I spend a fair amount of time monitoring what our competition is doing in our market. It’s always interesting and frequently a learning experience.

Some of my effort is focused on finding sites via Google and studying my discoveries. I learn a fair amount in these hunts but much of it is the same old stuff with one site copying the other. I don’t often find very much innovation or testing happening on these sites.

Some of the things I’ve learned that are more leading edge come from searching further under the radar. For instance, there is a fair amount of guerilla marketing going on at Craigslist. It’s fascinating to find out what other divorce lawyers are doing. Some of their ideas are awful. Sometimes, however, there’s a gem hiding out in there.

One drawback to the Craigslist is that it’s not possible to search more than one market at a time using their site. There are, however, other sites that facilitate searching all of the Craigslist sites.

The one I use is SearchAllCraigs. It does exactly what it’s name says – it searches all Craigslist markets.

Today, I ran a search on “divorce” and found some helpful listings. I found lawyers advertising discounted rates, free consults, divorce workshops, seminars on stopping the divorce plus a prospective client seeking to trade remodeling work for a divorce in San Francisco. One never knows what they might find on Craigslist.

Spend a few minutes and see if you come up with some new ideas. You might learn something about your market or you might find a great deal on used car.