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How to Do a Competitive Analysis | Case Study Included

In order to be a leader in your industry, you need to know how to perform a competitive analysis.  A competitor analysis is more than a simple SWOT analysis where you find the strength and weaknesses of your market segment. Evaluating your competitors is highly important and must be done through complete market research using an analysis template like the one that we're going to present in this article.

Finding out where your competition excels doesn't have to be a burden if you have the right strategy and necessary tools.

What Is a Competitor Analysis?

Why perform a competitor analysis, how to conduct your competitive analysis, step 1. find your top competitors, step 2. analyze your competitors popularity, step 3. identify the public perception of competitors, step 4. analyze your competitors' social media strategy, step 5. perform an seo competitor analysis.

Competitor analysis in digital marketing is the process of finding strengths and weaknesses of your competitors, relative to those of your own product or service.

There is no exact competitive analysis definition. Yet, you need to know that the strengths within a competitive analysis are the things that make you unique, your key selling point, the ideas around your whole business - which can be about the product or the team. On the opposite side, the weaknesses point out some deficiencies, and things you could improve, when it comes to your brand, or take advantage from, when it comes to the weaknesses of your competitors.

The competitive analysis has the role to make a valid and accurate market positioning and a report on what you are doing best, and where your competitors excel, and learn from that to win more potential customers. A competitive analysis also means picking the right competitors and looking at analytics that include business metrics, digital marketing analysis, social media metrics.

By doing an accurate competitor analysis you'll be able to receive a lot of data and insights for making better business decisions. Similar to an internal research, by evaluating quantitative and qualitative data, if you research your competitors, you will uncover effective strategies and new ideas for increasing your business' performance, be it on social media, on online, or in the physical store.

A well-performed competitor analysis will allow you to:

• Build your unique selling proposition (the statement that describes the benefit of your offer and how you solve your clients' needs).
• Bring business improvements regarding products and services, team management, customer care, delivery and many more.
• Discover new market segments.
• Prioritize goals and future development.
• Create products that are actually required and respond to customer's needs.

For a better understanding of how your competitor analysis framework should look like, we've performed a competitive market research on the cosmetic niche. We've analyzed several metrics on this market segment to conduct a competitive analysis as in-depth as possible, with most of the data being pulled out from brand mention monitoring.

Brand monitoring, when done with the right tools, is more versatile than you'd think. Running an in-depth brand mentions competitive analysis could help you make sure that you are not overlooking any efficient strategies that might be working wonders for your competitors.

They are talking about your company

Get instant access to brand mentions across social, news, blogs, videos and more. Get Free Report

Even though you might be aware of some of your market leaders, there might be a few you're missing.

For our case study example, we searched for top leading beauty brands. As social media is a highly important segment within this industry, one of the analyses we've performed was to find the top-performing brands on social media, by the number of followers.

You can also search on Google for the relevant keywords in your business and see the top brands that are ranking for those keywords. And use a spying tool to find out important analytics on every website you want, such as the Mozbar browser extension.

Also, check out Social Media to figure out the businesses that pop out in results in your market. The research we performed helped us understand the niche a little better. Therefore, based on this research performed, we've chosen to continue our competitive analysis on the following brands:

• MAC cosmetics
• Kylie cosmetics
• Anastasia Beverly Hills
• Urban Decay

It’s too complicated and actually impossible to manually track all your competitors’ records and activity, as much manual web scraping you'd be doing.

So, even if you know your competition , the question remains: how do you find who is the most popular brand in your niche?

Most popular = most mentioned

Tools like BrandMentions can make things easier.

Therefore, to answer to our main question, "how to perform a competitive analysis", you need to start performing an in-depth research of your competition. Brand Mentions allows you to track keywords, brands, product names or whatever you need.

Going back to the beauty niche we are analyzing, let's figure out the most popular brands here. We took BrandMentions for a spin, to find out the most popular beauty brand into a very competitive niche by analyzing and monitoring social media metrics. We analyzed the mentions for these beauty brands for a short period of time, October 14 - November 15 , Worldwide for all languages.

After analyzing the results, we saw that Sephora has some interesting discoveries. Compared to the rest of the beauty sites, Sephora has the highest number of mentions on web and social. In the printscreen below, we can see all mentions for each brand categorized by source (web and social).

By far, Sephora outranks the rest of beauty brands on the total amount of mentions on web and social.

The number of mentions could be explained by the fact that Sephora has more influencers that talk about it on Twitter. Results showed that the brand is mentioned by influencers with over 50k followers on Twitter compared to other beauty brands.

BrandMentions has a filter that allows you to filter mentions to see the Twitter posts from people that have a specific number of followers. The Twitter account for each brand was excluded.

Just by taking a look at your competitors and monitoring their brands, you can get a bunch of data:

• compare how often your competitors versus you post on social media
• what outlets mention them more than you
• how many mentions they have had in the last 24 hours
• how many shares their mentions have
• what languages are their mentions written in
• do they have mostly web or social mentions

And yes,  all mentions matter, but some matter more than others.

When looking into your competitor’s yard, look at their best practices and try to figure out what worked best for them.

You must have heard at least once people saying that all publicity is good publicity, as long as they spell your name right. Or that the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about. But is it really so? How much does the public perception influence a brand's popularity? Let's find out!

The  Sentiment Analysis feature  allowed us to have a better understanding on the public perception of the analyzed brands. If we first identified the competitors and looked for the most popular ones, now we can have a look at how they are perceived in the online world.

How did we do that exactly?

We monitored all brands with BrandMentions as we said before, and from all mentions we started to filter them out. Filters are a blessing in this situation, giving you full control over the segment of mentions that you want to analyze.

Trying to manually find all the negative brand mentions that interest you is like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

After analyzing the sentiment analysis for each individual beauty brand ,we came to realize that most of them share a higher positive experience with the users.

By looking at the data, for all brands or just some of them, we can draw lots of conclusions. For instance, comparing to other brands, Benefit has the highest number of web and social mentions that have a positive sentiment analysis. If we look at the next graph, we can easily see that Benefits stands out:

Another thing we can observe is the fact that Benefit has the highest number of web mentions with a positive sentiment, as well. But the brand that is leading the positive social mentions is Sephora.

Even though Sephora has the highest number of positive social mentions, overall, compared to the rest of the beauty brands, it has the highest number of negative sentiment. Which might be a downsize for the brand.

Below you can see a comparison with the other cosmetics brand on positive and negative sentiment analysis.

We can see that most of the mentions are from social media and more specifically, from Twitter. The connection with the previous results might be stronger. Often time it has happened that people are more driven to write online about a negative experience, rather than a positive one.

We saw that the negative sentiment had the lowest value compared with the positive and neutral sentiment, with a single exception. Morphe had a higher neutral sentiment than the negative one. Check out the graphic below:

Urban Decay has the most naturally ordered distribution of the sentiment analysis for the mentions analyzed on web and social.

We are not saying that bad publicity couldn't be good publicity for some businesses or individuals. But for most businesses and niches, bad publicity and negative brand mentions are never a reason for joy but an occasion for a crisis communication meeting.

Another interesting thing to observe in the graph above is that Morphe has the highest negative sentiment analysis on social media.

People love it the most, but they also hate is the most, compared to the rest of the brands. If we look particularly at the brand to evaluate the total number of positive vs. negative sentiments, we can see that in the end, a positive experience overcomes the negative one, in terms of absolute numbers.

We've previously talked about Morphe saying that it has a higher number of neutral sentiments, the only brand with this particularity. We can understand that people have mixed feelings when it comes to this brand: You either love it or hate it.

Both positive and negative mentions have a big impact on the purchase decision of a client.

Although it might sound bad to   spy on your competition , this marketing technique is a fully transparent, popular, and white-hat one. How else would we all improve ourselves and our brands if we were to not compare our endeavors with the others? And this is where a brand monitoring tool comes to rescue us.

When doing competitor spying, we are actually building PR relationships.

Both directly and indirectly.

Directly by getting to know your common audience better (the one your competition shares with you) through your competitors’ eyes, win ties with important outlets in the industry, etc.

In addition, while keeping “your enemies” closer, you indirectly relate to and establish a relationship with them. By constantly trying to keep up the pace with or outrun the brightest ones in the niche, and struggling not to ever fall in the pitfalls of black-hat marketing techniques other companies deploy in their strategies, you simply get better and better. In other words, you widen your professional circle.

Competitor spying is the more polite version of eavesdropping. There's no harm in doing it as long as you're using the tools to improve yourself and not disrupt the other.

You can easily gain insights on your competitors' performance and   dig into their success strategies   and use the lessons to your own benefit.

Tracking mentions for your competitor can lead you into discovering social media campaigns, new content ideas, top-performing social channel alongside types of content shared on each platform, plus trending hashtags used and top influencers for each competitor.

For instance, in our case, in the beauty niche, the results might surprise you. If you thought Instagram would be the most used Social Media platform for beauty products, you might be wrong.

According to the analysis performed in BrandMentions, it turned out that Twitter has the highest number of mentions for every beauty brand compared to the other social media marketing platforms.

If you thought that Instagram was the king of the beauty industry, you are wrong.

Of course, Instagram is a powerful Social Media channel, but maybe there's more in that direction. There are some insights related to this social platform, nonetheless. We know that Facebook became stricter about sharing data with third parties, so we can't see private posts. Instagram has shifted the strategy in this direction as well. Instagram started to hide likes in select countries earlier this year, and it will soon do the same in the United States.

This method affects the way we see data, on top of the fact that there are lots of users with private user accounts where even if you have an account you can't see their posts, likes, and stories.

After analyzing all the social mentions for all the beauty brands on all social platforms, here's what we discovered:

• Twitter is the Social Media Platform with the highest number of mentions.
• Twitter is the Social Media Platform with the highest number of mentions with positive sentiment analysis.

It seems that Twitter is a great way to start an influencer marketing strategy; it is also the most popular social media site. Finding all the information will help all marketers, brand managers, and community managers to build the best social media strategies for beauty brands.

When we looked at the distribution of web and social mentions for the beauty brands, we discovered 2 categories:

• more web mentions: MAC and Benefit
• more social mentions: Kylie cosmetics, Anastasia Beverly Hills, Sephora, NYX, Too Faced, Urban Decay, Morphe and Tarte.

It's obvious that social is the king here. We won't bother you with tons of charts and data on all the analysed brands, yet, you need to know that within Brand Mentions you can perform any type of analysis you want when it comes to social mention analysis.

If we analyze one of the competitors, Morphe, we can see that it is more popular on Instagram by the number of mentions. It is seconded by a small number by Anastasia Beverly Hills.

Morphe has lots of mentions on Instagram, but it is on the 8th place when it comes to Instagram followers with 10.3m.

When it comes to answering the question on how to do a competitive analysis  we know that what matter most are the insights you get to find out. And here are some great insights we've extracted for the most popular social media beauty sites scrutinized within our competitive analysis:

1.  For the MAC Brand: 

• MAC has the highest number of influencers on Instagram.
• MAC doesn't have influencers of people with more than 50k followers that mention the brand on Twitter.
• MAC is the least popular on the web and social media judging by the number of mentions. 

2.   For the Sephora Brand: 

• Sephora is one of the most popular beauty brands on social media and the whole web compared to the rest of the brands by the number of mentions.
• Sephora is mentioned by influencers and people with more than 50k followers on Twitter.

3.  For the Morhphe Brand: 

• Morphe shares a positive experience on social media compared to the rest of the beauty brand. It has the highest number of social mentions with a positive sentiment.
• But it also shares the highest value of negative emotions on social.
• Morphe is the top beauty brand on Instagram by the number of mentions compared to the rest of the brands.

4.  For the Benefit Brand: 

• Benefit is on the 10th place by the number of followers on Instagram with 9.8m (see printscreen below), the last place compared to the rest of the brands.
• Benefit offers a higher positive experience by analyzing sentiment analysis for the whole web and social mentions.

After analyzing all the mentions for all the beauty brands, there are lots of insights to help you create social media marketing strategies and find out the top competitors in your niche.

Knowing how to analyze your SEO competition is an important step in determining your overall keyword and SEO strategy. There are many factors involved in the process, and without the correct framework, it can get complicated. Here you can find the steps for the SEO competitor analysis explained, as clear and simple as possible. Within the screenshot below you can see the main steps that you need to take to make sure you perform an SEO competitive analysis at the highest level.

What Tools We Used to Do The Competitive Analysis

We used BrandMentions to analyze the beauty content and all the mentions for each beauty brand : MAC cosmetics, Kylie cosmetics, Anastasia Beverly Hills, Sephora, NYX, Too Faced, Urban Decay, Morphe, Tarte, Benefit.

Each created project had the name of the brand, and we added the keywords, domain URL, Facebook and Twitter account for higher accuracy in finding relevant mentions. We let the tool do its magic and analyze the beauty content on social media and the web.

For the metrics and discoveries made, we used filters and features available in BrandMentions, such as Sentiment Analysis analyzer, web and social sources, mentions from Twitter accounts with a specific number of followers and more. Check out the data for designing your winning social media strategy.

Also, the trigger was when we found a research on Statista with most followed cosmetics brands on Instagram; so we thought of performing a deeper analysis on the topic, and finding the most popular beauty site on Social Media, not only on Instagram. We wanted to see if there more we needed to know. And yes, there was so much more.

For an effective competitive research, there are multiple things that need to be taken into consideration, beside web and social listening. Things like  brand awareness , customer experience, target audience, the search engines you are interested in, target market,  the service or product features, the competitors sales, etc. This is not a  complete guide to obtain competitive advantages  that applies for all. But a competitor analysis template that helps you best identify your competitors and your main competitor strengths and weaknesses.

The best time to start finding out information about your competitors is now. So even if you are a content marketer, a small online store owner or a big ecommerce business , an online marketing specialist or you're in the sales teams, you need to start digging into competitive intelligence.

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Blog Marketing How to Create a Competitor Analysis Report (with Examples)

How to Create a Competitor Analysis Report (with Examples)

Written by: Midori Nediger Nov 09, 2023

Your business will always have competition.

And if you don’t know what that competition is up to, you could be missing out on huge opportunities.

That’s why a competitive analysis is so crucial to your success as a business. It gives you the tools to quickly adapt to any changes in the competitive landscape and potentially capitalize on industry trends that your competitors haven’t even noticed.

So let’s get some basics out of the way…

What is a competitive analysis report?

A competitive analysis report outlines the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors compared to those of your own business.

Typically, a competitive analysis report will contain:

• A description of your business’s target market
• Details about the features of your product compared to your competitors’ products
• A breakdown of current and projected market share, sales, and revenues
• Comparisons of pricing models
• An analysis of marketing strategy and social media strategy
• A description of customer ratings of the features of each competitor

Whether you’re a startup trying to break into the marketplace , a consultant trying to get results for your client, or an established company looking to cement your foothold against the competition, a well-researched competitive analysis gives you the tools you need to make strategic decisions.

Your competitive analysis should inform your marketing plan , your business plan , your consultant report and every part of your high-level business strategy.

But how do you actually create a competitive analysis report?

How to make competitor analysis report :

• Start with a competitor overview
• Conduct market research to uncover customer personas and industry trends
• Compare product features in a feature comparison matrix
• Summarize your strengths and weaknesses with a SWOT analysis
• Show where you fit in the competitive landscape
• Use a competitor analysis template for a professional look and feel

The level of detail you include in each section of your competitive analysis report will vary depending on the stage of your business growth and your goals. For example, a startup might create a report that focuses on market research, while an established business might dive into detail on an emerging competitor.

But let’s talk about the parts of a competitive analysis that every report should include.

1. Start with a competitor overview

A strong report shows exactly what a company must out-compete to be successful.

Meaning you must audit any product or service that currently solves the problem your business is trying to solve for customers and write a quick profile for each competitor.

Like the template below, each competitor profile might include:

• The company’s revenue and market share
• The company’s size and information about their management team
• A broad description of the company’s strengths and weaknesses
• An overview of how the company is perceived by customers

This overview will help your readers get a big-picture view of the market landscape.

2. Conduct market research to uncover customer personas and industry trends

You can’t create a competitive analysis report without doing extensive market research , which is all about gathering information to understand your customers, identify opportunities to grow, and recognize trends in the industry.

This research can help you put together the customer personas that will guide business and marketing decisions down the line, and allow you to plan for any shifts that might disrupt the marketplace.

You can conduct primary market research, with:

• Customer interviews
• Online surveys or questionnaires
• In-person focus groups
• Purchasing a competitor product to study packaging and delivery experience

Or secondary market research, by:

• Reading company records
• Examining the current economic conditions
• Researching relevant technological developments

When assembling your market research you may just want provide a high-level summary of the industry trends, like this competitor analysis example shows:

Or you may want to dive into detail on the demographics of a particular consumer segment, like this:

But if you’re a consultant or advisor struggling to get buy-in from skeptical stakeholders, the report below would be ideal. Covering everything from market forecasts to consumer profiles, it can help you get clients and decision-makers on board.

3. Compare product features in a feature comparison matrix

The feature comparison is arguably the most important part of the competitive analysis. Breaking down your product and your competitors’ products feature-by-feature will allow you to see what really sets everyone apart.

In addition to specific product features, here are some attributes that you might include in a feature comparison matrix:

• Product quality
• Number of features
• Ease of use
• Customer support
• Brand/style/image

The most common format for a features analysis is a simple matrix with you and your competitors along one side and all of the relevant features along the other. You can check off or rate how you perform in each area:

But these tables can get pretty long. Another approach is to focus on the things that provide the most value to the user, like in this competitor analysis example from Mint. It only includes ease of use, costs, and benefits:

If you want to visualize your comparisons in an engaging way, you could use a comparison infographic . 

Great resources for this section of your competitive analysis report are product rating sites like Capterra and G2Crowd . They’ll give you an unbiased view of your company and your competitors.

And as with any market research, it’s critical that you speak with real people who use your product and your competitors’ products. That’s the only way to get an accurate picture of how your target customers rate the competition .

4. Summarize your strengths and weaknesses in a SWOT analysis

When you’re conducting research for your competitive analysis, it’s going to be messy. You’ll have a lot of data and it’ll be hard for an outsider to understand.

That’s what makes the SWOT analysis so essential.

A SWOT analysis is a framework for evaluating your competitive position by listing your key strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

It can act like a short summary of the rest of your competitive analysis report for anyone who doesn’t have time to dig into the details.

Click the template above to enter our online SWOT analysis maker tool. Customize the template to your liking–no design no-how required.

Here are some questions to kickstart your SWOT analysis:

• Strengths: What are we doing really well (in terms of marketing, products, sales, branding, technology, etc.)?
• Weaknesses: What are we struggling with? What’s holding us back?
• Opportunities: What’s the weakest area for our biggest competitor? Are there any gaps in the market that aren’t current being addressed? What has recently changed in our business or the market?
• Threats: What is our biggest competitor doing much better than us? What new products/features are they working on? What problems aren’t we currently addressing?

In your report, you could arrange your SWOT analysis in a simple list, but it can be helpful to use color-coded quadrants, like the competitor analysis example below. Note how each quadrant is paired with an icon:

5. Show where you fit in the competitive landscape

After summarizing your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, it’s time to look at the bigger picture. It’s time to figure out where every major competitor currently fits into the competitive landscape.

The most popular way of doing this is to identify the two dimensions that are most important for being competitive in your industry and plot them on a matrix, like this one from the Boston Consulting Group:

And this one from G2 Crowd (which looks at market presence and customer satisfaction):

You may want to focus on where you fit in the market landscape based on your own biggest strengths and weaknesses, or the biggest threats and opportunities you identified in the SWOT analysis.

Or, it may be enough just to summarize in words the features and benefits that set your apart from your competitors (which is a great way to end your report on a high note).

Competitor analysis examples for strategic planning

Let’s delve into some competitor analysis examples that can empower your organization to navigate the market effectively.

1. Competitor analysis example for marketing specialists

Imagine this: You are a Marketing Specialist and your goal is to establish a strong online presence and attract a diverse user base. However, you face stiff competition from established players in the market. Here are some things you should look into when doing your competitor analysis:

Competitor analysis focus:

• SEO strategies: Analyze competitors’ websites to understand their SEO strategies. Identify high-ranking keywords, backlink strategies, and content optimization techniques . Alternatively, if you’re running a local business, you might want to analyze and scrape Google Maps listings to better assess how companies are optimizing Google My Business to generate leads.
• Social media engagement: Examine competitors’ social media presence. Evaluate the type of content that garners engagement, the frequency of posts, and audience interactions.
• Online advertising: Investigate competitors’ online advertising campaigns. Are they leveraging Google Ads, social media ads, or other platforms? Assess the messaging, visuals, and targeting criteria.
• Content marketing: Scrutinize competitors’ content marketing efforts. Identify the topics that resonate with their audience, the formats they use (blogs, videos, infographics), and the platforms they prioritize.

Here’s a SWOT analysis template to help you get started:

2. Competitor analysis example for SME business development managers

Imagine this: As the business development manager for a medium sized start up, you are tasked with expanding the client base. The market is crowded with similar service providers, and differentiation is key. When doing your competitor analysis report, look into:

• Client testimonials and case studies: Explore competitors’ websites for client testimonials and case studies. Identify success stories and areas where clients express satisfaction or dissatisfaction.
• Service offerings: Analyze the range of services offered by competitors. Identify gaps in their offerings or areas where you can provide additional value to clients.
• Pricing models: Investigate competitors’ pricing structures. Are they offering packages, subscription models, or customized solutions? Determine whether there’s room for a more competitive pricing strategy .
• Partnerships and collaborations: Explore potential partnerships or collaborations that competitors have formed. This can provide insights into untapped markets or innovative service delivery methods.

Here’s a competitor analysis comparison chart template that you could use:

3. Competitor analysis example for product managers

Imagine this: You are a Product Manager for a consumer electronics company tasked with improving your company’s products and services. The market is buzzing with innovation, and staying ahead requires a deep understanding of competitor products.

