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Competitive and Industry Research

We use a number of AI tools to help you outsmart your competitors

Competitive Research

Successful marketing starts with understanding why your customers bought from you and how they wanted to buy from you. We take care of that with our Reality Check customer research.

But your marketing should also reflect the market realities that your customers are aware of—and experiencing as they buy.

What your competitors say and do has an impact on your customers’ buying decisions.

What are your competitors doing so right that they are literally taking sales away from your company before customers even consider you?

What are your competitors doing so wrong that they are creating a massive market opportunity for you that would drive your sales through the roof?

We helped one client uncover a grave mistake that two larger competitors were making and crafted a strategy that took full advantage of those missteps. They’ve been growing rapidly ever since.

Our research methods are designed to answer these questions so we can build a solid, revenue-growing strategy. We do the following:

Analyze your competition’s marketing using a variety of campaign analysis tools. We evaluate and report on their promises, websites, digital advertising, social media marketing, in-depth search engine optimization, and strategies.
Use AI tools to go deep into the history, themes, customers, successes and failures, recent investments into their company, partnerships, and product strategies. We can also explore patterns in customer behavior and industry trends.
Provide additional research as needed regarding new announcements, trends impacting your industry, and trademark or copyright infringements.
Discuss all this with you and decide how best to utilize what we have learned as we build your campaigns.

Every client’s needs are different; we can decide together what type of research you need and how we will conduct it.

All this is important to your success, but it’s essential to realize that your customers bought from you for very specific reasons. They chose you—your products and services, reviews, site, philosophy, people, company culture, and reputation in the market.

All of these characteristics are uniquely yours, which is why we always start with customer research.

You may think you are competing against your competitors, but Kristin has observed that your number one competitor is your own decisions and behaviors, and you can change those. We can help.

See what our clients are saying...

I now have a more favorable impression of marketing in general. I’m confident about it because there are very actionable things to do. Marketing has shifted. We are now providing info directly to customers and educating them.

— Extracted from ZP client interviews

Zhivago Partners is a full-service digital marketing agency. They cover every angle of digital marketing

— Extracted from ZP client interviews

I enjoy working with Kristin and our project manager, and the entire team. A pleasant surprise for me is the continual promptness in terms of problem resolution. If we have an issue, I’m continuously impressed with the staff from a technical perspective, and on a personal level, their level of care and involvement. They’re open and available, and always there for us. That’s refreshing and much appreciated.

— Extracted from ZP client interviews

It seems that most people you work with try to fit you into some kind of template they’ve created, which includes things that you don’t even need. Kristin doesn’t do that. She spends personal time with the owner and figures out where they’re at, and gently coaches them. She prioritizes what you need to do. If you have a cash flow issue, they work on short-term methods that bring in more leads. If you’re on life support, you don’t need to be working on how you’re going to lose 50 pounds this year. You need blood. That’s what she did with me. We did the most significant things first.

— Extracted from ZP client interviews

I’m forever grateful for Kristin and all you’ve done. I think you guys are rock stars.

— Extracted from ZP client interviews

The communication from them is top-notch.

— Extracted from ZP client interviews

I would describe Zhivago Partners as a collection of well-qualified people who go out of their way to help you achieve your goals.

— Extracted from ZP client interviews

“I needed help with sales and marketing, the language I was using, working on the website and providing the right information to people. I also needed to work on systems to help me capture and categorize leads, and follow up. Follow-up is an invisible problem. Most salespeople don’t follow up. I developed a system where I could be a resource. Not everybody is going to buy from you on your timeline, but if you just help them, they will eventually.”

— Extracted from ZP Client Interviews

“Zhivago Partners has a very knowledgeable, tight-knit team that is very invested and dedicated to high client success rates, and providing top-notch service. They are very much interested not only in the client, but in the client’s experience.”

— Extracted from ZP Client Interviews

Industry and Market Research

Trends move markets.

AI is a perfect example. It’s an all-encompassing shift in behavior—with customers and business people alike—affecting all industries.

It’s changing how people search for solutions. As one of our clients—who is using AI constantly throughout the day—said recently, “I like having a conversation with my search engine!”

It’s making some positions obsolete or at least significantly changing the way people in certain positions do their work.

All of this affects the success or failure of your marketing efforts because it directly affects how people look for solutions, how they evaluate what they learn, how they make their final buying decisions, and how they communicate their post-purchase experiences after they buy.

But AI isn’t the only trend that affects how people buy. Here are some of the others:

Government regulations.
Changes in administrations.
New tools that give customers insights they couldn’t get otherwise. For example, customer reviews and the ability to get answers from other customers on sites such as Amazon, on forums such as Reddit or Quora, and software review sites such as G2 and Capterra.
Availability or prices of specific products or materials.
Disasters that occur due to a defect in materials or manufacturing.
Rapidly emerging (and just as rapidly, sometimes disappearing) fads fueled by celebrity endorsements or viral videos.
Companies that go out of business or stop carrying certain types of products.
Negative press generated by an unfortunate incident or the discovery of a negative aspect of a product or service.
Research and reports that suddenly put a product, service, or material in a bad light.
Allergic reactions to a substance or material.
Groups of people becoming ill.
And even one person’s negative experience going viral.

One of our responsibilities as your agency is to help you keep track of all this. We set up monitoring systems so we can track these trends as they emerge, and work with you to determine the best approaches to take so that you take appropriate action.

We’ve got your back.

Your first conversation with revenue coach Kristin Zhivago will be one of the best consulting calls you’ve ever had.

Schedule a free call