Study up
on both competitor and complementary brands (i.e. if you are selling a fire
alarm, then look for “house safety” websites). Widmer says your customers will
be hanging out on websites for both competitor and complementary brands.
He recommends using search tools such asSimilarWeb and
Google’s related-search results (located at the bottom of every Google search)
to see what sites your prospective customer may be visiting.
Other
free research tools to get to know your market, suggests Brandon Schaefer, CEO
of MyVirtualSalesForce, are
LinkedIn (to see who competitor brands are connecting with and what types of
updates they're posting),Google
Alerts (for brand
mentions and keywords) and Google Trends.