• Feature comparison: Conduct a detailed feature-by-feature comparison of your product with competitors. Identify unique features that set your product apart and areas where you can enhance or differentiate.
• User experience (UX): Evaluate the user experience of competitors’ products. Analyze customer reviews, app ratings, and usability feedback to understand pain points and areas for improvement.
• Technological advancements: Investigate the technological capabilities of competitors. Are they integrating AI, IoT, or other cutting-edge technologies? Assess whether there are emerging technologies you can leverage.
• Product lifecycle management: Examine competitors’ product release cycles. Identify patterns in their product launches and assess whether there are opportunities for strategic timing or gap exploitation.

To help you get started, use this competitive analysis report template to identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the product or service

How to present a competitor analysis

Presenting a competitor analysis effectively involves organizing and communicating information about your competitors in a clear and concise manner. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to present a competitor analysis:

• Introduction: Start with a brief introduction to set the stage. Outline the purpose of the competitor analysis and its significance in the current market context.
• Competitor identification: Clearly list and identify the main competitors. Include both direct and indirect competitors. Briefly describe each competitor’s core business and market presence.
• Key metrics and performance: Present key metrics and performance indicators for each competitor. This may include market share, revenue, growth rate, and any other relevant quantitative data.
• SWOT analysis: Conduct a concise SWOT analysis for each competitor. Summarize their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Use a simple visual representation if possible.
• Market positioning: Discuss how each competitor is positioned in the market. This could include their target audience, unique selling propositions, and any specific market niches they occupy. Also, focus on finding keywords , as your competitor’s targeted keywords are the main source of information on their online market performance.
• Strategic moves: Highlight recent strategic moves made by your competitors. This could include product launches, partnerships, mergers, acquisitions, or changes in pricing strategy. Discuss how these moves impact the competitive landscape.
• Recommendations and implications: Based on the analysis, provide recommendations and implications for your company. Identify opportunities to capitalize on competitors’ weaknesses and outline potential threats that need to be addressed. Discuss any adjustments to your own strategy that may be necessary in response to the competitive landscape.

3 tips to improve your competitive analysis report design

How you design your competitive analysis report can have a significant impact on your business success. The right report design can inspire stakeholders to take action based on your findings, while a mediocre design may reflect poorly on your hard work.

Here are a few report design best practices to keep in mind when designing your competitive analysis report:

• Start with a competitive analysis report template
• Keep core design elements like colors and fonts consistent
• Use visuals to summarize important information and keep your audience engaged

1. Start with a competitor analysis template

The quickest way to lose the confidence of your stakeholders is to present a messy, amateur report design. Besides distracting from the content of the report, it might even put your credibility at risk.

Starting with a pre-designed competitor analysis template, like the one below, takes almost all of the design work out of the mix so you can focus on the content (while still impressing your stakeholders).

And if you’re a consultant competing for a project, a pre-designed template may just give you the edge you need to land that client.

Click on any of our templates; you’ll enter our online drag and drop report maker tool. No design know-how required.

2. Keep core design elements like colors and fonts consistent

If you take a look at the competitor analysis template below, you might notice that the designer has switched up the layout from page to page, but many of the other design elements are kept consistent.

That consistency helps the report design feel cohesive while making it easier for readers to quickly skim for key pieces of information.

Here are a few quick guidelines for keeping important design elements consistent:

• Use the same color scheme throughout your report (with one highlight color to draw attention to key takeaways and important numbers)
• Use the same font styles for your headers, subheaders, and body text (with no more than 2-3 font styles per report)
• Use the same style of visuals throughout your report (like flat icons or illustrated icons… but not both)

3. Use visuals to summarize important information and keep your audience engaged

The challenge with a competitive analysis report is that you collect heaps of background research, and you have to condense it into a brief report that your client will actually read.

And written summaries will only get you so far.

Visuals like charts and tables are a much better way to communicate a lot of research quickly and concisely, as seen in the market research summary below.

Even lists can be made more engaging and informative by spacing out list items and giving more emphasis to headers:

The more you can replace descriptive paragraphs and long lists with thoughtful visuals, the more your readers will thank you.

A competitive analysis will allow you to think up effective strategies to battle your competition and establish yourself in your target market.

And a report that communicates the findings of your competitive analysis will ensure stakeholders are on board and in the know.

Now that you know how to design a competitive analysis report, you’re ready to get started:

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Competitor Analysis: Core Principles and How to Conduct One

Written by Leigh McKenzie In collaboration with Semrush

In the fast-paced realm of digital marketing, understanding and outperforming your competitors is not just an advantage, it’s a necessity.

Competitor analysis, a critical skill for any marketer, provides insights that can be the difference between leading the market or lagging behind.

This guide, rooted in Backlinko’s expert approach to digital marketing strategies, delves into the nuts and bolts of effective competitor analysis.

From leveraging SEO tactics to understanding audience needs, we unpack the methods that will not only help you understand your rivals but also enable you to outmaneuver them strategically.

Get ready to transform your approach to competition, armed with tools and insights that put you ahead in the digital marketing game.

Let’s dive in.

Key Takeaways

• A competitor analysis involves collecting data about your competitors to identify their strengths and weaknesses and improve your marketing strategy.
• Any type of business can benefit from conducting a competitor analysis.
• Before you begin a competitor analysis, you need to be sure of who your target customer is.
• The next step of a competitor analysis involves identifying your organic and paid search competitors. You also need to determine if they’re classed as direct, indirect, or replacement competitors.
• Once you’ve identified your competitors, you need to analyze their content strategies , backlink profiles, technical SEO , and paid media strategies.

The Importance of Competitor Analysis in Marketing

Before we discuss how to carry out your competitor analysis, let’s take a look at exactly what it is and why it’s so beneficial.

What is Competitor Analysis?

A competitor analysis, commonly referred to as competitive analysis, is a strategic and systematic approach to identifying competitors within your industry and analyzing their strengths and weaknesses.

It involves assessing your competitors’ product offerings, pricing strategies, distribution channels, customer service, innovation, marketing strategies, and overall market positioning.

This in-depth analysis serves as a valuable benchmark. It helps you grasp not just the strategies and tactics your competitors employ but also allows you to pinpoint your own strengths and weaknesses relative to each competitor.

Armed with this well-rounded view, you can strategically position your business for success in the competitive arena.

A competitive analysis can be broad or specific. You can delve into every aspect of your competitors’ business or focus on just one area. For example, you might choose to concentrate solely on analyzing their marketing strategy.

However you decide to go about it, you need to ensure your approach is customized to align with the needs and goals of your business.

Who Can Benefit from an Analysis?

Simply put, anyone who wants to gain a better understanding of a market and the competitive landscape will benefit from a competitor analysis.

Business Owners and Executives

Competitive research helps business owners and executives:

• Identify opportunities and threats posed by competitors
• Make informed decisions
• Optimize resource allocation
• Stay ahead of industry trends
• Proactively respond to competitive challenges

As a result, these actions contribute to business growth and sustained success.

Product Marketing Teams

Conducting market research can greatly benefit product marketing teams by helping them:

• Identify unique features and benefits of their products
• Understand how competitors position and present their products
• Tailor their marketing messages to highlight distinct advantages of their products
• Recognize market gaps for potential product innovation
• Understand customer preferences
• Adapt strategies to differentiate products effectively in the market

Brand Marketing Teams

Gathering market competitor insights will help brand marketing teams:

• Understand how competitors position and present their brands
• Develop strategies to create a distinct and compelling brand image
• Identify unique selling points to differentiate the brand
• Adapt messaging to address customer perceptions and preferences

Content Marketing Teams

Content marketing teams will be able to use the insights gained from conducting competitor research to:

• Tailor content to address customer needs based on competitor insights
• Identify content gaps and opportunities in the market
• Adapt their messaging to differentiate content from competitors
• Learn from competitors’ successful content strategies
• Improve overall content effectiveness and relevance in the market

SEO Professionals

SEOs can use these competitive benchmarks to help them:

• Identify keywords competitors are ranking for
• Uncover link-building opportunities
• Discover content gaps to provide valuable and unique information
• Improving website structure and user experience based on their competitors’ successes

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Specialists

A competitive analysis can help PPC specialists:

• Identify effective strategies used by competitors in their ads
• Adjust bidding strategies based on competitors’ performance
• Improve ad creatives and messaging to stand out in the market

Social Media Teams

The insights gained from an analysis allows Social media teams to:

• Identify successful strategies used by competitors on social platforms. This includes analyzing content themes and engagement tactics that resonate with the target audience.
• Uncover the various social media platforms their competitors leverage
• Discover opportunities for unique and engaging social content
• Adapt posting schedules and frequency based on their competitors’ performance

Sales Teams

Competitor analysis data will help Sales teams:

• Determine their competitors’ strengths and weaknesses
• Identify their competitors’ unique selling points
• Anticipate customer objections, and stay informed about market trends

This helps them tailor their pitches, address customer concerns effectively, and position their products or services competitively. As a result, it can enhance sales outcomes.

Identifying Your Target Customer

Before delving into a competitor analysis, it’s crucial to clearly understand your target audience. Without this insight, you’re essentially navigating in the dark. To help clear things up, let’s dive into why it’s so important. Plus, we’ll cover the best ways to identify your target audience, but first, let’s discuss the difference between a target market and a target customer.

Target Market vs. Target Customer

A target market is a fairly broad group of customers you hope to sell your products or services to. For example, if you sell gym wear, your target market could be fitness enthusiasts.

A target customer is a more specific segment of your target market. So, your target customer within your target market could be a fitness enthusiast aged 25 to 35, who lives in Los Angeles.

The process begins by identifying your target market and then pinpointing more specific target customers within that market.

To pinpoint your target market, you must assess the key features and benefits of your products or services. Delve into understanding the problems they solve and the value they offer. Next, identify the broad groups of customers who are likely to find these qualities appealing.

By identifying your target customers, you can efficiently allocate resources to analyzing the competitors that engage with your specific audience.

How to Identify Your Target Customer

So, now you know why it’s important to identify your target customer before carrying out a competitor analysis, but how do you do it?

1. Start With Your Existing Customers

If you’re already selling products or services, you should have insights into your existing customer base, which can significantly inform your understanding of your target customer. Analyzing your current customer data, including demographics, preferences, and purchase behavior, provides a foundation for identifying and refining your target customer profile.

Additionally, gathering feedback directly from your current customers proves invaluable in gaining deeper insights.

A highly effective method to achieve this is by initiating surveys with your customer base. You can do this via email, text, or call to ask customers who have purchased to complete a survey. You can also add survey buttons and links to certain pages on your site or read customer reviews.

Furthermore, you should leverage social media platforms as an additional channel to connect with your current customers. You should create posts or direct messages inviting them to participate in surveys or share their thoughts and experiences.

2. Gather Demographics Data With Google Analytics 4 (GA4)

To collect demographic data on your target audience, you can utilize GA4 . This tool offers comprehensive insights, allowing you to get a deeper understanding of your audience.

After you log in, click “Reports”, “User attributes”, and then “Demographic details”. You’ll now see a graph representing the number of users who visited your site from different countries.

Scroll down, and you’ll see the total number of “Users” for each country, as well as the number of “New Users” (users who interacted with your site for the first time).

To view different types of demographic data, click the “Country” button in the table and you’ll get a dropdown.

For example, we chose “Interests”, and this is what the tool gave us.

In this case, the data provided above clearly indicates that a significant portion of our audience is located in the US and Canada, with a keen interest in technology, media, and entertainment.

By applying different filters, we can also see data about the audience’s:

3. Dig Into Your Social Media Analytics

Another way to identify your target customer is to explore your social media analytics. This helps you gain insights into the behaviors, preferences, and demographics of your audience.

Semrush’s Social Tracker tool allows you to analyze your followers, mentions, and engagement levels on multiple social media platforms.

This helps you identify the type of customer who interacts with your site via social media and also reveals the social media channels that generate the highest engagement and traffic for your site. You can then focus on these channels when analyzing your competitor’s social media strategy .

4. Create a Target Audience Profile

Once you’ve collected the data, it’s time to put it to use by creating a profile of your ideal target customer.

This should include information like:

• Level of education
• Platform usage

It’s essential to recognize that you may have various types of target customers. For example, an e-commerce store could have a distinct target customer for each product or service they offer.

The more data you can collect about your different types of target customers before you start a competitor analysis, the better.

How to Conduct a Competitor Market Analysis

After you identify who your target customer is, it’s time to begin your competitive research.

Before we begin, here’s a bit of advice.

• A competitor analysis can easily become overwhelming if you try to do everything at once.
• It’s always best to start fairly small and break it down into manageable chunks. Instead of analyzing 50 competitors, start with a small number (even one will do) and gradually increase the scope of your analysis over time.
• Identify what your goals are before you start your analysis. Ideally, your main objective should be conducting sufficient research to take actions that positively impact your business.
• Store your competitor insight data in a spreadsheet, which should be a living document that you return to periodically and update with new information.

OK, let’s get into how to conduct a competitor analysis.

1. Identifying Your Main Competitors

First things first, it’s time to figure out who your main competitors are.

When identifying your competitors, you need to break them down into three categories:

Direct Competitors

Direct competitors are businesses in your industry or local area that sell products or services very similar to the ones you offer. They also have the same target audience as you and are of a similar size and scope to your business.

McDonald’s and Burger King are direct competitors in the fast-food market. Both chains offer a range of fast-food items such as burgers, fries, and beverages. They target a similar customer base and compete for market share in the quick-service restaurant industry.

Indirect Competitors

Indirect competitors are businesses that offer different solutions to the same customer needs or cater to the same target audience. Unlike direct competitors, indirect competitors do not provide similar products or services but fulfill a similar customer need or serve the same overall market.

You and your competitor both run travel websites. However, you focus on offering luxurious beach vacations while they specialize in adventure vacations – like hiking trips. Even though you’re both trying to attract people looking for vacations, the key difference is that you provide different kinds of trips.

Replacement Competitors

Replacement competitors offer alternative or substitute products or services to what your business offers.

• Your business: Specializes in selling traditional incandescent lightbulbs.
• Replacement competitor: Specializes in selling energy-efficient LED bulbs.

The replacement competitor is considered as such because, although they offer a different type of product, their offerings serve as a substitute or replacement for the traditional incandescent lightbulbs sold by your business.

Customers looking for a solution to their lighting needs have the option to choose between your traditional bulbs and the energy-efficient LED bulbs offered by the replacement competitor.

The competition arises because both businesses are aiming to satisfy the same fundamental customer need, illumination, albeit through different types of products.

How to Identify Your Competitors

Whenever we need to identify our competitors, we primarily use Semrush, but there are other ways you can get an idea of who your industry competitors are. These include:

• Customer Feedback: Reach out to your existing customers and inquire about the other businesses they considered before choosing yours. Make sure to ask for their opinions on which other businesses they perceive as providing a similar service or product.
• Market research: Consult your sales department to understand the businesses they frequently encounter during research within your target market. Their on-the-ground insights can contribute valuable information.
• Google Search: Conduct a Google Search using your target keyword (e.g., “running shoes”) to identify competitors. Analyze the first page of the search results to pinpoint key players in your industry.

You’ll also want to gain a comprehensive understanding of your organic, paid, and local competitors.

Several features within the Semrush tool can help you.

Identify Your Organic Search Competitors

These are sites that compete with you in the SERPs for non-paid traffic. They use SEO strategies to rank as highly in the SERPs as possible.

The easiest way to identify your organic competitors is to use Semrush’s Organic Research tool .

Type in your domain, hit “Search”, then click “Competitors”.

You’ll see a chart representing your site and your main competitors who rank for the same organic keywords as you. The X-axis shows you how many keywords your competitors are ranking for, and the Y-axis shows you how much monthly traffic they receive.

Scroll down, and you’ll see a long list of competitors with several bits of data like competition level (how closely a site is competing with you for the same keywords) and common keywords (the number of keywords both you and your competitor are ranking for).

Now, just because these sites are competing with you for the same organic keywords doesn’t necessarily mean they’re direct competitors, they could be targeting a different audience to you.

Here’s an example to give you a better grasp:

Imagine there’s a website that writes a blog about advertising. They want to attract people interested in “online marketing strategies.”

Now, let’s say you have a blog about SEO, and you also want to attract people searching for “online marketing strategies.” Even though you’re both targeting the same keyword, you’re not necessarily in direct competition.

Here’s why: The first website is focused on advertising, so their audience is interested in learning about advertising. On the other hand, your blog is about SEO, and your audience is more interested in SEO topics.

So, even though you target the same keyword, the sites serve different interests and are not considered direct competitors.

The best way to determine whether the sites in your list are direct, indirect, or replacement competitors is to visit each site and analyze their offerings. Here, we clicked on “neilpatel.com”.

A brief review of the blog content indicates that it shares similarities with ours and is geared toward the same audience. This categorizes it as a direct competitor.

Find Your Paid Search Competitors

Paid search advertising, or Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising, involves businesses bidding on keywords. Ads from the highest bidders are then displayed in the SERPs when users search for these keywords.

To identify your paid search competitors, you can use Semrush’s Advertising Research tool . You’ll see the same graph you get in the Organic Research tool but with paid traffic and keywords instead.

Below, you’ll get a table of your paid competitors.

As with the Organic Traffic table, you can see the number of keywords you have in common with your competitors. This is a good indication of how closely you’ll be competing with them.

Remember, to split your competitors into different types, you’ll need to examine the site content, and their products or services to see what they offer. This may sound like a lot of work, but as we said earlier, you only need to start small.

Identifying Local Competitors

Your local competitors are the businesses in your area that offer a similar product or service. You may already have several local businesses in mind that you consider to be your competition. However, your local competitors might not be exactly what you expected when it comes to SEO.

Local SEO competitors are businesses that rank prominently in the SERPs for keywords related to your products or services within a specific geographical area. These businesses are your direct competition for visibility in local search results and aim to attract local customers searching for relevant products or services.

The most effective method to pinpoint these competitors is through Google. For example, if you operate a law office in Seattle, users searching for such services in your area will likely use long-tail keywords (three or more words) with location modifiers specific to the region, such as “lawyer in Seattle.”

Type this into Google and see which businesses appear in the local search results. One of the most important things to pay attention to is the Map Pack. This is a group of top-ranking local businesses that are displayed prominently in the SERPs.

2. Analyzing Your Competitor’s Content Strategy

Once you’ve identified your competitors, it’s time to analyze their content strategy .

The goal is to identify the components of their strategy that are performing well and those that are not. By doing so, you can replicate the successful elements and take advantage of the opportunities created by the shortcomings in the weaker aspects of their strategy.

The key things to analyze are:

Content Types and Formats

Identify the various kinds of content competitors create, like blog posts , videos , infographics , or podcasts .

Additionally, analyze the formats they employ to present information within these content types. For example, blog post formats may include how-to guides, listicles , or thought leadership articles.

This analysis will help you understand the diversity of their approach and allow you to tailor your content strategy to meet similar or unique audience preferences.

Content Quality and Relevance

Assess the overall quality of their content. Look at factors such as relevance, depth, and level of expertise. Evaluate how well their content meets the users’ search intent and addresses the needs and interests of their target audience.

The insights you gain will allow you to learn from your competitors’ successes or capitalize on their failures. By identifying what works well in their content, you can incorporate similar strategies into your own. Similarly, understanding where their content falls short provides an opportunity to avoid similar pitfalls and tailor your approach for better results.

Content Frequency

Analyze how often they publish new content and the consistency of their posting schedule. This can provide insights into their content production capabilities and audience engagement strategy.

By evaluating your competitors’ content frequency, you can learn from their success in maintaining a consistent posting schedule, potentially improving your own content planning . On the flip side, identifying gaps or irregularities in their posting schedule presents an opportunity to capitalize on potential shortcomings and enhance your own content consistency for better audience engagement.

Content Distribution Channels

This involves recognizing the platforms or mediums competitors use to promote and share their content , which may include social media, email newsletters , or external platforms.

This analysis will help you to learn from their success in reaching audiences through specific platforms. It also provides insights into potential gaps or missed opportunities. This offers you a chance to capitalize on alternative channels for broader content reach and engagement.

Analyzing the keywords your competitors prioritize provides insights into what their audience is actively searching for, allowing you to align your content with similar user intent . Identifying the keywords they are targeting will help you spot industry trends and topics that resonate with your shared audience.

If you create a Semrush project, Copilot AI will automatically check what keywords your competitor ranks for. It will also check where they’re gaining visibility compared to you.

You’ll also be able to identify content gaps that will help you tailor your strategy to address topics that may be underserved in your niche. Additionally, analyzing how your competitors utilize keywords in their meta titles, page headings, and main content can offer valuable insights. This analysis will guide you in optimizing your content effectively or seizing opportunities where your competitors may fall short.

Backlink Profile

By analyzing the quality and quantity of backlinks pointing to their content, you will get insights into the authority and credibility of their content in the eyes of search engines.

3. Assessing Your Competitor’s Backlink Profile

A backlink is a hyperlink from a page on one site to a page on another site. Acquiring backlinks from high-authority sites that align with your niche is a great way of increasing the authority of your site.

When analyzing your competitor’s backlink profile, you need to assess the quality of their links rather than focusing solely on the quantity.

Analyzing your competitors’ backlink profiles is important because sites with robust and diverse link profiles are likely to rank highly in the SERPs. By analyzing their strategies, you can identify backlink opportunities for your site, and boost your rankings and traffic.

If you’d like to learn more about building links, check out our comprehensive guide on link-building strategies .

Here’s how to check up on your competitors’ backlinks.

You can use Semrush’s Backlink Analytics tool .

On the “Overview” page, you will see:

Referring Domains: This is the total number of referring domains pointing to your competitor’s domain.

Backlinks: This is the total number of backlinks your competitor has earned.

As mentioned earlier, the quality of the backlinks is more important than the quantity. You’ll need to assess the quality of referring domains that are linking to your competitor’s pages. To do this, click on “Referring Domains”.

On the “Referring Domains” page, select:

• Set the AS score to 40-100
• Click on “Add filter” and select “Follow”

As you can see in the image above, there are over 3.5k high-authority referring domains linking to this competitor’s domain.

