EP. 75- SEE What Your COMPETITION is DOING? | Ask Us ANYTHING

Foreign. We are here for Ask us anything. This is a super short episode where we try to tackle one work question and one ridiculous question.

We get questions in all week long and if you want to submit one, it's super easy.

Just go to jschwettleson.com podcast and there's a button there where you could submit a ridiculous question or a work question and we will try to tackle that. And keep in mind we still have our 10 minute episodes at the end of the week where we tackle kind of big ideas and tactics.

So I hope you check that out. So let's jump into it. What is the work question? This week we got a question in from Teresa from Orlando. Yeah, Disney. Cool.

I've been to Disney a bunch of times. Am I a Disney person? I don't walk around with a Mickey Mouse watch. But if you do, that's fine. I like it. I eat a turkey leg. Not a big rides person.

I'll throw up. That's true. True story. Yeah, Disney. There you go. What's the question Theresa has? How can I keep an eye on my competition?

Okay, I have some specifics on this and something that might be interesting that you're not currently doing. First of all, sign up for everything your competitors have.

Every email, follow them on every social media, look for every different types of newsletter or discount thing or content area that you could sign up for. Don't just sign up for one place signature, sign up for all of it. All right?

You're going to be shocked about what you learn, what you see, the cadence, everything everywhere. Follow all their pages. And come on, you're like, no, it's going to bombard me. That's what your job is. We're marketers. Come on.

Now here's something I think it's interesting that a lot of marketers aren't doing. You may be interested to know what my competitors are using to send out their email or to set up their marketing automation streams.

Or let's say there are brands that you just think are sending out great emails or, or marketing automation streams and you want to know what platform are they using. And sometimes it's hard to figure it out. There's one very simple, a hundred percent free way to instantly figure out what platforms anybody is using.

Any email that you get, okay, you can forward the email. You literally click forward.

You forward the email to this email address, espendview IO espendview IO you forward an email that you got to that address and within about two to three minutes you get an email instantly back for free. And it tells you exactly the platform that email came from, which I think is super valuable. It doesn't have to be just your competition.

It could be anybody. So I would check that out. I use SpyFu a lot also. That's s p y dash fu dot com.

That's a really good free tool if you want to see competitors, search engine ads and backlinks and all that. So I like spyf. A lot of folks out there are looking to get jobs, right? You're trying to maybe change your career, get a different job.

And the simplest thing, besides for all sorts of different things you're doing on LinkedIn or Indeed or whatever, is to create Google Alerts for any area, any company that you're interested in.

If there are different people that are significant that you're trying to get in contact with, create a Google Alert for companies, for the brands, for the individuals. I have a lot. I probably have 500 Google alerts for all sorts of different things.

And the reason I set it up that way is anytime a business that I'm interested in or a person that I'm interested in or a brand that I'm interested in has a press release that comes out or it's mentioned in the news, that way, I could see that. And then I go on LinkedIn, I message that person, I say, hey, just saw that you announced this. Congratulations, that's awesome.

Would love to learn more about it or whatever. It's fantastic.

If you're trying to up your career or break into a new company that you want to get a job in, because you're not just saying, hey, are you hiring? You're coming at it from a point of, hey, I'm paying attention to your company. I know what's going on, and let's talk more.

So Google Alerts, and of course, it's free. No brainer.

All right, before we get into the ridiculous question, which is going to be ridiculous, okay, I wanted to share that this podcast is exclusively presented by Marigold. Marigold is the greatest email marketing sending platform on earth, and it also is a great loyalty marketing platform.

And this thing is packed with data from this huge study that they did on all sorts of different trends in marketing that I am relying on to fuel my own ideas of where I want to take my business.

I'll give you an example of something that I Just saw that I need to focus on what is among the top reasons that people fill out forms that give their information to any company or website. And 89% of people said it, it's having a loyalty or reward program. I don't have one of those. I. I want to start one of those. Because you know what?

If you ever listen to this before, the ridiculous questions are truly ridiculous. Dave from Albany, New York. If I'm from Albany, it's weird.

Nothing bad about living in upstate New York, but let's say you're from Syracuse or Rochester or Albany. It's like, where are you from? I'm from New York. Oh. And instantly people are like, oh, cool, you hang out in Times Square.

No, if you're from, like, Albany or upstate New York, it's a totally different vibe. Great vibe, but it's like they gotta say, I'm from upstate New York. You can't just say you're from New York because it's a totally different thing.

And I dig it. Freezing cold, but great area. Anyway, here's a question from Dave.

If you accidentally see the outcome of the reality show that you are watching and you see the outcome on social media, do you still go back and watch the episodes that you haven't seen? And bonus question from Dave. What do you watch that is not reality tv? Oh. Two good questions. All right.

First thing, it's very upsetting to me because I follow all the reality shows on social media, like Instagram, whatever, and I follow all the people on all those shows. So when I go on Instagram, it's very difficult for me to navigate, to not see it all. So I'm instantly.

As soon as I see anything from that show, I just scroll past it. I try to close my eyes because I don't want to see it.

But if I did see it, I would absolutely go back and watch all the episodes because I have no life and I like to waste time. And this is what's a priority to me. So 100%, I go back and watch all of that and then what do I watch that's not reality tv?

I think that these still qualify as reality tv. And you all have to let me know. Number one, I like watching Botched. That's that show that has the two plastic surgeons. Oh man.

Or people come into their office and they're, they have the most botched plastic surgeries and then they fix them up. But the backstories on the people with the pla.

That that are coming with the messed up plastic surgery, it's not like something like, like a nice story there. It's like they wanted their butt to be 10 times bigger and it's only eight times bigger. It's the craziest show. So I watched Botched.

I think my happiest show that I watch is My Lottery Dream Home. I love that show. It's the happiest show in the universe. Because if you haven't seen before, you should look for it. My Lottery Dream Home. And you.

The people on there have just won the lottery. Sometimes they won a quarter of a million dollars, sometimes they've won $5 million. And they're all regular people.

And then the show is about them finding a home with their new lottery winnings and they couldn't be happier. Right? They literally won the lottery. And the host of the show is this guy, what's his name? David, promised that. I love this dude.

I gotta hang out with this dude. Great vibes, super happy, super positive.

And it's amazing because these people that maybe didn't have a lot of money before, now they have all this money and they're like, wow, we're gonna get a home for like our generation. So if I'm in a bad mood, I will watch My Lottery Dream Home. And yeah, that's a lot of information. Anyway, I appreciate you all being here.

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