how to do competitive research

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:

Don't forget to share this post!

Related articles.

25 Tools & Resources for Conducting Market Research

Market Research: A How-To Guide and Template

SWOT Analysis: How To Do One [With Template & Examples]

TAM SAM SOM: What Do They Mean & How Do You Calculate Them?

How to Run a Competitor Analysis [Free Guide]

5 Challenges Marketers Face in Understanding Audiences [New Data + Market Researcher Tips]

Causal Research: The Complete Guide

Total Addressable Market (TAM): What It Is & How You Can Calculate It

What Is Market Share & How Do You Calculate It?

3 Ways Data Privacy Changes Benefit Marketers [New Data]

10 free templates to help you understand and beat the competition.

Marketing software that helps you drive revenue, save time and resources, and measure and optimize your investments — all on one easy-to-use platform

Everything that you need to know to start your own business. From business ideas to researching the competition.

Practical and real-world advice on how to run your business — from managing employees to keeping the books.

Our best expert advice on how to grow your business — from attracting new customers to keeping existing customers happy and having the capital to do it.

Entrepreneurs and industry leaders share their best advice on how to take your company to the next level.

• Business Ideas
• Human Resources
• Business Financing
• Growth Studio
• Ask the Board

Looking for your local chamber?

Interested in partnering with us?

Start » strategy, sizing up the competition: how to conduct competitive research.

Competitive research can reveal trends in the marketplace and gaps in your own business plan.

Competitive research is a crucial part of any good marketing plan. This term may elicit some negative images but competitive research has nothing to do with spying. It has everything to do with paying attention to your competition and what they are doing.

Many people will lose out on business to competitors they have never even heard of simply because they’ve never taken the time to do competitive research. Understanding what your competition is doing will help you position yourself, and your product or service, within the market.

What is competitive research?

Competitive research involves identifying your competitors, evaluating their strengths and weaknesses and evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of their products and services. By looking at your biggest competitors, you can see how your own products and services stack up and what kind of threat they pose to your business. It also helps you identify industry trends you may have been missing.

Four benefits to doing competitive research are:

• Understanding your market . Competitive research can reveal trends in the marketplace that might have otherwise been missed. The ability to identify and predict trends is a huge asset for any business, helping to improve value proposition for customers. This is an important component of competitive research that you should constantly be doing.
• Improving your marketing . Your customers care about how your product or service is going to make their lives better. If they are leaving to go to one of your competitors, it’s probably because that company does a better job of explaining the benefits to the customer base, or does in fact provide a better product or service. Competitive research helps you understand why customers choose to buy from you or your competitors and how your competition is marketing their products. Over time, this can help you improve your own marketing programs.
• Identifying market gaps . When you do competitive research, you’re analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors. You’ll often find that, by looking at the data, there is a segment of the population that is being underserved. This could put your business in a unique position to reach those customers.
• Planning for the future . The most important byproduct of competitive research is that it will help you create a strategic plan for your business. This includes things like improving your product or service, using more strategic pricing strategies, and improving the promotion of your products.

Good competitive research could put your business in a unique position to reach customers who are being underserved.

6 steps to competitive research

It may sound obvious, but the first step is to simply identify who your top competitors are . There are two different types of competitors to identify: direct and indirect.

Direct competitors are targeting the same customer base you’re targeting. They are solving the same problem that you are trying to solve and sell a similar product or service.

Indirect competitors may sell something similar to your product or service but target a different audience, or they may target your same customer base but have a slightly different product or service.

It’s important to understand this segment of your market for two reasons: (1) it could provide you with growth opportunities for your own business, and (2) it could also highlight a threat to your business of which you would otherwise be unaware.

Here are six steps to getting started on competitive research:

Identify main competitors.

The most obvious way to do this is simply by searching your product or service category on the web and seeing what comes up. You can also check websites like Crunchbase or Product Hunt . You may find competitors that you might not have noticed before.

The goal is to cast a wide net and get an idea of who your main competitors are. Another good way to identify direct and indirect competitors is to ask your potential customers what services they are already using.

Analyze competitors' online presence

Once you’ve identified your main competitors, you want to look at their website, the type of content they are publishing, and their social media presence. Then, look for any blogs, white papers, and social media content being provided about their products and how to use them. Ask yourself these questions:

• What is the user experience like on their website?
• Is it easy to navigate?
• Do you clearly understand the products or services they offer?
• Is their website mobile-optimized?
• How often do they blog and most importantly, is the quality of their content good?
• What topics do they blog about most frequently?
• What social platforms are they actively using to talk about their products and services?
• Is this content engaging their target audience?

The answers to these questions show you opportunities where you can outperform your competitors. You will want to pay close attention to anything they are doing well that you aren’t doing. This will help give you a better understanding of where you should be focusing your attention and resources.

Gather information

The best way to gather information about your competitors is by acting like one of their customers. Sign up for their email list so you can get an idea of how they communicate.

Also, follow their blog and social media accounts and watch how they interact with their customers online. What kind of experience do customers have with your competitors?

You should consider shopping from them so you can see what their product looks like and what the experience is like from a customer perspective.

Track your findings

Make sure you track your competitors' findings on a spreadsheet; it will help with ongoing monitoring. This isn’t a complicated process, you just need to keep track of what they are doing over time so that you can see how they change everything from pricing to marketing and promotional activities.

You’ll start by dividing your competitors into direct and indirect customer columns. You’ll then track the following information:

• Company name
• Social media sites
• Unique features
• Pros and cons
• Screenshots and additional links

Check online reviews

Try to find as many reviews of your competitors as possible. Read their social media reviews, comments on their blogs, and case studies on their website. If they offer and present Google reviews, read them as well. It’s a good idea to understand not only the good things that your competitors may be doing, but the bad things as well. Include mentions with the Better Business Bureau about them in your research.

How customer-focused are they? This could be an opportunity for you to stand out. And, if they sell a product similar to yours, this will be a good way to find out if a lot of people are interested in it.

Any negative feedback will help you identify areas where you can improve your own product or service.

Identify areas for improvement

Now that you’ve taken note of some of the biggest differences between you and your competitors, it’s time to think about how you can use this information to improve your own business results.

Your competitive research should reveal at least one area your business can stand to improve in. This will help you learn how to engage better with your customers and online followers.

Keep in mind that competitive research is never a "one-and-done" event. Ongoing monitoring, such as observing how competitors evolve, is necessary to ensure that you are staying competitive in the marketplace.

Tools for competitive research

Software and technology now make it easier than ever to conduct competitive research. However, there are hundreds of competitive research tools on the market and narrowing down the right software can feel overwhelming.

This is why we’ve done the legwork and narrowed it down for you. Here are four tools you should consider using to conduct your competitive research:

SEMrush : This is one of the best competitive research tools on the market. It contains over 30 tools that can track things like SEO, PPC, keyword research, competitive research, and more. SEMrush will help you discover new competitors, find their best-used keywords, and analyze their ad copy. They have flexible pricing plans depending on your business needs.

SpyFu : This search analytics tool reveals the keywords websites buy on Google. So, once you’ve identified your biggest competitors, you can track every keyword they’ve bought. Plus, you can track every keyword they are ranking for and find the content and backlinks that helped them rank in the first place.

BuzzSumo : BuzzSumo lets you see how your content is matching up to your competitors’ content. You can see which content is shared more frequently on social media compared to others, and you can even schedule alerts on your competitors’ content which will make it easier to continue tracking them.

Owletter : Owletter tracks and analyzes emails sent from a website. This allows you to track your competitors’ email marketing and see what is and isn’t working for them. To get started, you’ll need to sign up to join your competitors’ email list. Then, every time you receive an email, Owletter will take a screenshot, analyze it, and alert you to any useful information.

Competitive research can seem daunting at first but it’s an essential part of running a successful business. When you incorporate the right tools into your research, you may find that it’s not as difficult as you imagined.

On some level, understanding your competitors is just as important as understanding your customers. Your competitors have valuable lessons to teach you and it’s important to regularly monitor their online activity. Doing so will strengthen your business and improve your own value for your customers.

CO— aims to bring you inspiration from leading respected experts. However, before making any business decision, you should consult a professional who can advise you based on your individual situation.

CO—is committed to helping you start, run and grow your small business. Learn more about the benefits of small business membership in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, here .

Subscribe to our newsletter, Midnight Oil

Expert business advice, news, and trends, delivered weekly

By signing up you agree to the CO— Privacy Policy. You can opt out anytime.

By continuing on our website, you agree to our use of cookies for statistical and personalisation purposes. Know More

Welcome to CO—

Designed for business owners, CO— is a site that connects like minds and delivers actionable insights for next-level growth.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce 1615 H Street, NW Washington, DC 20062

Social links

Looking for local chamber, stay in touch.

Find Keyword Ideas in Seconds

Boost SEO results with powerful keyword research

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.

• Product overview
• All features
• App integrations

CAPABILITIES

• project icon Project management
• Project views
• Custom fields
• Status updates
• goal icon Goals and reporting
• Reporting dashboards
• workflow icon Workflows and automation
• portfolio icon Resource management
• Time tracking
• my-task icon Admin and security
• Admin console
• asana-intelligence icon Asana Intelligence
• list icon Personal
• premium icon Starter
• briefcase icon Advanced
• Goal management
• Organizational planning
• Campaign management
• Creative production
• Marketing strategic planning
• Request tracking
• Resource planning
• Project intake
• View all uses arrow-right icon
• Project plans
• Team goals & objectives
• Team continuity
• Meeting agenda
• View all templates arrow-right icon
• Work management resources Discover best practices, watch webinars, get insights
• What's new Learn about the latest and greatest from Asana
• Customer stories See how the world's best organizations drive work innovation with Asana
• Help Center Get lots of tips, tricks, and advice to get the most from Asana
• Asana Academy Sign up for interactive courses and webinars to learn Asana
• Developers Learn more about building apps on the Asana platform
• Community programs Connect with and learn from Asana customers around the world
• Events Find out about upcoming events near you
• Partners Learn more about our partner programs
• Support Need help? Contact the Asana support team
• Asana for nonprofits Get more information on our nonprofit discount program, and apply.

Featured Reads

• Project planning |
• 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.

Related resources

How to use a feasibility study in project management

How to track utilization rate and drive team profitability

How to accomplish big things with long-term goals

Smooth product launches are simpler than you think

How to Do a Competitive Analysis: A Complete Guide

Digitization has profoundly altered competitive markets.

With increased connectivity, industries have experienced exponential growth. And, with the web at our fingertips, customer expectations are higher than ever.

To succeed in these competitive markets, you must have a deep understanding of your competitive landscape.

This will provide insights into:

• How the most successful businesses serve your prospects
• What works in your digital space and what doesn’t
• Gaps in the market you can take advantage of

Competitor analysis is a powerful way to help you increase your market share in any market.

In this post, we’ll give you a top-down approach to how to do a competitor analysis. This big-picture overview is structured from the biggest fundamental aspects of your competitors down to the more granular tactical aspects.

Discover how to do a competitive website analysis , repeat the process regularly, and look forward to seizing opportunities by making actionable decisions that elevate your growth.

What is competitive analysis?

In the marketing world, competitive analysis is the process of finding and evaluating your competitors’ marketing strategies to identify their strengths and weaknesses and find new untapped opportunities. It involves gathering data on your competitors’ products, pricing, marketing strategies, and overall performance to make informed business decisions and gain a competitive edge.

Why is competitor analysis crucial in market research?

Business is inherently competitive, and your marketing strategies don’t exist in isolation. And be assured your competitors aren’t likely to give up a piece of the pie without a fight. So, how do you increase your market share ?

The key is to understand what made them successful in the first place. 

This means analyzing your competitors’ products and marketing strategies. The more thoroughly you understand their business, the better you’ll understand their strengths and weaknesses. You can then evaluate, based on your current business, if you should beat them at their own game or find an uncompetitive sub-niche or micro-consumer demand to play in.

This is true whether you are launching a product in a new market or pursuing growth of any kind. You need a razor-sharp understanding of your competitors.

Build winning marketing strategies

Find gaps in your competitors' marketing strategies and hidden opportunities with our competitor analysis tools.

The key benefits of competitive analysis

Now that you understand why you need competitive analysis, here are some of the benefits you can expect.

1. Build smarter business strategies

It never pays to reinvent the wheel. Almost any industry has tried and tested methods, and when you take a deep dive into competitor strategies and tactics, you’ll find things that you can replicate in your own space. Competitor research can impact your big-picture strategy as well as the marketing tactics you are employing to make your strategy happen.

2. Understand your target audience better

Your competitors might be serving your target audience in ways you never thought possible. Looking at their products and services will not only help you to think of product ideas it’ll give you insight into what your prospects really need. The better you understand your audience, the more likely you are to serve their needs.

3. Surface competitor weak points

Analyzing your competitors’ marketing strategies will help you find their weaknesses. This could be on a marketing or product level. And the better you understand their weaknesses, the more leverage you have to win market share.

4. Make informed, data-based decisions

Running a business without data and analysis is like flying blind. With competitor research, you’ll be able to easily size up your competitive landscape and build a strategy that takes both your competitors and your target audience into consideration.

How to do competitor analysis in 8 easy steps

The first stop on the competitor research train is collecting and analyzing information about your competitors to understand what you’re up against. A methodical approach lets you understand how the different areas impact each other.

You can divide your competitor research into four main areas of competition:

• Company : Information about company size, location, business info, and more
• Customer : Demographics, preferences, and characteristics of the target audience
• Product and pricing : Product-related data such as features, offers, or if they have a mobile app
• Marketing : Strategic approach, SEO tools, use of channels, and marketing campaigns

In this section, we’ll show you how to analyze your competitors systematically. We’ll start off with the big-picture metrics and slowly work our way down to the specific tactical approaches your competitors are taking to achieve the results they are getting.

We’ll be using a combination of data from competitor analysis tools and traditional market analysis methods.

1. Identify your competitors

Start by mapping out the companies that offer a product or service in the same category as yours. Next, prepare a list of competitors and categorize them into different levels. Use these three factors:

• The audience each one targets
• The problem they solve
• The products they offer

Keep in mind there are two types of competitors: direct and indirect .

Your main competitors are direct, for example, businesses that are identical to you in all three areas: They have the same target audience , offer a solution for the same problem, and are in the same product category. For example, if you sell orthopedic shoes for kids, you’ll want to look for other ecommerce sites or brands on retail sites with similar products and qualities that you want consumers to associate with your brand.

The second category of competitor analytics is indirect – that is, companies that are identical in only two of the three areas. They could be targeting the same audience and offering a solution for the same problem but with an entirely different product. Someone offering a surgical procedure to correct the same issue as your orthopedic footwear would be a good example of an indirect competitor.

Focus on the direct competition, but keep data on indirect competitors as well; they may become more significant over time. Especially in the growing business-to-business (B2B) landscape , companies are always venturing into new sectors outside their original industries.

Indirect competitors may pivot at any point and could introduce something like a new app to their offering seemingly overnight.

The first step in finding who your competitors are is everyone’s favorite search engine.

Start by Googling your keywords

Possibly the most difficult process to master is finding your competitors. Start by searching for common keywords in Google and see what comes up or find search ads that target keywords that are relevant to your business. Search specifically for competitive queries. For example, below, we’ve Googled the query Apple competitors .

Google will help you find competitors, but it is limited.

Speak to your sales team

One of your most accessible resources is your sales team. It really pays to take the time to speak to them, and they’ll give you countless insights if you just take the time. The reason is they literally speak to your customers directly, and they’ve likely heard which competitors your customers are using.

Get feedback from your customers

Although slightly less available than your sales team, speaking directly to your customers is your most valuable information. Simply ask them which competitors they considered before making a purchase.

Use a competitor analysis tool

Using a data-driven approach with a competitor analysis tool is far more efficient than any other method. The main advantage of using data is it’s scalable. But your data is only valuable if you are able to filter it to find relevant results.

Let me demonstrate what this might look like. Let’s enter foodinsight.org into Similarweb’s Website Performance tool.

We’ll first look at the Similar Sites report. If you have full access, this competitor analysis tool is your superpower. The reason is it’s based on multiple data points including:

By using multiple data points, you are more likely to find closely related competitors.

As you can see in the example above, the tool brings a number of clear competitors. If you find that the sites it brings are not relevant to your market, you can easily filter the results with the industry filter.

Once you’ve done that, take a look at the competitors you’ve found to ensure that they are indeed direct competitors. Again, a direct competitor serves the same audience as you do, solves the same problem, and with the same products or services.

At this stage, you should have a list of sites that share similar metrics in general. Let’s now get a little more granular and focus on Organic competitors and Paid Media competitors.

Find your organic competitors

Organic competitors are not always direct competitors, as an organic competitor is a site that targets similar keywords to your site. And you’ll find that sites in more than one industry often target the same keywords.

This means you should gather organic competitor data but ensure they are in a similar market to yours.

To demonstrate, we’ve entered foodinsight.org into the Similarweb Organic Competitors report. This report considers sites to be organic competitors if they target similar keywords.

Below, you can see organic competitors for foodinsight.org.

Looking at the results, you’ll notice that the tool brings you sites from different industries. Although this might be useful if you are building an SEO strategy , we are looking for direct or closely related competitors for this analysis and should filter the results to find the most relevant business competitors.

Since foodinsight.org is a content publishing website in the Nutrition Diets and Fitness industry, below we have used the Industry filter and the Website type filter .

Find your paid competitors

You should also look at the sites that are using a paid ad search strategy that targets similar keywords to your site.

Below, Similarweb is displaying a list of paid search competitors for foodinsight.org.

Just like the Organic Competitors report, to find direct competitors, you must find sites that are in a similar industry to you.You can use the same filters as in the Organic Competitors report. This will help you find direct competitors that are running ads.

You now know which competitors you want to target. What’s next?

2. Create a company overview

After you’ve identified your main competitors, it’s time to gather background information on them. It’s best to analyze three to five companies per competitive set.

Make sure your company overview includes the following:

• Basic information such as company size, location, employee count, and year established. Information like this is easily obtainable from national business registers, official government sites, and even social networks like LinkedIn .
• Add financial and business information, including stock value, owners, investors, acquisitions, and mergers. You can view a company’s financial statements or find information on business review sites like Dun & Bradstreet , Hover, etc. For startups and tech companies, check sites such as Indiegogo and Kickstarter .
• Next, define their market position and share, level of brand awareness , range of products, and delivery methods, such as whether they have a mobile app and product categories.

You can monitor market position, market share, and brand awareness by creating a Custom Industry in the Similarweb Market Intelligence addon .

Set it up by adding your site and your competitors. This will show you how your site is performing within a market defined by you.

For instance, if we look at the market for Food Insight and its competitors, we see that Food Insight owns 8.45% of the market while Diet Doctor is the market leader with 53.46%.

Looking at the Market Quadrant Analysis in the Players report, we see that Diet Doctor is clearly the market leader in terms of brand strength, but with a high level of branded search traffic, Gaps Diet is showing up as a challenger brand. Food Insight is one of the weaker brands, displaying a small amount of branded search volume and direct traffic.

To get deeper insight into these brands, let’s see how their audiences respond to their businesses by looking at Loyalty and Retention . With high levels of returning visitors and exclusive visitors, we see that Diet Doctor, Gaps Diet, and Eat Right are leading the market.