Now, if you want to check the actual backlinks pointing to your competitor’s pages, click on “Backlinks”.

Here you can see the source pages, their AScore, and the pages they are linking to on your competitor’s site.

4. Evaluating Your Competitor’s Technical SEO

Analyzing the technical aspects of your competitor’s site is crucial to understanding how well their site performs. You then compare this data to your site and identify areas where you’re outperforming them and where you need to improve.

Here’s why conducting a technical analysis of your competitors’ sites is essential:

• Identify Strengths and Weaknesses: Analyzing the technical aspects of your competitors’ sites can reveal their strengths and weaknesses in terms of website structure, page speed, mobile optimization, and other technical elements. Understanding these aspects helps you identify areas where you can surpass them.
• User Experience (UX): Technical SEO influences the user experience. By analyzing your competitors’ technical elements, you can gain insights into how user-friendly their websites are. This understanding can guide improvements to your site’s UX.
• Crawling and Indexing: Examining how well your competitors’ websites are crawled and indexed by search engines provides insights into their overall search engine visibility. This can reveal potential issues or opportunities for improvement on your site.

You can use the info you gather to avoid common mistakes, prioritize tasks, and replicate successful strategies. Ultimately, this can lead to better UX, increased traffic, and improved rankings.

5. Exploring Your Competitor’s Paid Media Strategy

Simply put, analyzing your competitor’s paid media strategy helps you:

• Learn what works in your industry
• Stay updated on market trends
• Benchmark your performance
• Discover new advertising channels
• Improve your creativity and messaging
• Adapt to changes
• Enhance your targeting strategies

All of this ensures your advertising efforts remain effective and competitive.

Here’s how to go about analyzing your competitors’ paid media strategies.

Keyword Research

You need to identify the keywords your competitors are bidding on. This will help you uncover gaps in your PPC keyword strategy.

Analyze Historical Performance

You should analyze your competitors’ click-through rates, ad spends, and conversion rates. This will help you determine if their tactics are worth replicating to improve your site’s PPC results.

Ad Placement Analysis

You need to identify where your competitors are placing their ads. Do they tend to favor specific sites, the SERPs, or social media platforms like Facebook? This provides valuable insights into the effectiveness of the different channels they use, their overall market presence, and their strategic focus. Armed with this knowledge you can optimize your advertising approach based on successful practices and focus on platforms that yield better results.

Ad Copy Analysis

A key part of any PPC competitor analysis involves assessing your competitors’ ad copy. You need to analyze the ways they position their product or service and how they promote their unique selling points (USPs).

When analyzing ad copy, it’s useful to ask questions like:

• What types of CTA do they use?
• How do they incorporate keywords into their ad copy?
• Do the color schemes in their ads align with those of their brand?
• Do they use graphics or videos to drive clicks?

Landing Page Analysis

Optimized landing pages are one of the most important elements of a successful PPC campaign. If they contain effective CTAs, enticing content, and are well laid out, they can greatly increase your conversion rates.

So, it’s important to dig into your competitors’ landing pages to identify their strengths and weaknesses. Key things to analyze include:

• Relevance: Does the landing page align with the ad copy that led users to it? To maintain user trust and increase conversions, there must be consistency between the content of a landing page and the ad that leads to it.
• Visuals: How do your competitors use images, graphics, and videos on their landing pages? Are they high-quality and relevant? Do they support the overall message of the page?
• Headline: Pay attention to how clear and compelling the headline on the landing page is, and if it quickly communicates the value proposition of the product or service to the user. The value proposition tells the user the benefits and value of a product or service. For example, “Save time and money with our user-friendly project management software designed for small businesses.”
• Social proof and trust indicators: Keep an eye out for social proof signals like reviews and user ratings, and trust signals like security badges, as these can enhance credibility and user trust.

Track Performance and Return On Investment (ROI)

Keeping tabs on your competitors’ performance and ROI helps you to set goals and KPIs for your site.

Semrush’s Advertising Research tool enables you to effortlessly monitor key performance and ROI metrics, such as CPC and average positions.

Paid Social Media Analysis

Analyzing your competitors’ paid social media strategies will help you identify the ad copy and promotions they use to attract customers within your target audience. The insights you gather will offer ideas that you can integrate into your own paid social media campaigns.

One way of doing this is to use the tools that are built into social media platforms, like Meta Ads Library. This allows you to see all of your competitor’s ads that are currently active on Facebook or Instagram. All you need to do is choose a location and the type of ads you want to see and then type in a keyword or a competitor’s domain.

Then, you’ll be taken to a page with the ads your competitor is running. For each ad, it tells you when it was launched and which Meta platforms it’s running on and you can view the ad itself.

However, this doesn’t provide insight into the success of competitor’s ads. To gauge their effectiveness, we need to uncover metrics such as ad spend, impressions, and share of voice. You can use Semrush’s AdClarity tool to gain these insights. The tool allows you to track your competitors’ ad performance metrics on social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and X (formerly Twitter).

Real-World Competitor Analysis Example

OK, you now know what information you need to uncover during your competitor analysis and how to conduct one. To make it even clearer, we’re going to walk you through a real-world example where we’ll carry out our own competitor analysis.

For this example, we’re going to identify a single competitor for “Backlinko.com”, and focus on them for the analysis.

As we already went into detail about how to identify your target customer, we’ll be skipping this step. We’ve already used the steps laid out above to determine that our target customer lives in the US, is aged between 18 to 34, and is interested in SEO but isn’t necessarily an SEO professional.

Step 1: Identify Your Competitor

Using Semrush’s Organic Research tool, we can pull up a list of the main competitors (we’ll be focusing on organic competitors in this example).

In the list above, you can see that Backlinko has 7.3K keywords in common with “wordstream.com” and 13% “Competition Level”. By quickly scanning the site, we can also see that we create similar types of content and target the same audience.

This makes “wordstream.com” a great choice for our competitor analysis.

Step 2: Content Analysis

During the next phase of competitor analysis, we’re going to dig into WordStream’s content strategy.

First, identify the types of content they publish. The easiest way to do this is to simply have a look at the WordStream site and make a note of all the different content formats.

You can also analyze WordStream’s meta titles to get an understanding of the content they create. For this, we’re going to use Screaming Frog SEO Spider.

This is a tool that crawls domains and gives you valuable info about them. The free version allows you to crawl up to 500 URLs, which is perfect for smaller websites.

By analyzing these meta titles, you can start to build a picture of the types of content WordStream is creating. We can see titles include phrases like “How to” and “25 ways”, which indicates WordStream is creating how-to guides and listicles.

When analyzing your competitor’s content strategy, you should identify how frequently they publish content. To do this, type site:your competitor’s domain into Google, click “Tools”, and click “Anytime”.

Next, choose a date range from the dropdown menu. We went with “Past month”.

This will give you an idea of the amount of content your competitor publishes a month.

Next, you should take a look at the pages driving the most traffic to your competitor’s site. To do this, you can use the “Organic Pages” report in Semrush’s Organic Research tool.

There are two things you can learn from this report.

• These insights will provide content ideas. Identify the topics most relevant to your site and start creating content for them.
• If you already have content covering these topics but the pages aren’t getting a lot of traffic, you need to optimize them to start drawing in higher levels of traffic.

Next, you need to assess the quality of the content your competitor is producing. You need to look at the depth of the content and its relevance. Is the information well researched and does the content match search intent?

Next, evaluate the levels of E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness) your competitor demonstrates within their content.

For example, do they demonstrate experience by including hands-on videos within their how-to guides?

Or do they communicate their expertise by including info about the authors of their articles?

Here’s a look at an article on Wordstream.

Step 3: Backlink Analysis

Next, we’re going to analyze WordStream’s backlink profile. There are many different elements of this we could analyze, but we’re going to focus on four main things during this competitor analysis:

• Number of backlinks: The total number of backlinks pointing to WordStream’s site.
• Quality of backlinks: The number of high-authority referring domains linking to WordStream.
• Top-linked pages: The number of pages that have the most backlinks pointing to them. This indicates the quality and popularity of their content.

Using Semrush’s Backlink Analytics tool, we can see that WordStream has a total of 10.6M backlinks and 87K referring domains.

Now, let’s check out how many of those links are coming from high authority referring domains.

To do this, click on the number under “Referring Domains”.

You’ll only want to pay attention to the domains with the highest Authority Score (AS), so click “AS” at the top-left of the table to view the list in descending order. You can also view the number of backlinks your competitor receives from each domain.

Underneath the domain name, Semrush tells us what category the site falls into. By looking at this table, we can determine the diversity of sources for WordStream’s backlink profile, too.

Next, we want to analyze the pages receiving the most backlinks. Just click on the “Indexed Pages” to get the report:

If your site has pages covering the same topics as your competitors, you should compare the backlinks you’ve received with those of your competitor’s pages. This comparison provides insights into whether you’re outperforming them or falling short in terms of backlink performance.

If your site lacks pages covering these topics, prioritize the most relevant topics and create superior content.

Then, identify the referring domains linking to your competitor’s pages, and proactively reach out to the webmasters of these domains and ask for a link.

Step 4: Technical SEO Analysis

There are a huge number of technical SEO elements you can analyze during a competitor analysis. we’re going to focus on site performance, and analyze Wordstream’s Core Web Vitals, page load speeds, and check if their site is mobile-friendly.

Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals are a set of metrics that measure a site’s performance in terms of providing a positive UX. The Core Web Vitals metrics are:

• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Measures how visually stable a page is by analyzing how much the content of the page shifts around as it loads.
• First Input Delay (FID): Measures the time it takes between a user first interacting with a page and the browser starting to process this interaction. FID will be replaced by a new metric called Interaction to Next Paint (INP) in March 2024.
• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Measures how long it takes for the largest content element on a page to become visible to the user.

All of these metrics are important for providing a good UX, and they’re also included in Google’s ranking factors , which is why it’s worth analyzing them.

The quickest way to do this is by using Google’s Page Speed Insights .

First, you’ll see your competitor’s Core Web Vitals for the mobile version of their page.

Click on the “Desktop” tab to see the metrics for the desktop version.

Analyzing your competitor’s Core Web Vitals is useful as it can serve as a benchmark for the performance of your site.

When you analyze several of your competitors, you can build a picture of the average performance levels for sites within your niche, and ensure that your site performs to this level or above it. This will result in a better UX and could improve your rankings.

Page Load Speeds

Next, we’re going to use Page Speed Insights again to check up on WordStream’s page load speeds. The metric to pay close attention to is the “Speed Index”. This shows how long it takes for the visual elements on the page to be fully rendered.

Ideally, you want this to be 2-3 seconds or lower. So, this page is pretty slow.

The key takeaway here is that by analyzing your competitor’s page speed, you can compare it to yours. This indicates whether you’re outperforming them or if improvements are needed.

It’s important to note that the “Speed Index” metric is not representative of the entire site, it only pertains to the specific URL you paste in for analysis.

Mobile-Friendliness

Now, we need to check whether WordStream’s site is mobile-friendly or not. As Google has retired its Mobile-Friendly Test, we’re going to use Bing’s Mobile Friendliness Test Tool instead.

You can see that Wordstream’s page is mobile-friendly.

The primary reason for conducting this analysis is to benchmark your site against your competitors. For instance, if the pages on your site aren’t mobile-friendly, it signifies that you are lagging behind competitors. In the realm of online marketing, sometimes a single factor can determine whether you have an advantage over your competitors or vice versa.

Step 5: Paid Media Analysis

In the final stage of this competitive analysis, we’re going to take a look at WordStream’s paid media strategy.

PPC Keyword Research

The first thing we want to do is gain some insights into WordStream’s PPC keywords using Semrush’s Advertising Research tool . The tool allows you to view metrics such as:

• Position changes
• Search volume

This analysis will reveal the keywords your competitor is excelling in and those where they are struggling. Take note of their success with certain keywords and the areas where they are not performing well.

If you and your competitor are targeting the same keywords, compare your ad performance to theirs. This will enable you to identify areas where you are outperforming them or falling short.

By analyzing the keywords in which your competitor is finding success, you can attempt to replicate it by analyzing their ad copy. On the other hand, by analyzing the keywords they are not performing well for, you can optimize your ad copy and outperform them.

Another effective way to improve your PPC strategy is to identify the paid keywords your competitor is targeting but you aren’t.

To do this, we’re going to use Semrush’s Keyword Gap tool .

Here, we get a list of paid keywords that WordStream is targeting but our site isn’t.

This analysis will give you insights into their PPC strategy and their target audience.

Additionally, analyzing the CPC for the keywords they are targeting provides valuable insights into their ad budget. This understanding will help you determine the budget required to compete effectively with them.

Competitive Analysis Templates and Tools to Guide Your Research Journey

As you can see from this real-world example, Semrush has many features that can aid you in conducting an in-depth competitor analysis, but you need somewhere to store all of the info you gather.

Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. This free spreadsheet template , courtesy of Semrush, allows you to store your competitor analysis data in one easily accessible place.

Analyzing your competitors is vital for gaining insights into their digital marketing strategies, so you can learn from their success and enhance your own.

It also highlights areas where your competitors are not performing well, presenting opportunities for you to capitalize on their shortcomings and outperform them.

But remember, the key is to start small. Don’t overwhelm yourself by analyzing a ton of competitors at once.

The objective should be to gain insights that you can act on immediately to improve your marketing efforts and stay ahead of the competition.

If you found this guide useful, then check out our in-depth guide on SEO Competitor Analysis.

What is a Competitive Analysis — and How Do You Conduct One?

Published: April 24, 2024

Every time I work with a new brand, my first order of business is to conduct a competitive analysis. 

A competitive analysis report helps me understand the brand’s position in the market, map competitors’ strengths/weaknesses, and discover growth opportunities. 

In this article, I’ll break down the exact steps I follow to conduct competitor analysis and identify ways to one-up top brands in the market. 

We’ll cover:

What is competitive analysis?

What is competitive market research, competitive analysis in marketing.

• How To Conduct Competitive Analysis in 5 Steps

How to Do a Competitive Analysis (the Extended Cut)

Competitive product analysis, competitive analysis example, competitive analysis templates.

• Competitive Analysis FAQs

Competitive analysis is the process of comparing your competitors against your brand to understand their core differentiators, strengths, and weaknesses. It’s an in-depth breakdown of each competitor’s market position, sales & marketing tactics, growth strategy, and other business-critical aspects to see what they’re doing right and find opportunities for your business.

Competitive analysis gives you a clearer picture of the market landscape to make informed decisions for your growth. 

That said, you have to remember that competitive analysis is an opportunity to learn from others. It isn’t:

• Copying successful competitors to the T.
• Trying to undercut others’ pricing.
• A one-and-done exercise.

Let’s look at how this exercise can help your business before breaking down my 5-step competitive analysis framework.

4 Reasons to Perform Competitive Analysis 

If you’re on the fence about investing time and effort in analyzing your competitors, know that it gives you a complete picture of the market and where you stand in it.

Here are four main reasons why I perform a competitive analysis exercise whenever working with a brand for the first time:

• Identify your differentiators. Think of competitor analysis as a chance to reflect on your own business and discover what sets you apart from the crowd. And if you’re only starting out, it helps you brainstorm the best opportunities to differentiate your business.
• Find competitors’ strengths. What are your competitors doing right to drive their growth? Analyzing the ins and outs of an industry leader will tell you what they did well to reach the top position in the market.
• Set benchmarks for success. A competitor analysis gives you a realistic idea of mapping your progress with success metrics. While every business has its own path to success, you can always look at a competitor’s trajectory to assess whether you’re on the right track.
• Get closer to your target audience. A good competitor analysis framework zooms in on your audience. It gives you a pulse of your customers by evaluating what they like, dislike, prefer, and complain about when reviewing competing brands.

The bottom line: Whether you’re starting a new business or revamping an existing one, a competitive analysis eliminates guesswork and gives you concrete information to build your business strategy.

10 Free Competitive Analysis Templates

Track and analyze your competitors with these ten free planning templates.

• SWOT Analysis
• Battle Cards
• Feature Comparison
• Strategic Overview

You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

Competitive market research is a vital exercise that goes beyond merely comparing products or services. It involves an in-depth analysis of the market metrics that distinguish your offerings from those of your competitors.

A thorough market research doesn't just highlight these differences but leverages them, laying a solid foundation for a sales and marketing strategy that truly differentiates your business in a bustling market.

In the next section, we’ll explore the nuts and bolts of conducting a detailed competitive analysis tailored to your brand.

10 Competitive Analysis Templates

Fill out the form to access the templates., essential aspects to cover in competitive analysis research .

Before we walk through our step-by-step process for conducting competitor analysis, let’s look at the main aspects to include for every competitor:

• Overview. A summary of the company — where it’s located, target market, and target audience.
• Primary offering. A breakdown of what they sell and how they compare against your brand.
• Pricing strategy. A comparison of their pricing for different products with your pricing.
• Positioning.  An analysis of their core messaging to see how they position themselves. Customer feedback: A curation of what customers have to say about the brand.

Now, it’s time to learn how to conduct a competitive analysis with an example to contextualize each step. 

Every brand can benefit from regular competitor analysis. By performing a competitor analysis, you'll be able to:

• Identify gaps in the market.
• Develop new products and services.
• Uncover market trends.
• Market and sell more effectively.

As you can see, learning any of these four components will lead your brand down the path of achievement.

Next, let's dive into some steps you can take to conduct a comprehensive competitive analysis.

How to Conduct Competitive Analysis in 5 Quick Steps

As a content marketer, I’ve performed a competitive analysis for several brands to improve their messaging, plan their marketing strategy, and explore new channels. Here are the five steps I follow to analyze competitors.

1. Identify and categorize all competitors.

The first step is a simple yet strategic one. You have to identify all possible competitors in your industry, even the lesser-known ones. The goal here is to be aware of all the players in the market instead of arbitrarily choosing to ignore a few.

As you find more and more competitors, categorize them into these buckets:

• Direct competitors. These brands offer the same product/service as you to the same target audience. People will often compare you to these brands when making a buying decision. For example, Arcade and Storylane are direct competitors in the demo automation category.
• Indirect competitors. These businesses solve the same problem but with a different solution. They present opportunities for you to expand your offering. For example, Scribe and Whatfix solve the problem of documentation + internal training, but in different ways.
• Legacy competitors. These are established companies operating in your industry for several years. They have a solid reputation in the market and are a trusted name among customers. For example, Ahrefs is a legacy competitor in the SEO industry.
• Emerging competitors. These are new players in the market with an innovative business model and unique value propositions that pose a threat to existing brands. For example, ChatGPT came in as a disruptor in the conversational AI space and outperformed several brands. 

Here’s a competitive matrix classifying brands in the community and housing space:

Testing It Out

To help you understand each step clearly, we’ll use the example of Trello and create a competitor analysis report using these steps.

Here’s a table of the main competitors for Trello:

able of the main competitors for Trello:

2. Determine each competitor’s market position.

Once you know all your competitors, start analyzing their position in the market. This step will help you understand where you currently stand in terms of market share and customer satisfaction. It’ll also reveal the big guns in your industry — the leading competitors to prioritize in your analysis report.

Plus, visualizing the market landscape will tell you what’s missing in the current state. You can find gaps and opportunities for your brand to thrive even in a saturated market.

To map competitors’ market positions, create a graph with two factors: market presence (Y-axis) and customer satisfaction (X-axis). Then, place competitors in each of these quadrants:

• Niche. These are brands with a low market share but rank high on customer satisfaction. They’re likely targeting a specific segment of the audience and doing it well.
• Contenders. These brands rank low on customer satisfaction but have a good market presence. They might be new entrants with a strong sales and marketing strategy.
• Leaders. These brands own a big market share and have highly satisfied customers. They’re the dominant players with a solid reputation among your audience.
• High performers. These are another category of new entrants scoring high on customer satisfaction but with a low market share. They’re a good alternative for people not looking to buy from big brands.

This visualization will tell you exactly how crowded the market is. But it’ll also highlight ways to gain momentum and compete with existing brands.

Here’s a market landscape grid by G2 documenting all of Trello’s competitors in the project management space. For a leading brand like Trello, the goal would be to look at top brands in two quadrants: “Leaders” and “High Performers.” 

Image Source

3. Extensively benchmark key competitors.

Step 2 will narrow down your focus from dozens of competitors to the few most important ones to target. Now, it’s time to examine each competitor thoroughly and prepare a benchmarking report.

Remember that this exercise isn’t meant to find shortcomings in every competitor. You have to objectively determine both the good and bad aspects of each brand.

Here are the core factors to consider when benchmarking competitors:

• Quality. Assess the quality of products/services for each competitor. You can compare product features to see what’s giving them an edge over you. You can also evaluate customer reviews to understand what users have to say about the quality of their offering.
• Price. Document the price points for every competitor to understand their pricing tactics. You can also interview their customers to find the value for money from users’ perspectives.
• Customer service. Check how they deliver support — through chat, phone, email, knowledge base, and more. You can also find customer ratings on different third-party platforms.
• Brand reputation. You should also compare each competitor’s reputation in the market to understand how people perceive the brand. Look out for anything critical people say about specific competitors.  
• Financial health. If possible, look for performance indicators to assess a brand's financial progress. You can find data on metrics like revenue growth and profit margins. 

This benchmarking exercise will involve a combination of primary and secondary research. Invest enough time in this step to ensure that your competitive analysis is completely airtight.

Check out this example of a competitor benchmarking report for workforce intelligence tools:

Here’s how I benchmarked Asana based on these criteria using the information I could find:

4. Deep dive into their marketing strategy.

While the first few steps will tell you what you can improve in your core product or service, you also need to find how competitors market their products.

You need to deep-dive into their marketing strategies to learn how they approach buyers. I analyze every marketing channel, then note my observations on how they speak to their audience and highlight their brand personality.

