it's not a good sign, but it's also really, really telling.
And that's why it's the first thing I look for.
So I have all those tabs open.
I've got every single website, the splash page, the front page open for every firm, including ours or the clients.
And if they haven't updated their website or it is really, really stale, what that tells me, and I know they're still in business, is that they are complacent and they're complacent because they have enough work.
They have steady clients, they have repeat work, they're not hungry and they're not hustling.
And if I see that a competitor has updated their website, is really on the ball, has, you know, their connections, their social media platforms, front center, where you can find them and click on them, and has really taken care to make sure that the user experience is flawless and if they do have a blog that's integrated into it, it's not only recent, but they are posting regularly.
There's all these little things that tell you that there's intentionality there.
And if there's intentionality and it's happened fairly recently, to me that means they're either making a big move, they were succession planning, you know, someone took over in the C-suite, they're entering into a new market, they're adding a new service, or maybe they were complacent, and they started losing market share, and now they realize, oh shoot, we've really gotta step up our game.
because again, as we mentioned in the last episode, this stuff never stops, and it never stops changing.
It's a kaleidoscopic thing, this thing we call competition.
So that is a great place to start, is to see have they taken steps to update their website, and if they haven't, that tells you a lot too.
How does branding play related to websites?
It feels like you see some representation of their brand, their logo, and how they're showing off the company.
So are you kind of making that judgment call also related to is it up to date, and are they complacent?
Yeah, branding is an interesting one because I think you can almost take it too far online, where it starts to look a little cartoony, especially with display fonts.
I think like a really good book, you want to kind of stop seeing the font and get immersed in the story.
So you want a really good logo, and you want a color scheme that is really copathetic with your firm colors, but you also want really good photography.
And to your point, you talked about earlier, people, having people on your site, I call it the humans.
Are there any humans on your website, or is it all pictures of buildings, or renderings, or concept sketches?
If it's someone's back to the camera pointing at something, that doesn't count.
What I'm looking for is people in conversation, and one of them has her head thrown back, laughing at something, some pathos, some emotion, some energy that you're adding to the site, but you're also, and this gets to both the potential clients and to your future potential employees, is it brings it to a human level, and you want to pull a company out and off its pedestal and bring it back down to earth where it's approachable and reachable, especially if you want to work there.
But if you want to hire them, you want to kind of, who am I going to be working with?
It's not just these finished products at the end.
So that's also one of the first things I look for after giving a cursory look is where are the people?
I do believe that in professional services and in particular AEC, the selection can often be determined based on who the team is.
It's their experience and what they're going to be like to work with.
Do we get along as design build and progressive design build becomes more and more prevalent than like, hey, we're going to all be in this together for a long time, so we really want to like each other.
The website is a very obvious place to start telling that story of who you are as a firm and hopefully, it's very genuine and authentic.
Don't try to be something that you're not, but I could imagine in this competitor audit scenario, you get a view of how's your competition telling that story?
How are they showing the people?
And if you were on a selection panel from a school district or something, not really knowing the nitty gritty of these firms and you got a sense like, do you have a connection to them?
Do they look like people that you'd like to get to know or you're seeing a human element of how their finished work is being used by the public?
I mean, those are all really good things.
So it's a visual component.
I guess you're scoring based on just what you're seeing and kind of that impression you're getting.
You hit on something really important, which is the why.
Getting into the story of why we do what we do, or why something had to happen or be built or planned around.
And you can see that right away when you go to a website and you can see if they have a history of storytelling within the company.
You shouldn't have to dig into an old or the fourth blog post in the list.
It should be front and center.
It can be simple because it might be a header image.
So you can see some of those things happening.
And it might be just another level deeper with the scroll, but definitely not buried.
So that's what you're looking for when you're doing this competitor audit on the website is.
Is the website up to date?
Are they showing humans?
Are they showing how their work is being used?
You know, the benefit to the community or to their clients?
Is there a video that kind of helps tell that story too?
And then how is it connected to social media?
I guess not every firm uses social media as one of their marketing strategies, but you're looking for that in the competitor audit, right?
And then it goes both ways.
It bleeds into social media, comes back to the website.
What are you looking for related to social media?
Yeah, that's a really good pivot because you're right.
There's not 100% buy-in by every firm across AEC in the power of social media.
And then for some firms, they're on every single platform, for better or worse.
It's like, how do you find the happy medium between those?
I think there is value for firms to be on at least one social media channel, if not a couple.