Once you have company overviews for your competitors, your next step is to look at their web traffic and engagement metrics.

If the company you are analyzing has many online entities, it may make sense to do a digital analysis of all of the assets together using the Similarweb Company Analysis tool .

For instance, we noticed that Verizon owns three domains.

• Verizon.com
• Verizon.net
• Myverizon.com

To get big-picture Traffic & Engagement metrics, we created a separate Verizon company asset that combines all three. Below, you can see the total number of Unique Visitors for all of the properties together over a six-month period.

You can also see their Traffic & Engagement over time, including:

• Average monthly visits
• Pages Per Visit
• Visit Duration
• Bounce Rate

Once you have a basic company overview of your top competitors, your next step is to analyze how your company fits into your market in general.

3. Perform a SWOT analysis

SWOT analysis is a competitor analysis framework you can use to assess the internal Strengths (S) and Weaknesses (W) along with external Opportunities (O) and Threats (T) of your business and your competitors. It provides a concise framework for you to gauge your competitive landscape and make informed strategic decisions that take your market into account.

By doing a SWOT analysis, you’ll understand the market forces and players that affect your business. You’ll discover where you are vulnerable and where your biggest opportunities lie.

To get started, break out your whiteboard, call in your team, and start to brainstorm. Break your whiteboard down into four quadrants.

Label them:

• Strengths (S)
• Weaknesses (W)
• Opportunities (O)
• Threats (T)

Now, get your team together and brainstorm. Fill each quadrant with as many points as you can think of.

We recommend starting with opportunities and threats. The reason is these are factors that are external to your business and will give you a general understanding of your competitive landscape. Once you’ve outlined the external factors, move on to your business’s strengths and weaknesses.

Since you have first outlined your external factors, you are likely to find internal factors to address them.

It’s important to point out at this stage that many of the points we cover in this blog will help you ferret out details that you can add to your SWOT analysis. For instance, performing a channel analysis on your competitor sites will often reveal some hidden opportunities as well.

Granular competitive analysis

4. research your competitors’ 4 p’s.

The 4 P’s is a competitor analysis framework, also called the marketing mix, that refers to the fundamental elements businesses use to develop and implement marketing strategies.

The 4 Ps include:

Product: This refers to the actual goods or services that you offer to meet your customers’ wants and needs. It involves decisions related to product design, features, branding, quality, and packaging. A successful product either fulfills a gap in the market or offers something unique.

Price: Price is the amount of money customers are willing to pay for a product or service. Price should not be too high for your customers or be too low for you to make a profit. Pricing strategies consider factors such as production costs, competitor pricing, perceived value, and overall market conditions.

Place: This refers to where people can buy your product. It includes distribution channels, logistics, inventory management, and the overall strategy for ensuring the product reaches your target market. Not every place is suitable for every product. For instance, you would never sell medical equipment for hospitals in a grocery store.

Promotion: Promotion includes how your business informs your audience about your product so that they make a purchase. It includes advertising, public relations, sales promotions, personal selling, and other communication strategies. Timing is a crucial element in any marketing strategy, for example, promoting back-to-school products before the start of a school year.

5. Understand your competitor’s target audience

So far, we’ve looked at your competitors directly. But to get a complete picture, you must examine your customers.

Starting with big-picture metrics, you must first understand your audience demographics . This is crucial and affects every aspect of your marketing, including pricing, tone, and positioning.

To understand geography and demographics, you must look at a competitor analysis tool, which we’ll demonstrate with the Audience tab in Similarweb’s  Website Analysis tool.

Looking at the Geography report, you can see the traffic share each competitor has in each country.

Now, to your target audience demographics. Below, we see that foodinsight.org and its competitors’ audience tend to be primarily female . Looking at age metrics, their audience tends to be evenly distributed between 25 and 64 .

Want deeper insights? You can filter the results by gender and age.

You have demographic information, it’s time to see what interests your competitor’s audience. You can do that by simply going to their websites and looking at what appears in their content. You’ll be surprised by how much you find by doing this.

What’s more, take a look at their social media content. Check the number of followers your competitors have and the level of their engagement rate . Also, research what types of posts are popular and how followers engage. Do they like, comment, share, or post themselves? Are there any influencers that sponsor them?

Now, if you want to scale this up and see the topics your audience is interested in, use a data-driven approach.

With the Similarweb Audience Interests report, you can see all the topics that appear in high density in the chosen domain. The report shows you topics that are connected to all industries and if you want to see audience interest topics that are specifically for your industry, use the Industry filter.

Above, you can see the audience interest in hotpot.ai , which is specifically in the Graphics Multimedia and Web Design industry. At this point, you are just looking at audience interests at a high level. This analysis will give you a general idea of the topics and themes that drive web audiences in your industry.

You should also take a look at situational analysis to understand what your audience expects in different scenarios. Investigate the factors that impact a customer’s state of mind, such as their knowledge, level of attention, and ability to process information.

Read customer reviews

How a company presents itself and its products is one thing, but how customers view the company is another thing entirely. To get an unbiased view of your competitors’ performance, try to look through the lens of a customer:

• Read customer reviews and evaluate how well the two match
• Browse the issues and questions raised by users to uncover potential weaknesses and see if and how the company answers comments from users
• Look for reviews in forums and groups on sites like G2 and Trustpilot to find feedback
• Evaluate the feedback on their mobile app — are there any missing features, or are there common areas of complaint? What do people love or hate about their app?

Depending on the industry, there may be review sites that compare your competitors’ products. Keep in mind these are usually run by affiliates (who endorse products in exchange for commissions), and they have an interest in favoring one over another. However, they test products themselves and pin features against each other; therefore, you can get facts on the competitor that it isn’t keen on sharing.

Here’s an example of a review website comparing between Dyson and Shark, two leading cordless vacuums:

6. Website competitor analysis

You now have an overview of your competitors. You’ve assessed their place in the market and conducted an audience comparison.

Now, let’s delve into their website performance to uncover:

• Which channels are performing well for your competitors
• Which sites are your strongest competitors
• Which sites you can compete with to quickly gain market share

Let’s start with some digital data for the Similarweb Website Analysis report.

Here, we’ve created a competitor analysis example for foodinsight.com together with its key competitors.

Looking at Traffic & Engagement metrics, we see that dietdoctor.com is getting substantially more traffic than its competitors, followed by ketocycle.diet . Now, traffic is a limited metric. Let’s qualify our findings with engagement metrics.

Again, we see that dietdoctor.com is a clear winner in the Nutrition Diets and Fitness category.

But, when we look at visits over time, dietdoctor.com shows an obvious downward trend. Let’s move over to Channels.

Above, you can see that dietdoctor.com is winning in Organic Search and Direct traffic. Direct traffic indicates that they have better brand recognition than their competitors.

Also notable is that ketocycle.diet is investing heavily in advertising, and none of its competitors are competing in this space. This might be a big opportunity for you as this space is mostly untapped.

Pro tip: Keep track of your competitors with a Competitive Tracker

Once you know who your competitors are, you can track them over time with a Similarweb Competitive Tracker .

A Competitive Tracker enables you to track up to 25 competitors at a time and will help you understand their marketing performance. You can use it to see how your business fits into your market by comparing your site’s performance with your industry competitors.

It will show you where your competitors are gaining or declining in traffic for every marketing channel.

You can also see new ad creatives they have created and discover new trending terms and topics.

What’s more, your tracker will highlight note-worthy insights across all of your metrics.

After you’ve completed your competitor’s Website Analysis, the next step is to dig into keyword strategies.

7. Analyze your competitors’ keyword and content strategy

At this stage, you have already seen your competitors’ big-picture strategic and tactical approach. It’s now time to go to the Similarweb Keywords report. Looking at keywords will help you understand how your competitors are showing up in search results. This could reveal both SEO strategies and PPC keywords that they are bidding on .

Since you are looking at your competitive market, it makes sense to analyze your top competitors at the same time. This will merge all the keywords your top competitors are ranking for in one table. You can filter the data from there.

Above, we noticed in the Channels report that competitors were investing in SEO. To understand their SEO strategies, we are looking at the non-branded keywords. If, on the other hand, we want to understand how a brand is performing in search, we could look exclusively at branded keywords.

We currently have an overwhelming number of keywords in the table. To make sense of your data, filter it by topic. For instance, since we are looking at sites that are focused on diet, we can start to look at diet plan keywords.

This filter is powerful, as yes, these sites are organic competitors, but not all topics are relevant to your site. The filter will allow you to quickly see the topics your site is competing on. Another way to use this is to look at what topics other sites are competing on. You might find some that are relevant to your site that you never thought of.

See your competitors’ best-performing content

To understand what content is bringing your competitors their best results, look at their top-performing landing pages. Below, you can see the top-performing pages for foodinsight.com.

The report shows you all the keywords the page is ranking on, as well as a trend graph so that you can see how each page is performing.

8. Analyze their lead generation strategies

To get a better understanding of your competitor’s strategic approach, you’ll want to research their lead generation strategies . To do this, you need to put yourself into the shoes of their audience and actually take a trip down their funnel. Read a few blog posts, sign up for whatever you can, and try out any free tools they offer. You can also hone in on top traffic referrers and discover the top sources of referrals for their site.

Don’t forget to use a methodical approach to collecting any responses. This is going to save you time and provide inspiration for future improvements.

Your goal here is to identify:

• The major pain points they address
• The unique solutions they offer (and how)
• Their key messages for customers
• Who is sending referrals to their site
• How they serve their customers (site or app)

You have the data (source), now craft your winning strategy

At this point, you should have a comprehensive grasp on how to analyze your competitors. We’ve covered how you can assess the broader market and dissect your competitors. We’ve also covered how you can analyze audience interests and see what assets your competitors are using to serve them.

Doing this analysis will help you find untapped opportunities in your market so that you can create a strategy that capitalizes on your strengths and addresses your competitors’ shortcomings.

There is one thing at the heart of competitor analysis.

Comprehensive and consistent data.

Because pulling from many data sources will give you inconsistent results.

Build winning strategies

Competitive analysis is the process of collecting and reviewing information about your competitive landscape.

What should I include in a competitor analysis? 

In your competitor analysis, you should assess your competitors’ strengths, weaknesses, market share, pricing, marketing strategies, and customer feedback. Also, evaluate their innovation, distribution channels, and overall financial health. This will help you to identify opportunities and threats in your industry.

How can I conduct successful competition analysis?

Use Similarweb to determine the demographic makeup of your customer base across both web and app sources. Identify the sites consumers are visiting, evaluate emerging or declining performers, and find industry trends and marketing strategies that you can replicate.

What is a competitive analysis framework?

A Competitive Analysis framework is a structured approach to compare your company’s marketing strategy to your competitors in order to to inform strategic decision-making. It involves evaluating market dynamics, industry trends, and competitor performance.

Related Posts

Marketing OKRs: How to Stay Focused and Hit Your Targets

Digital Marketing Strategy: A Beginner’s Guide

What is a Marketing Plan and How Do You Create One?

How to Conduct a Social Media Competitor Analysis: 5 Quick Steps

How to Do an Ecommerce Competitor Analysis in 2024

Industry Benchmark Analysis 2024: Is Your Marketing Strategy Aligned?

Wondering what similarweb can do for your business.

Give it a try or talk to our insights team — don’t worry, it’s free!

How to Perform Competitive Research: A Comprehensive Guide

The business environment is constantly evolving. New players are emerging, technologies are advancing, and consumer preferences are changing in the blink of an eye. Staying one step forwards of your competitors is crucial to ensure your business thrives. Read more.

Shaurya Bedi

The business environment is constantly evolving. New players are emerging, technologies are advancing, and consumer preferences are changing in the blink of an eye. Staying one step forwards of your competitors is crucial to ensure your business thrives.

So, how do you "Stay ahead?"

Have you ever wondered why successful companies always seem to be one step ahead of the game?

Well, the secret lies in performing effective  competitive research and analysis !

Effective competitive research and analysis help businesses understand their market and leverage their strengths. Companies can uncover valuable insights about industry trends, customer preferences, and emerging opportunities by closely monitoring their competitors.

Effective analysis is also the key ingredient that turns research into action. By thoroughly examining the data, businesses can formulate winning strategies, refine their products/services, and stay ahead of the curve.

What is Competitive Research?

Competitive research gathers and analyzes information about your industry rivals to gain a competitive edge. It involves identifying who your competitors are and analyzing their strengths and weaknesses. This lets you understand what they're doing well and where they fall short. Learning from their strategies and mistakes is like peeking over their shoulders.

Competitive research helps you uncover market trends and customer preferences. Understanding what your target audience desires and how your competitors meet those needs helps you develop a USP that sets you apart.

Competitive research also enables you to spot new opportunities and potential threats. Keeping a close eye on your competitor helps identify gaps in the market or anticipate any challenges that may come your way.

What is a Competitive Market Analysis?

Competitive market analysis  is a valuable tool for businesses to evaluate their market position and gain a competitive edge. It involves analyzing key factors such as market trends, competitor strategies, pricing, and customer preferences. Studying the weaknesses and strengths of your competitors can help identify opportunities to distinguish yourself and better serve your target audience.

A competitive analysis report helps you understand the market dynamics and gives you insights into what your customers truly want. It also allows you to adapt and stay ahead by fine-tuning your marketing strategy and identifying potential threats.

Knowledge is power. Understanding your competition is the key to flourishing in today's fast-paced business environment. So, whether you're a small business or a large corporation, conducting a competitive market analysis is necessary. It helps you make informed decisions and sets you on the path to success.

How do you conduct a Competitive Analysis?

Now that you know what is a competitive analysis, here's how you can perform a comprehensive competitive analysis:

Identify competitors

To get started, it's important to distinguish your direct rivals who offer similar products or services from your indirect rivals who cater to the same target audience. Make a comprehensive list of all potential competitors, including industry leaders, emerging players, and startups. Use online research tools, social media channels, and trade publications to gather information.

Analyze market positioning

Next, analyze your competitors' market positioning. Understand their value proposition, target market, and unique selling points. Compare their products or services with yours, identifying gaps or areas where you can differentiate yourself. Research their pricing strategies, promotions, and customer relationships to gain insights into their competitive advantage.

Assess strengths and weaknesses

Evaluate your competitors' strengths and weaknesses. Identify aspects where they excel and what sets them apart from others. Simultaneously, identify any weaknesses or shortcomings that you can leverage. Consider product quality, customer service, marketing efforts, innovation, and customer loyalty programs.

Evaluate marketing strategies

Examine your competitors' marketing strategies, including digital marketing campaigns, advertising, social media presence, and search engine optimization. Assess their branding, messaging, and engagement with customers. Look for opportunities to improve your brand image or capitalize on unexplored marketing channels.

Importance of Competitive Research

Let's explore the importance of competitive research and discover how it can give you that competitive edge!

• Understanding the market landscape : Competitive research allows you to understand the current market landscape comprehensively. You can discover untapped opportunities and potential threats by analyzing your competitors' strengths, weaknesses, and market positioning. This information helps you make informed decisions and adjust your business strategies accordingly.
• Setting benchmarks : Competitive research also enables you to set criteria for your own business. By evaluating your rivals' successes and failures, you can establish attainable goals and strive to exceed them. Setting standards provides a clear direction and helps you track your progress concerning the competition.
• Innovating and differentiating : Staying stagnant in a rapidly evolving market is a recipe for disaster. Competitive research helps you identify gaps in the market that your competitors might be overlooking. You can innovate and differentiate your products or services by leveraging these opportunities. This attracts new customers and helps you retain existing ones by offering unique value propositions.
• Customer-centric approach : Understanding your competitors lets you gain insights into their customer base. You can make insightful decisions about your marketing strategies by identifying their target audience and analyzing customer feedback. You can tailor your messaging, branding, and customer experience to cater to your target market more effectively.
• Adaptability : Competitive research encourages adaptability and agility. You can swiftly respond to market trends and changes by monitoring your rivals' actions. This flexibility helps you stay competitive and maintain an edge over those who are slow to adapt.

Competitive Analysis Best Practices

Let's now explore some competitive analysis best practices that can give your business an edge.

• Gather information. Identify your competitors and evaluate their strengths, weaknesses, and strategies. Look into their product offerings, marketing tactics, customer feedback, and online presence. This will help you identify areas where you can differentiate yourself and target potential customers.
• Analyze the data collected. Compare your performance to theirs, considering factors like sales figures, market share, and customer satisfaction. Examine trends and patterns to identify your key competitive advantages and areas for improvement.
• Constantly monitor and track your competitors. Keep an eye on their new product launches, marketing campaigns, pricing changes, and any other moves they make. This will help you anticipate their next steps and stay one step ahead.
• Conduct a  SWOT analysis . Evaluate your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Then, do the same for your competitors. This will help you unravel potential gaps in the market to exploit and areas to strengthen your position.
• Compare your performance metrics with industry standards to understand your market standing. This will help you set realistic goals and targets for your business.

Virtual Assistants for Best Competitive Research 

If you are wondering how to find the time to do competitive research while managing your day-to-day tasks, the answer is Virtual Assistants.

Finding time for competitive research can be as elusive as the golden ticket in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. But fear not, because just as Oompa Loompas kept the factory running smoothly, virtual assistants are your golden ticket to managing day-to-day tasks and conducting competitive research with efficiency and precision.

Let's find out in detail:

• Conduct initial research to identify direct and indirect competitors.  Your VA will begin by recognizing your direct competitors. These are organizations that offer similar products or services within your target market. Once done, they will analyze indirect competitors, which include businesses that offer alternative solutions or serve a different target audience.
• Compile a comprehensive list of competitors in the industry.  From established giants to emerging startups, your VA will compile a list of competitors.
• Gather market intelligence through industry reports and market studies.  Your VA will collect and analyze data from various sources, extract valuable insights, and present them in comprehensive industry reports. The information includes industry trends, customer preferences, and market dynamics.
• Analyze competitors' websites for product/service offerings and positioning.  Your VA will analyze your competitors' websites for their product and service offerings and their positioning in the market. The information will help you identify your competitors' strengths and weaknesses. You can then improve your offerings and stay ahead in the market.
• Monitor competitors' social media channels for engagement and promotional strategies.  Your VA will start following your competitors' social media channels. Monitoring your competitors' channels for engagement and promotional strategies can provide valuable information to boost your brand.
• Review customer reviews on Yelp, Google, and industry-specific review sites.  Your VA will diligently review the customer reviews to identify improvement areas. A deeper understanding of customer feedback helps businesses refine their service offerings, improve customer satisfaction, and ultimately secure a competitive edge in the market.
• Investigate competitors' marketing campaigns, content, and advertising efforts.  Investigating competitors' marketing campaigns helps to understand the tactics they employ. Analyzing competitors' content helps identify gaps and focus on areas where you can excel. Examining competitors' advertising efforts enables you to evaluate the effectiveness of different advertising channels.
• Compare product/service pricing among competitors.  Your VA will scour the market to gather data and compare product/service pricing across your industry. The detailed insights will help you make informed decisions on adjusting prices, positioning your business, and developing effective marketing strategies.
• Conduct each competitor's SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats).  By examining your competitors' websites, social media presence, customer feedback, and industry reports, the VA accumulates insightful data for the SWOT analysis. This information can help your business refine its strategies, develop new products/services, and anticipate market challenges.
• Benchmark your business performance against key competitors.  Your VA will collect data from various sources, including market research reports, industry analyses, customer surveys, and competitive intelligence tools. They will then analyze this data, cross-referencing it with your business performance metrics, to provide a clear picture of how you measure up against your competitors.
• Provide insights into areas where your business can capitalize on competitors' weaknesses.  By examining your competitors' weaknesses, a VA can help you identify potential market gaps that you can fill. Through in-depth research, they can reveal untapped customer needs that competitors have failed to address adequately. With this knowledge, you can tailor your offerings or introduce new products or services, positioning your business as the go-to solution for these unmet demands.
• Offer recommendations for adapting and refining business strategies based on competitive insights.  A VA can recommend refining existing strategies and developing new ones based on competitive insights.
• Continuously monitor and update competitive landscape information.  By constantly monitoring the market, your VA can provide timely updates on industry trends, pricing strategies, customer preferences, and more.