Here are a few key marketing channels to explore:

• Website. Analyze the website structure and copy to understand their positioning and brand voice.
• Email. Subscribe to emails to learn their cadence, copywriting style, content covered, and other aspects.
• Paid ads. Use tools like Ahrefs and Semrush to find if any competitor is running paid ads on search engines.
• Thought leadership. Follow a brand’s thought leadership efforts with content assets like podcasts, webinars, courses, and more.
• Digital PR. Explore whether a brand is investing in digital PR to build buzz around its business and analyze its strategy.
• Social media. See how actively brands use different social channels and what kind of content is working best for them.
• Partnerships. Analyze high-value partnerships to see if brands work closely with any companies and mutually benefit each other.

You can create a detailed document capturing every detail of a competitor’s marketing strategy. This will give you the right direction to plan your marketing efforts. 

5. Perform a SWOT analysis.

The final step in a competitive analysis exercise is creating a SWOT analysis matrix for each company. This means you‘ll take note of your competitor’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Think of it as the final step to consolidate all your research and answer these questions:

• What is your competitor doing well?
• Where do they have an advantage over your brand?
• What is the weakest area for your competitor?
• Where does your brand have the advantage over your competitor?
• In what areas would you consider this competitor a threat?
• Are there opportunities in the market that your competitor has identified?

You can use tools like Miro to visualize this data. Once you visually present this data, you’ll get a clearer idea of where you can outgrow each competitor. 

Here’s a SWOT analysis matrix I created for Asana as a competitor of Trello:

• Determine who your competitors are.
• Determine what products your competitors offer.
• Research your competitors' sales tactics and results.
• Take a look at your competitors' pricing, as well as any perks they offer.
• Ensure you're meeting competitive shipping costs.
• Analyze how your competitors market their products.
• Take note of your competition's content strategy.
• Learn what technology stack your competitors use.
• Analyze the level of engagement on your competitors' content.
• Observe how they promote marketing content.
• Look at their social media presence, strategies, and go-to platforms.
• Perform a SWOT Analysis to learn their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

To run a complete and effective competitive analysis, use these ten templates, which range in purpose from sales to marketing to product strategy.

Featured Resource: 10 Competitive Analysis Templates

1. Assess your current product pricing.

The first step in any product analysis is to assess current pricing.

Nintendo offers three models of its Switch console: The smaller lite version is priced at $199, the standard version is $299, and the new OLED version is $349.

Sony, meanwhile, offers two versions of its PlayStation 5 console: The standard edition costs $499, and the digital version, which doesn’t include a disc drive, is $399.

2. Compare key features.

Next is a comparison of key features. In the case of our console example, this means comparing features like processing power, memory, and hard drive space.

3. Pinpoint differentiators.

With basic features compared, it’s time to dive deeper with differentiators. While a glance at the chart above seems to indicate that the PS5 is outperforming its competition, this data only tells part of the story.

Here’s why: The big selling point of the standard and OLED Switch models is that they can be played as either handheld consoles or docked with a base station connected to a TV. What’s more, this “switching” happens seamlessly, allowing players to play whenever, wherever.

The Playstation offering, meanwhile, has leaned into market-exclusive games that are only available on its system to help differentiate them from their competitors.

4. Identify market gaps.

The last step in a competitive product analysis is looking for gaps in the market that could help your company get ahead.

When it comes to the console market, one potential opportunity gaining traction is the delivery of games via cloud-based services rather than physical hardware.

Companies like Nvidia and Google have already made inroads in this space, and if they can overcome issues with bandwidth and latency, it could change the market at scale.

How do you stack up against the competition? Where are you similar, and what sets you apart? This is the goal of competitive analysis.

By understanding where your brand and competitors overlap and diverge, you’re better positioned to make strategic decisions that can help grow your brand.

Of course, it’s one thing to understand the benefits of competitive analysis, and it’s another to actually carry out an analysis that yields actionable results. Don’t worry — we’ve got you covered with a quick example.

Sony vs. Nintendo: Not all fun and games.

Let’s take a look at popular gaming system companies Sony and Nintendo.

Sony’s newest offering — the Playstation 5 — recently hit the market but has been plagued by supply shortages.

Nintendo’s Switch console, meanwhile, has been around for several years but remains a consistent seller, especially among teens and children.

This scenario is familiar for many companies on both sides of the coin; some have introduced new products designed to compete with established market leaders, while others are looking to ensure that reliable sales don’t fall.

Using some of the steps listed above, here’s a quick competitive analysis example.

In our example, it’s Sony vs Nintendo, but it’s also worth considering Microsoft’s Xbox, which occupies the same general market vertical.

This is critical for effective analysis; even if you’re focused on specific competitors and how they compare, it’s worth considering other similar market offerings.

PlayStation offers two PS5 versions, digital and standard, at different price points, while Nintendo offers three versions of its console.

Both companies also sell peripherals — for example, Sony sells virtual reality (VR) add-ons, while Nintendo sells gaming peripherals such as steering wheels, tennis rackets, and differing controller configurations.

When it comes to sales tactics and marketing, Sony and Nintendo have very different approaches.

In part thanks to the recent semiconductor shortage, Sony has driven up demand via scarcity — very low volumes of PS5 consoles remain available. Nintendo, meanwhile, has adopted a broader approach by targeting families as its primary customer base.

This effort is bolstered by the Switch Lite product line, which is smaller and less expensive, making it a popular choice for children.

The numbers tell the tale : Through September 2021, Nintendo sold 14.3 million consoles, while Sony sold 7.8 million.

Sony has the higher price point: Their standard PS5 sells for $499, while Nintendo’s most expensive offering comes in at $349. Both offer robust digital marketplaces and the ability to easily download new games or services.

Here, the key differentiators are flexibility and fidelity. The Switch is flexible — users can dock it with their television and play it like a standard console or pick it up and take it anywhere as a handheld gaming system.

The PS5, meanwhile, has superior graphics hardware and processing power for gamers who want the highest-fidelity experience.

5. Analyze how your competitors market their products.

If you compare the marketing efforts of Nintendo and Sony, the difference is immediately apparent: Sony’s ads feature realistic in-game footage and speak to the exclusive nature of their game titles.

The company has managed to secure deals with several high-profile game developers for exclusive access to new and existing IPs.

Nintendo, meanwhile, uses brightly lit ads showing happy families playing together or children using their smaller Switches while traveling.

6. Analyze the level of engagement on your competitor's content.

Engagement helps drive sales and encourage repeat purchases.

While there are several ways to measure engagement, social media is one of the most straightforward: In general, more followers equates to more engagement and greater market impact.

When it comes to our example, Sony enjoys a significant lead over Nintendo: While the official Playstation Facebook page has 38 million followers, Nintendo has just 5 million.

Competitive analysis is complex, especially when you’re assessing multiple companies and products simultaneously.

To help streamline the process, we’ve created 10 free templates that make it possible to see how you stack up against the competition — and what you can do to increase market share.

Let’s break down our SWOT analysis template. Here’s what it looks like:

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A Guide to Competitive Analysis: It’s Not Just about Competitors

By Joe Weller | April 16, 2018 (updated February 13, 2024)

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If you were running a cross-country marathon, wouldn’t you want to know something of the terrain and expected weather conditions before you began? The same principle of preparation applies when starting and continuing a business. It’s not enough to focus on your own production and financial goals: You need to understand what’s happening around you, how others create goods or services, the economic forecast, changes in rules and regulations, and more. In other words, you need to conduct a competitive analysis. The thought of searching for and digesting the required information may seem overwhelming, but we make it easy.

In this article, we explain how to focus your analysis by first deciding what questions you want answered. Learn how to find current and potential competitors and how many of them you need to review. Then, we cover the specific aspects of your competitors that you need to consider as well as where to find more information about them. Marketing experts weigh in on how to maintain focus during analysis. We also offer free, downloadable competitive analysis templates to start you on your own information gathering and analysis.

What Is Competitor Analysis?

Competitor analysis (CA) is a process of identifying competitors and gauging their business and marketing strategies to understand both their strengths and weaknesses and those of your own business. Competitive analysis provides a higher-level perspective of the entire marketing landscape and competitive intelligence.

“Competitive analysis is the process of analyzing all collected information to derive some insight for reducing risk and making better decisions,” explains competitive intelligence expert and author Babette Bensoussan .

“It is about your broader competitive environment,” she says. “I always remind my clients that competitors make up only one element of a business’s competitive environment. Other elements include government, technology, buyers, and suppliers, to name a few that impact how well you can compete.”

What Is the Purpose of a Competitive Analysis?

Researching your competitive landscape is essential to business growth and survival, and helps you offer better products or services to customers. You should gain an understanding of how customers view your company, what you’re doing right, and what you’re doing wrong. Therefore, competitive analysis forms a crucial part of marketing plans to help you understand what differentiates your product or service. Particularly when applying for funding, competitive analysis provides valuable insight into business plans. However, competitive analysis offers much more:

• Branding possibilities
• Insight into how competitors design products and messages
• SEO possibilities
• CRO (conversion rate optimization)
• GTM strategies
• User experience (UX) advantages of your and others’ products and websites
• Gaps in the market
• New products and services to develop
• Market trends

According to a Conductor survey , 60 percent of marketers don’t feel proficient in competitive analysis. Many don’t practice it on a regular basis. Knowledge derived from these exercises is critical, and you need to assess competition regularly. Nevertheless, marketing departments often skip competitive analysis, which leaves them with a fragmentary understanding of the landscape and competitors. Being proactive can help you anticipate and prepare for competitor developments and provide you with the agility to take advantage of changes.

According to Bensoussan, “In today’s world of constant change and information overload (whether the information be real or fake), it is critical for any business person to understand the competitive landscape and the forces that impact the profitability and viability of a business.”

What Should Be Included in a Competitive Analysis?

In most cases, a competitive analysis contains a few basic sections, which may vary depending on the size and form of your company and the focus of your analysis:

• A list of your main competitors
• An overview or what you know about them
• Who their target customers are
• A list of their products or services
• What media they use to market their goods and services
• Their current and past marketing strategies
• Their value proposition and effectiveness
• An analysis of all of the strengths and weaknesses of your competition (and your own company)
• An overview of the strategies being used by the competition to achieve their objectives
• An overview of the market and projections for the future

How to Prepare for a Competitive Analysis

One of the crucial prerequisites for a successful competitive analysis is an open mind. Check your beliefs at the door — what you think about your company, your customers, or your competitors isn’t necessarily true. That can be a good thing.

In addition, it is vital to understand why you are conducting an analysis. What are your goals for the business? What are your goals for this analysis? “Always, always be very clear as to what the decision you will be making is all about,” advises Bensoussan. “If you are not clear about your decision, then you will never know if you have good competitive analysis or just some more information.”

She offers these two questions as examples of how different the impact of each answer can be: “Tell me who’s who in the [manufacturing] of zippers?” versus “Should I enter the zipper-manufacturing industry, and can I achieve a return on investment of, say, 15 percent in three years?”

“Which question would help you the most in delivering good quality CA? Which outcome do you think would provide the most value?” Bensoussan asks.

Companies often enlist the help of outside consulting firms dedicated to conducting competitive intelligence research. Guidance on competitive intelligence support, such as database information, software platforms for market program tracking, and more is available through the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals .

Competitor Analysis Frameworks

Over the decades, marketing gurus have developed or advocated several competitive analysis frameworks. Here are six well-known methods to consider.

• Porter’s Five Forces Model: First published in 1979 by Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter, the Five Forces model provides a view beyond competitors to factors in your industry landscape that may threaten or strengthen your position. The Five Forces include the following:

• Potential New Entrants: Consider how much money, time, and effort it would take for a company to displace you.
• Competitive Rivalry: Determine who your competitors are, who the closest competitors are, and their products, prices, and quality. Fewer rivals mean more opportunity for your unique qualities to shine; many rivals mean more competitors to steal your customers and potentially better deals to lead customers elsewhere.
• Suppliers: The more potential suppliers you have, the better for you. Consider how having fewer suppliers might impact your operation.
• Buyers: If you have many customers, you have the power. Otherwise, buyers can negotiate more advantageous deals elsewhere or find sources other than yours. Consider how you would treat that situation.
• Substitutes (or Complements): A competitor could create a product or model that replaces yours. On the other hand, a new product or service could also complement yours, which would create a symbiotic sales situation. Complements are sometimes considered the sixth force in the model.

Porter stressed the importance of not confusing these constants with temporary disruptions, such as technological innovations or government interventions in industry.

You can download the Five Forces model below to answer your own questions about an industry or business proposition.

Download Five Forces Model

Excel  |  PDF

Industry Life Cycle Overview: Both industries and individual products have life cycles, which reflect the state of sales, whether robust or diminishing. Understand which stage of the life cycle your industry, company, or product is in to help target your marketing efforts. Product life cycles contain such stages as these:

• Introduction: At the introductory stage, a new industry or product is not well known or proven. It is usually marketed to a few early adopters. Because resources focus on product development, testing, and refinement, few or no profits accrue. Marketing focuses on explaining the product, creating awareness around it, and establishing a niche.
• Growth: As awareness grows and the industry or product becomes established, profits may also grow. However, in the growth stage, rival products may also appear. Although improvements require funds, production efficiencies may also develop. Some products have only a short growth phase. For example, a particular fashion may last for only one season. Other products experience a long or extended growth phase, such as software products, which continue their usefulness through upgrades. During the growth stage, marketing centers on differentiating the product, so it stands out from competing products.
• Maturity: In the maturity stage of a product or industry, sales may expand, but at a less accelerated rate. Fewer competitors may dominate the market and may attempt to differentiate on quality or increase sales by touting low costs.
• Saturation: You reach the saturation stage when every customer who could buy the product already owns the product. A lack of innovation or competition from a superior product could result in saturation.
• Decline/Termination: Industries and products decline for several reasons. Innovations may overtake them and render them obsolete. Businesses and product lines may fail to upgrade and innovate. At the decline or termination stage, companies may fold, continue in a smaller market, or merge with larger, successful businesses.  

Strategic Groups Analysis: You perform strategic groups analysis on companies within a business sector, such as automobiles, to see how they vie for their share of consumer expenditure. By dividing companies into strategic groups, you can understand how businesses of different sizes behave in the marketing landscape. Businesses within groups tend to be competitors, whereas businesses in other groups are related but not competitive. For example, running shoes and high-end women’s dress shoes are in different groups. Analyzing companies in this way can also reveal other significant information: direct competitors and their basis for competition; if and how a company can move to another group; and strategic problems and opportunities. Strategic groups are usually plotted on an x-y axis, where two highly relevant criteria form the axes. Here are some examples of criteria:

• Brand ownership
• Company size
• Capacity utilization
• Cost structure
• Geographical market segmentation
• Marketing activities
• Ownership structure
• Sales channels
• Product diversity
• Product quality
• R&D capability
• Vertical and horizontal integration

First, plot the companies where you think they belong on the graph. Now, with all companies plotted, create groupings. If you want, you can use larger or smaller circles to indicate market share. To gain greater insight, perform a Five Forces analysis on them, or consider the mobility barriers that prevent companies from shifting to other strategic groups.  

SWOT: Perhaps one of the most commonly addressed marketing analyses is SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats). In essence, SWOT represents what competitors do and do not do well. As you look at SWOT for competitors, also consider it for your own products and services.

• Strengths: What do they do better than you? What are they known for? Is their pricing, inventory, convenience, and level of service better than yours?
• Weaknesses: How do they fall short of your company’s standards? Can you leverage their shortcomings to improve your standing with customers?
• Opportunities: What in your competitors’ landscape can you exploit to your advantage?
• Threats: What in your competitors’ landscape threatens their business position?

Note that strengths and weaknesses focus on internal characteristics, while opportunities and threats concern external forces. SWOT can be performed separately, but it may provide a useful frame for studying a business’ products and services, marketing, and sales.  

Competitive Array: Competitive arrays, also known as competitive matrices , provide a way to quantify characteristics that may be unquantifiable. For example, if company A sells 500 widgets and company B sells 250, it’s clear which company sold more. But how do you quantify the attractiveness of online and print media or innovation? Creating the competitive array can be an individual or group exercise. To start, list your competitors across the top of your writing surface. In the left-most column, list important characteristics. Next, create a column for weighting the importance of each characteristic so that the sum of the characteristics totals one. The higher the weighting, the more important the characteristic (you may have a few characteristics with the same weight). Next, grade each competitor for each characteristic on a scale, such as from one to 10. Now, multiply the grade by the corresponding weight.  

Competitive Value Proposition Analysis: The characteristics of a value proposition are exclusivity, clarity, and credibility. This method concerns how unique the product or service is, how clearly the product message is conveyed, and whether the message is credibly supported by evidence, such as testimonials, statistics, or test results. Because customers remember only a few key advantages of your product from your media promotion, the main value proposition must be correct and clear and mesh with your actual competitive advantage. To figure out how to differentiate your company, you must determine how competitors differentiate themselves from each other. POPs (points of parity), PODs (points of difference), and POIs (points of irrelevance) help you dissect value propositions.

• Points of Parity (POPs): These are elements of customer benefit that both you and your competitors offer.
• Points of Difference (PODs): These are features of customer benefit that you offer but competitors don’t. Keep in mind that not every point of difference is significant to consumers.
• Points of Irrelevance (POIs): These are characteristics that customers don’t care about.

Your unique value proposition (differentiating characteristics) doesn’t need to appeal to every customer. Don’t make your value proposition too general. You can’t be all things to all customers, just as you can’t do what your competitors are doing.

Otherwise, there's no differentiation. You end up being like teenagers, everybody in the same jeans," says Sonia Schechter, Chief Marketing Officer of Marxent , a provider of virtual reality and augmented reality apps for furniture retailers. Therefore, target your message.

Discover your points of parity by using our POP template.

Download Points of Parity Template

Excel  |  Word  |  PDF

Who Are Your Competitors?

As a first step in competitive analysis, marketing guides typically suggest determining who your competitors are. Competitors can be divided into groups of direct competitors, indirect competitors, and future competitors.

• Direct Competitor: These are companies who sell a direct substitute for your product, operate in the same geographic area, and/or offer the same goods (such as groceries) to the same market. Ask who your customers would buy from if you weren’t in business.
• Indirect Competitor: These are companies in the same geographic area whose products occupy the same general, but not specific, category as your own (e.g., a general bakery versus a designer cake store). Indirect competition satisfies the customer’s need for a particular product or service, although that product or service may be different from yours. Similar products operating in different market segments do not represent direct competitors. For example, a high-end seafood restaurant doesn’t compete with a burger place.
• Future Competitor: Future competitors may currently be indirect competitors who change and expand solutions. In the bakery example, the general bakery could hire a high-end designer to compete with the specialty cake maker. Or, the designer cake store could branch out into breads and muffins.

It may be difficult at first to envision what types of organizations you need to analyze and whether you need to analyze all competitors.To identify competitors, ask yourself who your customers would buy from if your product did not exist. Perhaps even more important, consider who your customers think your competitors are. How many competitors you review depends: If only a few companies do what you do, analyze everyone. If you have many competitors, use Pareto analysis to focus on the critical 20 percent. Larger businesses may analyze the top 10, whereas a small business can focus on three. Disregard online competitors unless you plan to sell online.

‌ Download Pareto Chart Template - Excel

How to Find Current Competitors

Some competitors may seem obvious, but sleuthing can reveal challengers you weren’t aware of.

• Google search for a product or service similar to yours. Consider the companies in paid ads and organic returns.
• Try SEMrush to check which domains are using which keywords.
• Ask your current customers who they would choose besides you.
• Check Alexa, Google Trends, or SimilarWeb for general estimates on the popularity of domain names and keywords.
• Review Dun & Bradstreet for new incorporations.
• Consult Derwent for new patent information.
• See who has booths at trade shows.

How to Find Potential Competitors

While you consider the current playing field, you must also keep your eye on what’s coming around the corner. These are the future new entrants in your niche. Consider who might start a  business that would compete with yours. New competitors can be found in related markets, related technologies, or related products. Companies from other geographical areas with similar products may begin to sell in your area, and former employees or managers can start their own companies based on the themes of your business. In addition, consider the following conditions that may encourage competition:

• A company gains competitive advantage.
• Buyers are dissatisfied with suppliers.
• An unmet demand for goods exists.
• Few major barriers to entry exist.
• The industry offers high profit margins.
• The industry offers unrealized growth potential.
• Competitive rivalry is not intense.

It’s Not All about Competitors ( Competitive Doesn’t Always Mean Competitor )

Depending on what your product or service is and where it is in its life cycle, a competitor focus may not be optimal. For example, for emerging technologies, no true competitor may exist.

“Looking too closely at competition is a massive distraction,” Schechter notes. “If you’re selling a commodity or established product, such as a drugstore, which sells the same thing anywhere, you’d be looking at specific issues, like price, location, and assortment.”

Schecter says marketers themselves often don’t understand that what the competition is doing is not important: “Successful marketing is how you define yourself in the landscape. People don’t care about a feature-by-feature description, or even one feature. They buy the package. They like you. You’re different or you’re solving a particular problem. A new business must define and lay out the landscape for the customer.”

To succeed, understanding what customers want is key. “Marketers have nuanced detail, and customers don’t care about that detail,” Schechter continues. “But, you have to listen to their questions and engage in dialogue with them to gain real understanding,” she points out. She cites Apple’s promotion of the camera in the first iPhone as an example of marketers understanding what — out of thousands of potential functions — was important to consumers. “B2B marketing is the same. It’s about listening to customers, figuring out how they’re shopping, and trying to see through their eyes,” Schechter emphasizes.

“Obsessing over competition can get you off track. If you’re listening to customers, you’ll build the right product. But you don’t need to build your dreams on other people’s ideas,” she concludes.

Where to Find Information for a Competitive Analysis

Remember that every department of your business is a potential source for information, including the following areas:

• Sales: Questions for potential, current, and lost customers
• Research and Development: New patents
• Purchasing: Suppliers
• Marketing: Customers and other consumers

Once you’ve determined who your competitors are and what you want to learn about them and from them, you need to go information hunting:

• Visit offices or brick-and-mortar stores. What do they look like? Who’s there?
• Get financial and organizational information from public filings and from sources like Hoovers, Manta, and Dun & Bradstreet.
• Monitor PR Newswire for new developments and changes.
• Some marketing platforms may actually include information about your competitors.

