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Daniel Murray
Welcome to a new special series called the Bathroom break. That extra 10 minutes you either have to listen to marking tips or use the bathroom. Or both. But I don't recommend both. But that's your choice.
Jay Schwedelson
This collab is going to be super fun. We have Daniel Murray from the Marketing Millennials and me, Jay Schwedelson from the do this, not that podcast and subjectline.com each episode in the series, we are going to go over quick tips about different marketing topics. And if you want to be in the bathroom, fine. Just don't tell us about it. Thanks for checking it out.
Daniel Murray
We are back with another episode of Bathroom Break. I'm here with the number one marketing podcaster in the world, Jay Schweisen. And I am Daniel Murray of the Marketing Millennials. I want to get this started. Jay, you gave a keynote this. This week.
Jay Schwedelson
Stupid. You really have no brain. That's the problem. I did not give a keynote. No. My son just graduated high school and I was, for a variety of weird reasons, I was one of the speakers and it was. I'm just glad I didn't fully embarrass him. And yeah, that was a weird experience.
Daniel Murray
I heard from multiple people that it was one of your best keynotes.
Jay Schwedelson
No, it was not. All I know is that afterwards everyone was like, okay, you didn't embarrass your entire family.
Daniel Murray
But okay, that's good, that's good.
Jay Schwedelson
I'm embarrassing my family right now. Let's. Let's get into this thing. What we're talking about today is really how to reverse engineer. Not either what your competition is doing or people in your category that you think are crushing it. And there are certain things that you could do that are off the radar, that there's very easy ways to kind of not steal their tactics, but kind of like see what they're doing and then use it yourself. So, Daniel, how do we do this? How do you reverse engineer stuff?
Daniel Murray
I think the first thing you need to do is just identify your competitors. And what one thing I always say is like, like people think that competitors are like the exact product you're competing with, but there's other versions of competitors that you need to analyze too. So there's category competitors. So like someone who's also selling marketing software, they're in your category. They might not be competing product or part of them might not be both email marketing, but they also competing for budget for your in your category. And then there's one step deeper. Is like is attention stealers. So like you say your audience is Millennials. They're getting competed against all these other companies, like hat companies, clothing companies. So you're competing with all these different podcasts. Newsletters are stealing attention from your audience. So a couple of things that I like, tools you can use to look into. This is one is SparkToro. SparkToro will tell you like, who are the hidden influences? Like who are your audience actually paying attention to, like what podcast they're listening to, what news sources. So you can, you could see where their attention's going. It also will help you market on those those places. You can also do like exploding topics to see what topics they're interested in. There's similar web to see what referral traffic you can look at. So there's a lot of ways to look at that. But first identify who is competing for your audience attention. And there's those three categories, direct competitors category competitors and attention stealers in those categories.
Jay Schwedelson
Yeah. And we're going to put the links to all these different tools and the vast majority of them are free that you can use, like what Daniel just mentioned. I'll mention a few other ones. There's one simple tool that I think is kind of fun and easy, which is and any email you get from any company, any brand, anything, whatever, if you want to find out what email platform that they're using to send out their email, you literally just forward the email that you got to this email address, espendview IO, and when you send an email to espendview IO within about three or four minutes, you can email back and it tells you the exact platform that the person's using. And then the other one I would throw out there is it's a really great use of ChatGPT. You can go to ChatGPT, the free version, and you could put a prompt in there or something similar to this saying, you know, analyze the marketing strategies used on these websites. And you put in, you know, two, three websites and summarize the key tactics, what is their content marketing, social proof they're using SEO strategies, CTAs, and what should I consider from my site? And it will spit back at you a whole recap. So if you're not leveraging the free tools that are out there, I think you're really missing out.
Daniel Murray
Another, another two free tools I'll add is one is built with, so it's a plugin that if you go to any site, it will show you the tech stack that your competitors are using. So this is really useful because you can see what tools they're using on their website, what are their, what's their forms, what their pop up using. So then you can learn how to reverse engine zero, what you should do for your site or if you're trying to start from scratch. Another really great tools is like Facebook Meta Ad Library. Go to Meta Library, you could see what ads they're running. This is a great way to like look at other people's ads too. Like go beyond your competitors, go out in other industries because this can help you see what people are targeting. And I like to look at ads that have been running for a longer period of time because if they're running for a longer period of time that means they're converting. So like the newer ads might not be converting but if you look, it's been running for two, three, four, two months. Three months. These are ads that have been running for a long time. So that means they're working and they're keeping those ads up.