Wishup: Your Ultimate Research Partner

Wishup's virtual assistants are highly trained professionals who excel in handling administrative tasks, managing social media, organizing calendars, and much more. They can help you with competitive research - in all the ways mentioned above.

Wishup's services provide entrepreneurs and small business owners with an efficient and organized solution. Our team of skilled professionals handles all your business needs, from recording transactions to generating reports. Wishup utilizes modern tools and software to streamline your processes, making it hassle-free and time-efficient. Also, Wishup ensures the highest level of accuracy and confidentiality when handling your information.

Enjoy affordable services.

Wishup offers all of its incredible services at an affordable price. We understand the value of your time and work tirelessly to ensure your tasks are completed efficiently.

Collaborate with the most exceptional 0.1% of talent.

Wishup offers the cream of the crop for virtual assistants. Whether handling administrative tasks, managing your calendar, or organizing your finances, Wishup ensures you are paired with the best of the best.

Easily bring your virtual assistant on board in just one day.

With  Wishup , you can bring a talented and dedicated virtual assistant on board in just one day. It's as simple as signing up and discussing your requirements.

Say goodbye to the need for a training budget.

With Wishup, you can now hire highly trained and skilled virtual assistants who are experts in their fields. No more spending on expensive training programs or workshops.

Take advantage of Wishup's amazing replacement policy, no questions asked!

Wishup understands that sometimes things don't work out how we want them to. That's why they have a "no questions asked" replacement policy. If you're not satisfied with the virtual assistant provided to you, simply reach out to our customer support team, and they'll arrange a replacement for you.

Give your virtual assistant a try with our 7-day Risk-Free Trial.

With our Risk-Free Trial, you can experience the convenience and productivity of having a virtual assistant without any commitment.

Competitive research is an essential part of any successful business strategy. It helps you scout out the competition, understand their strategies, and use this knowledge to position your own business for success.

Start by identifying your main competitors. Once you understand your competition, it's time to analyze their strengths and weaknesses. Identify areas where you can outshine them and capitalize on their shortcomings.

Keep up with ongoing research and analysis. The market is ever-changing, so staying ahead of the game is crucial.

Remember that competitive research isn't a one-time deal - it's an ongoing process.

Wishup can be an effective partner for you in conducting competitive research. Contact us to  schedule a free consultation . You may also drop us an email at  [email protected] .

FAQs: Competitive Research

How do you do competitive market research.

Start by identifying your main competitors and gathering information on their products, pricing, and marketing strategies. Analyze their strengths and weaknesses, and use this knowledge to improve your own offering. Don't forget to keep an eye on emerging trends and consumer behavior.

What are competitive examples?

Competitive examples are real-life situations or instances that demonstrate competitiveness in a particular industry or field. These examples showcase how different companies or individuals constantly strive to outperform each other and gain a competitive advantage. For instance, consider tech giants like Apple and Samsung battling it out in the smartphone market with innovative features and designs.

Request consultation has been made.

Virtual Assistants | Software Testers | Bookkeepers

* Valid for new signups only

• Skip to main content
• Skip to primary sidebar
• Skip to footer
• QuestionPro

• Solutions Industries Gaming Automotive Sports and events Education Government Travel & Hospitality Financial Services Healthcare Cannabis Technology Use Case NPS+ Communities Audience Contactless surveys Mobile LivePolls Member Experience GDPR Positive People Science 360 Feedback Surveys
• Resources Blog eBooks Survey Templates Case Studies Training Help center

Home Market Research

Competitor Research: What it is + How to conduct one

Having the feeling that your company is falling behind the competition is frustrating, right? Competitor research is one efficient strategy for staying one step ahead of the game. You can learn about your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, gain valuable insights into their strategies, and ultimately improve your own business through competitive analysis.

In this post, I’ll discuss competitor research in detail and give you actionable tips on how to conduct it effectively. So brace yourself to overcome the competition.

What is Competitor Research?

Competitor research is the process of identifying your competitors, finding out what their strengths and weaknesses are, and evaluating their products or services. It helps you understand the market and find ways to differentiate your business.

You may learn a lot about the target market and the competition by analyzing the products and services of your big competitors. It also assists in identifying previously unnoticed industry trends in the business world.

LEARN ABOUT:  Market Evaluation

Why is Competitor Research Important?

Competitor research is an important aspect of business strategy because it allows companies to learn about their competitors’ strengths and weaknesses. Businesses can identify opportunities for improvement and areas where they can gain a competitive advantage by conducting a competitive analysis of their product or service, pricing, and marketing strategies.

Businesses may adapt their strategy to better serve their potential customers and position themselves to succeed in their industries by keeping up to date with what their competitors are doing. Following are some reasons for the importance of competitor analysis:

• To Understand the Market: Competitive market research helps to find market trends, consumer preferences, and other important elements that have an impact on their industry by researching their competitors.
• To Identify Opportunities: Businesses can identify market gaps where they can gain a competitive advantage by researching their competitors. For instance, they might identify market opportunities or brand-new customer groups to focus on.
• To Develop Better Strategies: By conducting a comprehensive competitive analysis, you can better understand why customers choose to buy from you vs. your competitors. Businesses may identify what works and what doesn’t by analyzing what their major competitors are doing and then modifying their marketing strategy accordingly.

LEARN ABOUT: market research trends

Is competitor research qualitative or quantitative?

Competitor research can use both qualitative and quantitative methods based on the particular research objective and the data that needs to be collected.

• Qualitative research collects non-numerical data and is frequently employed to better understand customer behavior, attitudes, and opinions. Conducting customer interviews, evaluating interactions on social media, and reviewing online reviews are examples of qualitative research methods.
• Quantitative research contains the collection of numerical data and is frequently used to measure market trends and the behavior of customers. Quantitative research approaches include conducting surveys or questionnaires, evaluating sales data, or making use of web analytics tools to measure website traffic

The appropriate strategy will depend on the goals of the research, the resources available, and the exact information you want to learn from the research.

Both qualitative and quantitative research approaches have their advantages and disadvantages. In many cases, a mix of qualitative and quantitative research methods can offer a complete picture of the competitive market.

LEARN ABOUT: Qualitative Interview

What should be included in competitor research?

A comprehensive competitor analysis or research should include some key elements to provide a complete picture of the market environment. Here are a few important things to consider:

Identify competitors

Analyzing the online presence of competitors.

• Website Design and Layout: It covers your competitor’s website’s layout, design, user-friendliness, and mobile responsiveness.
• Content Quality: It involves the accuracy, relevancy, and audience-usefulness of the content on your competitor’s website.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO): It analyzes the on-page and off-page SEO tactics used by your competitors, including how they make use of keywords, meta descriptions, headings, URL structures, domain authority, and link-building strategies.
• Traffic Analysis: Find out how much organic and sponsored traffic your competitor’s website gets, including their use of calls-to-action, landing pages, and forms.
• Social Media Integration: Check out how your competitors use social networking symbols and widgets on their websites.
• Lead Generation: Check your competitor’s website for pop-ups, lead magnets, and other lead collection methods.

Competitive analysis of Products or Services

• Identify the gaps: Product or service that your competitors provide but you do not.
• Differentiators: Product or service that you provide but not by your competitors.

Pricing research

Marketing audit.

• Sponsored Ad Campaigns
• Social media advertisements
• Newsletters

SWOT analysis

Gathering information and tracking your findings.

• Business name
• Social media
• Special features
• Pros and cons
• additional details

Improvements and conclusions

Competitive research is a continuous process. For you to remain competitive in the market, ongoing monitoring is required, such as watching how competitors change. Creating a competitor analysis template will make future market research easier for you.

LEARN ABOUT:  Market research industry

Dumpster Diving vs. Value Driving: Which would you pick?

Instead of spending all of our time and money figuring out what the competition is doing — shouldn’t we just give our customers what they want?

Yeah. It was getting ridiculous. That little sentence almost got me fired. But, I had honestly had enough.

I was the 1-woman competitive intelligence department for a large pharmaceutical packaging company who had suddenly had a reality check moment when they saw bits and pieces of their multi-million dollar business start vanishing before their eyes.

Suddenly, I realized that other companies were providing the same products, and they went from one extreme to the other.

Over the next year or so, I did phone interviews, customer interviews, and even some dumpster diving, all for competitor analysis and with the intent of trying to figure out what was going on.

This was all in the days before the internet, so there was a lot of hands-on, feet-on-the-ground, kind of competitor analysis that I did. And my conclusion-customer satisfaction was a way better investment of time and money. But that doesn’t mean that you should ignore the competition and not do competitor analysis; no way.

How to begin the competitor research process

Figure out what do you want to know and why.

When I first started doing competitive intelligence, it was a knee-jerk reaction to seeing sales and profits dwindle.

• Where did the money go?
• Why aren’t they ordering the same number of parts as last year?
• Who took my business?

And ultimately, the most important questions underlying all of these were “WHY were our customers leaving us?” and “What are we going to do about it?”

This was a good place to start our competitive analysis and competitive intelligence journey. The first step is knowing that you have competitors (duh! EVERYONE has competitors) and then understanding exactly what was important to our customers that we weren’t fulfilling on and our competitors were.

What’s your competitive dilemma?

• Do you see a competitor getting more of your ideal customer than you are?
• Do you see customers spending more on your type of product or service with someone else?
• Do you see customers “doing it themselves” when you can do it better?

Get as specific as you can about exactly what you want to know and why.

What decisions are you going to make, and what information do you need to make them?

This is a sister question to the first and will often come only after you understand exactly what’s going on in your competitive landscape. But it’s a critical piece of information to have in your competitor’s research because it will drive your time, money, and resources for a good amount of time.

So, the clearer you are on what decisions you’re going to make and what information you need to make them, the faster the process will go and the more effective you’re going to be.

What is it about this “competitive situation” that have you stumped?

• Are you trying to launch a new product and not sure if customers would switch from a competitor to you?
• Are you considering getting into a new market and wondering how to position yourself against an entrenched competitor?
• How many customers would you need to be successful?

Imagine that competition was NOT an issue; what would you need to know to be successful? This will help you identify and focus on very specific questions that will move your story and strategy forward and keep you from getting mired in “nice to know” information.

Decide on who your actual competition is in your competitor research

You probably believe that your greatest competitor is the person who lives next door, lives across the country, or offers the same service as you do. Is that right? Your competitors are any other possibilities that your customer may have to get the result that you promise. That is how I would define it. Keep reading to find out.

Types of Competition

As you can see, there are three categories of competition:

Direct competitors

Indirect competitors, secondary competitors.

Take a moment to list some of your direct and indirect competitors, as well as secondary competitors, now. This will really help you get some context around your competitor research.

Here are some Cool Tools That Will Help You Track Your Competition . Meanwhile, you can use some of our product survey templates and find out where your competitive advantage lies.

What tools can I use to do competitor analysis?

Competitive analysis is now more accessible than ever because of developments in software and technology. With so many options available, choosing the best tool for conducting market research might be difficult.

Because of this, I’ve done the research and narrowed it down for you. Let’s take a look:

• Google Alerts: Set up a Google Alert to be notified whenever your competitor’s name, product, or brand name, or maybe even their management team, is mentioned.
• Social Media Tracking: Use HootSuite to keep an eye on your competitors. I like this platform because it’s free, and you can make separate tabs for whatever you’re doing. So, make a tab that searches for the most important hashtags in your industry. Then, make another tab that searches for your competitors’ names and brand names.
• Email Promotions: If your competitors use email marketing, SIGN UP to get their emails. Sure, they can take you off the list, but you’ll still get information in your inbox.
• BuzzSumo: I started using BuzzSumo to come up with ideas for blog posts, but I’ve since learned that it’s also a great tool for figuring out how your competitors are doing. Just look up the name or brand of a competitor and see how many social shares they have.
• HubSpot’s Marketing Grader: This was originally made as a way to get people to sign up for your email list and show you how to make your website better. But why not use it to rate the website of your competitor instead? It’s a simple way to see where they can’t reach customers (oh, and you can use it for your own site for the same thing).
• Market research, Academic research, capturing qualitative and quantitative insights, and social media sentiment analysis .
• Analyze pricing research data to determine market factors, including competition intelligence, purchase behavior, and pricing sensitivity.
• A/B testing across questions, segments, and ideas.

Competitor Analysis FAQ

Is competitor analysis the same as swot analysis, why do we do competitor analysis, what are the types of competitor analysis, what are the objectives of competitor research.

LEARN ABOUT:  Test Market Demand

Final Words

Competitor research can be difficult initially, but it’s crucial to successful business management. It might not be as difficult as you thought when using the appropriate research tools.

QuestionPro is a set of research tools that let researchers make surveys, polls, online focus groups, and even mobile surveys. The platform has an easy-to-use interface and advanced customization options that let researchers make their surveys fit their specific research needs while collecting accurate data.

QuestionPro also has powerful tools for analyzing data, such as data visualization and real-time reporting , which make it easy for researchers to understand and present their findings. The automation features of the platform also make it easy for researchers to collect and look at data.

FREE TRIAL         LEARN MORE

MORE LIKE THIS

Data Information vs Insight: Essential differences

May 14, 2024

Pricing Analytics Software: Optimize Your Pricing Strategy

May 13, 2024

Relationship Marketing: What It Is, Examples & Top 7 Benefits

May 8, 2024

The Best Email Survey Tool to Boost Your Feedback Game

May 7, 2024

Other categories

• Academic Research
• Artificial Intelligence
• Assessments
• Brand Awareness
• Case Studies
• Communities
• Consumer Insights
• Customer effort score
• Customer Engagement
• Customer Experience
• Customer Loyalty
• Customer Research
• Customer Satisfaction
• Employee Benefits
• Employee Engagement
• Employee Retention
• Friday Five
• General Data Protection Regulation
• Insights Hub
• Life@QuestionPro
• Market Research
• Mobile diaries
• Mobile Surveys
• New Features
• Online Communities
• Question Types
• Questionnaire
• QuestionPro Products
• Release Notes
• Research Tools and Apps
• Revenue at Risk
• Survey Templates
• Training Tips
• Uncategorized
• Video Learning Series
• What’s Coming Up
• Workforce Intelligence

Advisory boards aren’t only for executives. Join the LogRocket Content Advisory Board today →

• Product Management
• Solve User-Reported Issues
• Find Issues Faster
• Optimize Conversion and Adoption

What is competitive analysis? Template, examples, and how-to

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll define what a competitive analysis is, describe the benefits product teams stand to gain from conducting one, and walk through the steps of how to do a competitive analysis.

Through the tutorial, we’ll refer to examples to demonstrate how each step of a competitive analysis works in practice. We’ll also provide a list of customizable, free competitive analysis templates for you to use when completing these steps on your own.

Complete guide to competitive analysis

Picture this: you just came up with the next disruptive, game changing, AI-powered e-commerce marketplace. The objective is to connect buyers with sellers to fulfill their tailored and customized product needs.

You’re confident your product will take on Etsy and other big players in the market. You did some market and user research and have a good idea of your ideal customer and their (underserved) needs. Based on this data, you believe your marketplace can reach product-market fit quickly.

It’s now time for you to dust off your copy of Sun Tzu’s  T he Art of War . Why is that, you ask?

The Art of War is an ancient Chinese military textbook that, although dated somewhere between ~500–400 B.C., is one of the most influential management books out there to this day. It provides great strategic and tactical advice. Moreover, it provides guidance to help you assess yourself and your competition to gain an advantage.

Maintaining a competitive advantage is the goal. Even if you have the best product in the world and you know there is a market for it, if you don’t understand your competition, you‘re bound to fail. That’s why you need to perform a competitive analysis.

As the band Rage Against the Machine would say, know your enemy .

What is competitive analysis?

Competitive analysis (sometimes called a competitor analysis or competition analysis) is exactly what it sounds like: a structured approach to identifying and analyzing your competitors. More concretely, it’s an assessment of your competition’s offerings, strategy, strengths, and weaknesses.

A competitive analysis helps you answer questions such as:

• Which other companies are providing a solution similar to ours?
• What are the ideal customer’s minimum expectations?
• What are they currently not getting from our product with regard to those expectations?
• What barriers do competitors in the market fce?
• What should we avoid introducing in our product?
• What price are customers willing to pay for our product?
• What value do we need to provide to make our product stand out in the market?
• What trends are happening and how might they change the playing field?

When conducted thoroughly and regularly, a competitive analysis provides you with tons of information that can be used to improve and optimize your product. The end result is a holistic overview of your competitor landscape.

Why do a competitive analysis?

Competitive analysis is a fundamental product management instrument. It helps PMs learn what works and what doesn’t when trying to acquire market share, identify market trends, and locate gaps in their product offering.

Competitive analysis exists to help you avoid making mistakes and empower you to beat competitors to the punch in the pursuit of product growth and success.

Knowing your competition will bring you great rewards. Conducting a competitive analysis will help you more effectively:

• Create benchmarks
• Identify opportunities to better serve customers
• Make strategic decisions
• Determine your pricing strategy
• Identify market gaps
• Determine distribution and marketing strategies

Typically, the first time you create a competitor analysis is when doing your market research. This helps you get an idea of the product-market fit , which will evolve along your journey.

As a product manager, your role is not to analyze how well your competitors are able to showcase themselves. It is your job to make the product what the customer needs it to be. Understanding your competitor’s capabilities, pricing, and product positioning helps you in this.

Keep in mind that your competitors will likely showcase themselves to appear better than they probably are. You’ll be able to acquire tons of information about them, but you should take that information with a pinch of salt.

How to do a competitive analysis

There is no a single way to do a competitive analysis. In general, a competitive analysis is made up of three fundamental components:

• A shortlist of competitors
• A competitor deep dive
• A holistic overview and strategy

To demonstrate how to do a competitor analysis, we’ll refer back to the example outlined in the introduction.

Over 200k developers and product managers use LogRocket to create better digital experiences

Remember, in our example, we’re looking to disrupt the market with an AI-powered e-commerce marketplace app that helps buyers and sellers connect to fulfill highly customized orders. Let’s call our innovative new product AGORA.

1. Create a shortlist of your competitors

There are three types of competitors:

• Direct — Competitors that offer the same product and target the same ideal customer; you are battling direct competitors heads-on
• Indirect — Competitors that either offer a somewhat similar product or target the same ideal customer
• Replacement — Competitors that offer a different product but target the same ideal customer

For a competitive analysis, you need to identify at least your direct and indirect competitors. So how do you do that? By looking inward and researching obsessively .

Look inward

To figure out who your direct and indirect competitors are, you need to look inward first to understand your product positioning: who are you servicing and what is the offering you are providing?