Interviews and Research Surveys

Interviewing competitor customers and consumers who know little about your business is important to overcoming your preconceptions about the business landscape. You probably have specific questions in mind, but here are the basics:

• Why are you shopping for a solution?
• What were the main reasons you chose the company you did?
• Ranked from most important to least important, what are your five shopping criteria?

Media Scanning or Competitor Content Analysis

You can learn much about competitor products and messaging by scanning media. Media doesn’t just include online content (web pages, tweets, and Facebook posts) — it also includes such traditional marketing collateral as white papers, case studies, and data sheets. Moreover, consider reference materials, such as LexisNexis and Hoovers, and trade, business, or news publications for ads, news stories, and press releases. Media and content can reveal not only new products and new branding, but also new positioning and segmentation strategies, pricing, target markets, and promotion strategy.

What Information to Search for in Competitive Analysis

The approach to analysis depends on the questions requiring answers. To organize your analysis, divide it into three aspects: product or services, marketing, and sales. Each aspect contains its own questions and means of analysis.

Download Competitive Analysis Checklist

Products and Services

Your understanding of products and services must be thorough. Investigate the complete product or service line. Try to understand who your competitors’ customers are and what they need. Look at their pricing strategy and see if it differs for online and brick-and-mortar stores. Also, consider how they differentiate from their competitors.

Tracking competitor sales processes can involve more legwork. For public companies, SEC filings provide some financial information about growth or contraction, but, for private companies, information is less readily available. Information about sales channels may be easy to find through a look in the phone book or online. You can also gather details about the sale process by asking current customers why they chose your product over others. You can also acquire valuable information by following up even after you lose a sale in order to understand the customer’s thinking. What do their partner resales programs look like? What are their revenues versus sales volume?

Marketing Efforts in Competitive Analysis

What does the competitor marketing plan entail? How do competitors invest marketing efforts? What can you do even better? A variety of approaches can help you define competitor marketing strategy.

When you identify marketing assets, take a reasonable sample of items — no need to review all of them. Just remember to keep samples consistent among competitors. Also, when reviewing items, consider the quality of the collateral. It should appear professional, with no typos, and in the formal, professional, idiomatic voice. In addition, a solid library of resources, such as consistent blog posts, whitepapers, case studies, videos, webinars, and podcasts may point you to themes and leads you should follow.

E-Marketing Strategy Competitive Analysis

Few businesses today can function without a web presence that helps generate traffic and inquiries or purchases. Some statistics say that prospective buyers visit a website as many as nine times before purchasing and, depending on the product, visit multiple sites before purchasing. Forrester research after 2010 suggests potential customers visit three sites on average before buying. The more sites visited, the more money the customer intends to spend.

Therefore, understanding how your site compares to your nearest competitors can be helpful. To drive eyes to websites, online purveyors use search engine optimization (SEO) to employ the keywords most likely to garner high search ratings in Google (and other search engines). Marketers frequently also use SEM (search engine marketing) to promote a business or product by increasing visits to a website through paid keywords. Look at how saturated their content is with keywords and where they use keywords, whether in H1 and H2 tags, page titles, content, or links. Also, look at the difficulty level of their keywords.

Consider the usability of the steps in the sales funnel as well as the navigation. What do the  landing pages say? Also, look at backlinks (i.e., links from other pages to your competitor’s page) to your web page. See how many backlinks exist — and from which pages — to understand if this is something you can improve for your website.

Structure is important, but quality content also matters. Online marketing collateral appears as blogs, white papers, ebooks, case studies or user stories, videos, webinars, podcasts, and more. But words and pictures themselves are not valuable if they don’t offer any unique information or concise approaches to existing knowledge. Check whether content is shared and which topics attract attention, or, conversely, what that content and those topics are linked to. What do readers comment on, if they do comment? Who else is sharing what your competitors are publishing?

Social Media

Certain social media platforms appeal to some audiences more than others. The channels a company favors can reveal clues to the demographics of their target market. Make note of what social media buttons they include on pages and where on the page they include them.

Software Tools for Understanding Online Competitors

Besides monitoring content, you can monitor the mechanics of competitor websites to glean more data about how marketing strategy and product offerings are changing. Software helps to automate these investigations for you. Following are some of the many products available:

• BuiltWith : See what platform was used to build a page.
• Ghostery : Find trackers on a website.
• SEMrush : Discover company rankings, organic keywords, AdWords, and analyses of backlinks.
• Versionista : Track web page and website changes, SEO changes, and more.
• Visualping : Monitor webpage updates.
• SpyFu : Find competitor keywords and AdWords, including AdWord and keyword variations and history.
• iSpionage : Track PPC and other keywords in competitor campaigns.
• SimilarWeb : Compare competitor websites to your own.
• Heatmaps: Use large amounts of data to provide a visual representation of how users interact with a website. Heatmaps can indicate where users click and look and for how long. Levels of intensity of activity are usually displayed through colors.
• Session Recording Tools: Record user browsing sessions. Session recording tools can yield a wealth of rich data, but raise some privacy concerns.
• Tag Management Systems: Advanced e-marketing implementations use tags to aid analysis and reporting. Tags are snippets of code that are usually added to the <head> tags of a web page.

Web Page User Testing for UX in Competitive Analysis

It’s essential to understand how consumers approach your website, especially for web-based products and marketing. Allow customers to test your site, and even view it yourself from a customer’s perspective, to help eliminate unnecessary steps and streamline your sales funnel. Doing so can also help to illuminate the opportunities for upsells and cross-sells.

Limiting the analysis to two or three competitors offers a manageable amount of insight into usability, which helps you avoid reviewer overload and confusion. For impartial results, don’t reveal to test participants which website is yours.

Ask test participants to enter words in Google or list the words and phrases they would use to find a certain product or service. Not only does this yield potentially fruitful keywords, it also indicates whether your site appears in search returns.

To get a sense of each participant’s impression, have them look at each website for five seconds and answer the following questions:

• What three words would you use to describe the site?
• What is it about? What products or services are offered and for whom?
• How does this website make you feel?

To understand their process, give participants a task to perform on each website. Ask them to answer the following questions:

• What was the worst thing about your visit to this website?
• What aspects of the experience could be improved?
• What did you like about the website?
• What other comments do you have?
• Which website did you like best and why?

How Much Data Do You Need in a Competitive Analysis?

It may seem overwhelming to sit down and search out your competitors’ business situations. That’s why setting a clear intention before you begin an analysis is so important. In addition, Babette Bensoussan advises that you don’t need to analyze everything:

“Over the years, I have learned that once you have 70 percent of the information required for your chosen analytical technique, you can proceed to the analysis,” she explains. “You never really need all the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle to tell you what the picture is. This same philosophy applies to analysis. More information may not yield better insights nor improve predictive accuracy.”

How Do I Write a Competitor Analysis Report?

The format of your analysis depends on individual choice and the audience. You may also choose to use one kind of format while you work through the analysis, and another when you present findings.

Take a sheet of paper. In the left-most column, write the names of your closest competitors. Across the top of the page, list the main attributes of each product, such as target market, price, size, method of distribution, extent of customer service, prospective buyers, and so on. Then, make a check or a note for each attribute the competitor fulfils. An additional column can contain information about service or product availability, the website, a toll-free phone number, and other general information.

A competitor profile helps you make a detailed record about each competitor, and also allows you to capture snapshots of a business over time. Consider listing some of the following information:

• Location of offices and factories
• Key personalities, history, and trends
• Ownership, organizational structure, and corporate governance
• Number of employees and skill sets
• Management and management style
• Compensation, benefits, and retention rates
• Plant capacity, utilization rate, age of plant, capital investment
• Product mix per plant and shipping logistics
• Products and services
• Depth of product line
• New products developed and success rate
• Research and development details
• Brands and brand loyalty and awareness
• Patents and licenses
• Quality control conformance
• Cash flow and liquidity
• Profit growth profile
• Method of growth (organic or acquisitive)
• Objectives, mission statement, growth plans, acquisitions
• Marketing strategies
• Segments served, market shares, customer base, growth rate, and customer loyalty
• Promotional mix, promotional budgets, advertising themes, ad agency used, online promotional strategy
• Distribution channels (direct and indirect) and exclusivity agreements

Here is a step-by-step process for writing a competitor analysis report:

• Write down your competitors.
• Write what you know about them already.
• Discover who their target customers are.
• Discover their pricing methods.
• Investigate their marketing strategy.
• Figure out their competitive advantage.

Download our competitive analysis landscape template to get ideas for gathering information and reporting analysis results.

Download Competitive Analysis Landscape Template

Excel  |  Word  |  PDF  | Smartsheet

Competitive Analysis for Small Businesses

Small business can be competitive. Beyond meeting financial targets, you need to understand the competitive landscape (short of allowing it to distract you) and then target a niche market.  Many of the same analyses that apply to large businesses also apply to small businesses. However, if this is your first business, or if you don’t have a marketing background, you may want to pay attention to a few aspects.

First, it is helpful to acknowledge how much or how little you know about your competitors by sketching a profile of your top two or three competitors. Next, try to learn all you can about your competition.

You can use the following template to perform a competitive analysis for your small business.

Download Small Business Competitive Analysis Template

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What Is a Competitive Analysis in a Business Plan?

Competitive analysis should play a key role in the preparation of a business plan. Particularly if you seek outside funding, your knowledge of the competitive landscape will show your understanding of your business and the market forces at play.

When starting a business, consider all the analysis questions described above, but pay particular attention to issues of growth and opportunity. Consider addressing the following circumstances:

• Whether current competitors target a specific niche or offer products to the mass market
• If, how, and why competitors are growing or reducing business
• How your company will be stronger than competitors and better able to exploit changes in the market landscape
• What you will offer customers that no one else does (your competitive advantage)

In the business plan, describe the competitive landscape as it relates to direct and indirect competitors and opportunities and risks, emphasizing your competitive advantage. This competitive analysis can form the basis for your first marketing plan.

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What Is Competitive Analysis and How to Do It Effectively

• 15 min read

Rebecca Strehlow, Copywriter at Crunchbase

Whether you’re an entrepreneur, market researcher or marketing enthusiast, knowing your competitors inside and out is a crucial part of the job. 

Competitive analysis is more than a quick online search; instead, it’s a systematic process that allows you to gain valuable insights into your competitive environment. By examining the strengths, weaknesses, strategies and market positions of rival companies, you can make informed decisions that help you come out on top.

Let’s dive into what competitor analysis is and how to do it, as well as the tools and templates you need to thrive in the modern market.

What is competitive analysis? 

Competitor analysis, often referred to as competitive analysis, is the systematic process of gathering and evaluating information about your competitors to gain a deep understanding of the competitive landscape in your industry. It involves delving into your competitors’ business models, marketing practices, product offerings, target audiences and much more.

This practice helps you keep a pulse on competing products in the market and make well-informed decisions for your business. It also enables you to find opportunities for growth, anticipate trends and proactively respond to potential threats.

Benefits of competitor analysis

The advantages of doing competitive analysis can have a meaningful impact on your bottom line. Here are just some of its key benefits: 

• Informed decision-making: By understanding your competitors’ strategies, you can make well-informed decisions about your own business. This includes choices related to product development, marketing and pricing.
• Identification of market opportunities: Competitor analysis can reveal gaps in the market or areas where your competitors may be underperforming. These insights can help you identify new opportunities for growth and expansion.
• Risk mitigation: By staying aware of your competitors’ activities, you can better anticipate potential threats and challenges. This proactive approach enables you to develop strategies to effectively mitigate risks and overcome threats before they happen.
• Benchmarking: Comparing your business to competitors helps establish benchmarks for performance. This allows you to measure your progress and identify areas where you excel or need improvement.
• Product and service enhancement: Analyzing competitors’ products and services can inspire improvements in your offerings, leading to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.
• Improved marketing strategy: Understanding how your competitors market their products or services can help you refine your own marketing strategy to better reach your target audience.
• Adaptation to market shifts: The business environment is constantly evolving. Competitor analysis helps you stay agile and adapt to changes in customer preferences, technology and market trends.
• Competitive advantage: Armed with insights from competitive analysis, you can develop strategies to gain a competitive advantage in your industry.
• Long-term sustainability : Consistent competitor analysis allows your business to plan for the long term by identifying potential challenges and opportunities that may arise in the future.

Together, these benefits can empower you to thrive in the face of competition and establish a strong presence in the market. 

How to do competitor analysis 

To harness these advantages, you’ll need to learn how to perform competitive analysis effectively. The process is quite structured and involves several key steps to ensure that you gather relevant data and gain actionable insights.

• Identify your competitors
• Define your objectives
• Collect data
• Look for the 4 Ps
• Conduct a SWOT analysis

1. Identify your competitors

To pinpoint your competitors, create a list of organizations that compete with you both directly and indirectly in the marketplace. 

Direct competitors are organizations that offer similar products or services to the same target audience. In other words, they’re the businesses that potential customers could choose instead of your company.

To identify your direct competition, start by examining businesses that operate in the same industry or niche. Ask yourself questions such as:

• Who offers products or services that are nearly identical to ours?
• Who targets the same customer segments and geographical areas as we do?
• Who are our primary rivals when it comes to market share and sales?

Once you have identified these direct competitors, you can create a list or spreadsheet to keep track of their names, key characteristics and any available data that will be useful in your analysis.

Next, you’ll want to identify your indirect competitors. Indirect competitors serve a similar target market as your company, but may offer different products or services. They are indirect rivals because they can influence consumer choices, even though they are not in direct competition with your business. To identify indirect competitors:

• Look for businesses that serve the same customer needs, even if their products or services are not identical to yours.
• Consider how customers might choose between your offerings and those of indirect competitors.
• Examine businesses that could potentially expand into your market.

Including both direct and indirect competitors in your analysis provides a more holistic view of your competitive landscape and helps you anticipate shifts in consumer preferences or market dynamics.

Remember that the business environment is constantly changing, and new competitors may emerge over time. Regularly updating your list of competitors is essential to ensure that your competitor analysis stays relevant.

2. Define your objectives

The next step in competitive analysis is to clearly outline your objectives. This will ensure that you’re gathering relevant information that directly supports your business strategy. Here’s how to define your objectives effectively:

• Clarify your goals: Begin by outlining your overarching goals. Common objectives may include improving market share, optimizing pricing strategies, enhancing product development or refining marketing tactics.
• Identify your information needs: Use your goals to determine exactly what kind of information you’ll need. Ask yourself: What kind of data or insights will be most helpful in achieving your stated objectives? For example, if you want to improve product development, you may need data on your competitors’ product features, customer reviews and pricing.
• Develop KPIs: Write down the key performance indicators that are most relevant to your objectives. KPIs are quantifiable metrics that will help you measure your progress. For instance, if your goal is to enhance marketing strategies, relevant KPIs might include website traffic, conversion rates or social media engagement.
• Determine a time frame: Understanding the time frame of this project will influence the depth and scope of your analysis. Are you conducting a one-time competitor analysis, or is this an ongoing process? 
• Align with business strategy: Ensure that the above aligns with your overall business strategy. Your competitor analysis should directly contribute to the success and growth of your business.
• Adapt when necessary: Be open to adjusting your objectives as needed. The business landscape can change rapidly, and you may need to adapt in response to new opportunities or challenges.

When you define your objectives, you give yourself a clear roadmap for your research. This helps you focus on gathering the most pertinent data and ensures that your analysis directly benefits your business. Whether you’re looking to outperform competitors in a particular area or gain a broader understanding of the competitive landscape, well-defined objectives are the cornerstone of a successful analysis. 

3. Collect data

Effective data collection is another fundamental step in the competitor analysis process, as the quality and relevance of the data you gather directly influence the insights you gain. Begin by identifying data sources that will give you the information you’re looking for. These sources can include both online and offline channels.

Online sources are often the richest and most accessible. Common data sources for competitive monitoring include:

• Crunchbase : Crunchbase is a valuable resource for gathering data about companies, including your competitors. It offers details about a company’s firmographics, funding, leadership team, investor relationships and key metrics. This data helps you understand your competitors’ financial health, investment history, growth strategies and potential areas of expansion. 
• Company websites: Competitor websites are valuable sources of information about your competitors’ products, services, pricing and promotional strategies. They provide direct insights into how your competitors present themselves to customers and the market. 
• Social media: Social media platforms such as Facebook , X (formerly Twitter) , Instagram and LinkedIn offer a glimpse into your competitors’ marketing and promotional efforts. Analyze their posts, content engagement and follower interactions to understand their messaging and customer engagement strategies. You can also use social media to monitor comments, reviews and conversations to gauge customer sentiment and identify your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses.
• Customer review sites: Review sites like G2 , Capterra or dedicated industry-specific review platforms also offer candid customer feedback. Analyze the reviews to understand customer satisfaction levels, identify pain points and discover areas where your competitors excel or underperform. Some reviews may also mention pricing, which can help you determine how customers perceive the value of your competitors’ products or services.
• Market reports: Market research companies like Nielsen , Gartner , Forrester and Euromonitor International often produce comprehensive market reports across various industries. They often include data on market size, growth projections and emerging opportunities, helping you assess the overall landscape your competitors operate in. Market reports may also include company profiles, giving you information about their market share, strategies and financial performance. 
• Industry publications: Business publications and journals often publish in-depth articles and analysis about trends, innovations and market players. They can provide valuable information about your competitors’ strategies, market positioning and noteworthy developments. Crunchbase News , which offers data-driven reporting on private markets, is a great place to start.
• Government databases: Government databases can provide access to financial and regulatory information about companies, including your competitors. This data may include financial statements, business registrations and industry-specific regulatory compliance, helping you understand their financial health and legal compliance.

As you gather this data, make sure you have an organized place to put it. A good idea is to create a competitor matrix, also referred to as a competitor grid, which is a spreadsheet for organizing your research. List out your competitors on one axis of the grid (either the horizontal or vertical axis is fine). On the other axis, list the data points you’re looking to collect, such as company location, market position, price and branding.

A couple additional notes: pay attention to both your data accuracy as well as any ethical considerations. Confirm that the information you gather is up to date and reliable, as outdated or inaccurate data can lead to erroneous conclusions. On top of that, be mindful of legal requirements. Respect privacy rights, copyright and intellectual property laws when gathering data.

4. Look for the 4 Ps

Next, you’ll want to analyze your competitors’ marketing strategies. A systematic way to approach this is by looking at the 4 Ps of marketing, also known as the marketing mix. These are product, price, place and promotion, which you can break down into the following questions:

• What are the key features and attributes of our competitors’ products?
• How does the quality of our competitors’ products compare to ours?
• Are there any unique or innovative features in our competitors’ products that we should be aware of?
• What is the product life cycle of our competitors’ offerings, and how does that impact their market presence?
• How do our competitors brand and position their products in the market?
• Do our competitors offer a wide product range, or do they focus on a niche market?
• What are the customer reviews and feedback on our competitors’ products, and what strengths or weaknesses do they highlight?
• How do our competitors handle product updates, customer support and warranties?
• What are the pricing strategies employed by our competitors (e.g., premium, value, competitive or penetration pricing)?
• How do our competitors price their products or services compared to our pricing?
• What types of discounts, promotions or special offers do our competitors use, and how frequently do they change them?
• Do our competitors offer bundle pricing or product packages?
• How do our competitors handle pricing changes and adjustments based on market conditions or demand?
• What is the perceived value of our competitors’ products or services in relation to their pricing?
• Are there any loyalty programs or customer rewards related to pricing that our competitors offer?
• How do competitors communicate their pricing to customers, and does it align with their branding and positioning strategies?

Place (distribution)

• What distribution channels do our competitors use to reach their customers (e.g., direct sales, retailers, e-commerce or wholesalers)?
• How extensive is the geographic reach of our competitors’ distribution networks?
• Are there specific partnerships or collaborations that our competitors have with distributors or retailers?
• What is the availability and accessibility of our competitors’ products or services, both online and offline?
• How do our competitors handle inventory management, logistics and fulfillment to ensure timely delivery to customers?
• Do our competitors have a physical presence, and how does it impact their brand and customer engagement?
• What is the overall customer experience with the distribution and availability of our competitors’ offerings?
• Are there any supply chain or distribution challenges that our competitors face?
• What are the core elements of our competitors’ marketing and advertising strategies (e.g., online ads, content marketing, social media, traditional media)?
• How do our competitors position their brand, and what is their unique selling proposition?
• What messaging and tone do our competitors use in their advertising and marketing campaigns?
• How do our competitors engage with customers on social media, and how do they manage their online reputation?
• What content marketing tactics do our competitors employ to educate and engage their audience?
• Do our competitors use influencer marketing or partnerships with other brands or organizations?
• What customer feedback, testimonials or case studies do our competitors use in their promotional materials?
• How do our competitors measure the success and impact of their promotional efforts, and what adjustments do they make based on these metrics?

These questions will force you to think hard about your competitors and the ways they position their product or service in the market. Be sure to make a note of these data points so you have an organized spreadsheet with your competitive analysis. 

5. Conduct a SWOT analysis

Now, conduct a SWOT analysis using all the data and insights you’ve gathered. A SWOT analysis is a competitive analysis framework for systematically evaluating your competitors’ strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Create a table or slide deck with the following notes about each competitor:

• Strengths: Consider areas like product quality, brand reputation, financial stability and unique capabilities. What does your competitor excel at? What are their key assets and resources? What advantages do they have over your business and other competitors?
• Weaknesses: Analyze your competitors’ weaknesses, which are internal factors that put them at a disadvantage. Evaluate areas where they struggle, such as customer service issues, product limitations or operational inefficiencies. Where does your competitor fall short? What are their operational or financial weaknesses? Are there aspects of their products or services that receive consistent criticism?
• Opportunities: Consider the external factors and opportunities that your competitors can capitalize on. These may include market trends, emerging customer needs, technological advancements or changes in regulations. Here, you’ll want to ask yourself the following questions: What market opportunities are your competitors pursuing? Are there emerging trends that they are well-positioned to benefit from? How do they adapt to changing market conditions and customer demands?
• Threats: Evaluate the external factors and threats that pose risks to your competitors’ business. These could be increased competition, economic downturns, changing consumer preferences or regulatory challenges. What are the external threats that our competitors face? How do market or industry conditions pose risks to their operations? Are there competitive pressures that could erode their market share?