But there's also a lot of, we talked about this in the last episode, this idea of keeping up with the Joneses that happens online.
And you can really spin out your marketing resources trying to keep up in the social media game or constantly feel like you're failing at it.
And there are some ways to kind of crash and burn in the social media world.
So I think that's a good place to go to get an indication of the marketing prowess of your competition's internal department as far as are they pulling all of these different places where their quote unquote voice is activated into one cohesive and intentional march towards market share.
And the social media game is one that I have a presentation that I've given before called How to Market Online without Wasting Your Time, because I have a love hate, a tolerance hate relationship with social media as well.
And yeah, I do like LinkedIn.
I think out of all of them, LinkedIn feels the least social media-y to me.
And there's kind of been this trend to step away from Facebook, notice that, for a lot of firms and Twitter as well.
There does seem to be still quite an emphasis on LinkedIn and Instagram, especially for, you mentioned, architecture firms, urban planning firms and demolition firms, GCs.
There's really awesome visuals that come out of our work, and you can get really cool followings.
But when I do an audit of social media, I tend to, one, capture what platforms they're on, how many followers they have, and what type of content they're posting, which is really a fun one.
There's the branded babies phenomenon, where I think there was just a lot of babies in the last few years.
You started to see babies in branded onesies popping up.
And, of course, dogs.
Dogs and the cat that's laying on the laptop, you know, oh, I can't work today because of my office mate.
And they're really cute and people love them.
And so, of course, they post them.
And babies are great.
Who doesn't love a cute branded baby?
But then, what else are they posting?
Is it, we're so excited about this new project we're working on.
We were so excited to get this award last night.
There's a lot of that.
Or the Happy Thanksgiving.
Or we'd like to honor our veterans today.
The holiday posting that happens.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
But it doesn't rise above the noise very much on social media.
And so, what I try to do is, and this gets, you know, we're talking about quantitative versus qualitative data.
Social media is where you can start to really tease out some quantitative data.
And what I do, obviously, I can't get into their back ends and look at their analytics.
And I'm not that interested anyway.
I do want to see how many followers they have.
And I want to see how often they're posting.
I want to see what they're posting, but I really want to see their engagement.
So, I did this exercise for a client recently.
The client had about 700 followers.
Their nemesis firm had about 2,000.
And there was another competitor that had like 22,000.
So, and it's everywhere in between from there on.
And I went back three months and counted the number of posts that they had and averaged out how many posts they had per month.
And then from there, I went back through every single post and I put down how many likes they got.
And the results of it were really, really interesting.
The one that had 22,000 had almost no activity.
They had the lowest engagement.
They had by far the most people following them, but no one cared at all about what they were posting.
Super unengaged audience.
It was just zoom right past it through your feed, you know?
And you got to wonder who of the ones that were liking their content, probably employees, you know?
That does make up a lot of the folks that like something on social media.
When it first gets posted by companies or employees that are helping to get the word out there, it's who's liking it beyond that.
And so the other really interesting finding from that exercise was that the nemesis firm was posting 20 times a month on average.
And the client that I was working with was posting twice a month.
Yet, they had more engagement than the firm that was posting 20 times a month.
Then you get into the qualitative, like, why?
Why is that the case?
And you can look at the content under a microscope, and from there, you can make some educated guesses.
And that was really fun news to share with them.
See, you can post twice a month, and if the content is high quality and matters to your audience, I mean, of course, people love babies and puppies.
It's hard to avoid that.
I actually worked with a marketing director very early in my career.
He's like, we don't post the babies and the puppies on the brochure because it's too easy, right?
That is fun, and it has its place and everything, but you post too much content that sort of just is like stuff on the surface, not really getting to the heart of what you do, then you might lose some of that engagement because people aren't thinking, oh, I want to learn more.
I want to click on this.
I want to share.
I want to get some knowledge that I didn't have.
So posting a couple of times a month of really good content could be great.
And it saves that a huge amount of effort.
You know, I can't even imagine posting 20 times a month.
That would be a lot.
It would be exhausting.
Gosh, how exhausting.
Looking at your six competitor firms, looking at all of the channels that they're active in, noting which ones that they're not, and then making some recommendations or at least kind of teasing out something of what you should do.
Is there anything like to summarize, like what you would typically find or does it really, I mean, is it all over the map?
No, actually, it's not because no one is winning at the social media game in our industry.
In my opinion, there's so much room to bloom, and I know that rhymed.