You can answer these questions by doing a self-assessment using the product canvas . Originally introduced by Roman Pichler, the product canvas has since tbeen tweaked and refined.

In its core, the product canvas covers:

• The name of the product
• Objectives and key metrics for success
• The ideal customer
• A high-level overview of what’s required to meet the customer’s needs
• Just enough product details about short-term goals

For our example product, the competitive analysis might look something like this:

Research obsessively

A simple Google search using keywords from your self-assessment can get you pretty far. Other resources that can help you identify your competitors include tools such as Crunchbase, Similarweb, Statista, etc.

As the old saying goes, the customer knows best. If you don’t have many customers yet, review sites such G2, Capterra, Trustpilot, and Google Reviews can help you.

If you do have customers, go ask them. Most customers try and evaluate several products before deciding on the right product to buy. Nothing is stopping you from asking them which other brands they considered and why they ultimately chose yours.

Once you have established who your competitors are, you might find yourself in a market with many direct and indirect competitors. If that is the case, select about seven of the most relevant competitors to include in your competitor deep dive.

2. Do a deep dive on each competitor

From your a shortlist of competitors, choose about seven of your most important and dig up all the relevant information on each one.

The research conducted during the previous step will help you capture the most relevant information about your competitors for the following categories:

Company profile

Ideal customer profile, product information, market approach, swot analysis.

Start by creating a company profile for each of your competitors to gain a better understanding of who they are. Include the following information:

• Name   —  What is the name of your competitor?
• Founding date  —  When was the company founded? How long has it been in the market?
• Company size  —  How many employees does the company have? Are they equipped to service the market and innovate?
• Market share  — The portion of the market controlled by the competitor’s product
• Revenue   —  The income the competitor generates from its product
• Reputation   —  What do customers think of your competitor’s product on a scale from one to five?

Let’s apply this framework to our AGORA competitive analysis example:

It’s important to understand who your competitors are serving and who is buying the product. This not only to reconfirm that the competitor is indeed a direct (or indirect) competitor, but also to understand what customers like and dislike about the competitor’s product.

The information you’re looking for includes:

• Ideal customer   —  Who is the competitor’s target customer and what defines them?
• Motivations   —  What does the customer enjoy about your competitor’s product?
• Frustrations   —  What does the customer hate about the product?
• Primary buyer  —  Who is the primary buyer of the product? Is it the as the ideal customer, or is it a different persona?

Let’s see what this would look like following our AGORA example. Below is an example ideal customer profile for Etsy. First, for the buyer:

And the ideal customer profile for Etsy sellers:

Not to be captain obvious, but you want to capture more details about the product your competitor is offering and its positioning.

The information we’re looking for at this step includes:

• The product   —  What is the tagline your competitor is using to market its product?
• Positioning   —  Based on the quality and price of the product, place the product into a one of several buckets. For example, Economy (low quality, low price), Skimming (low quality, high price), Penetration (high quality, low price), and Premium (high quality, high price)
• Product features   —  What are the key features being marketed and promoted?

Referring to our example AGORA app, the product information associated with Etsy on a competitor analysis might look as follows:

Next, seek to understand how your competitors are bringing the product to market .

List the following information:

• Pricing — What does the product costs? If there is a tiered pricing model, what does it look like?
• Distribution channels — Through which channels is your competitor selling the product?
• Marketing channels — Through which channels is the product being promoted?

In our AGORA competitor analysis example, this section would look something like:

With all the information you’ve collected, you’ll find yourself in a good place to do a SWOT analysis . This is one of the most common and popular competitive analysis frameworks.

SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats:

• Strengths  —  What is going well for the competitor?
• Weaknesses   —  What is not going well? What obvious flaws are there?
• Opportunities   —  What could give your competitor an advantage?
• Threats  —  What might harm your competitor’s product?

For AGORA, our example competitive analysis might include a SWOT analysis that looks like this:

3. Develop a holistic overview and strategy

Now that you have a better view of your competitors, it’s time to determine how you want to approach them in the market: do you want to avoid your competitors or attack them?

Two extremely useful tools that can help you make this assessment are the competitive matrix and battle cards .

Competitive matrix

One way to operationalize the data you gathered during your competitive analysis is to plot out a four-quadrant competitive matrix.

Define key factors for the and x and y axes and plot yourself and your competition accordingly to see how you stack up. This approach is also known as perceptual mapping.

A competitive matrix for our example would look like this:

Battle cards

You can use the four-quadrant competitive matrix and competitor insights to create battle cards for each of your competitors.

Battle cards are a visual aid that help you compare your product against those of your competitors at a glance. It’s a quick and easy way to see how you stack up in key areas of performance and value. It’s also a neat way to help sales in their conversations with customers.

Here’s what you should include on each battle card:

• Company name — Name of your competitor
• Powers  —  What makes this competitor stand out from the rest?
• How we win   —  What should we do to gain a competitive advantage over this competitor?
• Why we lose   —  What is this competitor better at? What should we avoid so we don’t lose market share?
• Pricing   —  How much of a threat is the competitor’s product to our market share (low, medium, or high)?
• Strategy   — Should we attack or avoid this competitor?

A battle card for our example competitive analysis might look as follows:

Alternative competitive analysis frameworks

If you‘ve followed the framework described above, you should have solid insight into your competitors, your product opportunities, and the best strategy to attack or avoid your competitors in the market.

If you want to dig deeper, you can follow up your competitive analysis by producing a Five Forces analysis and/or customer journey map .

The Five Forces model

You still might want to consider gaining more insights into the competitive structure of the market you are in — in other words, gain a better understanding of how easy it is to either enter or be replaced by a competitor in the market.

A great framework to use for this type of competitor analysis is the Five Forces model , originally conceived by Michael Porter.

According to the Five Forces model, you can assess the market you are in by looking at:

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

Customer journey map

Instead of zooming out, you can also zoom in on the journey ideal customers make when interacting with the product itself, the distribution, or marketing channels.

On a journey map, your touchpoints are the customer, the activity performed, how the customer experiences the activities, and their expectations.

Free competitive analysis templates

A competitive analysis is a continuously updated document packed with information about your most important competitors to help you determine how to approach them in your target market.

The competitive analysis model described in this article consists of three steps that are designed to produce the insights you need to rule the market once and for all.

Below are free, customizable competitive analysis templates for each step of the process described in this article:

• Competitive analysis template
• Product canvas template
• Competitive matrix template
• Battle card template
• Customer journey map template

NOTE : To use and customize the competitive analysis templates above, after opening, select File > Make a copy from the main menu.

Featured image source: IconScout

LogRocket generates product insights that lead to meaningful action

Get your teams on the same page — try LogRocket today.

Share this:

• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• #market analysis

Stop guessing about your digital experience with LogRocket

Recent posts:.

Crafting a successful product launch strategy: Key tips and steps

A launch strategy builds anticipation, maximizes initial sales, and establishes a strong market presence early on.

Leader Spotlight: Having a bias for action, with Anish Chadda

Anish Chadda discusses the importance of having a “bias for action” — iterating quickly instead of focusing on creating a perfect prototype.

DSDM: The dynamic systems development method

The dynamic system development method (DSDM) was first released in 1994 as a software development method to provide some discipline to RAD.

Leader Spotlight: Enabling a vision-led product mindset, with David Krell

David Krell, VP of Product at Going, talks about the fallacy that PMs have to be in a position of authority to do vision-led work.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Business growth

Business tips

A step-by-step guide to competitive market analysis

I remember Blockbuster going bankrupt in 2010. As a 12-year-old, this news meant the end of walking down aisles with my family, looking for the perfect weekend flick. But to Netflix, this meant their competitive market analysis had paid off.

As much as I miss my three-day VHS and DVD rentals, video entertainment has improved significantly, thanks to innovation and competitive pressure. Your industry isn't immune to change either, which is why it's so important to get ahead.

Table of contents:

What is a competitive analysis?

Competitive market analysis is the process of determining who your competitors are, researching their strategies, and unpacking what they do well (and not so well).

From this process, you can learn a lot about your company's own strengths and weaknesses, as well as how to remain a strong competitor in your industry.

The importance of competitive analysis in marketing

Identify and fill crucial gaps in your business  .

The greats learn from the greats. Yes, you're trying to beat your competitors, but that doesn't mean you can't learn from them—especially if they've been around the block a few times. Seeing what works for your competitors will point toward gaps in your own strategies (as well as gaps in their strategies)—and ideally give you some inspiration on how to fill those gaps.

Spot trends and get ahead

Competitive market analysis isn't just about understanding specific competitors. It can also uncover the direction that an entire industry is moving. For example, Blockbuster didn't move with the industry, and we all know how that ended. Competitive analysis can help you avoid that same fate.

Recognize product value and pain point solutions

Set future objectives for growth.

By examining market leaders, you define bold markers for your growth, and you can emulate their tactics. You can also employ AI-driven tools like Google Analytics' predictive metrics, HubSpot's forecasting tools, or IBM Watson's analytics. These tools can decipher market patterns, anticipate future prospects, and help you set precise KPIs. With AI's assistance, you can unearth data-driven insights and opportunities even top-tier competitors might miss.

How to conduct competitive market analysis in 6 steps

Competitive market analysis isn't just a matter of making sure you have a unique selling point. Here's how to dig into the competition and figure out where you stand—and how to stand out.

1. List your competitors

Start by creating a comprehensive list of everyone operating in your industry. You can weed out the less relevant competitors later, but for now, jot down anyone that offers similar products or services.

If you're a small local business, your competitors are located nearby—you probably know a lot about them, but at the very least, you know they exist. But for something like an eCommerce store or online service, it's important to figure out who your competitors even are.

Start with basic keyword research. Google your product category a few different ways, maybe with words like "price," "cheap," or "sale" to reinforce the commercial nature of your query.

This will help you identify any competitors and can shed some light on how saturated your industry is.

Next, categorize the companies you identify into direct and indirect competitors.

Direct competitors provide similar products or services to a target market similar to yours. For example, Gucci and Prada both offer high-end clothing and accessories to fashion-conscious consumers with high disposable income.

Indirect competitors provide different products or services (though ones that land in the same category as yours) to a target market similar to yours. For example, gyms and companies producing at-home workout equipment can be considered indirect competitors.

As the name suggests, direct competitors tend to pose a more direct risk to your business. That said, indirect competitors can still attract customers and pull business away from you. You need to identify and analyze both to truly understand your competitive landscape.

2. Identify their target markets

For other companies, it isn't as obvious. To determine your competitors' target markets, try the following:

Study their mission statement: Sometimes, a company's mission statement will explicitly state who their products and/or services are designed for. And even when it isn't explicit, it will almost certainly provide a hint. Navigate to the "About" page on their website, and soak up whatever insight you can.

3. Unpack their 4 P's

Whenever possible, give your competitors' products a spin. Get a free trial or even buy or sign up for the real deal, if your budget allows. When using their products, try contacting their customer support for additional insight.

What's their pricing model? Subscription-style, one-time purchase, or a mix of both?

Do they seem to be using skim pricing or penetration pricing?

Does their pricing model seem to align with the rest of the industry?

There are many tools out there to help, as well as specialized tools for specific industries, like hotel room price monitoring.

Once you have a grip on your competitors' pricing strategies, here are your options:

Reduce your prices: If pricing is the only differentiator in your industry (meaning product, place, and promotion strategies are all pretty uniform), you may consider lowering your prices to snag a higher share of the market. But be wary about how this will impact customers' perceptions of your quality, as well as the risk of a price reduction competition, driving everyone's prices to unprofitable levels.

Raise your prices: If your business already leads the market by providing something unique or higher-quality products than the competition, you may consider raising your prices. Be mindful of the price elasticity of your product before pursuing this strategy, as a small price increase can lose customers in certain industries.

Match your competitors' pricing: It's much more challenging to sell products at the same price as competitors. This strategy works if your business has been in the market for a while and can make a unique or niche offer. In this case, the customer will decide to purchase based on personal preferences rather than the price.

Where are your competitors selling? Is everything online, or do they have brick-and-mortar stores?

Every industry trends differently here—shoe brands, for example, tend to have some in-person outlets since most people want to try on a pair of shoes before buying them. Furniture stores, on the other hand, don't always rely on brick-and-mortar locations. They can provide pictures, videos, and product details (such as dimensions and materials) to provide customers with a "good enough" idea of what they're getting.

Here's what you're looking for:

Long-running ads: If your competitor keeps running the same campaign for a long time, it definitely works for them. You can try to create something similar to replicate their success.

If most competitors rely on social media advertisements as opposed to TV or print ads, you should probably follow suit. Likewise, if they're putting their entire budget into advertising how crispy their chicken sandwich is, it's probably because chicken sandwich consumers really like their chicken crispy. Watch how your competitors allocate their advertising budget and use that information to inform your own strategy.

4. Get to know their SEO strategy

The Ahrefs screenshot below shows the highest-traffic-driving pages from Slack's blog. A competing communication platform could use this data to learn what's working for Slack and replicate their success. To really be successful, however, you need to one-up the competition, bringing something new to the table.

Pro tip: As you do this research, actually click into some of your competitors' high-ranking pages to see what exactly is attracting users (and Google). Data is crucial, but nothing can replace the human eye.

5. Make note of their most popular content

The goal is to identify which content types get the most traffic or engagement. You can use a marketing analytics tool to analyze both of those things:

Do the highest-performing pieces of content tend to all be one specific medium (video, infographic, written content, or something else)?

Do the titles of the most-shared articles all have numbers or other specific characters (like brackets or hyphens) in them?

Is the most-shared content all about a similar topic?

Let's say you run a travel blog and discover that your competitor's article called "How to save money for a trip" is super popular among their audience. You now have an opportunity to create content on a similar topic but make it even better. Maybe "The ultimate guide to traveling on a budget" or even a real story about "How 21-year-old Mike saved $10K for his epic adventure." 

Social media presents an opportunity to let your brand's voice and personality shine. Take Wendy's, for example. The brand publicly roasts its competitors on X (Twitter), and the internet loves it.

Not every brand can (or should) be quite as blunt and sassy as Wendy's, but showing some personality can pay off.

6. Conduct a final SWOT analysis

Strengths (S) and weaknesses (W) look internally at your company.

Opportunities (O) and threats (T) look externally to the industry and market.

While diving into your competitive market analysis, consider these factors:

Market share percentage: This metric reflects the proportion of sales a company has in the industry compared to its competitors. Tools like Statista or market research reports can offer insights into a brand's dominance or underperformance.

Competitive features: Understand the unique offerings that set a product or service apart from its rivals. Customer surveys and product comparison charts are useful methods to determine standout features.

Company culture: A company's values, work environment, and ethics can be a deciding factor for customers. Monitoring employer review sites like Glassdoor or observing a company's interactions on social media can provide insights.

Customer reviews: Customer reviews provide direct feedback on a product or service's quality and the company's reputation. Platforms like Yelp, Trustpilot, or Google Reviews offer a treasure trove of customer sentiments and concerns.

Geography (if applicable): Location can be pivotal in a company's success, especially for local businesses. Using tools like Google Trends can help identify where a product or brand is most popular geographically.

Let's be clear—this isn't going to shine a spotlight on the exact strategy you should pursue to beat your competitors. What it can do is provide a high-level look at your internal and external environment, making it easier to piece together your competitive strategy.

When promoting your brand, you're thinking about how to communicate your strengths. Conducting a SWOT analysis forces you to also view your brand with scrutiny. You may be working toward being "the best" at everything, but there will inevitably be things that other brands do better.

Competitive analysis example

Let's say you're the CEO of an automotive company conducting a competitive analysis. After doing a deep dive into your competition and your industry as a whole, organizing your notes and SWOT analyses in folders labeled by competitor, you notice a huge push toward electric vehicles.

In fact, you estimate that your closest competitor (who targets the same market as you) now allocates over half of its advertising budget to its newest electric vehicle release. But you only have one electric vehicle option, and you only allocate 15% of your advertising budget toward it. You reasonably guess that you're in trouble.

Additional research confirms your market is very interested in making the switch to electric. You decide to reallocate your budget toward researching, producing, and promoting electric vehicles. Five years pass, and you realize you would have been left in the dust had you failed to analyze the competition or ignored the warning signs.

Competitive market analysis can prevent wasted resources, inspire new opportunities, and help you stay one step ahead of the competition. Take these six steps to better understand your company's strengths and weaknesses—then identify where you need to improve and how to invest your resources to remain a strong competitor in your industry. 

Internal operations as a competitive advantage

Sometimes, a company's competitive advantage comes from its seamless internal operations. It can be hard to find out what's going on internally at another company, but you can be sure you streamline your own processes. Here are some tips to get started:

This article was originally published by Diana Ford in May 2021. The most recent update was in September 2023.

Get productivity tips delivered straight to your inbox

We’ll email you 1-3 times per week—and never share your information.

Luke Strauss

Based in sunny San Diego, Luke is a digital marketer with 3+ years of experience developing and executing content strategy for eCommerce startups and SaaS enterprises alike—Airtable, Zoom, and yes, Zapier—to name a few. When he isn’t diving into a keyword research rabbit hole, you can find him at a music festival, thrifting, or spending time with his friends and family.

• Small business

Related articles

How to start a successful side hustle

11 management styles, plus tips for applying each type

11 management styles, plus tips for applying...

Keep your company adaptable with automation

How to enrich lead data for personalized outreach

How to enrich lead data for personalized...

Improve your productivity automatically. Use Zapier to get your apps working together.

• Success Stories

They Ask, You Answer Mastery

A coaching & training program that drives unmatched sales & marketing results.

Sales Performance Mastery

Improve the competencies and close rates of your sales organization.

Website Mastery

Web design, development & training for your team.

HubSpot Mastery

Everything you need to get the most from HubSpot.

AI Enablement Mastery

Unlock the power of AI in all aspects of your revenue operations.

More Services

• Paid Search & Social
• Request a Speaker
• Join the Community

Learning Center

Free resources to help you improve the way you market, sell and grow your business.

• Podcast Episodes
• Tools & Assessments

Quick Links

• What is They Ask, You Answer
• Free Sales & Marketing Assessment
• Certifications
• The Endless Customers Podcast
• Meet the Team
• Certified Coaches

Free Assessment:  How does your sales & marketing measure up?

Free Assessment:

By John Becker

Jun 29, 2023

Join 40,000+ sales and marketing pros who receive our weekly newsletter.

Get the most relevant, actionable digital sales and marketing insights you need to make smarter decisions faster... all in under five minutes.

How To Do a Competitive Analysis In 5-and-a-half Easy Steps

What is competitive analysis?

Competitive analysis (or competitive research) is a field of strategic research that specializes in the collection and review of information about rival firms. It's an essential tactic for finding out what your competitors are doing and what kind of threat they present to your company's success.

Whatever it is you do, it is almost certain that there are other companies out there offering a similar product or service to yours.

In any crowded marketplace, you need as much information and insight as possible to gain an edge over your competitors.

Simply knowing what they offer is not enough.

With the advent of new software and technology, marketers and business owners have the ability to know more about their competition than ever before.

It is extremely important to regularly conduct a thorough competitive analysis in order to stay one step ahead.

Why is it important to research competitors

Competitive research (or competitive intelligence) is a field of strategic research that specializes in the collection and analysis of information about rival firms.

It's an essential tactic for finding out what your competitors are doing and what kind of threat they present to the success of your company.

