In the era of infinite in Google It! Assignment
formation availability, sometimes we forget to take advantage of one of our greatest resources – the internet that lives in our pockets! As youre narrowing in on ideas for your pitch proposal, you need to do research on what it out there in terms of existing products services, as these will be your future competitors. Different product service categories also use different vocabulary, and you’ll need to be familiar with that to talk about your idea competently when it comes time to give your pitch.
Instructions:
Using at least three different combinations of keywords, look for competing products services (direct and indirect), examine similar businesses in similar locations and or industries, and look over advertising and or industry pages to get a feel for the vocabulary and tone people use to talk about this.
For example, if I wanted to start a commercial roofing business in Jonesboro, I might use commercial roofing, strip mall roofing, and office roofing as search terms. I’d find a list of competitors in Jonesboro and around the Delta and go look at some of their websites to see their prices, product offerings, etc. I’d also be looking for how they talk about roofing and what sorts of things they seem to think their customers care about (Is roofing priced by the square foot or something else? Does the same company usually do tar shingles and the metal sheet roofing or is that usually two different companies? Do they mention seasonal contingencies due to weather?). I might also find some general informational pages on the types of roofing available, roughly how they compare on cost and longevity, etc.
In your short write-up include (and feel free to just number bullet point this):
1. In 1-2 sentences, tell me what the business idea you’ll be using for your elevator pitch and this assignment is
2. The 3+ sets of keywords you used
3. Who you would consider to be your top 3 direct competitors
4. Who would be your big indirect competitors or categories of indirect competitors (in this example, it would be products services that could be used instead of purchasing a roof)
5. Describe briefly what sort of vocabulary these competitors and industry’ sites are using
6. Looking at the advertisements used by your competitors and any industry informational sources you read, describe what they think customers care about and what the “key metrics are for customers (ex: price, life of product, time saved, miles per gallon…)
7. Give me the URLs of the pages you visited (if you visited multiple pages on one company’s website, you can just give me one URL)
