

Ask HN: Would you pay for this service? - plax512

Hi,<p>So I&#x27;m thinking about offering this service to startups and small businesses- competetive research and analysis. So would you pay lets say $40&#x2F;month for a comprehensive analysis on your top 3 competitors every month or quarter?
Thanks!
======
smartwater
You have to ask the right questions to get the right answers. You shouldn't be
asking us, "Would you pay for this?", you should be asking yourself, "Can I
convince people to buy this?"

Whether you make any sales is completely up to you and your ability to sell.
Businesses buy competitive analysis all the time. Typically after a well
articulated value proposition. All the details you left out in this post, the
specifics of the service you're providing, is what makes or breaks a deal.

~~~
plax512
You are absolutely correct. Great point. And sorry, I wanted to keep the post
short. Here is what I would offer:

For $30/month, you will get reports every quarter consisting of evaluating a
company's top 3 competitors, in what they are doing in terms of marketing,
what new milestones they have reached in terms of growth and revenue, what
sort of complaints they get from customers concerning what, and a little more
such as outreach and giveaways they do, and their projected success in the
future.

~~~
smartwater
Generic value propositions don't give the buyer confidence, it doesn't jump
start their imagination, it doesn't do anything for you or them.

You're not being specific enough to even peak my interest. Depending on who
you're selling to, the metrics you provide need to make sense to them. An
internet marketer might want to know exactly what you're monitoring (Google
News, Facebook, Backlinks, Newly Created Pages) but the CEO would need it
presented in a different way, in order to provide him with the value you're
promising. That way you don't have the marketer trying to interpret data that
he himself might not fully understand.

The demons are in the details.

~~~
plax512
Like how so? It's essentially competitive analysis as a service... There are
known templates in which these are formatted. I would simply do one for a
company every quarter, and list each source in the back. You're telling me I'm
not being specific enough, yet you are doing the same. It goes both ways I
guess

~~~
smartwater
Don't describe it as if everyone should already know what you're talking
about. You're not going to sell anything to anyone that way. And you
definitely won't sell a service based on "known templates" and doing what
everyone else is doing.

I know exactly what they offer, but you are the one selling right now. You
can't just say, "I'm selling what everyone else is selling, wanna give me
$30/month?"

What makes you different? Why are you better? What are the benefits? What
value does it provide and to who?

In B2B, you could charge $200 a month and it wouldn't make a difference --
it's not their money that they are spending. A lot of little things, such as
export to PDF, are much more important. Know your customer and know your
product.

------
esw
Honestly, I'd be somewhat skeptical of the value of a report produced for $40.
That price implies that these are at least mostly automated checks.

~~~
marvvelous
Those questions would be answered by a landing page that shows you what you'd
be paying for. There's much better tools for data extraction and automation
available today than in the recent past and this market sounds like a great
category for disruption.

Startups often neglect competitor analysis because it's not available cheaply.
If you could get 85% of the value automatically that's worth paying for.

~~~
plax512
Hmmm... I was planning on doing the research manually, but if you want to
share any examples of sites that have gotten better at data extraction, I'm
all ears. I will do research as well on that.

thanks!

~~~
TheCoelacanth
At that price, it doesn't seem like you would be able to provide much value by
doing it manually. If you factor in some overhead, you would have to be
spending less than an hour on each report to pay yourself a decent wage. If
I'm running a business, I'm not going to pay someone to do research that I
could do myself in less than an hour, even if it is really cheap. With B2B
services, it's probably a better idea to provide substantial and demonstrable
value than it is to have a really low price.

------
raphar
Perhaps a way to promote your services and showing the concrete value you
could provide, would be publishing a monthly newsletter. There you'd show the
kind of analysis you are capable of. You could do this also as a way to
attract traffic if the topics are interesting enough. (Hosting, seo tools,
analytics, project managers...). Those are generic topics and you could sure
find an interesting (niche) subgroup enough to be useful & atract posible
customers.

------
source99
WHY WHY WHY?

What's the point of this service?

What are you really selling? I see that it is a report but are you trying to
help startups? In what way specifically?

WHY are you creating this service? If its simply because you think its a good
idea or you will be good at it, it will be very difficult to sell it without a
better reason.

~~~
AznHisoka
I agree. The service is also very vague. Competitor analysis in what? SEO (ala
SEMRush?), Competitor analysis in PPC? Competitor analysis in website
audience(ala Quantcast?) Competitor analysis in the form of consulting?

~~~
plax512
it would mostly growth-related data-- you will get how the company has grown
over the quarter in terms of users and revenue, what new marketing strategies
they have undertaken, new products or features they have released, complaints
current users are giving to them, and their overall strengths and weaknesses,
as observed objectively by me. The point is to allow you "to keep an eye on
your competitors" because most startups don't have the time to do so.

~~~
AznHisoka
users + revenue is private for a lot of businesses.

For the rest, they all belong to the category of "social monitoring". That's
the name given to this. It's a crowded market.

------
malditojavi
How do you plan to make the competitors research? I think the guys in
[http://www.compass.co/](http://www.compass.co/) have a great product, but
sincerely if they don't share revenue of it with startups and businesses that
are the ones providing data & info, it won't work.

------
cedsav
I wouldn't pay for it, but competitive research is a big and active market, so
I don't doubt there's a demand for it. I suspect though that your audience
would be mostly established businesses. Startups are usually too busy to worry
about their competitor's every move.

~~~
plax512
How does bi-quarterly sound? It's risky business neglecting your competitors.

~~~
cedsav
I understand what you're saying, but I'm actually inclined to think that (in
our case) it doesn't matter what they do. We learn what we need to know from
our customers and we have our own roadmap. We can keep tab on the competition,
but getting periodical detailed reports seems counterproductive to me.

------
lauradhamilton
I would not pay for it. Can learn more by doing research myself.

Also, it costs a bunch of money to acquire business customers. Tough to recoup
that on $40/month if you spend $30/month doing the research work.

------
marvvelous
I can't answer without seeing what we'd be paying for. That said, in general,
a quality analysis would be worth $40/month to me.

If you add your email to your public profile I'd like to reach out privately.

~~~
plax512
ok

------
kayhi
I'd find it helpful if you had a white paper on it perhaps using 3 YC
companies as examples.

~~~
plax512
I can do the first report free if you like

------
sharemywin
little confused what would have changed about my top 3 competitors in a month?

~~~
plax512
It's just you get an updated report on them... So, what sort of milestones
they reached, any new marketing stratehies they've undertakem, any new product
changes or releases thet've done, and any sort of complaints they got from
customers, and about what. It's a way to stay updated on your competitors.

Maybe bi-quarterly would work better?

------
davidsmith8900
\- No. That is too much money.

~~~
softwareman
rofl