According to data from Crayon, a research firm based in Boston, 41% of business professionals "strongly agree" that competitive intelligence is critical to their company's success .

But at the same time, a majority say they struggle to gather the right information and insights. 

Competitive research is really just collecting bits of information available in the public domain, from financial filings to reports compiled by companies like Hoovers and Dun & Bradstreet .

(You can also find articles written about companies in local newspapers or on Nexus files. Online databases are available from sources such as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and Standard & Poor’s , and news sources such as PR Newswire .)

Of course, you can also use search engines to find information about companies.

While an in-depth analysis is certainly going to yield the most insight, a good deal of information can be obtained just from your own desk. Here's how.

How to conduct your competitive analysis

1. identify your top ten competitors.

This seems obvious, but it’s an essential first step. Do you know who your top competitors are?

If you sell a product or service online, you are likely competing with dozens, even hundreds of companies going after the same group of qualified leads.

Whether you are a local, national, or international company, there is probably someone in your company, often in the sales or marketing teams, who can quickly rattle off your top competitors — as well as what differentiates them from you.

If you need a little help identifying your competitors, Google is a helpful resource. By simply searching the type of service or product you are offering, it is pretty likely a few of your top competitors will show up. 

Another great way to discover who your top competitors are is by using online tools such as Semr ush .

Semrush is a great software to get a look into which other companies are ranking for your keywords, and how you stack up against them. ( You can start with a 30-day free trial.

Depending on your business, you could also use review sites like Yelp, Angi, or Trustpilot

2. Analyze and compare competitor marketing

Once you've identified your competitors, you can kick-start your competitive analysis and dig a little deeper to gain a better understanding of what type of content they're publishing.

Analyzing their content can help you determine what opportunities for your messaging? What types of content creation do your competitors focus on? Blogs? Case studies? Premium content?

Are there newsletters, YouTube channels, or podcasts?

Once you've located their content, you can determine the quality, and you can see how it compares to yours.

Be sure that you look for how frequently they are publishing, adding, and updating new content — as well as what topics are they covering. 

At the bottom line, are they doing anything that you aren't?

If your competitors are consistently publishing case studies , this could be a part of the reason why your quality leads are going to your competitors. A prospective client wants to know what it's like to work with your company.

Next, take a closer look at their website. 

If your competitors tend to publish articles three times a week compared to your one article every two weeks, it will be beneficial for your company to start building a content library that drives more traffic to your site. Start publishing more frequently about relevant topics — and organize your content into a learning center .

However, don't just blog because you want to add more content; it won't generate more traffic if the content you're adding isn't remarkable.

2 (A). Analyze their traffic

Say your competitors have the same type of content, update it just as frequently, and produce high-quality work. You might have to look more closely to find what they are doing differently.

It might be their SEO. 

If your company has a blog, you know how important your SEO is. While conducting a competitive analysis on the type of content your competitors are generating, it is also beneficial to consider that content's SEO.

Look for gaps that you can go after. Be willing to talk about things that our competitors aren't. 

If there are taboo topics in your industry, consider being the one to address them. For exa mple, in some fields it's uncommon for companies to openly address price and cost . If you're willing to, you can become the established voice of trust in your field. 

As you look at keyword rankings, look for opportunities.

If a top result for tennis rackets is a few years old, try to outrank it with one that’s more up to date. 

Does their list of top insurance providers leave out a big one? Does it fail to include a featured snippet? Are any links broken?

When you look closely at the work of your competitors, you should be able to identify gaps and shortcomings. Use the creativity and expertise of your team to fill in those gaps.

3. Evaluate their social media engagement

A company's presence on social media is becoming increasingly important, and each company is utilizing each platform differently. Social media networks are a great way for companies to interact with users and fans .

Additionally, businesses use these sites to distribute content and get discovered .

The next step of your compet itive analysis should be to determine how your competitors are using social media and integrating it into their marketing.

Not only is it important to see if your competitors can be found on social media platforms, but you also want to see how e ffectively they're using their profiles.

What type of information are they posting? What is their frequency? 

Next, check out engagement.

• Do their posts garner clicks?
• Do they have followers?
• Are they often liked or retweeted?
• Are they posting photos that showcase events or company culture?
• Do they engage with their audience?
• Are they leading conversations that potential customers care about?

These are all questions you should be asking yourself when you are checking your competitors’ profiles. Remember, just because they have a profile does not necessarily mean they are winning with social.

Don't just click off the page quickly; learn what they are doing. See what can you do better?

4. Dig into their company's health

This one's a bit harder, but that just means you'll have to do some digging. Find the information you can so you're able to piece together the full picture.

Businesses are not keen on broadcasting their financial health to the entire marketplace.  

But there are signals you can look for. 

• Stability. Is there high turnover at a competitor? Look for frequent job postings or positions that never seem to get filled. Follow the company on LinkedIn and notice when there's a departure on the leadership team.
• Financial health.  You can look for clues about financial health in a bunch of places. Layoffs tend to make their way onto social media. As do acquisitions, mergers, downgrades in office space, and other indicators of change.  
• Customer satisfaction. You can pore over social media and review sites (GoogleMyBusiness, Yelp, Angi, etc.) to see what customers are saying about the business. True, companies sometimes purge bad comments, but you're like to get a sense. 

None of these will give you a full picture of a company's health, but they give you an idea. 

5. Identify areas for improvement

After performing a competitive analysis, you now have a better idea and understanding of what your competitors are doing.

Take all the information you gathered about each competitor and identify particular areas of your own work that can be improved. If you’re looking closely enough, you’re bound to find something. 

You be able to identify key areas that you can improve upon — especially in regard to your messaging with potential customers, blog readers/subscribers, and social media users.

Get started!

According to research done by Crayon, marketplaces are becoming increasingly crowded and competitive:

In this landscape, the information already provided to you by your competitors, by way of their websites, their social media profiles, and their content — in conjunction with third-party review sites and other resources — can provide you with much of what you need to position yourself strategically. 

(Images sourced from Crayon )

Increasingly, companies see their close knowledge of their competitors as key to their own success.

If you want to position yourself to stand out from the competition, start with the research that’s already close at hand. Then, plan how you and your colleagues can go above and beyond to make sure your firm stands out, ranks highly, and is seen as a first choice, whatever field you occupy. 

Related Articles

I need video content but i don’t know how to start [endless customers podcast s.1 ep.22].

Boost Your SEO: Is Your Agency Holding You Back? [Endless Customers Podcast S.1 Ep. 15]

Organic social media marketing: grow your audience without ads.

'The Big 5': Best Business Blog Topics to Drive Traffic and Sales (+ examples)

'Business is Booming — So Why Should I Invest in Marketing?' (+ Video)

20 Value Proposition Examples that Every Marketer Can Learn From in 2024

How to talk about price on your website (+ examples).

5 Examples of Companies with Great Multi-Brand Websites

Website conversions in 2024 — stop, start, keep.

10 Marketing Objective Examples To Guide and Focus Your Strategy

4 Questions for Defining a Winning Value Proposition in 2024

How is impact different from other agencies, video marketing: what your 2024 business video strategy must include, create better website videos by avoiding these 3 mistakes, 4 ways to recession-proof your website in 2024, 4 brand positioning techniques to drive your marketing strategy, is content marketing dead in 2024, how should my marketing budget change with ai, sales vs marketing in 2024: what’s the difference, what should a 2024 content marketing strategy include, hubspot pricing: your guide to everything hubspot costs.

Why Trust Is the True Currency for All Business

10 marketing kpis you should be tracking.

How To Become a Better Business Coach

Do You Need a New Website? Maybe Not

Join the 40,000+ sales and marketing pros who receive our weekly insights, tips, and best practices., thanks, stay tuned for our upcoming edition..

How to Do Market Research: The Complete Guide

Learn how to do market research with this step-by-step guide, complete with templates, tools and real-world examples.

Access best-in-class company data

Get trusted first-party funding data, revenue data and firmographics

What are your customers’ needs? How does your product compare to the competition? What are the emerging trends and opportunities in your industry? If these questions keep you up at night, it’s time to conduct market research.

Market research plays a pivotal role in your ability to stay competitive and relevant, helping you anticipate shifts in consumer behavior and industry dynamics. It involves gathering these insights using a wide range of techniques, from surveys and interviews to data analysis and observational studies.

In this guide, we’ll explore why market research is crucial, the various types of market research, the methods used in data collection, and how to effectively conduct market research to drive informed decision-making and success.

What is market research?

Market research is the systematic process of gathering, analyzing and interpreting information about a specific market or industry. The purpose of market research is to offer valuable insight into the preferences and behaviors of your target audience, and anticipate shifts in market trends and the competitive landscape. This information helps you make data-driven decisions, develop effective strategies for your business, and maximize your chances of long-term growth.

Why is market research important? 

By understanding the significance of market research, you can make sure you’re asking the right questions and using the process to your advantage. Some of the benefits of market research include:

• Informed decision-making: Market research provides you with the data and insights you need to make smart decisions for your business. It helps you identify opportunities, assess risks and tailor your strategies to meet the demands of the market. Without market research, decisions are often based on assumptions or guesswork, leading to costly mistakes.
• Customer-centric approach: A cornerstone of market research involves developing a deep understanding of customer needs and preferences. This gives you valuable insights into your target audience, helping you develop products, services and marketing campaigns that resonate with your customers.
• Competitive advantage: By conducting market research, you’ll gain a competitive edge. You’ll be able to identify gaps in the market, analyze competitor strengths and weaknesses, and position your business strategically. This enables you to create unique value propositions, differentiate yourself from competitors, and seize opportunities that others may overlook.
• Risk mitigation: Market research helps you anticipate market shifts and potential challenges. By identifying threats early, you can proactively adjust their strategies to mitigate risks and respond effectively to changing circumstances. This proactive approach is particularly valuable in volatile industries.
• Resource optimization: Conducting market research allows organizations to allocate their time, money and resources more efficiently. It ensures that investments are made in areas with the highest potential return on investment, reducing wasted resources and improving overall business performance.
• Adaptation to market trends: Markets evolve rapidly, driven by technological advancements, cultural shifts and changing consumer attitudes. Market research ensures that you stay ahead of these trends and adapt your offerings accordingly so you can avoid becoming obsolete. 

As you can see, market research empowers businesses to make data-driven decisions, cater to customer needs, outperform competitors, mitigate risks, optimize resources and stay agile in a dynamic marketplace. These benefits make it a huge industry; the global market research services market is expected to grow from $76.37 billion in 2021 to $108.57 billion in 2026 . Now, let’s dig into the different types of market research that can help you achieve these benefits.

Types of market research 

• Qualitative research
• Quantitative research
• Exploratory research
• Descriptive research
• Causal research
• Cross-sectional research
• Longitudinal research

Despite its advantages, 23% of organizations don’t have a clear market research strategy. Part of developing a strategy involves choosing the right type of market research for your business goals. The most commonly used approaches include:

1. Qualitative research

Qualitative research focuses on understanding the underlying motivations, attitudes and perceptions of individuals or groups. It is typically conducted through techniques like in-depth interviews, focus groups and content analysis — methods we’ll discuss further in the sections below. Qualitative research provides rich, nuanced insights that can inform product development, marketing strategies and brand positioning.

2. Quantitative research

Quantitative research, in contrast to qualitative research, involves the collection and analysis of numerical data, often through surveys, experiments and structured questionnaires. This approach allows for statistical analysis and the measurement of trends, making it suitable for large-scale market studies and hypothesis testing. While it’s worthwhile using a mix of qualitative and quantitative research, most businesses prioritize the latter because it is scientific, measurable and easily replicated across different experiments.

3. Exploratory research

Whether you’re conducting qualitative or quantitative research or a mix of both, exploratory research is often the first step. Its primary goal is to help you understand a market or problem so you can gain insights and identify potential issues or opportunities. This type of market research is less structured and is typically conducted through open-ended interviews, focus groups or secondary data analysis. Exploratory research is valuable when entering new markets or exploring new product ideas.

4. Descriptive research

As its name implies, descriptive research seeks to describe a market, population or phenomenon in detail. It involves collecting and summarizing data to answer questions about audience demographics and behaviors, market size, and current trends. Surveys, observational studies and content analysis are common methods used in descriptive research. 

5. Causal research

Causal research aims to establish cause-and-effect relationships between variables. It investigates whether changes in one variable result in changes in another. Experimental designs, A/B testing and regression analysis are common causal research methods. This sheds light on how specific marketing strategies or product changes impact consumer behavior.

6. Cross-sectional research

Cross-sectional market research involves collecting data from a sample of the population at a single point in time. It is used to analyze differences, relationships or trends among various groups within a population. Cross-sectional studies are helpful for market segmentation, identifying target audiences and assessing market trends at a specific moment.

7. Longitudinal research

Longitudinal research, in contrast to cross-sectional research, collects data from the same subjects over an extended period. This allows for the analysis of trends, changes and developments over time. Longitudinal studies are useful for tracking long-term developments in consumer preferences, brand loyalty and market dynamics.

Each type of market research has its strengths and weaknesses, and the method you choose depends on your specific research goals and the depth of understanding you’re aiming to achieve. In the following sections, we’ll delve into primary and secondary research approaches and specific research methods.

Primary vs. secondary market research

Market research of all types can be broadly categorized into two main approaches: primary research and secondary research. By understanding the differences between these approaches, you can better determine the most appropriate research method for your specific goals.

Primary market research 

Primary research involves the collection of original data straight from the source. Typically, this involves communicating directly with your target audience — through surveys, interviews, focus groups and more — to gather information. Here are some key attributes of primary market research:

• Customized data: Primary research provides data that is tailored to your research needs. You design a custom research study and gather information specific to your goals.
• Up-to-date insights: Because primary research involves communicating with customers, the data you collect reflects the most current market conditions and consumer behaviors.
• Time-consuming and resource-intensive: Despite its advantages, primary research can be labor-intensive and costly, especially when dealing with large sample sizes or complex study designs. Whether you hire a market research consultant, agency or use an in-house team, primary research studies consume a large amount of resources and time.

Secondary market research 

Secondary research, on the other hand, involves analyzing data that has already been compiled by third-party sources, such as online research tools, databases, news sites, industry reports and academic studies.

Here are the main characteristics of secondary market research:

• Cost-effective: Secondary research is generally more cost-effective than primary research since it doesn’t require building a research plan from scratch. You and your team can look at databases, websites and publications on an ongoing basis, without needing to design a custom experiment or hire a consultant. 
• Leverages multiple sources: Data tools and software extract data from multiple places across the web, and then consolidate that information within a single platform. This means you’ll get a greater amount of data and a wider scope from secondary research.
• Quick to access: You can access a wide range of information rapidly — often in seconds — if you’re using online research tools and databases. Because of this, you can act on insights sooner, rather than taking the time to develop an experiment. 

So, when should you use primary vs. secondary research? In practice, many market research projects incorporate both primary and secondary research to take advantage of the strengths of each approach.

One rule of thumb is to focus on secondary research to obtain background information, market trends or industry benchmarks. It is especially valuable for conducting preliminary research, competitor analysis, or when time and budget constraints are tight. Then, if you still have knowledge gaps or need to answer specific questions unique to your business model, use primary research to create a custom experiment. 

Market research methods

• Surveys and questionnaires
• Focus groups
• Observational research
• Online research tools
• Experiments
• Content analysis
• Ethnographic research

How do primary and secondary research approaches translate into specific research methods? Let’s take a look at the different ways you can gather data: 

1. Surveys and questionnaires

Surveys and questionnaires are popular methods for collecting structured data from a large number of respondents. They involve a set of predetermined questions that participants answer. Surveys can be conducted through various channels, including online tools, telephone interviews and in-person or online questionnaires. They are useful for gathering quantitative data and assessing customer demographics, opinions, preferences and needs. On average, customer surveys have a 33% response rate , so keep that in mind as you consider your sample size.

2. Interviews

Interviews are in-depth conversations with individuals or groups to gather qualitative insights. They can be structured (with predefined questions) or unstructured (with open-ended discussions). Interviews are valuable for exploring complex topics, uncovering motivations and obtaining detailed feedback. 

3. Focus groups

The most common primary research methods are in-depth webcam interviews and focus groups. Focus groups are a small gathering of participants who discuss a specific topic or product under the guidance of a moderator. These discussions are valuable for primary market research because they reveal insights into consumer attitudes, perceptions and emotions. Focus groups are especially useful for idea generation, concept testing and understanding group dynamics within your target audience.

4. Observational research

Observational research involves observing and recording participant behavior in a natural setting. This method is particularly valuable when studying consumer behavior in physical spaces, such as retail stores or public places. In some types of observational research, participants are aware you’re watching them; in other cases, you discreetly watch consumers without their knowledge, as they use your product. Either way, observational research provides firsthand insights into how people interact with products or environments.

5. Online research tools

You and your team can do your own secondary market research using online tools. These tools include data prospecting platforms and databases, as well as online surveys, social media listening, web analytics and sentiment analysis platforms. They help you gather data from online sources, monitor industry trends, track competitors, understand consumer preferences and keep tabs on online behavior. We’ll talk more about choosing the right market research tools in the sections that follow.

6. Experiments

Market research experiments are controlled tests of variables to determine causal relationships. While experiments are often associated with scientific research, they are also used in market research to assess the impact of specific marketing strategies, product features, or pricing and packaging changes.

7. Content analysis

Content analysis involves the systematic examination of textual, visual or audio content to identify patterns, themes and trends. It’s commonly applied to customer reviews, social media posts and other forms of online content to analyze consumer opinions and sentiments.

8. Ethnographic research

Ethnographic research immerses researchers into the daily lives of consumers to understand their behavior and culture. This method is particularly valuable when studying niche markets or exploring the cultural context of consumer choices.

How to do market research

• Set clear objectives
• Identify your target audience
• Choose your research methods
• Use the right market research tools
• Collect data
• Analyze data 
• Interpret your findings
• Identify opportunities and challenges
• Make informed business decisions
• Monitor and adapt

Now that you have gained insights into the various market research methods at your disposal, let’s delve into the practical aspects of how to conduct market research effectively. Here’s a quick step-by-step overview, from defining objectives to monitoring market shifts.

1. Set clear objectives

When you set clear and specific goals, you’re essentially creating a compass to guide your research questions and methodology. Start by precisely defining what you want to achieve. Are you launching a new product and want to understand its viability in the market? Are you evaluating customer satisfaction with a product redesign? 

Start by creating SMART goals — objectives that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. Not only will this clarify your research focus from the outset, but it will also help you track progress and benchmark your success throughout the process. 

You should also consult with key stakeholders and team members to ensure alignment on your research objectives before diving into data collecting. This will help you gain diverse perspectives and insights that will shape your research approach.

2. Identify your target audience

Next, you’ll need to pinpoint your target audience to determine who should be included in your research. Begin by creating detailed buyer personas or stakeholder profiles. Consider demographic factors like age, gender, income and location, but also delve into psychographics, such as interests, values and pain points.

The more specific your target audience, the more accurate and actionable your research will be. Additionally, segment your audience if your research objectives involve studying different groups, such as current customers and potential leads.

If you already have existing customers, you can also hold conversations with them to better understand your target market. From there, you can refine your buyer personas and tailor your research methods accordingly.