Room to bloom.
Room to bloom.
And we could have an entire episode talking about social media basics, like what people really wanna see versus what they don't.
But to go through it really quickly, just think of yourself.
When you go online, think about the state of the world.
You want to be uplifted.
You want inspiration.
You wanna see this in those companies.
If you work in this industry, then odds are the people that you follow on your social media feeds, at least a percentage of them are also gonna be in the industry.
What do you need from them?
Otherwise, you're just gonna scroll right past it.
But if they're giving you something that was thought-provoking, inspiring, funny, or, and this is my favorite, the raising of boats, when they post something that's about someone else, that's my favorite.
When it's not about them trumpeting their own successes, it's about them giving some of their light and some of their platform and their space and their audience to someone else is so cool, especially for the big priming firms, when they take a moment to honor an emerging small business, a sub that is up and coming.
It's really cool.
There's going to be a little bit about like, hey, here's who I am and here's who we are and what we care about and what we do.
Here's some other firms that they're doing really cool things, amplifying other messages and providing content that's helpful to other people.
I mean, that feels like a good guidelines for AEC firms.
It's also a place, especially in professional driven social media, like LinkedIn, a place to talk about the state of the practice, to share wins, but also it is the place to share information.
It's not the place to be on the corner with the sign that you're toiling in the air talking about your firm.
It just, it's boring, and it's not going to slow their scroll, you know?
They're going to whiz right past you if that's all you're doing.
Well, I don't feel like we can wrap up this conversation about the online research related to the competitor audit without thinking about earned media instead of social media, but being actually in the news and publicized by reputable publications.
And that is part of your recommended competitor audit.
What are you looking for there?
And how are you grading it, assessing?
I'm guessing there's quite a variety across even your six competitors you're looking at.
This is a tricky one because some facets of our industry get more play than others.
Some folks are kind of always going to be a little obscured and in the shadows, like electrical contracting.
Unless it's a very, very trades specific website or newsletter or peer-reviewed journal or some kind of periodical.
And those are kind of obscure and hard to find.
It's really, is your competition getting into the news?
And if so, why?
So for instance, there's a general contracting firm in Portland, Oregon that is not only getting into the news, they're getting voted things like most inspiring companies, one of the most inspiring companies in the state of Oregon, like big news, stuff that's making it into the mainstream media, not just the industry mags.
You just want to know if that stuff is happening.
And if it is, then that means you're in an industry where there is true thought leadership happening, impossible.
And if there is, you need to make a strategic decision on if you want to be in that arena or not.
You might end up getting pulled into it if you win a very high profile project where your role in it is exposed, like say a revitalization project of a portion of a downtown that's going to affect the people that live there.
Those projects are already starting to evolve in terms of approach.
You might end up being more exposed and the media might have a higher IQ about the role of consultants in shaping society, and they might actually come to you and want feedback from you.
So you can get pulled into it.
But, and this is another thing we could have an entire podcast about, is a lot of engagement with media is intentional.
It's building relationships with reporters, sending them emails to say, hey, that was a great article.
because they're constantly having to try and figure out where to get their information if they want to cover a story.
Sometimes they need ideas for stories.
That also happens.
Some want you to write it for them, depending on the outlet you're working with.
To me, that is a part of the competitor audit, where you just need to see what the others are doing to make sure that you really understand all of the different arenas in which voice is being amplified.
And if that's the case, you need to make some serious decisions on if you want to be in that particular arena or not.
Well, I really appreciate the recommendation that we don't try to do this amount of analysis for 20 different firms, because there is a ton to look at.
And while it may be really fun, we all have very demanding jobs to do.
And so I think starting small with that core group of your closest six, or maybe if you have a team that spread across the country, you could divide out and you could actually look at more firms with the same criteria.
But you can tell from these two episodes, there's been a lot to talk about here.
So Allison, walk us through what you do or how you crunch the numbers on all of this stuff.
How do you summarize the takeaway in your experience having explored the differentiators and looked at the digital marketing component?
What are they putting out there and done this compare and contrast?
What do you do?
Well, you like visuals, I like visuals too.
I love pie charts, I love bar charts, and I love matrices.
You kind of have to in proposal coordination because you build so many of them for proposals.
I think it all starts with creating matrices.
So you have your competitors in that first column, and then whatever the topic is, whether it's your website, social media, affiliated organizations, industry groups.
Let's take website.
So has it been updated?