Jay Schwedelson
Yeah. And in general it's not like oh my competitors doing this, I need to be doing this. You really want to look at the leaders in your category. They're leaders for a reason. And then I like to triangulate things. Like when I see, you know, the five companies are leading a particular category and they're all doing, you know, certain things, it's, it's there for a reason and that's really what you want to think about. Like another great site that's free, has a free version is spyfu. Spy fu.com it's great because you could put in your domain for example of your site and then it'll actually show you the competitors that it's finding that you're competing with, whether that's on keywords or organic traffic and will actually show you the ads that are running. So SpyFu is another great one that's out there.
Daniel Murray
Another thing that I mean is a free thing and I used to do this in Mark when I was a marketing ops is like go through their funnel. So they click the ad, fill out the form, see if an email is sent to you, see how long it takes someone to reach out to you, see what follow ups you get, see the retargeting of that ad on other channels. If they chant targeting you on LinkedIn or, or Facebook or Instagram, like go through their funnel and click on an ad or click on a piece of content or, and see every stage and then you can reverse engineer like hey, they're doing this, they're doing this. And what Jay said at the beginning is like this is just for you to know what they're not doing and you're doing. And how could you be better and how could you reinvent the wheel? It's not for you to copy their strategy, because if you copy, you're just going to fit in. It's for you to know so you can play on the same playing field of these people and actually know, like, their play. It's like sports. You got to know their. You got to watch film before you go play another team, just so you know what moves they're trying to make so you can play a fair game against them.
Jay Schwedelson
All right, so before we wrap up here, I'm super curious, something random. So, Daniel, you've now you moved to Miami. You've been down here a few months now. What is your review of living in Miami now that you're down here?
Daniel Murray
I love Miami, first of all, like, because I live not in like central Miami, like in Brickell, downtown. I live in a smaller part of Miami. I, I don't know if I can give a fair review yet because I haven' been through a summer yet of Miami, but from at least like middle October to like end of May, it's been not unbearable. I think people overly hate on. On Florida for their heat when they shouldn't be overheating. What I mean, you've been living here for a long time. What are like, your tips? I mean, you've been, you've survived many summers, many hurricanes.
Jay Schwedelson
It's not the heat. You know, the. What happens with a hurricane. And I don't want to belittle a hurricane. It's very important. But when they. They announces a hur coming, usually they give you about a week's lead time. There's a hurricane, they show you way out in the ocean it's coming. And then when they announce it, you should take it seriously. But the problem is everyone takes it seriously very fast. So all of the supermarkets, like, oh my God, get everything, get gas, get every. And it's like chaos ensues. And I'm like, dude, we've been dealing with this forever. And you have a week, like, calm down. So that's, that's slightly annoying. Which you'll get used to because that doesn't start until a little bit later on. But the heat, who cares? We live in air conditioning. What are we talking about? It's a nonsense.
Daniel Murray
Yeah, that's what you just go air conditioning air. Because someone said to me, like, it's, it's Florida's winter. Like, other people have, like, yeah, other people have snow, like, half the year and they can't get. They need to shovel stuff, like. And you need to be inside in the heat. Like, what's the difference of being inside an air conditioner?
Jay Schwedelson
All right, another amazing bathroom. Listen, everybody, if you don't follow Daniel's show, you need to the market. Millennials is the goat show. Leave him an amazing review too. He deserves it. Why not? And we'll check you at the next one. Daniel, come on, man. I gotta get back to work. Get out of there. All right, while he's still in there. This is Jay. Check out my podcast, do this, not that, for Marketers. Each week we share really quick tips on stuff that can improve your marketing and hope you give it a try. Oh, here's Daniel. He's finally out.
Daniel Murray
Back from my bathroom break. This is Daniel. Go follow the mark in the this podcast, but also tune into this series. It's once a week, the Bathroom Break. We talk about marketing tips that we just spew out. And it could be anything from email, subject line to any marketing tips in the world. We'll talk about it. Just give us a a shout on LinkedIn and tell us what you want to hear. Peace out.
Jay Schwedelson
Later.
Podcast Summary: The Marketing Millennials – "Reverse Engineering Your Competition | Bathroom Break #57 🚽"
Release Date: May 26, 2025
In episode #57 of The Marketing Millennials, host Daniel Murray collaborates with Jay Schwedelson from the Do This, Not That podcast to dive into the art of reverse engineering your competition. Titled "Bathroom Break," this special series aims to deliver quick yet impactful marketing insights, perfect for those short breaks in a busy day.
Daniel and Jay kick off the conversation by defining what it means to reverse engineer your competition. They emphasize the importance of not merely copying competitors but understanding their strategies to carve out a unique space for your own brand.