3. Choose your research methods

Selecting the right research methods is crucial for gathering high-quality data. Start by considering the nature of your research objectives. If you’re exploring consumer preferences, surveys and interviews can provide valuable insights. For in-depth understanding, focus groups or observational research might be suitable. Consider using a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods to gain a well-rounded perspective. 

You’ll also need to consider your budget. Think about what you can realistically achieve using the time and resources available to you. If you have a fairly generous budget, you may want to try a mix of primary and secondary research approaches. If you’re doing market research for a startup , on the other hand, chances are your budget is somewhat limited. If that’s the case, try addressing your goals with secondary research tools before investing time and effort in a primary research study. 

4. Use the right market research tools

Whether you’re conducting primary or secondary research, you’ll need to choose the right tools. These can help you do anything from sending surveys to customers to monitoring trends and analyzing data. Here are some examples of popular market research tools:

• Market research software: Crunchbase is a platform that provides best-in-class company data, making it valuable for market research on growing companies and industries. You can use Crunchbase to access trusted, first-party funding data, revenue data, news and firmographics, enabling you to monitor industry trends and understand customer needs.

• Survey and questionnaire tools: SurveyMonkey is a widely used online survey platform that allows you to create, distribute and analyze surveys. Google Forms is a free tool that lets you create surveys and collect responses through Google Drive.
• Data analysis software: Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets are useful for conducting statistical analyses. SPSS is a powerful statistical analysis software used for data processing, analysis and reporting.
• Social listening tools: Brandwatch is a social listening and analytics platform that helps you monitor social media conversations, track sentiment and analyze trends. Mention is a media monitoring tool that allows you to track mentions of your brand, competitors and keywords across various online sources.
• Data visualization platforms: Tableau is a data visualization tool that helps you create interactive and shareable dashboards and reports. Power BI by Microsoft is a business analytics tool for creating interactive visualizations and reports.

5. Collect data

There’s an infinite amount of data you could be collecting using these tools, so you’ll need to be intentional about going after the data that aligns with your research goals. Implement your chosen research methods, whether it’s distributing surveys, conducting interviews or pulling from secondary research platforms. Pay close attention to data quality and accuracy, and stick to a standardized process to streamline data capture and reduce errors. 

6. Analyze data

Once data is collected, you’ll need to analyze it systematically. Use statistical software or analysis tools to identify patterns, trends and correlations. For qualitative data, employ thematic analysis to extract common themes and insights. Visualize your findings with charts, graphs and tables to make complex data more understandable.

If you’re not proficient in data analysis, consider outsourcing or collaborating with a data analyst who can assist in processing and interpreting your data accurately.

7. Interpret your findings

Interpreting your market research findings involves understanding what the data means in the context of your objectives. Are there significant trends that uncover the answers to your initial research questions? Consider the implications of your findings on your business strategy. It’s essential to move beyond raw data and extract actionable insights that inform decision-making.

Hold a cross-functional meeting or workshop with relevant team members to collectively interpret the findings. Different perspectives can lead to more comprehensive insights and innovative solutions.

8. Identify opportunities and challenges

Use your research findings to identify potential growth opportunities and challenges within your market. What segments of your audience are underserved or overlooked? Are there emerging trends you can capitalize on? Conversely, what obstacles or competitors could hinder your progress?

Lay out this information in a clear and organized way by conducting a SWOT analysis, which stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Jot down notes for each of these areas to provide a structured overview of gaps and hurdles in the market.

9. Make informed business decisions

Market research is only valuable if it leads to informed decisions for your company. Based on your insights, devise actionable strategies and initiatives that align with your research objectives. Whether it’s refining your product, targeting new customer segments or adjusting pricing, ensure your decisions are rooted in the data.

At this point, it’s also crucial to keep your team aligned and accountable. Create an action plan that outlines specific steps, responsibilities and timelines for implementing the recommendations derived from your research. 

10. Monitor and adapt

Market research isn’t a one-time activity; it’s an ongoing process. Continuously monitor market conditions, customer behaviors and industry trends. Set up mechanisms to collect real-time data and feedback. As you gather new information, be prepared to adapt your strategies and tactics accordingly. Regularly revisiting your research ensures your business remains agile and reflects changing market dynamics and consumer preferences.

Online market research sources

As you go through the steps above, you’ll want to turn to trusted, reputable sources to gather your data. Here’s a list to get you started:

• Crunchbase: As mentioned above, Crunchbase is an online platform with an extensive dataset, allowing you to access in-depth insights on market trends, consumer behavior and competitive analysis. You can also customize your search options to tailor your research to specific industries, geographic regions or customer personas.

• Academic databases: Academic databases, such as ProQuest and JSTOR , are treasure troves of scholarly research papers, studies and academic journals. They offer in-depth analyses of various subjects, including market trends, consumer preferences and industry-specific insights. Researchers can access a wealth of peer-reviewed publications to gain a deeper understanding of their research topics.
• Government and NGO databases: Government agencies, nongovernmental organizations and other institutions frequently maintain databases containing valuable economic, demographic and industry-related data. These sources offer credible statistics and reports on a wide range of topics, making them essential for market researchers. Examples include the U.S. Census Bureau , the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Pew Research Center .
• Industry reports: Industry reports and market studies are comprehensive documents prepared by research firms, industry associations and consulting companies. They provide in-depth insights into specific markets, including market size, trends, competitive analysis and consumer behavior. You can find this information by looking at relevant industry association databases; examples include the American Marketing Association and the National Retail Federation .
• Social media and online communities: Social media platforms like LinkedIn or Twitter (X) , forums such as Reddit and Quora , and review platforms such as G2 can provide real-time insights into consumer sentiment, opinions and trends. 

Market research examples

At this point, you have market research tools and data sources — but how do you act on the data you gather? Let’s go over some real-world examples that illustrate the practical application of market research across various industries. These examples showcase how market research can lead to smart decision-making and successful business decisions.

Example 1: Apple’s iPhone launch

Apple ’s iconic iPhone launch in 2007 serves as a prime example of market research driving product innovation in tech. Before the iPhone’s release, Apple conducted extensive market research to understand consumer preferences, pain points and unmet needs in the mobile phone industry. This research led to the development of a touchscreen smartphone with a user-friendly interface, addressing consumer demands for a more intuitive and versatile device. The result was a revolutionary product that disrupted the market and redefined the smartphone industry.

Example 2: McDonald’s global expansion

McDonald’s successful global expansion strategy demonstrates the importance of market research when expanding into new territories. Before entering a new market, McDonald’s conducts thorough research to understand local tastes, preferences and cultural nuances. This research informs menu customization, marketing strategies and store design. For instance, in India, McDonald’s offers a menu tailored to local preferences, including vegetarian options. This market-specific approach has enabled McDonald’s to adapt and thrive in diverse global markets.

Example 3: Organic and sustainable farming

The shift toward organic and sustainable farming practices in the food industry is driven by market research that indicates increased consumer demand for healthier and environmentally friendly food options. As a result, food producers and retailers invest in sustainable sourcing and organic product lines — such as with these sustainable seafood startups — to align with this shift in consumer values. 

The bottom line? Market research has multiple use cases and is a critical practice for any industry. Whether it’s launching groundbreaking products, entering new markets or responding to changing consumer preferences, you can use market research to shape successful strategies and outcomes.

Market research templates

You finally have a strong understanding of how to do market research and apply it in the real world. Before we wrap up, here are some market research templates that you can use as a starting point for your projects:

• Smartsheet competitive analysis templates : These spreadsheets can serve as a framework for gathering information about the competitive landscape and obtaining valuable lessons to apply to your business strategy.
• SurveyMonkey product survey template : Customize the questions on this survey based on what you want to learn from your target customers.
• HubSpot templates : HubSpot offers a wide range of free templates you can use for market research, business planning and more.
• SCORE templates : SCORE is a nonprofit organization that provides templates for business plans, market analysis and financial projections.
• SBA.gov : The U.S. Small Business Administration offers templates for every aspect of your business, including market research, and is particularly valuable for new startups. 

Strengthen your business with market research

When conducted effectively, market research is like a guiding star. Equipped with the right tools and techniques, you can uncover valuable insights, stay competitive, foster innovation and navigate the complexities of your industry.

Throughout this guide, we’ve discussed the definition of market research, different research methods, and how to conduct it effectively. We’ve also explored various types of market research and shared practical insights and templates for getting started. 

Now, it’s time to start the research process. Trust in data, listen to the market and make informed decisions that guide your company toward lasting success.

Related Articles

• Entrepreneurs
• 15 min read

What Is Competitive Analysis and How to Do It Effectively

Rebecca Strehlow, Copywriter at Crunchbase

17 Best Sales Intelligence Tools for 2024

• Market research
• 10 min read

How to Do Market Research for a Startup: Tips for Success

Jaclyn Robinson, Senior Manager of Content Marketing at Crunchbase

Search less. Close more.

Grow your revenue with Crunchbase, the all-in-one prospecting solution. Start your free trial.

Send us an email

How to do market research: The complete guide for your brand

Written by by Jacqueline Zote

Published on  April 13, 2023

Reading time  10 minutes

Blindly putting out content or products and hoping for the best is a thing of the past. Not only is it a waste of time and energy, but you’re wasting valuable marketing dollars in the process. Now you have a wealth of tools and data at your disposal, allowing you to develop data-driven marketing strategies . That’s where market research comes in, allowing you to uncover valuable insights to inform your business decisions.

Conducting market research not only helps you better understand how to sell to customers but also stand out from your competition. In this guide, we break down everything you need to know about market research and how doing your homework can help you grow your business.

Table of contents:

What is market research?

Why is market research important, types of market research, where to conduct market research.

• Steps for conducting market research
• Tools to use for market research

Market research is the process of gathering information surrounding your business opportunities. It identifies key information to better understand your audience. This includes insights related to customer personas and even trends shaping your industry.

Taking time out of your schedule to conduct research is crucial for your brand health. Here are some of the key benefits of market research:

Understand your customers’ motivations and pain points

Most marketers are out of touch with what their customers want. Moreover, these marketers are missing key information on what products their audience wants to buy.

Simply put, you can’t run a business if you don’t know what motivates your customers.

And spoiler alert: Your customers’ wants and needs change. Your customers’ behaviors today might be night and day from what they were a few years ago.

Market research holds the key to understanding your customers better. It helps you uncover their key pain points and motivations and understand how they shape their interests and behavior.

Figure out how to position your brand

Positioning is becoming increasingly important as more and more brands enter the marketplace. Market research enables you to spot opportunities to define yourself against your competitors.

Maybe you’re able to emphasize a lower price point. Perhaps your product has a feature that’s one of a kind. Finding those opportunities goes hand in hand with researching your market.

Maintain a strong pulse on your industry at large

Today’s marketing world evolves at a rate that’s difficult to keep up with.

Fresh products. Up-and-coming brands. New marketing tools. Consumers get bombarded with sales messages from all angles. This can be confusing and overwhelming.

By monitoring market trends, you can figure out the best tactics for reaching your target audience.

Not everyone conducts market research for the same reason. While some may want to understand their audience better, others may want to see how their competitors are doing. As such, there are different types of market research you can conduct depending on your goal.

Interview-based market research allows for one-on-one interactions. This helps the conversation to flow naturally, making it easier to add context. Whether this takes place in person or virtually, it enables you to gather more in-depth qualitative data.

Buyer persona research

Buyer persona research lets you take a closer look at the people who make up your target audience. You can discover the needs, challenges and pain points of each buyer persona to understand what they need from your business. This will then allow you to craft products or campaigns to resonate better with each persona.

Pricing research

In this type of research, brands compare similar products or services with a particular focus on pricing. They look at how much those products or services typically sell for so they can get more competitive with their pricing strategy.

Competitive analysis research

Competitor analysis gives you a realistic understanding of where you stand in the market and how your competitors are doing. You can use this analysis to find out what’s working in your industry and which competitors to watch out for. It even gives you an idea of how well those competitors are meeting consumer needs.

Depending on the competitor analysis tool you use, you can get as granular as you need with your research. For instance, Sprout Social lets you analyze your competitors’ social strategies. You can see what types of content they’re posting and even benchmark your growth against theirs.

Brand awareness research

Conducting brand awareness research allows you to assess your brand’s standing in the market. It tells you how well-known your brand is among your target audience and what they associate with it. This can help you gauge people’s sentiments toward your brand and whether you need to rebrand or reposition.

If you don’t know where to start with your research, you’re in the right place.

There’s no shortage of market research methods out there. In this section, we’ve highlighted research channels for small and big businesses alike.

Considering that Google sees a staggering 8.5 billion searches each day, there’s perhaps no better place to start.

A quick Google search is a potential goldmine for all sorts of questions to kick off your market research. Who’s ranking for keywords related to your industry? Which products and pieces of content are the hottest right now? Who’s running ads related to your business?

For example, Google Product Listing Ads can help highlight all of the above for B2C brands.

The same applies to B2B brands looking to keep tabs on who’s running industry-related ads and ranking for keyword terms too.

There’s no denying that email represents both an aggressive and effective marketing channel for marketers today. Case in point, 44% of online shoppers consider email as the most influential channel in their buying decisions.

Looking through industry and competitor emails is a brilliant way to learn more about your market. For example, what types of offers and deals are your competitors running? How often are they sending emails?

Email is also invaluable for gathering information directly from your customers. This survey message from Asana is a great example of how to pick your customers’ brains to figure out how you can improve your quality of service.

Industry journals, reports and blogs

Don’t neglect the importance of big-picture market research when it comes to tactics and marketing channels to explore. Look to marketing resources such as reports and blogs as well as industry journals

Keeping your ear to the ground on new trends and technologies is a smart move for any business. Sites such as Statista, Marketing Charts, AdWeek and Emarketer are treasure troves of up-to-date data and news for marketers.

And of course, there’s the  Sprout Insights blog . And invaluable resources like The Sprout Social Index™  can keep you updated on the latest social trends.

Social media

If you want to learn more about your target market, look no further than social media. Social offers a place to discover what your customers want to see in future products or which brands are killin’ it. In fact, social media is become more important for businesses than ever with the level of data available.

It represents a massive repository of real-time data and insights that are instantly accessible. Brand monitoring and social listening are effective ways to conduct social media research . You can even be more direct with your approach. Ask questions directly or even poll your audience to understand their needs and preferences.

The 5 steps for how to do market research

Now that we’ve covered the why and where, it’s time to get into the practical aspects of market research. Here are five essential steps on how to do market research effectively.

Step 1: Identify your research topic

First off, what are you researching about? What do you want to find out? Narrow down on a specific research topic so you can start with a clear idea of what to look for.

For example, you may want to learn more about how well your product features are satisfying the needs of existing users. This might potentially lead to feature updates and improvements. Or it might even result in new feature introductions.

Similarly, your research topic may be related to your product or service launch or customer experience. Or you may want to conduct research for an upcoming marketing campaign.

Step 2: Choose a buyer persona to engage

If you’re planning to focus your research on a specific type of audience, decide which buyer persona you want to engage. This persona group will serve as a representative sample of your target audience.

Engaging a specific group of audience lets you streamline your research efforts. As such, it can be a much more effective and organized approach than researching thousands (if not millions) of individuals.

You may be directing your research toward existing users of your product. To get even more granular, you may want to focus on users who have been familiar with the product for at least a year, for example.

Step 3: Start collecting data

The next step is one of the most critical as it involves collecting the data you need for your research. Before you begin, make sure you’ve chosen the right research methods that will uncover the type of data you need. This largely depends on your research topic and goals.

Remember that you don’t necessarily have to stick to one research method. You may use a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches. So for example, you could use interviews to supplement the data from your surveys. Or you may stick to insights from your social listening efforts.

To keep things consistent, let’s look at this in the context of the example from earlier. Perhaps you can send out a survey to your existing users asking them a bunch of questions. This might include questions like which features they use the most and how often they use them. You can get them to choose an answer from one to five and collect quantitative data.

Plus, for qualitative insights, you could even include a few open-ended questions with the option to write their answers. For instance, you might ask them if there’s any improvement they wish to see in your product.

Step 4: Analyze results

Once you have all the data you need, it’s time to analyze it keeping your research topic in mind. This involves trying to interpret the data to look for a wider meaning, particularly in relation to your research goal.

So let’s say a large percentage of responses were four or five in the satisfaction rating. This means your existing users are mostly satisfied with your current product features. On the other hand, if the responses were mostly ones and twos, you may look for opportunities to improve. The responses to your open-ended questions can give you further context as to why people are disappointed.

Step 5: Make decisions for your business

Now it’s time to take your findings and turn them into actionable insights for your business. In this final step, you need to decide how you want to move forward with your new market insight.

What did you find in your research that would require action? How can you put those findings to good use?

The market research tools you should be using

To wrap things up, let’s talk about the various tools available to conduct speedy, in-depth market research. These tools are essential for conducting market research faster and more efficiently.

Social listening and analytics

Social analytics tools like Sprout can help you keep track of engagement across social media. This goes beyond your own engagement data but also includes that of your competitors. Considering how quickly social media moves, using a third-party analytics tool is ideal. It allows you to make sense of your social data at a glance and ensure that you’re never missing out on important trends.

Email marketing research tools

Keeping track of brand emails is a good idea for any brand looking to stand out in its audience’s inbox.

Tools such as MailCharts ,  Really Good Emails  and  Milled  can show you how different brands run their email campaigns.

Meanwhile, tools like  Owletter  allow you to monitor metrics such as frequency and send-timing. These metrics can help you understand email marketing strategies among competing brands.

Content marketing research

If you’re looking to conduct research on content marketing, tools such as  BuzzSumo  can be of great help. This tool shows you the top-performing industry content based on keywords. Here you can see relevant industry sites and influencers as well as which brands in your industry are scoring the most buzz. It shows you exactly which pieces of content are ranking well in terms of engagements and shares and on which social networks.

SEO and keyword tracking

Monitoring industry keywords is a great way to uncover competitors. It can also help you discover opportunities to advertise your products via organic search. Tools such as  Ahrefs  provide a comprehensive keyword report to help you see how your search efforts stack up against the competition.

Competitor comparison template

For the sake of organizing your market research, consider creating a competitive matrix. The idea is to highlight how you stack up side-by-side against others in your market. Use a  social media competitive analysis template  to track your competitors’ social presence. That way, you can easily compare tactics, messaging and performance. Once you understand your strengths and weaknesses next to your competitors, you’ll find opportunities as well.

Customer persona creator

Finally, customer personas represent a place where all of your market research comes together. You’d need to create a profile of your ideal customer that you can easily refer to. Tools like  Xtensio  can help in outlining your customer motivations and demographics as you zero in on your target market.

Build a solid market research strategy

Having a deeper understanding of the market gives you leverage in a sea of competitors. Use the steps and market research tools we shared above to build an effective market research strategy.

But keep in mind that the accuracy of your research findings depends on the quality of data collected. Turn to Sprout’s social media analytics tools to uncover heaps of high-quality data across social networks.

• Marketing Disciplines
• Team Collaboration

How to build a marketing tech stack that scales your business

• Customer Experience

Brand trust: What it is and why it matters

• Leveling Up

The 43 best marketing resources we recommend in 2024

Executing a successful demand generation strategy [with examples]

• Now on slide

Build and grow stronger relationships on social

Sprout Social helps you understand and reach your audience, engage your community and measure performance with the only all-in-one social media management platform built for connection.