After identifying the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of your competitors, it’s time to analyze the findings. Look for connections and relationships between these factors. For example, how do strengths offset weaknesses, or how can opportunities be leveraged to mitigate threats? Consider how these factors impact your competitors’ overall competitive positioning.

Competitive analysis templates

Competitive analysis is a complex task, but you don’t have to start from scratch. These competitor analysis templates provide a structured framework for gathering and analyzing data about your competitors:

• Competitor research template
• Competitor matrix template
• Social media competitor analysis template
• SWOT analysis template

1. Competitor research template

This advanced search template is a helpful starting point for gathering data about competing companies. You can customize the template by adding multiple search filters, such as industry, geographic location and funding information, to pull up the companies that match your competitor profiles. The more you fine-tune your search, the more precise your list of competitors will be.

2. Competitor matrix template

A competitor matrix template , like this one from HubSpot , allows you to systematically compare key features, pricing and other attributes of your products or services with those of your competitors. By comparing these attributes side by side, you can better assess your biggest threats and identify areas where your business can excel.

3. Social media competitor analysis template

This social media competitor analysis template offers a structured framework for assessing and comparing your social media performance with that of your competitors. With sections for tracking key metrics, content strategies, audience engagement and more, this template simplifies the process of understanding how your social media efforts stack up against the competition. 

4. SWOT analysis template

This SWOT analysis template represents one of the most important types of competitive analysis templates. A template can simplify the SWOT analysis process and ensure that nothing falls through the cracks, helping you identify areas for improvement, capitalize on advantages and mitigate potential risks.

Competitive analysis examples

To understand how competitive analysis works in practice, let’s explore a few real-world examples that highlight its significance within different industries:

1. Apple vs. Samsung

Tech giants Apple and Samsung have long been rivals in the smartphone market. Both companies must scrutinize each other’s product launches, innovations and market share to stay competitive. Their competitive analysis involves a deep dive into one another’s product features, pricing strategies, branding and marketing tactics. 

2. Coca-Cola vs. Pepsi

Coca-Cola and PepsiCo have engaged in one of the most iconic and enduring business rivalries. Competitor analysis here includes assessing their advertising campaigns, product diversification, distribution networks and customer preferences. These two giants need to continuously monitor each other’s market positioning in order to win over consumers.

3. Amazon vs. Walmart

Amazon and Walmart are leaders in e-commerce and retail. They must perform ongoing competitive analysis to compare delivery speeds, pricing structures, customer experience and market expansion strategies. Both companies are committed to staying ahead by understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the other.

4. Airbnb vs. Booking.com

Another iconic competitor analysis example is within the online travel industry. Airbnb and Booking.com are key competitors that need to evaluate each other’s user reviews, property listings, pricing and website user experience. Both platforms continuously track each other’s offerings to enhance their competitive position.

5. Nike vs. Adidas

Nike and Adidas are major players in the athletic apparel industry. These companies closely follow each other’s strategies to dominate the market. Their competitive analysis includes examining product innovations, brand endorsements, athlete sponsorships and global market presence. 

Competitor analysis tools 

In order to conduct robust competitive analysis like the companies above, you’re going to need the right tools. These include everything from online databases to website monitoring platforms. Here are our top recommendations: 

1. Crunchbase

Crunchbase is a comprehensive business intelligence tool that provides best-in-class data about both public and private companies, including your competitors. You’ll get insights into funding, leadership teams, key metrics and investor relationships, allowing you to understand your competitors’ financial health, investment history and market focus. This information is vital for identifying potential threats in the market, as well as opportunities to differentiate yourself. Learn more about market research on Crunchbase .

2. Brandwatch

Brandwatch is a social listening and consumer intelligence platform that helps you monitor your competitors’ social media mentions, customer sentiment and brand reputation. This allows you to gauge public sentiment about your competitors and identify areas where you can strengthen your brand’s image and stand out in the market.

SEMrush is most commonly known as an SEO platform, but it’s also a useful competitive analysis tool. It helps you analyze your competitors’ digital marketing strategies, keywords, backlinks and advertising efforts. Ultimately, this gives you insights into your competitors’ online presence and helps you identify their strengths and weaknesses in the digital space. Note that you can view SEMrush web traffic data directly from Crunchbase .

4. SimilarWeb

SimilarWeb is a market intelligence platform that offers insights into website traffic, audience demographics and online performance. It allows you to benchmark your website’s performance against those of your competitors, discover their traffic sources and understand their online audiences.

IPqwery is a competitive analysis tool that offers insights into your competitors’ patent portfolios, technological innovations and intellectual property strategies. This allows you to assess innovation, identify potential partnerships, and evaluate the intellectual property landscape. IPqwery data is available with Crunchbase Data Boost .

Achieve sustainable growth with competitor analysis

Competitive analysis doesn’t only involve gathering information, but it’s also about turning insights into actions that drive your business forward. Competitor analysis is an important part of market research for startups and large companies alike, as it’s fundamental for long-term success. By carefully assessing your rivals and industry trends, you can adapt your strategies and stay ahead of the curve. 

• market research
• Originally published October 26, 2023, updated December 19, 2023

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Dec 18, 2023

How to Do a Competitive Analysis in Digital Marketing

• Digital Strategy
• Digital Marketing

Written by Clodagh O’Brien

Staying ahead of the competition is a highly effective way to grow your business. It involves knowing the ins and outs of your competitors to identify ways you can outperform them to engage and influence customers. 

A digital competitive analysis is a key part of your digital marketing strategy . It helps you understand the digital strategies of your competitors so you can leverage your strengths and minimize your weaknesses to build and grow. Plus, you don’t need expensive third parties to help you do it, everything can be done in-house if you know how. And with the ever-developing world of tools for AI in digital marketing , you can make the process even more efficient than before. 

So let’s look at how you can analyze a competitor so that you can use the USPs of your business to gain that all-important edge. In this blog, we will cover

• What is a Competitive Analysis in Digital Marketing
• Why you should do a Competitive Analysis
• What does a Competitive Analysis include
• The Different Types of Competitive Analysis

Competitor Analysis Tools

What is a competitive analysis in digital marketing.

Competitive analysis in digital marketing is a process that researches competitors to identify strengths and weaknesses. It examines the strategies companies use for marketing, pricing, product development, and distribution to gain insights.

It will help you to keep on top of trends in your sector and identify digital strategies that will drive brand awareness, customer engagement and, most importantly, revenue.

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Why you should do a competitive analysis in digital marketing.

What is the purpose of competitive analysis? Well, the scope of your competitive analysis can vary depending on what you want to discover. What you analyze can be as broad or as focused as you like. 

For example, you may want to focus on optimizing your website. For this, you would look at competitors’ websites to look at their content, UX, and lead generation strategies. What you learn can then help you to apply new CRO strategies. 

There are many benefits to conducting an analysis which include:

• Identify barriers and opportunities in a market
• Identify your value proposition and how it differs from competitors
• Highlight where competitors are not delivering or have weaknesses 
• Target the most effective digital strategies in your marketplace
• Identify new customers and territories
• Uncover market trends
• See the potential for a new product or service
• Establish a benchmark to measure your performance against

What does a Competitive Analysis include?

A competitive analysis in digital marketing means that you analyze the different platforms of each of your competitors and see how they contribute to growth. Ultimately it’s about benchmarking against your competitors. 

Determine competitor types

Not all competitors should be treated the same. Split them into categories based on their level of competitiveness. 

• Primary - These are your direct competitors that sell a similar product or service to your audience e.g. Asos and Boohoo.   
• Secondary - These companies offer a similar version of your product or service (low or high-end) to a different audience e.g. Target and Gucci.
• Tertiary - These brands are related to you but don’t compete with your product/service or audience e.g. Red Bull and Patagonia.

Segmenting your competitors like this will help you see how they relate to your business.

Profile your competitors' target customers

Understanding the audience of your competitors will tell you a lot about a business. It will help you to understand who they target and the digital channels they use effectively to do that. 

The best way to find out about their customers is to see who the brand is appealing to. You could find this out by looking at

• Their mission statement or ‘About Us’ section
• Social media messaging and interaction
• Blogs and free downloadable assets 
• Webinars or podcasts
• Customer reviews or user-generated content

By reviewing the goals, content, and interactions of your competitors, you’ll learn more about their audience. This will help you develop tactics that differentiate you from the pack. 

Apply the 4 Ps of marketing

The full marketing mix is crucial to any digital marketing strategy. It will help you to analyze your competitor’s marketing tactics to gain insights into your activities.

• Product - What are they selling? What do customers like about their product or service? What makes it a successful product or service? What features or product(s) does their product have over mine?
• Price - What price model do they use? Is it a one-off payment or subscription-based? What makes the price point attractive? 
• Promotion - How do they promote their brand and offerings? What digital channels are they most active in promoting? What tactics do they use to promote? 
• Place - Where do they sell? Are they active online or do they have brick-and-mortar stores or branches?   

You can gain a lot of information from this process, so you should focus on the areas you want to know about. Include any quantitative data to refer back to along with qualitative.

Find best practices

Your top competitors are successful for a reason, they have tested and tweaked their strategies across digital platforms over time. This means they have developed best practices you can learn from.   

For example, maybe your competitors see success by marketing on TikTok . Through competitive analytics, you can see the presence of your competitors and if a majority are using it, maybe it’s something you should consider. 

Or you can see that a number of your competitors have climbed up the rankings on SERPs like Google or Bing. This probably means they are using SEO to optimize for searches using popular keywords and phrases. 

Use a framework for analysis

What method you use to analyze your competitors depends on what you want to know. 

For example, you can use SWOT analysis once you gather all the data if you want to discover new opportunities or threats in the marketplace. This will also help you identify your strengths and weaknesses. 

Another framework to consider is Porter’s Five Forces. This looks at the market forces in an industry such as the threat of new entrants and substitutes, bargaining power of substitutes, competitive rivalry, and bargaining power of suppliers and new buyers. 

You can also use a growth share matrix developed by Boston Consulting Group that looks at your products or services against the competitive landscape. This is split into four areas (Star, Question mark, Cash cow and Pet) based on growth and market share to drive analysis. This video below uses Coca-Cola as an example to demonstrate the framework. 

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Organize your data for analysis

Group any data you collect on your competitors in an organized way. This will help you go back and refer to any data points to gain insights for future digital activities.  

This is particularly important when gathering data from many competitors as it will help you to check areas of similarity to identify opportunities. Criteria to analyze include price range, social media activities, lead generation tactics, content marketing initiatives, first-time visitor offers, etc.

What are the Types of Competitive Analysis?

There are several types of competitive analysis depending on your company and needs. Each one will focus on a niche area that you are looking to analyze and improve to drive targets and KPIs such as leads, revenue and brand awareness. 

These are the main types that focus on key digital marketing channels, but you can also analyze email (check out our ultimate guide to email marketing for guidance) or the UI and UX of a website.  

Social media competitor analysis

Social media is a powerful tool for any business in driving customer engagement and leads (especially since social commerce became more widespread). It’s important to know where your audience is so you can target them effectively across social platforms. 

Conducting a social media competitor analysis will help you see what social networks your competitors are on and the number of followers and demographics they target. 

You should also look at post frequency, when they post, type of content posted e.g. videos, blog links, etc. Also, look at their content themes or buckets so you can see the topics they discuss. 

Interactions with customers through comments can also be revealing and engagement rates can help you see what posts resonate more with their audience.

PPC competitor analysis

A PPC competitor analysis involves finding out the keywords or phrases your competitors are bidding on. The ultimate goal is to create PPC campaigns that drive results and are better than your competition! 

You can do this by studying the types of ads they are using and in which networks or platforms. Are they paying for expensive keywords or conversion-focused phrases? Or is their PPC focused on brand awareness? 

You can also review their landing pages to analyze messaging and CTAs. Are they creating custom landing pages for every campaign or relying on a few money pages? Knowing this will give you an idea of your competitor’s aims and budget.

Check out our case study of Airbnb’s digital strategy where we saw how they balanced their paid search needs with those of the brand.

SEO competitor analysis

This type of analysis helps you determine what SEO keywords your competitors rank for. This will help you understand their area of focus and figure out how to compete in the battle for keywords. 

A few techniques you can use are to:

• Compare website performance e.g. page speeds 
• Find keyword gaps
• Compare backlinks and where they get them 
• Look at strategies on how they rank for more keywords – e.g. do they have a blog or resources section?
• Examine top pages and traffic

There are many competitor analysis tools out there to help you. This will make your data collection simpler, more accurate, and more efficient. A few examples of the best tools specific to key areas are:

SEO Analysis

• Ahrefs - check top performing keywords of any website and get estimated keyword traffic
• SE Ranking - shows paid and organic search performance and keywords

PPC analysis

• SEMRush - can perform a site audit, show competitor’s keywords and a backlink analysis 
• Spyfu - researches your competitors’ most profitable keywords in PPC campaigns  
• Google Ads Auctions Insight - allows you to compare your performance with other companies that are bidding in the same auctions 

Keyword analysis

• Similarweb - provides information on web and channel traffic, uncovers keyword trends, and reveals engagement metrics  

Social media analysis

• Sprout Social - you can measure follower growth, engagement, hashtag trends, conversions, and paid content performance
• Facebook ad library - allows you to search for ads that are run across Facebook, Instagram, and other Meta products 

AI tools for competitor research

• Brandwatch - a tool that monitors the online presence of rival brands 
• Sprout Social - an AI tool that helps you understand how competing brands are performing on social media
• Other resources you can consider include Google Trends, TikTok Creative Center, and Meta Ads Library
• ChatGPT - use everyone's favorite AI co-pilot to crunch the data and insights you've gained from the other tools

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• How to create a competitive analysis (w ...

How to create a competitive analysis (with examples)

Competitive analysis involves identifying your direct and indirect competitors using research to reveal their strengths and weaknesses in relation to your own. In this guide, we’ll outline how to do a competitive analysis and explain how you can use this marketing strategy to improve your business.

Whether you’re running a business or playing in a football game, understanding your competition is crucial for success. While you may not be scoring touchdowns in the office, your goal is to score business deals with clients or win customers with your products. The method of preparation for athletes and business owners is similar—once you understand your strengths and weaknesses versus your competitors’, you can level up. 

What is a competitive analysis?

Competitive analysis involves identifying your direct and indirect competitors using research to reveal their strengths and weaknesses in relation to your own. 

Direct competitors market the same product to the same audience as you, while indirect competitors market the same product to a different audience. After identifying your competitors, you can use the information you gather to see where you stand in the market landscape. 

What to include in a competitive analysis

The purpose of this type of analysis is to get a competitive advantage in the market and improve your business strategy. Without a competitive analysis, it’s difficult to know what others are doing to win clients or customers in your target market. A competitive analysis report may include:

A description of your company’s target market

Details about your product or service versus the competitors’

Current and projected market share, sales, and revenues

Pricing comparison

Marketing and social media strategy analysis

Differences in customer ratings

You’ll compare each detail of your product or service versus the competition to assess strategy efficacy. By comparing success metrics across companies, you can make data-driven decisions.

How to do a competitive analysis

Follow these five steps to create your competitive analysis report and get a broad view of where you fit in the market. This process can help you analyze a handful of competitors at one time and better approach your target customers.

1. Create a competitor overview

In step one, select between five and 10 competitors to compare against your company. The competitors you choose should have similar product or service offerings and a similar business model to you. You should also choose a mix of both direct and indirect competitors so you can see how new markets might affect your company. Choosing both startup and seasoned competitors will further diversify your analysis.

Tip: To find competitors in your industry, use Google or Amazon to search for your product or service. The top results that emerge are likely your competitors. If you’re a startup or you serve a niche market, you may need to dive deeper into the rankings to find your direct competitors.

2. Conduct market research

Once you know the competitors you want to analyze, you’ll begin in-depth market research. This will be a mixture of primary and secondary research. Primary research comes directly from customers or the product itself, while secondary research is information that’s already compiled. Then, keep track of the data you collect in a user research template .

Primary market research may include: 

Purchasing competitors’ products or services

Interviewing customers

Conducting online surveys of customers 

Holding in-person focus groups

Secondary market research may include:

Examining competitors’ websites

Assessing the current economic situation

Identifying technological developments 

Reading company records

Tip: Search engine analysis tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush can help you examine competitors’ websites and obtain crucial SEO information such as the keywords they’re targeting, the number of backlinks they have, and the overall health of their website. 

3. Compare product features

The next step in your analysis involves a comparison of your product to your competitors’ products. This comparison should break down the products feature by feature. While every product has its own unique features, most products will likely include:

Service offered

Age of audience served

Number of features

Style and design

Ease of use

Type and number of warranties

Customer support offered

Product quality

Tip: If your features table gets too long, abbreviate this step by listing the features you believe are of most importance to your analysis. Important features may include cost, product benefits, and ease of use.

4. Compare product marketing

The next step in your analysis will look similar to the one before, except you’ll compare the marketing efforts of your competitors instead of the product features. Unlike the product features matrix you created, you’ll need to go deeper to unveil each company’s marketing plan . 

Areas you’ll want to analyze include:

Social media

Website copy

Press releases

Product copy

As you analyze the above, ask questions to dig deeper into each company’s marketing strategies. The questions you should ask will vary by industry, but may include:

What story are they trying to tell?

What value do they bring to their customers?

What’s their company mission?

What’s their brand voice?

Tip: You can identify your competitors’ target demographic in this step by referencing their customer base, either from their website or from testimonials. This information can help you build customer personas. When you can picture who your competitor actively targets, you can better understand their marketing tactics. 

5. Use a SWOT analysis

Competitive intelligence will make up a significant part of your competitor analysis framework, but once you’ve gathered your information, you can turn the focus back to your company. A SWOT analysis helps you identify your company’s strengths and weaknesses. It also helps turn weaknesses into opportunities and assess threats you face based on your competition.

During a SWOT analysis, ask yourself:

What do we do well?

What could we improve?

Are there market gaps in our services?

What new market trends are on the horizon?

Tip: Your research from the previous steps in the competitive analysis will help you answer these questions and fill in your SWOT analysis. You can visually present your findings in a SWOT matrix, which is a four-box chart divided by category.

6. Identify your place in the market landscape

The last step in your competitive analysis is to understand where you stand in the market landscape. To do this, you’ll create a graph with an X and Y axis. The two axes should represent the most important factors for being competitive in your market. 

For example, the X-axis may represent customer satisfaction, while the Y-axis may represent presence in the market. You’ll then plot each competitor on the graph according to their (x,y) coordinates. You’ll also plot your company on this chart, which will give you an idea of where you stand in relation to your competitors. 

This graph is included for informational purposes and does not represent Asana’s market landscape or any specific industry’s market landscape. 

Tip: In this example, you’ll see three companies that have a greater market presence and greater customer satisfaction than yours, while two companies have a similar market presence but higher customer satisfaction. This data should jumpstart the problem-solving process because you now know which competitors are the biggest threats and you can see where you fall short. 

Competitive analysis example

Imagine you work at a marketing startup that provides SEO for dentists, which is a niche industry and only has a few competitors. You decide to conduct a market analysis for your business. To do so, you would:

Step 1: Use Google to compile a list of your competitors. 

Steps 2, 3, and 4: Use your competitors’ websites, as well as SEO analysis tools like Ahrefs, to deep-dive into the service offerings and marketing strategies of each company. 

Step 5: Focusing back on your own company, you conduct a SWOT analysis to assess your own strategic goals and get a visual of your strengths and weaknesses. 

Step 6: Finally, you create a graph of the market landscape and conclude that there are two companies beating your company in customer satisfaction and market presence. 

After compiling this information into a table like the one below, you consider a unique strategy. To beat out your competitors, you can use localization. Instead of marketing to dentists nationwide like your competitors are doing, you decide to focus your marketing strategy on one region, state, or city. Once you’ve become the known SEO company for dentists in that city, you’ll branch out. 

You won’t know what conclusions you can draw from your competitive analysis until you do the work and see the results. Whether you decide on a new pricing strategy, a way to level up your marketing, or a revamp of your product, understanding your competition can provide significant insight.

Drawbacks of competitive analysis

There are some drawbacks to competitive analysis you should consider before moving forward with your report. While these drawbacks are minor, understanding them can make you an even better manager or business owner. 

Don’t forget to take action

You don’t just want to gather the information from your competitive analysis—you also want to take action on that information. The data itself will only show you where you fit into the market landscape. The key to competitive analysis is using it to problem solve and improve your company’s strategic plan .

Be wary of confirmation bias

Confirmation bias means interpreting information based on the beliefs you already hold. This is bad because it can cause you to hold on to false beliefs. To avoid bias, you should rely on all the data available to back up your decisions. In the example above, the business owner may believe they’re the best in the SEO dental market at social media. Because of this belief, when they do market research for social media, they may only collect enough information to confirm their own bias—even if their competitors are statistically better at social media. However, if they were to rely on all the data available, they could eliminate this bias.

Update your analysis regularly

A competitive analysis report represents a snapshot of the market landscape as it currently stands. This report can help you gain enough information to make changes to your company, but you shouldn’t refer to the document again unless you update the information regularly. Market trends are always changing, and although it’s tedious to update your report, doing so will ensure you get accurate insight into your competitors at all times. 

Boost your marketing strategy with competitive analysis

Learning your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses will make you a better marketer. If you don’t know the competition you’re up against, you can’t beat them. Using competitive analysis can boost your marketing strategy and allow you to capture your target audience faster.

Competitive analysis must lead to action, which means following up on your findings with clear business goals and a strong business plan. Once you do your competitive analysis, you can use the templates below to put your plan into action.