Daniel highlights the need to widen the scope of competition analysis beyond immediate rivals to include all entities competing for your audience's attention.
The duo discusses a suite of free tools that can aid marketers in dissecting and understanding their competitors' strategies:
SparkToro (00:01:53): Helps identify hidden influences by revealing which podcasts, news sources, and other media your audience engages with.
Exploding Topics (00:01:53): Offers insights into trending topics that resonate with your target audience.
SimilarWeb (00:01:53): Analyzes referral traffic and overall website performance compared to competitors.
Email Platform Identification: Forwarding any email to espendview.io allows you to discover the email platform a competitor uses, facilitating deeper insights into their email marketing strategies.
ChatGPT for Marketing Analysis (00:04:43): By prompting ChatGPT to analyze marketing strategies of selected websites, marketers can receive summaries of key tactics, including content marketing, social proof, SEO strategies, and CTAs.
BuiltWith (00:04:43): A browser plugin that reveals the tech stack of any website, enabling marketers to understand the tools and technologies their competitors employ.
Meta Ad Library (00:04:43): Provides visibility into the ads competitors are running on Facebook and Instagram, helping identify which ads have sustained performance over time.
SpyFu (00:05:46): Allows users to input their domain and uncover competitors based on keywords and organic traffic, along with detailed insights into their advertising strategies.
Beyond tools, Daniel and Jay delve into actionable techniques to effectively reverse engineer competitors:
Triangulating Strategies (00:05:46): By observing consistent strategies across multiple leading companies in a category, marketers can discern best practices and understand the reasons behind their success.
Funnel Analysis (00:06:28): Daniel shares his experience in manually dissecting a competitor’s sales funnel by interacting with their ads and content. This involves:
This hands-on approach provides a comprehensive view of how competitors nurture and convert leads, allowing marketers to identify strengths and weaknesses in their own strategies.
A key theme is the ethical use of reverse engineering. Daniel stresses that the goal is not to copy competitors but to understand their tactics to innovate and differentiate your own approach. By knowing the "plays" of other teams, marketers can develop unique strategies that stand out in the marketplace.
Daniel Murray [07:39]: "It's not for you to copy their strategy, because if you copy, you're just going to fit in. It's for you to know so you can play on the same playing field of these people and actually know, like, their play."
Jay shares a humorous anecdote about being unexpectedly thrust into delivering a keynote speech at his son's high school graduation. Despite multiple reports of it being one of his best keynotes, Jay humbly downplays the performance, highlighting the challenges of balancing personal and professional life.
Daniel offers a personal update on his recent move to Miami, discussing the initial impressions and adaptations required to adjust to the city's climate and lifestyle. Jay provides seasoned advice on handling Miami’s hurricanes and the misconceptions about Florida’s heat, reassuring Daniel about the manageability of the climate with proper preparations.
Jay Schwedelson [08:32]: "It's not the heat. We live in air conditioning. What are we talking about? It's a nonsense."
Jay Schwedelson [00:53]: "Stupid. You really have no brain. That's the problem." (Laughs) "I did not give a keynote."
Daniel Murray [01:53]: "People think that competitors are like the exact product you're competing with, but there are other versions of competitors that you need to analyze too."
Jay Schwedelson [05:46]: "It's there for a reason and that's really what you want to think about."
Daniel Murray [07:39]: "It's for you to know so you can play on the same playing field of these people and actually know, like, their play."
In this episode of The Marketing Millennials, Daniel Murray and Jay Schwedelson provide a comprehensive guide to reverse engineering competition. By identifying a broad range of competitors, leveraging a variety of free tools, and employing both technological and manual analysis techniques, marketers can gain valuable insights into their competitors' strategies. The emphasis remains on ethical application and strategic innovation, ensuring that understanding the competition translates into unique and effective marketing practices.
Actionable Insights:
Expand Your Competitor Analysis: Look beyond direct competitors to include category competitors and attention stealers to get a holistic view of the competitive landscape.
Utilize Free Tools: Leverage tools like SparkToro, BuiltWith, Meta Ad Library, and SpyFu to gather detailed data on competitors’ strategies and technologies.
Conduct Manual Funnel Analysis: Experience competitors’ sales funnels firsthand to understand their lead nurturing and conversion tactics.
Triangulate Strategies: Identify consistent successful tactics across multiple leaders in your category to discern effective practices.
Stay Ethical: Use the insights gained to innovate and differentiate your own marketing strategies rather than merely copying competitors.
If you found this summary valuable, consider joining the conversation and sharing it with fellow marketers!