Artificial intelligence in strategy

Can machines automate strategy development? The short answer is no. However, there are numerous aspects of strategists’ work where AI and advanced analytics tools can already bring enormous value. Yuval Atsmon is a senior partner who leads the new McKinsey Center for Strategy Innovation, which studies ways new technologies can augment the timeless principles of strategy. In this episode of the Inside the Strategy Room podcast, he explains how artificial intelligence is already transforming strategy and what’s on the horizon. This is an edited transcript of the discussion. For more conversations on the strategy issues that matter, follow the series on your preferred podcast platform .

Joanna Pachner: What does artificial intelligence mean in the context of strategy?

Yuval Atsmon: When people talk about artificial intelligence, they include everything to do with analytics, automation, and data analysis. Marvin Minsky, the pioneer of artificial intelligence research in the 1960s, talked about AI as a “suitcase word”—a term into which you can stuff whatever you want—and that still seems to be the case. We are comfortable with that because we think companies should use all the capabilities of more traditional analysis while increasing automation in strategy that can free up management or analyst time and, gradually, introducing tools that can augment human thinking.

Joanna Pachner: AI has been embraced by many business functions, but strategy seems to be largely immune to its charms. Why do you think that is?

Subscribe to the Inside the Strategy Room podcast

Yuval Atsmon: You’re right about the limited adoption. Only 7 percent of respondents to our survey about the use of AI say they use it in strategy or even financial planning, whereas in areas like marketing, supply chain, and service operations, it’s 25 or 30 percent. One reason adoption is lagging is that strategy is one of the most integrative conceptual practices. When executives think about strategy automation, many are looking too far ahead—at AI capabilities that would decide, in place of the business leader, what the right strategy is. They are missing opportunities to use AI in the building blocks of strategy that could significantly improve outcomes.

I like to use the analogy to virtual assistants. Many of us use Alexa or Siri but very few people use these tools to do more than dictate a text message or shut off the lights. We don’t feel comfortable with the technology’s ability to understand the context in more sophisticated applications. AI in strategy is similar: it’s hard for AI to know everything an executive knows, but it can help executives with certain tasks.

When executives think about strategy automation, many are looking too far ahead—at AI deciding the right strategy. They are missing opportunities to use AI in the building blocks of strategy.

Joanna Pachner: What kind of tasks can AI help strategists execute today?

Yuval Atsmon: We talk about six stages of AI development. The earliest is simple analytics, which we refer to as descriptive intelligence. Companies use dashboards for competitive analysis or to study performance in different parts of the business that are automatically updated. Some have interactive capabilities for refinement and testing.

The second level is diagnostic intelligence, which is the ability to look backward at the business and understand root causes and drivers of performance. The level after that is predictive intelligence: being able to anticipate certain scenarios or options and the value of things in the future based on momentum from the past as well as signals picked in the market. Both diagnostics and prediction are areas that AI can greatly improve today. The tools can augment executives’ analysis and become areas where you develop capabilities. For example, on diagnostic intelligence, you can organize your portfolio into segments to understand granularly where performance is coming from and do it in a much more continuous way than analysts could. You can try 20 different ways in an hour versus deploying one hundred analysts to tackle the problem.

Predictive AI is both more difficult and more risky. Executives shouldn’t fully rely on predictive AI, but it provides another systematic viewpoint in the room. Because strategic decisions have significant consequences, a key consideration is to use AI transparently in the sense of understanding why it is making a certain prediction and what extrapolations it is making from which information. You can then assess if you trust the prediction or not. You can even use AI to track the evolution of the assumptions for that prediction.

Those are the levels available today. The next three levels will take time to develop. There are some early examples of AI advising actions for executives’ consideration that would be value-creating based on the analysis. From there, you go to delegating certain decision authority to AI, with constraints and supervision. Eventually, there is the point where fully autonomous AI analyzes and decides with no human interaction.

Because strategic decisions have significant consequences, you need to understand why AI is making a certain prediction and what extrapolations it’s making from which information.

Joanna Pachner: What kind of businesses or industries could gain the greatest benefits from embracing AI at its current level of sophistication?

Yuval Atsmon: Every business probably has some opportunity to use AI more than it does today. The first thing to look at is the availability of data. Do you have performance data that can be organized in a systematic way? Companies that have deep data on their portfolios down to business line, SKU, inventory, and raw ingredients have the biggest opportunities to use machines to gain granular insights that humans could not.

Companies whose strategies rely on a few big decisions with limited data would get less from AI. Likewise, those facing a lot of volatility and vulnerability to external events would benefit less than companies with controlled and systematic portfolios, although they could deploy AI to better predict those external events and identify what they can and cannot control.

Third, the velocity of decisions matters. Most companies develop strategies every three to five years, which then become annual budgets. If you think about strategy in that way, the role of AI is relatively limited other than potentially accelerating analyses that are inputs into the strategy. However, some companies regularly revisit big decisions they made based on assumptions about the world that may have since changed, affecting the projected ROI of initiatives. Such shifts would affect how you deploy talent and executive time, how you spend money and focus sales efforts, and AI can be valuable in guiding that. The value of AI is even bigger when you can make decisions close to the time of deploying resources, because AI can signal that your previous assumptions have changed from when you made your plan.

Joanna Pachner: Can you provide any examples of companies employing AI to address specific strategic challenges?

Yuval Atsmon: Some of the most innovative users of AI, not coincidentally, are AI- and digital-native companies. Some of these companies have seen massive benefits from AI and have increased its usage in other areas of the business. One mobility player adjusts its financial planning based on pricing patterns it observes in the market. Its business has relatively high flexibility to demand but less so to supply, so the company uses AI to continuously signal back when pricing dynamics are trending in a way that would affect profitability or where demand is rising. This allows the company to quickly react to create more capacity because its profitability is highly sensitive to keeping demand and supply in equilibrium.

Joanna Pachner: Given how quickly things change today, doesn’t AI seem to be more a tactical than a strategic tool, providing time-sensitive input on isolated elements of strategy?

Yuval Atsmon: It’s interesting that you make the distinction between strategic and tactical. Of course, every decision can be broken down into smaller ones, and where AI can be affordably used in strategy today is for building blocks of the strategy. It might feel tactical, but it can make a massive difference. One of the world’s leading investment firms, for example, has started to use AI to scan for certain patterns rather than scanning individual companies directly. AI looks for consumer mobile usage that suggests a company’s technology is catching on quickly, giving the firm an opportunity to invest in that company before others do. That created a significant strategic edge for them, even though the tool itself may be relatively tactical.

Joanna Pachner: McKinsey has written a lot about cognitive biases  and social dynamics that can skew decision making. Can AI help with these challenges?

Yuval Atsmon: When we talk to executives about using AI in strategy development, the first reaction we get is, “Those are really big decisions; what if AI gets them wrong?” The first answer is that humans also get them wrong—a lot. [Amos] Tversky, [Daniel] Kahneman, and others have proven that some of those errors are systemic, observable, and predictable. The first thing AI can do is spot situations likely to give rise to biases. For example, imagine that AI is listening in on a strategy session where the CEO proposes something and everyone says “Aye” without debate and discussion. AI could inform the room, “We might have a sunflower bias here,” which could trigger more conversation and remind the CEO that it’s in their own interest to encourage some devil’s advocacy.

We also often see confirmation bias, where people focus their analysis on proving the wisdom of what they already want to do, as opposed to looking for a fact-based reality. Just having AI perform a default analysis that doesn’t aim to satisfy the boss is useful, and the team can then try to understand why that is different than the management hypothesis, triggering a much richer debate.

In terms of social dynamics, agency problems can create conflicts of interest. Every business unit [BU] leader thinks that their BU should get the most resources and will deliver the most value, or at least they feel they should advocate for their business. AI provides a neutral way based on systematic data to manage those debates. It’s also useful for executives with decision authority, since we all know that short-term pressures and the need to make the quarterly and annual numbers lead people to make different decisions on the 31st of December than they do on January 1st or October 1st. Like the story of Ulysses and the sirens, you can use AI to remind you that you wanted something different three months earlier. The CEO still decides; AI can just provide that extra nudge.

Joanna Pachner: It’s like you have Spock next to you, who is dispassionate and purely analytical.

Yuval Atsmon: That is not a bad analogy—for Star Trek fans anyway.

Joanna Pachner: Do you have a favorite application of AI in strategy?

Yuval Atsmon: I have worked a lot on resource allocation, and one of the challenges, which we call the hockey stick phenomenon, is that executives are always overly optimistic about what will happen. They know that resource allocation will inevitably be defined by what you believe about the future, not necessarily by past performance. AI can provide an objective prediction of performance starting from a default momentum case: based on everything that happened in the past and some indicators about the future, what is the forecast of performance if we do nothing? This is before we say, “But I will hire these people and develop this new product and improve my marketing”— things that every executive thinks will help them overdeliver relative to the past. The neutral momentum case, which AI can calculate in a cold, Spock-like manner, can change the dynamics of the resource allocation discussion. It’s a form of predictive intelligence accessible today and while it’s not meant to be definitive, it provides a basis for better decisions.

Joanna Pachner: Do you see access to technology talent as one of the obstacles to the adoption of AI in strategy, especially at large companies?

Yuval Atsmon: I would make a distinction. If you mean machine-learning and data science talent or software engineers who build the digital tools, they are definitely not easy to get. However, companies can increasingly use platforms that provide access to AI tools and require less from individual companies. Also, this domain of strategy is exciting—it’s cutting-edge, so it’s probably easier to get technology talent for that than it might be for manufacturing work.

The bigger challenge, ironically, is finding strategists or people with business expertise to contribute to the effort. You will not solve strategy problems with AI without the involvement of people who understand the customer experience and what you are trying to achieve. Those who know best, like senior executives, don’t have time to be product managers for the AI team. An even bigger constraint is that, in some cases, you are asking people to get involved in an initiative that may make their jobs less important. There could be plenty of opportunities for incorpo­rating AI into existing jobs, but it’s something companies need to reflect on. The best approach may be to create a digital factory where a different team tests and builds AI applications, with oversight from senior stakeholders.

The big challenge is finding strategists to contribute to the AI effort. You are asking people to get involved in an initiative that may make their jobs less important.

Joanna Pachner: Do you think this worry about job security and the potential that AI will automate strategy is realistic?

Yuval Atsmon: The question of whether AI will replace human judgment and put humanity out of its job is a big one that I would leave for other experts.

The pertinent question is shorter-term automation. Because of its complexity, strategy would be one of the later domains to be affected by automation, but we are seeing it in many other domains. However, the trend for more than two hundred years has been that automation creates new jobs, although ones requiring different skills. That doesn’t take away the fear some people have of a machine exposing their mistakes or doing their job better than they do it.

Joanna Pachner: We recently published an article about strategic courage in an age of volatility  that talked about three types of edge business leaders need to develop. One of them is an edge in insights. Do you think AI has a role to play in furnishing a proprietary insight edge?

Yuval Atsmon: One of the challenges most strategists face is the overwhelming complexity of the world we operate in—the number of unknowns, the information overload. At one level, it may seem that AI will provide another layer of complexity. In reality, it can be a sharp knife that cuts through some of the clutter. The question to ask is, Can AI simplify my life by giving me sharper, more timely insights more easily?

Joanna Pachner: You have been working in strategy for a long time. What sparked your interest in exploring this intersection of strategy and new technology?

Yuval Atsmon: I have always been intrigued by things at the boundaries of what seems possible. Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke’s second law is that to discover the limits of the possible, you have to venture a little past them into the impossible, and I find that particularly alluring in this arena.

AI in strategy is in very nascent stages but could be very consequential for companies and for the profession. For a top executive, strategic decisions are the biggest way to influence the business, other than maybe building the top team, and it is amazing how little technology is leveraged in that process today. It’s conceivable that competitive advantage will increasingly rest in having executives who know how to apply AI well. In some domains, like investment, that is already happening, and the difference in returns can be staggering. I find helping companies be part of that evolution very exciting.

Explore a career with us

Related articles.

Strategic courage in an age of volatility

Bias Busters Collection

You are using an outdated browser. Please upgrade your browser .

The Ins and Outs of Sign-On Bonuses: Pros, Cons, and Best Practices

Written by Salary.com Staff

May 14, 2024

Companies are constantly seeking ways to attract and retain top talent. One common strategy used by employers is to offer. But what exactly are sign-on bonuses? How do they differ from retention bonuses?

This explains sign-on bonuses, exploring their pros and cons for companies and employees , average bonus amounts, key factors to consider, and best practices.

Comparing Sign-On Bonuses and Retention Incentives

Before diving into sign-on bonuses, it is important to distinguish them from retention bonuses. Sign-on bonuses are like a welcome gift for new employees, encouraging them to join the company.  On the other hand, retention incentives are rewards given to current employees to encourage them to stay longer. These two may have different purposes, but they both aim to attract and keep the best people in the company.

Understanding the Mechanics of Sign-On Bonuses

Sign-on bonuses are one-time payments or rewards offered to new employees. Companies offer these bonuses upon signing an employment offer. They can take various forms, such as cash bonuses, stock options, or additional benefits such as relocation assistance or tuition reimbursement. The terms and conditions of sign-on bonuses change based on what the company allows and what is agreed upon between the new employee and the employer.

Weighing the Pros and Cons of Bonuses for Companies

Sign-on bonuses may bring benefits to both companies and job seekers, but they come with their own set of pros and cons as well.

• Attract Top Talent: Offering sign-on bonuses can lure in talented candidates who are unsure about switching jobs unless there is a good reason.
• Competitive Advantage: Sign-on bonuses can make a company stand out from the crowd. This is an advantage especially in industries where skilled workers are hard to find.
• Accelerated Recruitment: Another advantage of sign-on bonuses is they can speed up hiring. Their enticing appeal encourages people to say “yes” to job offers faster, which save time and money on the hiring process.
• Costly Investment: Providing sign-on bonuses can be a significant financial investment for companies, especially when they offer substantial bonuses or extend them to multiple hires.
• Risk of Turnover: Sign-on bonuses are not an assurance that employees will stay long when hired. This means more costs for the company after they leave.
• Discontent Among Existing Employees: When new hires get sign-on bonuses but the current team does not, it can make them feel unhappy and overlooked, which causes tension in the workplace.

Sign-on bonuses can be a powerful tool for attracting and retaining top talent. But they come with their own set of challenges. By carefully weighing the pros and cons, companies can make informed decisions on when and how to offer sign-on bonuses to achieve their hiring goals. Like any good investment, it is all about finding the right balance.

The Average Value of Sign-On Bonuses

How much do sign-on bonuses usually pay? The answer is not always straightforward. Sign-on bonuses can vary widely depending on factors such as the industry, the level of the position, and even the location of the job.

In some fields, like tech or finance, sign-on bonuses can reach huge amounts, sometimes even surpassing the annual salary of the position. But for most jobs, sign-on bonuses typically range from a few thousand dollars to tens of thousands.

Key Factors to Evaluate Before Offering Sign-On Bonuses

Companies need to consider a few key factors before deciding whether sign-on bonuses are a good idea for them and the people they want to hire.

• Market Demand: Check how much companies need certain skills . This helps decide whether offering sign-on bonuses is necessary to get the right people for the job.
• Budget Constraints: Companies must weigh the cost of offering sign-on bonuses against their budgetary constraints and financial goals to ensure they can afford the investment.
• Long-Term Strategy: When considering sign-on bonuses, it is important to look at how they can affect employee retention and the company's culture, not just short-term hiring goals.

Effective Strategies for Sign-On Bonuses

Companies must follow these best practices when offering sign-on bonuses:

• Clearly Define Terms: Clearly outline the terms and conditions of the sign-on bonus. Explain who are eligible for it, when they will receive the pay, and whether there are any conditions where they may have to give it back in the job offer.
• Tailor Bonuses to Individual Candidates: Customize sign-on bonuses based on the candidate's skills, experience, and level of demand in the job market. Make the bonus as appealing and competitive as possible.
• Communicate Transparently: Inform candidates on why they are getting a sign-on bonus and how it aligns with what the company wants in new hires.

Leveraging Sign-On Bonuses for Competitive Recruitment

Sign-on bonuses can be valuable tools for companies seeking to attract top talent in a competitive job market. But even with their great benefits, they come with their own set of pros and cons that must be carefully weighed and considered. Companies can only effectively utilize these incentives by understanding the nuances of sign-on bonuses and following best practices. Companies can then bolster their recruitment efforts and drive organizational success.

Download the 2018 Turnover Report:

Download our 2018 Turnover Report to compare your organization's turnover rate with averages in your industry and geographic region. View national and regional numbers by industry for voluntary and total turnover, as well as five-year trends.

Download our white paper to further understand how organizations across the country are using market data, internal analytics, and strategic communication to establish an equitable pay structure.

Insights You Need to Get It Right

TAGS: CEO/CFO , Compensation Conscience , Human Resources

It's easy to get started.

• Product Management Tutorial
• What is Product Management
• Product Life Cycle
• Product Management Process
• General Availability
• Product Manager
• PM Interview Questions
• Courses & Certifications
• Project Management Tutorial
• Agile Methodology
• Software Engineering Tutorial
• Software Development Tutorial
• Software Testing Tutorial
• Types of User Research in Product Management
• User Research in Product Management
• Market Research Vs User Research in Product Management
• Market Research in Product Management
• Go to Market Strategy in Product Management
• User Segmentation in Product Management
• What do you mean by Product Service Management?
• 5 Reasons Why Product Management is so Important
• Pros and Cons of Product Management
• Challenges in Product Management and How to Overcome them.
• Product Management Interview Questions for Advanced
• 6 Common Mistakes to Avoid in Data Science Code
• Top 21 Product Management Books for Product Managers
• Product Management Software by Monday.com
• What is a Product in Product Management?
• How to balance short-term and long-term goals in product management?
• How do I start studying product management?
• What are the 5 C's of product management?
• A/B Testing in Product Management

5 common mistakes to avoid in user research in Product Management

User research in product management is really important. But sometimes people make mistakes that can mess it up. Like not setting clear goals for the research, using the wrong methods, picking the wrong people to ask questions, not asking the right questions, and forgetting to look at the data properly. These mistakes can make the research not very useful. But if we avoid them, we can learn a lot about what users want and make better products that they’ll like more.

5 Common Mistakes to Avoid in User Research in Product Management

Here are the 5 Common Mistakes that can be Avoid in User Research in Product Management:

Mistake 1: Not defining a clear research goal

When we don’t have a clear research goal, it means we’re starting user research without knowing exactly what we want to find out. This mistake can waste time and effort because we might end up collecting information that doesn’t help us. Without a clear goal, we might ask the wrong questions or get data that doesn’t give us useful insights for our product. To avoid this, it’s important to take the time to decide what we want to learn from our research. This means figuring out the main questions we need answers to or setting specific goals for what we want to achieve. By doing this, we can make sure our research is focused and helpful for making decisions about our product.

Mistake 2: Not choosing the right research method

This mistake means using a research method that doesn’t fit what we’re trying to learn. This can lead to incomplete or wrong information, which makes it hard to make good decisions about our product. Different research methods, like talking to people, asking questions, or watching how they use things, have different strengths and weaknesses. If we pick the wrong one, we might waste time and money without getting useful data. To avoid this, we need to think about what we want to learn, the kind of information we need, and who we’re trying to learn from. By picking the best method for our goals, we can make sure we get the right information to help us improve our product.

