overlapping giraffe necks
PHOTO: Vincent van Zalinge

We tend to think of online visibility platforms as a sandbox for marketing folks, filled up with keywords rather than grains of sand. But as Martech continues to evolve, we also find that these originally SEO specific tools are evolving way beyond their original purpose. Often, this evolution also brings with it unintentional usage, as in my previous article, "How to Create a B2B Prioritized Sales List Using SEO," where a tool originally aimed at revealing competitors actually serves to find your next biggest customers.

Major online visibility platform tools, such as SEMrush, Alexa or SimilarWeb, include an audience overlap feature that shows the percentage of users who visited the given domain and the domain’s competitors. That might seem interesting, but after the first try the feeling is quickly replaced by “nice, but now what?” 

In this article, you will find seven examples of using a trial version of SEMrush to show how audience overlap can bring insights and help with decisions not only to your marketing team, but also product management or sales, making marketers keener to share their SEO tools subscriptions with others.

What Is the Right Product for Our Next Technology Integration?

Audience overlap can never in itself answer the strategic question, "What is the right product for our next technology integration," but it could help contribute to the decision. Let’s say the technology partner manager at Kentico carries out research about which content delivery network (CDN) should the integration, or at least the instruction manual, be developed on. 

The graph below shows the percentage of users who visit both websites — Kentico and preselected CDN sites. It reveals that although CDN77 and Kentico in the physical world both have headquarters close to each other in the Czech Republic, in the online world, their audience is further apart, and it is a Cloudflare integration that might bring the best value to Kentico’s current customer base.

comparison of overlap between tech companies

Related Article: Find Your Target Audience or Your Marketing Efforts Are Wasted

What Is the Affinity Between the Audience of a Proprietary and an Open-Source CMS?

Let’s consider three commercial CMSs – Sitecore, Kentico and Episerver — and see what their audience affinity to open-source solutions is. Quite interestingly, it is Sitecore who has the biggest affinity to WordPress, at 54% as compared to Kentico at 31% and Episerver at 35%.

audience overlap

What Is the Best Incentive for Filling in a Survey?

An NCBI study showed that a $10 incentive can increase the response rate of a survey by 30%. But what is the best pre-paid card for such an incentive? Which card would your audience prefer to get? 

audience overlap

Related Article: Engage Your Audience With the Element of Surprise

What Should Your Next Media Buy Be?

Most planned campaigns should generate new prospects rather than talk to your current customer base. And as budgets are generally limited, marketers must make choices. At least by name, The Next Web seems to be the closest to Kentico among the other technology media. And with only a 0.53% overlap, it makes it the most promising media outlet for generating fresh leads and brand awareness.

audience overlap

Which Media Share the Same Audiences?

Let’s say that the next vertical that Kentico’s marketing efforts will focus on will be logistics. Which investment in logistics magazines will cover the same audience? By discovering which media shares the same audience, you can avoid wasting money by running the same campaign. While Dcvelocity and Warehousenews seem to have unique audiences, an investment into Supplychaindigital will cover a bit of both — Logisticmgmt and Inboundlogistic.

audience overlap


Where Is Our Competition Stronger Than Us in Terms of Audiences?

In a more and more saturated technology landscape, analysts and review sites continue to have a notable impact on businesses. How is Kentico doing with analysts and review sites compared to Sitecore and vice versa? Shouldn’t Kentico maintain its relations with Forrester (95% less affinity compared to Sitecore) and Sitecore with Capterra (55% less affinity compared to Kentico)?

audience overlap
audience overlap

How Has the Positioning of Our Product Changed Over Time? 

Considering changes in the audience overlap over time might tell us how product positioning is changing. Back in 2018, Kentico shared more audience with all the open-source solutions than in 2019, indicating a growing separation between the two.

audience overlap between kentico and other tech platforms
audience overlap

Martech Crossing an Organizational Boundary

These seven examples show how different stakeholders can leverage the audience overlap feature commonly found in online visibility platforms to provides insights into the buying personas and their behavior. It also brings what Martech needs most of — a tool that crosses organizational boundaries and earns trust along the way.