That's a yes or no, plus or minus.
Are there humans?
Yes or no, plus or minus, or plus and minus, you know.
So go through and grade on a series of different metrics that you are deciding are important to you and your firm.
And more importantly, your potential clients and your future employees.
What are they looking for?
Can they find it?
Can they find it on your competitor's websites?
When you start to see where the minuses are, and there's usually more of them than pluses on all websites, you start to see where the advantages are, where the opportunities are.
And that's a good place to start.
That gives you something to do.
It's like, okay, well, obviously, we don't have any humans on our side, or whatever the thing might be.
You can prioritize that and say, okay, in 2023, we're gonna set aside X amount of dollars from our budget to hire a photographer to get some shots, and we're gonna make the shot list, and we're gonna get it done.
And boom, you have a discrete task that you can now do that is plugging in to a need that you have identified that's real and is something that is either gonna level you up to your competition or actually surpass them in terms of what they're doing.
And the same with social media.
And you do the plus minus.
Are they great at sending out information and announcements, thought leadership, education, inspiration, humor, and then plus and minus.
Almost all of us have a plus in the information and announcements, because that's a lot of what people kind of by default put on social media.
But is there levity and positivity and humor and inspiration and the raising of boats?
And if you start to see where all the minuses are, that again tells you, oh, this is an area where we can outshine them.
And so it's in finding where the soft spots are, like on an apple almost.
It's like, okay, where are they just not as solid as I thought they were?
because that's the other great part of doing the competitor audit is until you truly know the state of something, psychologically, we will build it up into something more than it usually is.
And that can be intimidating and it can set us off on paths where we're spinning our wheels.
You're making the newsletter that no one wants to read.
You're doing the thing that your boss or someone walks in your office saying, we need to do this too, because look what I'm seeing on my phone and it isn't this cool and we need to do it.
Instead, you'll have a map in front of you and you can actually say, here's the areas where we can bring our differentiators to life.
Here's the things that we can do on our website that's going to make for a great user experience for our audiences, not for us.
And on social media, get to a place where you have a completely right size, the amount of energy you're putting into it, to the amount of feedback and engagement you're getting in return.
And that's the best that you can do, you know, that's winning.
And it is, again, it changes all the time.
So doing a competitor audit every couple of years is not a bad idea.
Time it with when your firm does their strategic plans.
Great time to do it.
You might even want to do it before you do the strategic plan, because sometimes the information that comes out of that needs to help inform key decisions that your firm is going to make.
Well, that was such a nice wrap up, Allison.
Thank you.
Thank you for.
Thank you.
My job.
Appreciate it.
You're excellent.
And I was just thinking about how we started off with the part one of this is the focus on the share of voice.
So, just as a reminder, for anyone who maybe didn't listen to that part one episode, you should definitely do that.
But some of the things that we were talking about today were really focused on the outward, the share of voice areas, the places that a firm can impact eventually their market share because of promoting their firm and kind of being in the right places and using their brand personality effectively.
It's worth noting that you could have a similar conversation related to proposal, competitive audits and other areas where we want to compare against the competition, but it's going to be in a different space.
So I think this was a fantastic overview of elements that are going to be out more of like public facing and things that marketing teams or firm owners can go and do a little research, get into the internet and start doing some study there and come up with an interesting summary of where the holes are, where there are opportunities.
I think that was my big takeaway.
There are opportunities out there, but you have to map it out enough to find them.
So hopefully this inspires everyone out there.
And then if you have other questions, feel free to send us a note at the shortlist at middleofsix.com.
If you have questions, we can go into more detail at some point.
But for today, I think that was really great.
Thank you, Allison, for being here.
Thank you, Wendy.
This is great.
And thanks for letting me dive deep into this.
It's one of my favorite subjects.
Internet is that massive computer network, the one that's becoming really big now.
What do you mean?
That's big?
How does one...
What do you write to it, like mail?
No, a lot of people use it and communicate.
I guess they can communicate with NBC writers and producers.
Allison, can you explain what Internet is?
The Shortlist is presented by Middle of Six and hosted by me, Wendy Simmons, principal marketing strategist.
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The Shortlist is a podcast that explores all things AEC marketing. Hosted by Middle of Six Principal, Wendy Simmons, each episode features members of the MOS team, where we take a deep dive on a wide range of topics related to AEC marketing including: proposal development, strategy, team building, business development, branding, digital marketing, and more. You can listen to our full archive of episodes here.