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7 Competitor Analysis Frameworks To Give You an Edge

A competitor analysis framework is a must for anyone looking to survive and conquer their industry.

Competitive analysis frameworks differ from other types of market analysis in that they focus on understanding a company’s competitors in order to gain a better understanding of the competitive landscape. With a deeper understanding of your top competitors across different metrics, you’ll be armed with the strategic insights needed to develop a much more impactful digital research strategy , whether it aims to grow your audience, launch into a new market , or increase market share .

So, without further ado, let’s dive into the seven types of competitor analysis frameworks for industry analysis . Including what they are, and how to use them to survive and thrive in your market.

What is a competitor analysis framework?

A competitor analysis framework, market analysis framework or competitor analysis model, as they’re sometimes known, is a structure that business professionals use to research and evaluate their competitors. In other words, the art of knowing your enemy. Competitive frameworks gather vital information, such as a competitor’s business strategies, products, offerings, marketing efforts, sales, etc., into an organized visual model. And though competitive analysis might seem daunting, with the right frameworks, you’ll know exactly what information you need to gather — with zero guesswork.

Benefits of using a competitor analysis framework

Plugging your competitive analysis into a good framework can strengthen your business’ research strategy. If you’ve had trouble achieving any of these, competitor analysis models could be the answer:

• Identify market shifts: Frameworks can make it easy to discover market shifts that you might’ve missed if your competitor analysis wasn’t previously visually organized well.
• Locate gaps you didn’t even know you had: Examining businesses within a specific industry can reveal gaps in your own strategy compared to your industry at large, which may spark inspiration for a new business idea, product, or offerings.
• Target the most effective marketing strategies: By pinpointing the marketing channels that worked well for your competitors, you can create a data-backed roadmap to march confidently forward with your own marketing plans.
• Avoid mistakes: In the same vein, you can avoid costly mistakes by looking at what didn’t work for your competitors.
• Create measurable (and achievable) goals : A good competitive analysis framework helps businesses build specific performance goals based on their competitors’ data.
• Make data more digestible : Frameworks help display dull or confusing information in a visually appealing and organized manner, making it much easier to share your findings with the rest of the team and investors or C-level executives.

Seven types of competitive analysis frameworks

1. SWOT Analysis

Talk about an old faithful. The SWOT analysis has been around for decades, and for good reason. It organizes a company’s information into the following categories:

• Strengths: internal factors that provide benefits, like a highly trained staff.
• Weaknesses: internal factors that cause disadvantages, like a small marketing budget.
• Opportunities: external factors that pose opportunities, like high demand for a product offering.
• Threats: external factors that pose challenges, like an increase in the cost of supplies.

We recommend using SWOT analysis best practices to hone in on the strengths or weaknesses of your competitors. This is especially helpful for identifying potential competitive advantages your business may have over others, as well as finding areas for improvement.

SWOT Analysis Templates

Visualize how you stack up against the competition.

2. Porter’s Five Forces

Porter’s Five Forces is a formidable framework created by Michael Porter, a professor at Harvard Business School. This competitive framework examines the five key market forces in any given industry, including:

• Intensity of competitive rivalry
• Threat of new entrants
• Bargaining power of new buyers
• Bargaining power of suppliers
• Threat of substitutes

Porter’s Five Forces is especially useful for analyzing the competitive structure of an entire industry. This information will be helpful when shaping business strategies and creating targeted goals amid the expansive competitive landscape . However, you can also apply this framework to niche industries or specific market segments .

3. Strategic group analysis

A strategic group analysis does exactly what it says—it organizes competitors into groups based on the similarity of strategy.

There’s a wide range of ways you can group companies. Perhaps you’d like to group competitors by their marketing tactics , pricing strategies, or range of offerings. Don’t forget to place your own company into the analysis to get a better sense of who you’re most closely competing with and better understand the impact different strategies provide. For instance, if you discover that the top three most successful companies in your niche are all grouped into the same pricing strategy, it may be time to see if doing the same will benefit your own business.

4. Growth-share matrix

The growth-share matrix classifies your company’s products against the competitive landscape. This is an example of a competitor analysis that’s especially useful for big organizations with a large portfolio of products or offerings. A growth-share matrix is a chart divided into four quadrants to classify products or business units into:

• Stars : products with high growth and high market share . Invest more in these.
• Question marks : products (usually new ones) with high growth, but low market share. Decide whether to invest more (if convinced it will become a star) or give up on it.
• Cash cows : products with low growth but high market share that are usually used to fund investment in stars.
• Pets : products with low growth and low market share. Decide whether to reposition or give up on it.

Using this market analysis framework can help determine what’s worth giving priority to, what to reposition, and what to ditch.

Read More – How To Make The Most Of A Competitive Matrix

5. Perceptual mapping

Perceptual mapping, also known as positioning mapping, visualizes the perception of a company and its competitors on a plot graph. To use this competitive analysis framework, choose two factors to use as the basis for comparison, like perceived quality and price. Then, plot where your business and competitors fall on those two factors’ spectrum.

It’s great for obtaining a bird’s eye view of how customers perceive your company in relation to your competitors. Armed with that knowledge, your company can identify market trends and gaps and make adjustments to improve its existing positioning strategy. Smart and strong.

6. Business model canvas

This framework strips a business model to its bare bones, improving clarity and focusing on the most important factors. A business model canvas is a single analysis that’s divided up into nine elements:

• Customer segments: Who are the customers?
• Value propositions: Why do customers buy/use the proposition?
• Channels: How are propositions promoted, sold, and delivered?
• Customer relationships : How is the customer treated throughout their buyer journey?
• Revenue streams : How is revenue earned?
• Activities : What unique strategies does the business use to deliver its propositions?
• Resources : What unique strategic assets are required to compete?
• Partnerships: What can the business outsource so it can focus on its key activities?
• Cost structure: What are the major cost drivers and how are they linked to revenue?

7. Customer journey map

A customer journey map, also known as a user journey map, is a visual story of customers’ interactions with a brand.

First, all customer channels are mapped out—i.e., a company’s website, social channels, paid media, newsletters, email support, phone services, and face-to-face services (if the brand has brick-and-mortar locations). Customer journeys can then be mapped across these channels for each buyer persona . The customer experience at each touchpoint should be tacked on to the map, including key engagement metrics the customer hits. Below that, add how the brand responds to address the customers’ concerns. Finally, jot down what opportunities exist to improve the experience at each channel.

Utilizing customer journey maps can help gain insights into common customer pain points and how to improve them—not only within your own company, but for your competitors’ customers as well.

Pro Tip: Use Similarweb Consumer Journey Analytics to uncover competitor strategies and performance metrics through all stages of the conversion funnel.

How to use a competitive analysis framework?

Now let’s see this all in action. Below is a case study of a digital analysis using competitive insights to make faster and better business decisions. All of the data collected can be used to plug into any of the various competitive analysis framework templates we have covered so far.

Overview : Steve is a Category Analyst at a market-leading homeware and furniture retailer in the U.S. His company has several business lines across categories such as sofas, bedding, kitchenware, and outdoor furniture.

Steve’s company has one to two competitors that are particularly strong in the sofa category. An email from senior management says that sofa sales at the company have been on a downward trend, and now Steve has to pinpoint why this is the case and present a recovery plan. No pressure, right?

Analyze the competitor’s digital footprint

For Steve to truly understand his competitors, he needs to build a digital view of each company and break down assets such as subdomains to spotlight any trends that indicate a competitor’s digital performance. For example, he can identify the unique number of visitors the competitor generates over time to compare online reach relative to his own company’s performance.

Steve can then use this data to see where the company is growing or losing traction. In the example below, the percent change column indicates one of the domains has had a 42% downward growth in the last 12 months.

This information gives Steve a quick and easy snapshot of his competitor’s online performance and its strengths and weaknesses.

2: Map out your market landscape

Once Steve has built a company view of his direct competitors, he can also analyze their websites to benchmark traffic and engagement data against his company’s overall performance. This will enable him to instantly identify who the market leader is and where he needs to be to improve his digital strategy .

Try plotting out graph-specific metrics such as monthly visits vs. percent month-over-month change to know exactly how he’s performing.

3: Analyze search interest

Next, Steve can assess the market demand for the sofa category and use search interests as a way to identify any emerging competitors that are gaining traffic share for related search terms within the United States. In this example, he can measure the search volume of traffic, see the overall search trend over time, and analyze which competitor is winning digital market share.

With these insights, Steve understands the overall trend for the market and can spot any specific competitors that he may not have considered before during his competitive analysis.

4: Understand traffic and engagement metrics

To learn how your competitor’s traffic and engagement metrics have grown or declined over time, benchmark your growth to your competitors’ to reveal if they’re growing at a faster rate and that’s why they’re potentially winning market share.

In this example, Steve can see the year-over-year traffic growth for his competitive set and can see that one of his competitors grew its traffic by 80%, which is 5% more than his company’s website. Aha! At this point, Steve can use Similarweb to deep dive into the digital marketing strategy of his competitors to understand what’s causing that spike. He could discover that his competitor has an optimized paid search strategy, a marketing channel he previously overlooked.

5: Continuously track the competitive landscape

The last step for Steve is to continuously track and monitor the competitive landscape to identify potential threats and emerging players. This way, he can quickly react to any changes in his competitive landscape and investigate the root cause using smart insights.

Start crafting your competitor analysis framework

Now that you know how to use all seven competitor analysis frameworks, it’s time to decide which ones work best for you, and then get to it!

Try Similarweb for free and find out for yourself how our research tools can strengthen your competitive analysis.

Similarweb Competitor Analysis Frameworks

Whether your B2B or B2C, get started with our free and easy to use template

What is a competitor analysis framework? A competitive analysis framework is a model or tool marketing professionals can use to compare their business plan or marketing strategy with their competitors’.

How do competitive analysis frameworks differ from other types of market analysis?

Competitive analysis frameworks differ from other types of market analysis in that they focus on understanding a company’s competitors in order to gain a better understanding of the competitive landscape.

Which tools are used in competitor analysis? Some of the tools used in competitor analysis include a customer journey map, growth-share matrix, and SWOT analysis.

What are the main components of a competitive analysis framework? The main components of a competitive analysis framework include researching competitors’ product offerings, pricing models, marketing strategies, and customer service approaches.

What are the benefits of using a competitive analysis framework?

The benefits of using a competitive analysis framework include gaining insight into competitor strengths and weaknesses, understanding the potential impact of new entrants to the market, and developing an effective strategy to differentiate your own product or service. It can also provide a more holistic view of the market by uncovering emerging trends, changes in customer preferences, and opportunities to explore opportunities.

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How To Conduct a Competitive Analysis as a UX Designer

Want to conduct an awesome competitive UX analysis? Download this  free template and follow our step-by-step guide below.

UX designers don’t design new user experiences in a vacuum. No matter how unique or special a product is, it will inevitably compete with something already on the market. That is why it’s valuable to conduct a competitive UX analysis at the start of a new project.

Through the analysis you will evaluate the user experiences of your client’s competitors from your expert perspective as a UX designer. This will help orient you, your client and other stakeholders to the competitive landscape and give you an idea of what user experiences are standard for the market you’re designing for.

A competitive UX analysis will also help you think creatively about where you might be able to innovate in your UX design, as well as features you might want to avoid.

When initially dreaming about the possibilities for their new project, many clients will take inspiration from products that already exist.

If you conduct a competitive UX analysis, it will give you evidence that will enable you and your client to get on the same page about what the market really looks like from a user experience perspective and what that means for your project.

In this article, we’ll delve into the details of competitive UX analysis with the following:

• Why is a competitive UX analysis useful?
• The benefits and limitations of a competitive UX analysis
• A guide to conducting a competitive UX analysis (Plus a free template)
• Key takeaways

We’ve also included a free, downloadable template—you’ll find it in section three.

1. Why is a competitive UX analysis useful?

When you start a new project as a UX designer, there are many research methods you can use to determine who your users are and decide what the best user experience for them will be. On the other hand, competitive UX analysis gives you the opportunity to look outside your project and take in the market as a whole.

Writing for UX Planet, UX consultant Matt Isherwood identifies four reasons to conduct a competitive UX analysis:

To determine standard practices in the market

Depending on the product you’re designing, users likely already have expectations for the user experience and features they might encounter.

For example, if you’re designing a website for a car manufacturer, users will expect that when they select a vehicle they will be able to see photos of both the interior and exterior in every color in which it’s available.

On the other hand, if you’re designing a weather app, users will expect to be able to see the current temperature in their location at the top of the screen along with forecast information below it.

To identify noteworthy user experiences

There will often be one or two competitors in your analysis that offer a particularly good user experience. This might be because they’ve figured out an innovative solution to a problem or they’re using a novel feature that enhances what users are able to do.

But this could also be something like an especially well-placed navigation element or smart use of nomenclature. No matter what it is, these noteworthy user experiences are worth learning from and considering for adaptation and inclusion in your project.

To identify features to avoid

While there will always be competitors doing an especially good job, there will also be competitors at the opposite end of the spectrum.

These competitors offer a poor user experience for any number of reasons, including confusing navigation, difficult to understand user interactions or outdated functionality. These examples will teach you what not to do for your project—such as these ten classic UX design fails .

To notice unique features

As you evaluate various competitors, you may find you notice unique features you may never have considered. For example, if you’re creating a grocery delivery app, perhaps while reviewing competitors you notice one has a feature that allows you to select the level of ripeness of bananas by using a series of photos that show bananas with peels ranging in color from green to brown.

While it may not ultimately apply to your project, it’s worth taking note of these unique features so you can understand where and how competitors are innovating.

2. The benefits and limitations of a competitive UX analysis

A competitive UX analysis will help you orient yourself to the competition and understand the market. After all, users are creatures of habit, and a user who has spent time with your competitors will come to your product with certain expectations based on those previous experiences. As a result, before you design something completely new and unique, you need to understand the standards for a product’s user experience, an evaluation that will greatly benefit the design process .

On the other hand, there are some limitations to a competitive UX analysis that you should keep in mind. First, there may be the temptation to copy the competition. This is not the purpose of competitive UX analysis, however. The purpose is to inform the design process by learning from what your competitors are doing. You should always review several competitors, exploring the strengths and weaknesses of all of them. This will enable you to take inspiration from several sources to create something tailor-made for your product.

Furthermore, a competitive UX analysis can’t tell you where innovation is needed, it can only tell you what already exists. This is why a competitive UX analysis is only one of several research methods you should employ when tackling a UX project.

3. How to do a competitive UX analysis (step by step)

Before we jump in: If you’re conducting your first competitive UX analysis, you may find our downloadable competitive analysis template useful.

1. Identify your objectives

The first thing you need to do when conducting a competitive UX analysis is determine what your objectives are. Make sure you know exactly what you want to learn from this analysis. When you start evaluating competitors you can quickly become overwhelmed by everything involved in a given app, website, or other product. Laying out your objectives beforehand will prevent this from happening.

For example, if you’re creating a new app where users can stream movies and TV shows, one of your objectives might be to understand how competitors draw users’ attention to new entertainment choices.

2. Identify your competitors

Before you get started, you have to settle on the competitors you’ll include in your analysis. One of the first things you should do is ask your client and other stakeholders who they feel are their three or four top competitors. These competitors should automatically be included in your analysis. You should also come up with your own suggestions, especially focusing on competitors that may be less obvious.

Make sure your analysis includes both direct competitors—those that are operating in exactly the same market space—and indirect competitors—those that draw a different audience, like a social network geared exclusively towards young children if you’re working on a social network for adults, or include a similar feature, like a shopping cart tool for a different product than the kind you’re working on.

Ideally you’ll want to include five to ten competitors, but this may be constrained by time or budget issues.

3. Screenshot, take notes, repeat

Now that you know your objectives and have your list of competitors, you’ll visit each competitors’ product and navigate the relevant parts like any user would. As you go, take screenshots and record notes about everything you observe.

The easiest way to do this is to create a folder for all of the screenshots and a spreadsheet for your notes.

The spreadsheet should list all the competitors as well as all the parts of the product you’re evaluating so you’re sure to capture notes for everything you need from every competitor.

Alternatively, you can use an awesome tool like Airtable , a tool that allows you to gather screebshots, notes, links and more, all in one place and ready for you as you start to design your product (or as you conduct a redesign )

4. Compile your findings into a presentation

After you’ve finished going through the competitors, use your screenshots and notes to put together a presentation. You won’t mention every single thing you observed in the presentation, but you should mention the most relevant and noteworthy things.

Most importantly, at the end of the presentation, you should be sure to present a list of recommendations in which you boil down what you learned and explain how it will be put into practice in your project’s UX design.

4. Key takeaways

You should now have a basic understanding of why you should conduct a competitive UX analysis and the basic steps you would take to do so. To sum up:

• When you begin a new UX project, a competitive analysis is a research method that can help you and your client understand what the market for their product currently looks like.
• A competitive UX analysis will help you understand what user experience standards exist in the market sector, and therefore, what users’ expectations of a product in this space might be. The analysis will also give you information about competitors’ strengths and weaknesses as well as unique features they might be using.
• A competitive analysis has the benefit of informing the design process, but it can only show you what already exists in the market, not where innovation may be needed.
• Make sure you have a clear understanding of your objectives for your competitive UX analysis.
•  A competitive UX analysis should include 5-10 competitors and include both direct and indirect examples.
• Ask your client or other stakeholders for recommendations of competitors to include in the analysis, but also come up with your own suggestions.
• For each competitor, take screenshots and notes as you navigate through the parts of the product you’re evaluating.
• Compile your screenshots and notes into a presentation where you highlight the most important information you learned.
• Make sure you include a list of recommendations at the end of your presentation that explain how your analysis will impact your project’s UX design.

Now that you know how to conduct a competitive UX analysis, you might want to learn more. If so, you’ll find the following articles useful:

• Usability testing: Everything you need to know
• What is a UX audit and why should you conduct one?
• How to be a better UX designer in 2020

5 Famous Business Competitor Case Studies Of All Time

Look at any good or famous business competitor case study examples, and one thing immediately becomes clear:

Done well, this approach to competitive analysis can help you identify your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses and your own, all while determining those crucial gaps in the market that represent a golden opportunity for your brand.

However, doing not so well and a competitor case study can soon balloon into an overwhelming waste of time which may provide you with a tonne of data on your competition yet offers no real insight on how to use that data to gain a competitive advantage.

To help ensure yours is done well, I’ve put together this comprehensive guide to doing competitive analysis the right way, outlining not only what to look for when analyzing your competition but how to take what you find and put it to work for your business.

What is a Business Competitor Case Study and Why Do You Need One?

Typically, when we think of a business case study, we think of the traditional “Here’s how a business came with a solution to a particular problem.”

For example, there’s a famous case study focusing on the multi-national coffee supply chain Starbucks . After “hitting a wall” in their sales and revenue, the brand found a solution by closing down a significant number of their stores and “reinvigorating” their branding, essentially focussing on quality over quantity.

Other businesses can learn from the Starbucks case study and those like them and, where appropriate, apply what worked to their own brand.

A business competitor case study operates similarly, albeit with some notable differences. In this case, the problem doesn’t belong to another business but your own.

That problem or challenge could be:

• How do we increase our revenues and/or revenue streams?
• How do we re-engage with lapsed/former customers?
• How do we increase our ROI in social media or digital marketing?
• How do we increase our market share?

Or it could be any number of other challenges.

Whatever the case may be, carrying out this kind of competitive analysis helps you find the solution by looking at your main competition. If growing your market share is your main priority, identifying a weakness that your competitor has can help you develop new ideas on how you can offer customers something they’re simply not getting from that competitor.

If your digital marketing is leaving a lot to be desired, surveying the landscape to see where you’re falling behind can help you pinpoint precisely where you’re going wrong.

What’s more, making effective use of this competitive intelligence can help you to identify changes in both your audience and the industry as a whole, highlighting trends you can capitalize on, new audiences you could potentially target, or simply new ways to reach and engage with your existing target audience.

5 Famous Business Competitor Case Study Examples

1. the army crew team.

The Army Crew Team is an all-time classic business competitor case study that has a lot to teach us about how we work as a team. The coach of West Point’s varsity Army Crew team took his eight top individual rowers and placed them together in one boat. In a second boat, he placed his eight second-tier rowers.

The team in the second boat consistently beat the team in the first boat, despite the first boat consisting of better performing individual rowers. The case study shows that, collectively, a team can be more than the sum of its individual parts and that there’s more to getting great work out of a team than simply gathering together your star performers.

For businesses looking at the best ways to get the most out of their teams, this is an essential case study to look at.

See also: Twitter Competitors Analysis

2. Malden Mills

Two weeks before Christmas 1995, the Malden Mills factory burned to the ground.

Employees feared and assumed that they’d be unemployed until the factory was rebuilt, but the company’s CEO, Aaron Feuerstein, invested $25 million of company money to ensure those employees would still have a wage and benefits while the factory was rebuilt.

In one regard, this worked out well. When the factory reopened, the employees who had been well taken care of worked harder than ever. Productivity was at an all-time high and business boomed. In another regard, the cost of paying for the factory rebuild as well as taking care of employees landed Malden Mills in bankruptcy court three times.

This famous case study is used time and time again to present an argument for the pros and cons of philanthropy and making difficult decisions regarding employee satisfaction.

3. Apple Inc.

For the longest time, Apple was known as “Apple Computers” a name that perfectly summed up their focus on the personal computer market. In 2007, however, they dropped the “computers” part and simply became “Apple Inc.” This was more than just a name change for the company, it was part of an entire rebranding a shift in focus from personal computers to iPods, iPhones, iPads, and the like.

It was a strategy that paid off for them. Apple was already a well-known company beforehand, but after their “rebirth” in 2007, they truly became not only a household name but one of the most successful and profitable businesses of all time.

This famous case study is used a lot to demonstrate the benefits of taking the company in an entirely different direction rather than trying to compete in an already overcrowded market.