Mistake 3: Not recruiting the right participants

This mistake happens when we choose the wrong people for our research. When we don’t recruit the right participants, we miss out on getting insights that truly represent our target users. This can lead to decisions about our product that don’t match what our users want or need. Whether it’s because we pick people who aren’t like our typical users or we forget to include important groups like older adults or students, it means we’re not getting the full picture. To avoid this, we need to think carefully about who we want to include in our research and make sure they’re a good match for our target audience. By recruiting the right participants, we can get the information we need to make our product better for the people who will use it.

Mistake 4: Not asking the right questions

This mistake happens when we don’t ask the questions that will give us the information we need. When we don’t ask the right questions, we miss out on getting important insights that could help us make better decisions about our product. This can lead to us making choices that don’t match what our users want or need. Whether it’s because our questions are too vague, or leading, or we forget to ask about important things, it means we’re not getting the whole story. To avoid this, we need to think carefully about what we want to know and make sure our questions will give us the answers we’re looking for. By asking the right questions, we can get the information we need to make our product better for our users.

Mistake 5: Not analyzing and synthesizing the data

This mistake happens when we gather data from our research but don’t take the time to carefully look at it and put it together to find important things. When we don’t analyze and synthesize the data, we miss out on understanding what it’s telling us about our users and our product. This can lead to us making decisions without all the information we need or missing chances to make our product better. Whether it’s because we’re busy, don’t know how to do it, or just forget, not analyzing and synthesizing the data means we’re not using it to help us improve our product. To avoid this, we need to take the time to carefully look at the data we’ve collected and think about what it means for our product. By doing this, we can make better decisions and create products that work well for our users.

Related Articles:

• Learn Product Management | Beginner to Advanced Tutorial

In conclusion, good user research is important for making products that people like. By avoiding common mistakes like not setting clear research goals, picking the right research methods, choosing the right people for our research, asking the right questions, and looking carefully at the data, we can make sure our products meet users’ needs. When we focus on what users want and keep improving our research, we can create products that work well and make users happy. So, by putting effort into user research, we can make better decisions and build successful products.

FAQs: 5 Common Mistakes to Avoid in User Research in Product Management

Why is user research important in product management.

User research helps us figure out what users need and want, making sure our products actually solve their problems and meet their expectations.

How often should we do user research?

It’s best to keep doing user research regularly, all through making the product. This way, we stay updated on what users want and need.

In what ways can we do user research?

We can talk to users, ask them questions, watch how they use things, and even have them try out our product and give feedback. All these ways help us understand what users want.

What do we do with the feedback from user research?

We carefully listen to what users say and use their feedback to improve our product. This helps us make something that users really like.

How can we make sure our user research works well?

To do good user research, we talk to lots of different users, ask questions that let them share their thoughts freely, and pay attention to what they actually do. And we keep learning and improving how we do research.

Please Login to comment...

Similar reads.

• Product Management

Improve your Coding Skills with Practice

What kind of Experience do you want to share?

Viewpoint: research versus the rest of the world is a false dilemma

In polarised times, it is critical that we take a nuanced approach to designing the next framework programme, FP10

Ricardo Miguéis, head of INESC Brussels HUB.

It’s an increasingly binary world, where two opposites are presented as the only options available - and this lack of nuance is now infecting research and innovation policy.

Take for instance: Research Infrastructures versus Technology Infrastructures; basic research versus applied research; Pillar 1 versus Pillar 2; cohesion versus excellence; the east versus the west, the north versus the south; universities versus research technology organisations; the research office versus the researcher; the researcher versus the entrepreneur; the EU versus the world.

As discussions on the shape of the next EU research programme, FP10, gather pace, this polarisation is of increasing concern. In particular, it must not be allowed to undermine the European Research Council (ERC). I am a staunch supporter of the hugely successful ERC, but find that nowadays 90% of the conversations about its future in FP10 start with some version of an ‘ERC versus the world’ argument.

But the inherent danger of binary thinking in the research and innovation landscape extends far beyond the ERC, manifesting in practical, often detrimental consequences for the advancement of knowledge and technology. This binary framing not only narrows the scope of funding and policy support but also diminishes the capacity of research and innovation to respond to complex global challenges that demand a multifaceted approach.

As one example of this, a researcher faced funding barriers in her interdisciplinary research on the impact of climate change on biodiversity. Another example is an EU project to develop water purification technologies which struggled due to its cross-disciplinary nature. Both examples highlight the need for funding that supports specific skills to transition fundamental knowledge to market readiness.

But all the examples above ignore the most dangerous binary view of all:  research and innovation versus the world. This is especially when we are talking about budgetary divisions - and in the end, everything hangs on this. By bickering between ourselves about who should get more from the ever-small pot we will have access to, we are overlooking the main issue, which is properly funding R&I and thus contributing to solving the main societal problems on planet earth (and beyond, it seems).

To overcome this, we need to start thinking objectively. We need to acknowledge that the research and innovation funded by framework programmes is not an end in itself. It is, as it has been since the first EU research programme Esprit (European Strategic Programme for Research and Development in Information Technology) was set up in 1984 about Europe’s competitiveness. As Michel Carpentier, director general of DG XIII and the leading force behind Esprit put it, the aim was, “to coordinate and focus pre-competitive research in Europe and so strengthen the ability of European companies to compete in world markets.”

Did this mean basic research was out of the equation and did not receive any funding? Not at all. As the 1991/1992 Esprit report says, “The year 1991/92 for basic research marks a watershed — the completion of actions started from the first call for proposals in 1989 and the recommendations for funding further work from a second call made in October 1991.”

“Almost all the 61 actions and 13 working groups launched as a result of the first call for proposals in 1989 were completed, and 108 new projects, working groups and networks of excellence were initiated. There was, however, a high degree of directionality and the awareness that specific methodologies, skills, tools and investment were needed to transfer basic research into precompetitive research or industrial development,”

This highlights another issue that should be at the forefront of our thoughts in the build up towards FP10: the assumption that we all have the same capacity to bring knowledge to pre-competitive phase. We don’t. But we have built an impressive edifice of research and innovation capabilities, and they are all needed.

Do we need more money invested in research and innovation and in FP10? No doubt.

Will we secure €200B ? I hope so and will fight for that (we hereby fully endorse the Research Matters campaign). But we also need a visionary perspective to increase investment in research. First, we need to clearly set out a vision for the role of the EU level funding through FP10 vis à vis national and regional funding.

There is not and will not be enough money to fund all the good practice through FP10, but we do have, and will fight to increasingly have, the capacity to build the meta-structure, that is, the connections and the knowledge flows to make it happen.

This is why, in second place, we need route maps to mobilise resources towards concrete strategic goals, especially when it comes to the use of EU cohesion funds for research and innovation related investments.

Third, we need synergies, not only in funding instruments regulation, but also in planning, especially in the strategic thinking of regional, national and EU priorities, and in particular in relation to the conditions required to obtain and spend cohesion funds on research.

This must be done when negotiating framework agreements with each of the member states, if we want to even get near the goal of investing 3% of GDP on R&D across the EU in a more balanced manner.

And finally, we need far better planning and synergies at an EU horizontal level as well. We need to set a much more articulated vision for the role of different directorates in the Commission in the funding of research and innovation.

Ricardo Miguéis is head of INESC Brussels HUB, which represents the largest research and technology organisation in Portugal

Never miss an update from Science|Business:   Newsletter sign-up

Related News

Get the free Science|Business newsletters

  Sign up for the Funding Newswire

  Sign up for the Policy Bulletin

  Sign up for The Widening

Funding Newswire subscription

Follow where the public and private R&I money is going and which collaborative opportunities you can pursue. 

Subscribe today

Manage my subscription

Find out more about the Science|Business Network

  Why join?

  Become a member

• Funding Newswire
• The Widening
• R&D Policy
• Why subscribe?
• Testimonials
• Become a member
• Network news
• Strategic advice
• Sponsorships
• EU Projects
• Enquire today

PvE to stay competitive in PvP

Ignore this post, i was wrong jumping to the wrong conclusions before doing better research

TLDR Mythic + Currency upgrades are broken for PvPers (In My Opinion)

Ok for starters i am going to try to do some Mythics this season. Ive been in a couple of groups that i got through the dungeon with little to no trouble. But ive also been in groups where people where just pulling mobs like a heroic (10 at once) (Nokhud Offensive which is possibly the worst dungeon ive ever run and which im bad at anyway because your drake system is broken for me. Im going ‘fast’ but my vigor does not recharge. So i end up having to ride when i should be flying because i run out of Vigor)

What am I missing here?

Why do i have to PvE just so i can upgrade my gear so i can stay competitive. At the moment im doing OK because the season just restarted. If i get focused its not all bad as most people have the same or worse gear level or maybe a little bit better. Or they are just gearing their alts.

But i just know that a time will come (maybe 1-2 weeks) when the PvP’ers that PvE for the currency required to upgrade PvP gear will be to hard to beat.

As a healer playing against people i will just get focused. If these people have noticeably better gear i might as well not even try.

How can i upgrade gear (not including flight stones) without having to sit through dungeon after dungeon after dungeon. Its just pull as many trash mobs as the healer can take then do a boss fight. Rinse and Repeat. Boss fights are fun, but not worth the time it takes to sit through trash clears that require no cc or minimal thought. (especially after a few wipes or even just rezing 1 or 2 people clear after clear)

Im a solo player pretty much. I live in Oceania and we all know how the internet works when the servers are in the US.

If there is another way to earn the Mythic dungeon stones can some one inform me please. Please don’t say join a Guild because I know joining a Guild is my best bet but i want to be free to do what i want to do when i log in (Which is PvP at the moment)(And Blizzard is forcing me to PvE…why?)

I’m pretty sure the honor/CQ gear has a static item level that cannot be improved through PVE, you’d only be improving the PVE item level and not the PVP?

uhh, you dont have to pve to pvp friend, pve gear does not scale to 528 like pvp gear

course it does some go to 535

Pretty sure PvP gear has 8 Levels of upgrades. The Honor gear only requires flight stones but the conquest gear requires stones from Mythics / Raids. (I think)

you dont need to upgrade pvp gear with flightstones. the pvp gear scales up to whatever ilvl it says on it…conquest scales up to 528 as soon as you engage with another player or enter a bg. upgrading the gear with flightstones only makes you stronger against pve adds not against players

some of it does, but it requires alot of work and alot of m+ crests

yes but the point is it does

Exactly, guilds / players that have these dungeons on farm status will upgrade easily compared to me as a solo player. Hence my point of needing to join a guild, which i am not willing to do just to get what i want out of it and not help people in return.

You DONT need to pve to pvp…lol…it has never been easier to gear out for pvp…all of these items in pve are nerfed up to 50%.

Agreed, but thats not my point.

Upgrading your gear requires a lot more effort than just getting the ‘basic’ PvP gear from the conquest vendor.

Guess ill leave this here. if you can’t understand then you’re beyond help. GL

The only item that matters to upgrade to 535 is the legendaries. Nothing else is worth it to upgrade to use in PvP since it’s all nerfed.

You don’t have to do any PvE to prepare for PvP unless you’re an evoker or one of the plate melee for the 2h axe. Zero required. All pvp gear scales to 515,525,528 in pvp situations.

If you’re trying to pve with pvp gear that’s a different story altogether but if you’re doing that there’s something seriously wrong unless it’s a pvp version of a tier piece.

the effects are nerfed but i’m not talking about that if you do both pvp and pve at the same time, you will be able to gear up twice as fast for instance, you can get the tier pieces (or convert them) from pve, upgrade it to 528, then spend your conquest on something else

it is especially true this season since we’re already in the 40%+ versa range, where the diminishing returns really start to kick in. so even if versa is your best stat in general, it probably isn’t once you get to 40%.

Vers has diminishing returns ?

I like that there is PvE gear that goes up to 535 item level. That way when I lose a fight I can just say to myself, “that guy won only because of his 535 gear!” and I will know that to be true so I won’t even have to look them up.

That is some pretty strong ego armor right there. I like it.

Every secondary stat has diminishing returns.

you dont. once you get the conquest pieces they are bis for pvp. currently there is a visual bug that shows pvp gear able to be upgraded higher than anything currently in the game.

even mastery?

S&K Pro Painting

Verified license, portfolio from the business.

Siding Painting

Garage Doors

Inside Paint - Your house will shine with new colors

More Projects

Highlights from the Business

10 years in business

Locally owned & operated

Certified professionals

Free consultations

Budget friendly

Satisfaction guaranteed

Photos & videos

See all 13 photos

Services Offered

Verified by Business

About the Business

We are one of the best exterior & interior painting service contractors in Seattle and provide quality services at a competitive price. Our team of experts has more than 10 years of experience in the field of painting and guarantees maximum professionalism in the process of work. We offer a wide range of painting services, including painting the interior and exterior surfaces of buildings, apartments, offices, shops and other objects. We use only high-quality paints and materials to ensure durability and high quality of coloring. We understand that each project has its own unique requirements, so we work directly with each client to understand their needs and desires …

Location & Hours

Suggest an edit

Serving Lynnwood Area

Amenities and More

Ask the community.

Ask a question

Yelp users haven’t asked any questions yet about S&K Pro Painting .

People also searched for

commercial services

exterior painting

interior painting

deck or porch painting

deck or porch staining

home services

Recommended Reviews

• 1 star rating Not good
• 2 star rating Could’ve been better
• 3 star rating OK
• 4 star rating Good
• 5 star rating Great

Select your rating

Overall rating

A huge thank you to Edward and the team at S&K Pro Painters for their outstanding work on our recent home painting project, both interior and exterior. As we prepared to list our old home for sale, Edward and team transformed our old-paint chipped home and made it buyer-ready. The end result exceeded my expectations, and I wholeheartedly recommend them to anyone in need of interior or exterior painting. From the start, S&K Pro Painters impressed with their competitive quote, which was the most reasonable among the multiple quotes I received (and didn't change, there were no surprise fees at the end). Edward's communication was prompt and clear, and he even scheduled our initial consultation at 7PM to accommodate our busy work schedules. Given the limited space in our old home, timing was crucial, and Edward ensured the painting began immediately after our move, allowing them the space to work and to help us avoid any delays when it comes to listing our home. Edward's transparency regarding expectations, timing, and cost was refreshing. The team's commitment to punctuality, coupled with their open communication, made the entire process seamless. Not only were they professional, but they were also friendly and respectful, addressing any concerns we had promptly and without hesitation. When we noticed a few minor details that needed attention, Edward quickly sent his team to make adjustments, ensuring we were completely satisfied with the final result. To top it off, they completed the project ahead of schedule, a rarity in my experience. If you're in search of a painting company that combines great value, flexibility, and exceptional service, look no further than S&K Pro Painters. Highly recommended! Thanks again Edward and team!

Easy to work with. Good prompt communication. Competitive price, Job well done. Highly recommend.

The job was to repaint the entire house exterior. Their estimate was very competitive, so I chose S&K and never regretted it. Very professional, quick, great communication, awesome quality. Overall painless and definitely excellent price performance. One thing: you need to make all the decisions as far as colors, they won't recommend anything, which is probably also a good thing, makes you do research and own up to it. When I need my next paint job I know who to call.

Sergii and his crew did both an exterior and interior painting project for me in the last two years. In both cases, his bid was below others, and the quality and speed were impressive. S&K crews showed up early and were attentive to details. The communication was excellent and the results improved the value of the house and condo on which they worked. Of the many contractors I worked with on the single family home, S&K stood out as a company I would use again and recommend heartily. Nancy A.

Browse Nearby

Things to Do

Contractors

Drywall Installation & Repair

Hardware Stores

Painters in Lynnwood

Get free quotes on Yelp now

Related Articles

How to paint an exterior front door

12 pro-painting tips (for perfect walls)

Other Painters Nearby

Find more Painters near S&K Pro Painting

Service Offerings in Lynnwood

Commercial Services

Deck or Porch Painting

Deck or Porch Staining

Interior Painting

Related Cost Guides

Excavation Services

Fire Protection Services

Pool & Hot Tub Service

Refinishing Services

Shades & Blinds

Wallpapering

• 5 More Cost Guides

People Also Viewed

Northstar Painting

Dutch Pro Painting

Legacy Painting

Just Dandy Painting

AV Painting

High Quality Painting

Fly High Painting

LEO Painters

All Cities Painting

Queen Anne Painting

S&K Pro Painting is a Yelp advertiser.

Arts | Chrysler Museum receives grant to begin…

Share this:.

• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on X (Opens in new window)

Evening Edition

• Food & Drink
• Home and Garden
• Games & Puzzles

Things To Do

Subscriber only, arts | chrysler museum receives grant to begin meticulous research, restoration of a degas painting, $70,000 grant funds work on 'dancer with bouquets,' its origins and provenance..

The Degas is one of 24 works worldwide selected for a Bank of America Art Conservation Project grant to research its origins and restore it.

Degas, who lived from 1834 to 1917, is considered a master artist and a pillar of the Impressionist movement of the late 19th century, when artists emphasized more spontaneity, movement and scenes of ordinary people’s lives.

He was known for his paintings of ballerinas and a focus on intricate and accurate depictions of dancers practicing or performing. But “Dancer With Bouquets” defies standard notions of his work.

At nearly 6 feet tall and almost 5 feet wide, it is larger than most of his work. It’s also missing his precision-point details and thin lines. “Dancer With Bouquets” is painted in thick outlines and strokes of bold colors and was likely created late in Degas’ career, said Mark Lewis, conservator at the Chrysler.

“The guy was sort of losing his eyesight,” Lewis said. The older Degas got, the larger his paintings became. But it isn’t known when he painted “Dancer With Bouquets,” and it’s possible Degas worked on it for his entire career.

“It’s one of the things we want to find out,” Lewis said. He plans to meet and correspond with curators and art experts across the country to authenticate the painting’s history of ownership.

The grant will also fund X-ray and reflectography tests to pinpoint the types of paints used and to help date them; some paint pigments would have been available only at specific points in Degas’ life. The tests will reveal hidden layers — drafts the artist later painted over.

Then Lewis will remove a top layer of varnish.

Varnish makes paintings shimmer but can deepen and deaden bright colors such as rich pastels. Many Impressionist painters despised varnish. Claude Monet, for example, gifted his famous “Water Lilies” paintings to the city and people of Paris on the condition that they would never be varnished. Lewis suspects the varnish applied to the “Dancer With Bouquets” was added after Degas’ death, most likely by an art dealer trying to make a sale.

Removing the varnish could vastly alter the painting’s look. The process is detailed work, as different paints interact differently with chemical compounds. Each color must be tested before a solution is applied. Lewis will use a surgical microscope if cracked or flaking paint is discovered, and use a special glue to repair the damage nimbly.

“If the paints are really sensitive,” he said, “it could take months and months.”

The restoration is planned for this fall; “Dancer With Bouquets” will remain on display this summer.

Colin Warren-Hicks, 919-818-8138, [email protected]

More in Arts

Local News | Handwritten note a treasure at Riddick’s Folly House Museum in Suffolk

Things To Do | Cass Elliot’s death spawned a horrible myth. She deserves better.

Things To Do | Fun to Do: Cajun festival, monster trucks at the Oceanfront, ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and more

Entertainment | A combustible Cannes is set to unfurl with ‘Furiosa,’ ‘Megalopolis’ and a #MeToo reckoning

Trending nationally.