The ‘ Cadbury Ethical Dilema ‘ is a popular case study that is frequently presented to MBA students taking part in business case study competitions. Chocolate manufacturers Cadbury had prided themselves on their strong values and fair ethical practices. So it came as a huge blow to the brand when it was discovered that child labor was being used to produce cocoa on Côte d’Ivoire cocoa farms.

The House of Representatives passed legislation in the US which meant that companies who could prove their chocolate was produced without forced labor could print “slave-labor free” labels on their chocolate.

Naturally, this would paint companies who couldn’t prove that in a bad light, so the industry as a whole asked for time to essentially clean up its act. When the agreed deadline for doing so came to an end, Cadbury were left with a dilemma – did they continue to stall for time or did they find another way to ensure ethical management of their supply chain?

This case study remains famous for pointing out the difficulties in managing ethical practices and is well worth looking at for considering the impact that the practices of others in your supply chain can have on your business.

5. Coffee 2016

Another well-known case study that should be familiar to anyone who ever competed in a business case study competition in the last few years. Student teams were asked to come up with ideas for improving the returns generated by everyone involved in the production and consumption of coffee from the grower right through to the consumer.

The case was famous as it has so much to teach businesses and business students alike about marketing practices and supply chain logistics.

How to Create a Business Competitor Case Study

So, that takes care of the what and the why, but what about the how? Below, you’ll find a simple nine-step process to help you get the ball rolling with your own competitor analysis.

1. Determine Which Products/Services to Evaluate

If your business offers more than one product or service, you may find that analyzing your competitors becomes much less of a headache when you focus on just one of them or at least one type. For example, if you make sports clothing, you may choose to focus on your competition in the running gear market or concentrate on developing a strategy to increase revenues from your line of sports shoes.

If you’re a digital marketing agency, you might want to narrow down your competitive research to just Search Engine Optimization or how you can improve the service you offer to a web design client.

That’s not to say that you can’t research more than one aspect of your business, but doing so may mean that you end up producing data that isn’t always relevant and doesn’t help you to make the kind of strategic decisions you really need to make.

2. Determining Your Competitors for a Business Competitor Case Study

On the whole, your business is likely to have three types of competitors.

Direct Competitor

A direct competitor is any business that sells the same product or service in the same category to meet the same need for the same audience. Your biggest competitor, the one people most closely compare your business to, is more than likely going to fall in this category, as are any others that are actively competing for your share of the market.

If you sell sports shoes to female marathon runners, another company that sells sports shoes to female marathon runners would be your direct competitor. If you run a local car washing service and another business three blocks over also offer a local car washing service, they’re in direct competition with you.

Indirect Competitor

An indirect competitor is a business that sells a different product or service to meet the same need of the same audience. A common example is fast food restaurants.

McDonald’s and Burger King both sell fast food burgers (products) to hungry people (audience) so that those people can fulfill that hunger (need). If I’m hungry and want the convenience of fast food and the delicious taste of a burger, I could spend my money at either restaurant, which makes them direct competitors.

However, if I’m just hungry and want something convenient, whether it’s a burger or not, I might choose to go to McDonald’s or head next door to Pizza Hut or Subway. All three brands are in the same category (fast food), all three brands meet my need for a convenient way to satisfy hunger, but all three do so with different types of products, making them indirect competitors.

Replacement Competitor

A replacement competitor meets the same needs for the same audience but using different products or services in a different category. For example, I could choose to go to McDonald’s to fill my hunger, but I might also choose to go to Target and buy ingredients to make a homemade dinner.

To go back to the car wash example I used earlier – If you run a local car wash and the auto repair shop next door sells car cleaning supplies, that would make them a replacement competition. Your customer could choose to substitute using your service to buy some cleaning supplies and do the job himself.

Potential and Future Competitors

When determining your competition, it’s worth noting that just because a business isn’t currently in your market segment doesn’t mean they won’t eventually. This is why it’s worth noting your potential and future competitors too.

Potential competitors are those who may sell the same products, even with the same category but haven’t yet entered your market. For example, a company that operates exclusively in the next town, city, or state over to you may not be a direct competitor yet, but they have the potential to be if they chose to move into your town/city/state.

Likewise, if you run a limousine hire service focusing exclusively on corporate clients and another company across town focuses exclusively on limousine hire for weddings, they too have the potential to be a competitor. A future competitor is much more likely to become direct competitors, such as an expanding national chain.

To really get the most value out of your eventual competitive analysis report, it pays to consider all of these types of clients and their impact on your business.

How to Find Your Competitors for a Competitive Analysis

There are some competitors that you don’t have to look very hard to find. You know they’re there. They are the businesses and brand names that are hard to ignore, the ones everyone compares you to do.

Still, don’t just limit your research there.

Head to Google.

Search for the kind of keywords you’d expect people to use for your business.

Who else comes up beside you?

Search for your business name.

What are other businesses paying for Google ads around your business?

What about social media? Who are people talking about?

You can also use tools such as the Audience Overlap tool provided by Alexa , which helps you to not only track down your competition but develop and deliver on your entire competitive intelligence project. Don’t discount offline methods either. Magazines, trade publications, and even asking your target audience directly via focus groups, surveys, and so on can all prove helpful.

3. Start Your Research

Although Google can be a very powerful tool for finding out about your competitors, don’t just limit yourself to a quick search or browse their website. Yes, that’s important, especially if you’re both predominantly online brands. If your competitors have a physical presence, it’s important to check that out too.

You may want to treat this the same way you would a typical market research project and get a group of people to experience your competitor’s business, their customer service, sales experience, products, and so on. That way, you get a much wider range of opinions and can look for trends and common themes that can influence the strategic decisions you need to make to gain a competitive advantage.

4. Analyze Your Findings

With the research done, it’s time to collate what you’ve found into your competitive analysis report. This may take the form of graphs, charts, written insights, anything that can help you present a compelling business case as to why your brand needs to be made.

5. Identify Action Points

Speaking of which, the point of analyzing your competition isn’t to pay attention to how many social media followers they have or how they compare to you in terms of brand recognition; it’s to provide you with actionable steps that you can take to achieve your business goals.

So with that in mind, figure out what you’re actually going to do due to your competitor research. Will you be rethinking your price points? Revamping your customer service? Starting again with a completely different digital marketing strategy?

6. Take a Snapshot of Your Business Pre-Changes

Before you implement those steps, be sure to look at how your business is currently performing.

Consider your main KPIs and any data relating to how you’re currently doing. After all, it’s going to make it much easier to determine if the steps you’ve taken have been effective when you’ve got some real, measurable statistics to play with.

7. Implement the actions

This next step may sound simple, but it’s where the real work comes in. Whatever actionable steps you decide to take, whether it’s coming up with a brand new social media plan, establishing yourself as a market leader, or simply ensuring that every client receives first-class customer service, now’s the time to make that happen.

8. Measure the Results

When you’ve made your changes, measure your results.

Compare where you are now to where you were when you took that snapshot in step six.

9. Repeat as necessary

Last but not least, it’s important not to fall into the habit of thinking that competitive analysis is a one-and-done affair.

If there’s one universal truth about the business landscape, it’s that things change constantly. New trends emerge, new customers arrive on the scene, once loyal customers become former customers. As such, it’s important to analyze your competition as a regular component of your overall competitive strategy.

What to Include in a Business Competitor Case Study

You’ve now got a complete strategy to put your competitive analysis report together, but what exactly should you include in that report, and what aspects of your competitor’s business should you research?

The following are essential aspects that will help you to put together the most effective competitor case study.

1. Features

Starting with the basics, look at your customers’ product or service, which competes with yours, and note all of its features. For the best results, do this for each competitor and add your findings to a spreadsheet. This will make it easy to compare products and see what you’re missing.

It may even show you what your competitors are missing, highlighting a hidden advantage that you may not have previously capitalized on.

2. Market Share

Determining their market share will help you identify who your main competitor is and who you and who you may need to focus your attention on.

3. Price points

Pay attention to what the competition charges and consider what insights you can gain about your own pricing.

4. Marketing types

Your competition’s SEO marketing strategy, where they invest their ad spend, the kind of social media marketing tools they use are all important.

What keywords are they using to draw traffic?

How do your competitor’s websites compare to yours?

What are their PPC campaigns like?

All of these questions will help you determine their strengths and weaknesses from a digital standpoint.

Don’t forget about other forms of media, either.

Do they advertise in print publications? If so, which ones?

What about TV, radio, and other advertising platforms?

5. Online popularity

How do they fare in terms of social media engagement and website traffic? How does that compare to your own online presence?

Here, you’re looking more at quantifiable numbers. Likes, follows, mentions, page views, etc., should all be taken into consideration. They may not be the most important factor for some aspects of your business, but if you’re looking to up the game with your marketing and communication strategy or your SEO strategy, these numbers are worth considering.

6. Public perception and reputation

Here, we’re focusing on quality over quantity. One company may have more social media mentions than you, but if all those mentions are negative, it’s a different story. Social listening tools can be a big help in discovering what people are saying about your competitor’s brand online and can prove to be a valuable way to discover the perception of your competitors from a client perspective.

Away from social media, you might also want to consider news releases, blogs, and news articles as a means of discovering what kind of reputation your competitors have in the wider media.

7. Search Engine Optimization

An SEO marketing strategy is vital for just about any business in the digital age, but how do the strategies of competing businesses compare to yours, and what can that teach you. Here’s where keyword research and looking at their inbound marketing strategy, their approach to content marketing, and technical SEO aspects will all be important.

What makes other businesses in your market unique? What do they promote as being their reason for standing out from the crowd? Along with any sales literature, you might want to look at their mission and values statements and the kind of language they use in social media bios to get a good idea of their USPs.

9. Strengths and Weaknesses

Any good business competitor case study will feature a list of competitors’ strengths and weaknesses and insight into what opportunities this presents for your business.

Just as you might do a SWOT analysis for your business, a similar approach may help you analyze what other brands do well, how that influences the things you need to improve on, and what they don’t do so well, and how you do can capitalize on that.

10. Geography

In this regard, when we talk about geography, we’re not just talking about the town, city, or region your competitors operate in. Although that’s important, it’s just as important to note whether they have physical bricks-and-mortar venues in those towns or whether they’re a strictly eCommerce or digital-only operation.

What are the Advantages of Conducting a Competitor Analysis?

Identify your own weak spots

Competitor analysis doesn’t just identify your competitors’ weaknesses and gaps in the market. It may also highlight gaps in any areas for improvement in your own company. By comparing your brand to others, you get a different perspective than you’d get from standard SWOT analysis, and this can pay dividends when it comes to driving your company forward.

Improve your marketing and SEO efforts

Competitive strategy analysis isn’t just about products, services, and customers. It can also identify the SEO techniques used by competitors and come up with appropriate keywords to help you improve your organic search results.

Define your Benchmarks and Fine-Tune Your KPIs

Input your findings into a competitive analysis template, and it will soon become apparent what areas your business needs to be focusing on. This can prove invaluable when it comes time to determine your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and decide what -and how- it measures.

Identify gaps in your talent pool

A competitor case study really influences every aspect of your business beyond the direct products or services you sell. Your HR team can use the information to help identify gaps in your talent pool. If there’s a newly emerging market trend that you lack the talent to capitalize upon, your team can use this information to help with the recruitment needed to fill that gap.

What are the Disadvantages of Competitive Analysis?

Too much data, not enough analysis.

It’s easy to get so overwhelmed with the sheer amount of data you can unearth on your competitors that you forget that it’s the analysis of that data that really makes all the difference. It’s important to think about what meaningful conclusions you can draw and what actionable steps you can take as a result.

The impact is lessened if not kept up to date

The landscape of business is constantly changing. It’s not enough to assess the competition when you first start out and then never update it. Industries change, new trends emerge, new competitors arrive on the scene, all of which demand that market research on your competitors remains a key part of your competitive strategy.

Benchmarking performance based on competitors is not always the solution

Comparing your own performance against your competitors may not work so well if your competitors do things wrong or badly. Sure, it’s great to be an industry leader, but if the overall performance of that industry lacks compared to what the market actually demands, you may need to come up with a brand new strategy.

Frequently Asked Questions About Business Competitor Case Study

Question: what is a business case study competition.

Answer: A business case study competition is an event in which student teams compete to develop the best solution to a particular business case study. Though such events aren’t always exclusively for MBA students, most of them are as case study competitions can be a great way to inspire creative thinking and develop skills.

Question: How often should I do a competitive analysis?

Answer: Ideally, competitive analysis should be performed monthly, but if that seems like overkill for your industry, commit to at least once per quarter.

Question: What should be included in a competitive analysis?

Answer: Every competitive analysis report will be different depending on the nature of your business and your industry. However, as a general rule, it should identify who your competitors are, your competitor’s weaknesses, strengths, and overall strategies. Above all, it should provide insight into how you use their strengths and weaknesses to your advantage, whether that’s making improvements where you’re lacking or highlighting to customers what your brand does better than a rival’s.

The Final Word on Creating a Business Competitor Case Study

Whether you call it competitive intelligence gathering, competitive analysis reporting, or compiling a business competitor case study, there are three key points that I want you to take away from this guide:

• Competitive analysis is about identifying your own strengths and weaknesses as much if not more than your competitors.
• All the research and data in the world is unhelpful if it doesn’t provide you with insights into what you’re doing right and what you could be doing better.
• This isn’t a one-and-done project. Analyzing the competition is something you should be doing regularly to keep up with the ever-changing landscape of your industry.
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Analyzing your competitive landscape: 4 case studies.

Conducting a competitive analysis can be time-consuming. It takes time to gather intelligence, analyze the insights, share data, and integrate your findings into your strategy. However, if you’re able to take a quick snapshot of your competitive landscape , you’ll be able to get quick and impactful insights about your market. Previously, we walked you through the three dimensions of conducting a snapshot competitive landscape analysis . Now, let’s apply that methodology in a series of case studies — a breakdown of four industries, including Conversational Marketing Software, Point-of-Sale (POS) Solutions, Cybersecurity Technology, and Meal Kit Subscriptions. With data from completed competitive landscape reports, we’ll dive into what it means to be an industry leader.

Breaking Down the Competitive Analysis

Our competitive analysis report breaks down your competitive landscape in three ways: Company Growth & Trajectory, Company Traffic & Social Reach, and Company Homepage & Positioning History. All of these aspects are important in analyzing your competitive landscape for different reasons. For our analysis, we’ve also highlighted three areas of market leadership — Industry Billboard, Market Leader, and Top Challenger.

• The Industry Billboard represents the company with the largest voice in the market, as measured by the company with the best Alexa Rank.
• The Market Leader is the recognized front-runner in the industry, as measured by highest estimated revenue for a public company.
• The Top Challenger is the up-and-comer that is getting the most traction, as measured by highest estimated revenue for a private company. 

Now that we’ve broken down the key areas of focus for these reports, let’s look at how specific companies in a wide range of industries have gotten themselves to those top spots.

The Industry Billboard: Best Alexa Rank

Up first, we took a snapshot of the customer service / conversational marketing software industry, which included Intercom, Podium, Freshdesk, Zendesk, and Drift. To get recognized as an “Industry Billboard,” the company needs to have the lowest Alexa Rank in the industry.

The Top Challenger: Top Private Company by Revenue

Next up, let’s take a look at the Point-of-Sale (POS) industry. In this landscape snapshot, we analyzed NCR, ShopKeep, Toast, Upserve, Square, TouchBistro, and Revel Systems. To get recognized as the Top Challenger, you need to have the highest estimated revenue and be a private company.

In this industry, the Top Challenger is Toast. In this instance, Toast is the top private company in the POS space, based on its estimated revenue, which is in the $500M-$1B range. In comparison to other private companies in this space, they are the revenue leader. This data is important because it gives you insight into how efficient your competitors are, which ones are up-and-coming based on how long they’ve been in business and their revenue, as well as which competitor is leading the charge. Keeping a pulse on funding as well as revenue matters because you can gain insight into how well a company is performing. If your competitors are raising more funding, it might be a sign that something big is about to happen, that you will definitely want to monitor.

Revenue is a good indicator of success for private companies, but let’s focus on their funding. If you notice an increase in funding, keep an eye out for changes across other aspects of their business. When a company is raising capital, it means that they are planning to grow and invest more resources into their strategy - headcount, product capabilities, new offices, etc. Keep an eye on their funding as well as what happens after funding rounds are completed. Any shift in strategy, especially hiring, can give you insight into where they’re going next. Use this intel to get ahead of your competition.

The Market Leader: Top Public Company by Revenue

Similar to the Top Challenger, the Market Leader is based on revenue, but for public companies. In this example, we’re going to look at the Cybersecurity space, featuring Symantec, SentinelOne, Cylance, FireEye, Tanium, Carbon Black, Cybereason, McAfee, and Crowdstrike.

In addition to funding raised, revenue is critical because it’s another measure of the success of a company. Here, the leader is a company that has been around significantly longer than the other players, so they’ve created a sustainable competitive advantage . While it is possible to displace industry leaders , you can also learn from the bigger players in your industry. What did they do over the years to get to where they are today? What did they invest in, who did they hire, how did their product change? By analyzing how they became the industry leader, you’ll be able to iterate on your strategy to incorporate the positive and negative lessons learned by the industry leader. There may be strategies you can apply to your own business, or you may be inspired to try new tactics. Either way, leverage this competitive intelligence to make an impact on your own revenue achievement .

Don’t Forget: Keep an Eye on Messaging and Website Updates

Additional competitive insights to evaluate include homepage updates and messaging history. As an example, we’re going to take a look at the Meal Kit Subscription industry, featuring Purple Carrot, Sun Basket, Blue Apron, Daily Harvest, HelloFresh, Home Chef, and Marley Spoon.

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Introduction to Case Analysis & Critical Thinking

Whether you are competing in a case competition or participating in case studies in your courses, you might be wondering how to approach this process. This video by Professor Zoe Mayhook provides an introduction to the case analysis and critical thinking, and includes the following concepts: 

• Short history of the case method (0:19)
• Business case types (1:05)
• Business case characteristics (1:45)
• SWOT Analysis (4:41)
• Porter's Five Forces (6:36)
• Timeline Analysis (10:12)
• Financial Analysis (10:42)
• Case & Effect Analysis (14:36)
• Concluding thoughts (16:44)
• SWOT Analysis
• Industry Analysis
• Financial Analysis
• Other Analysis Tools

The SWOT Analysis is the process of identifying internal and external factors that affect the competitive positioning of a company. The SWOT mnemonic stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, which helps individuals identify and succinctly organize information so that their decisions and recommendations leverage a company’s strengths and opportunities, while also overcoming their weaknesses and possible threats. Sample SWOT Analyses can be found through the following resources.

NOTE: Copy and pasting a published SWOT analysis is plagiarism. They offer a good starting point, but conducting a SWOT analysis for your assignments, case studies, and case competitions should be your own work. 

Learn more about SWOT Analysis

• An Essential Guide to SWOT Analysis
• SWOT Analysis Template

When conducting an industry analysis, it may be useful to consider Porter's Five Forces model . This model helps individuals look at competitive forces within an industry, which can help inform a company’s business strategy. Porter's five forces includes: 

• Competitive Rivalry 
• Threat of New Entry
• Threat of Substitutes 
• Supplier Power
• Buyer Power

Many business databases a Purdue carry industry reports that can help is your analysis. IBISWorld Industry reports is a useful first step, and provides information that utilizes the Porter's Five Forces Model. To learn how to use IBISWorld for Porter's Five Forces research, check out the following article: Using Porter's Fives Forces to Develop Business Strategies (2020).  IBISWorld . 

• Current Industrial Reports (Census) The CIR program provides statistics primarily for production and shipments, but data on inventories, orders, and consumption are collected in a number of surveys. These surveys also measure manufacturing activity in important commodity areas such as textile and apparel, chemicals, primary metals, computer and electronic components, industrial equipment, and consumer goods.

Financial ratios allow provide useful insights, and can be divided into five different classes.

• Profitability Ratios
• Liquidity Ratios
• Activity Ratios
• Leverage Ratios
• Market Value Ratios

Check out the following resources to learn more about financial ratios:

• Key Business Ratios (D&B) Examine industry benchmarks compiled from D&B's database of public and private companies, featuring 14 key business ratios. Choose a one-year or three-year set of ratios for public and private companies in 800 lines of business.
• Corporate Finance Institute | Financial Ratios
• Investopedia | Financial Ratios
• Cascade | Conducting A Strategic Analysis + 8 of the Best Tools to Use Provides background on the strategic management cycle and describe different strategic analysis tools that can be employed.
• ASQ | The 7 Basic Quality Tools for Process Improvement List of analysis tools including check sheets, control charts, histograms, pareto chart, scatter diagrams, and stratification.
• ASQ | Fishbone Diagram This cause analysis tool is considered one of the seven basic quality tools. The fishbone diagram identifies many possible causes for an effect or problem. It can be used to structure a brainstorming session. It immediately sorts ideas into useful categories.
• CFI | PESTEL Analysis PESTEL Analysis is a strategic framework used to evaluate the external environment of a business by breaking down the opportunities and risks into Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental, and Legal factors.
• HBS | What is Value Chain Analysis? Value chain analysis is a means of evaluating each of the activities in a company’s value chain to understand where opportunities for improvement lie. Conducting a value chain analysis prompts you to consider how each step adds or subtracts value from your final product or service. This, in turn, can help you realize some form of competitive advantage.
• Microsoft Office | Timeline Templates Conduct a timeline analysis with these free templates provided by Microsoft Office.
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Case Study: Competitor Sales Analysis in Power BI

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Description

This Power BI case study follows a real-world business use case where you will apply the concepts of ETL and visualization. Through Power BI and Power Query Editor, you will work on the development of a complete Power BI report starting from the data integration from multiple sources, data transformation, modeling, and then visualization. You will carry out a sales and market share analysis, focusing not only on the company's performance internally, reflecting on how well the products sell, but also externally analyzing how well they are doing against competing manufacturers. Thus, business users can make informed decisions and actions on their data. By the end of this case study, you’ll have a stronger understanding of competitor sales analysis and have more confidence in using Power BI on your own datasets. Read more.

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