researching competitors

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!

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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.

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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.

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The Beginner's Guide to Competitor Research

How much time do you spend researching your competitors? Does your business have a research strategy in place? Do you know your strengths and weaknesses compared to your business rivals’? Unfortunately, for many businesses both big and small, competitor research is rarely given the attention it deserves, and that’s often detrimental to your company’s long-term growth. While there’s never been a better time to start and grow your business, there’s also never been more competition. With so many products, services, and pieces of content vying for our attention, it’s more important than ever to give you and your business the best chance to succeed — and that starts with knowing everything you can about your competition. Maybe your media company has been growing year after year and, all of a sudden, your growth stalls. Maybe you’ve recently discovered your most loyal customers are suddenly jumping ship. Or maybe you’ve just launched your ecommerce store and are looking for ways to get traction and increase exposure. Regardless of the stage your business is currently in or the challenges you face, competitor research can help you grow your brand, improve customer retention, and deliver the best product and service possible. In this post, you’ll learn the importance of competitor research, how to get started, the common mistakes to avoid, and how to use Quantcast to help you stay up to date.

The Benefits of Competitive Research

By now, it goes without saying — to stay relevant in your industry, you must constantly innovate. And innovation costs both time and resources. It also requires staying on top of the most effective industry trends, strategies, and tactics; ensuring your products improve; and meeting customer requests for new features. It can be overwhelming at best. But when competitor research is done properly, it’s a great resource that helps you understand and implement what’s working so you can focus on what you do best. With a well-executed competitor research plan, you can:

• Highlight your competition’s weak points so you can successfully position yourself as a better alternative
• Stay up to date with the latest macro trends in your industry so you can plan an effective long-term business strategy
• Learn the best practices for SEO, marketing, and social media
• Use your research to formulate, execute, and test new ideas, products, and services
• Determine common pain points of the customers and readers in your industry
• Help better define your target markets and opportunities for growth

Step 1 – The SWOT Analysis

The first step in competitive research is the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis. Running a SWOT analysis gives you a foundation to base your competitor research on, helps you stay focused on the most essential parts of your business, and gives you a holistic view of where your company currently stands. You can run a SWOT analysis internally or externally. It’s incredibly useful for researching your competitors, and though you should perform SWOT analyses both internally and externally for maximum results, this blog focuses on the benefits of using it to analyze your specific business. To get a running start on your competitor analysis, set aside a few hours to answer the SWOT analysis questions below. Be as accurate and honest as possible so you can use this information to develop a realistic approach to your future strategy. You may also want to include other decision makers as well to get the most accurate possible view of your company.

SWOT Analysis

Internal – things you can control.

• What does your company do better than your competitors? For example, do you have better customer service, higher-quality products, services that get better results?
• What unique assets does your company have? Include things like your IP, technology, company culture, team, and overall reputation.
• What are some positive attributes your customers and clients would use to describe your company? Would they use words like trustworthy and reliable? Are they happy with your service?

Weaknesses:

• Where is your company lacking? Is it in financial capital, culture, teams, or efficiency?
• What do your competitors perform better at? Do they have more locations, faster turnaround times, or a big marketing budget?
• Which assets does your company lack that your competitors have? Do they have bigger networks, perhaps, or more reputable investors?
• Where do your customers and clients say you could improve? Are you constantly out of stock or slow to respond to mistakes within your business?

External – Things That Are Out of Your Control

Opportunities:

• How is your business uniquely positioned to succeed? Do you have a strong technology infrastructure or a strong team to scale and grow?
• What trends can you take advantage of today and in the future?
• Where can you capitalize on errors your competition has made?
• Do you have opportunities to improve your systems and processes based on future projections?
• Are the demographics of your customers and clients rapidly changing?
• Are there any current events affecting your ability to do business?
• Is the global market affecting your ability to sell and deliver value?
• Are there new laws or legislation impacting your business model?

Running your SWOT analysis helps put you and your company on the right track as you start researching your competition and shows you where your company stands. This will deepen the insights you gain as you continue to research. Of course, you can start your competitive research without doing a SWOT analysis, but we don’t recommend it. Its benefits increase as you research — and you can replicate it for some of your biggest competition, compare it to your SWOT analysis, then strategize.

Step 2 – List Your Competitors

Make a list of all your competitors. Include every competitor you can think of, and then do some online research, include others in your brainstorming, and see if you can discover any up-and-coming competitors or companies you haven’t heard of. Here are a few tips for creating your competitor list:

• Take your time and be thorough. The more time you invest in this process up front, the better your results and learnings will be.
• Don’t stop after the first three or four competitors spring to mind. Remember to include up-and-coming or lesser-known companies.
• When searching online for additional competitors, use the keywords, products, and services related to your industry and niche.
• Once your list includes five to 10 companies, you’re ready for more in-depth research.

Step 3 – Deepen Your Research

One of the biggest roadblocks holding businesses back from doing competitive research is a lack of direction. What metrics should you look for? Where should you spend your time and effort? Here’s where you should focus as you research your competition.

Take a hard look at your competitors’ SEO efforts to understand where they stand in the marketplace and to give your company a baseline for improvement. Look for the answers to these questions as you research:

• When you search on industry-specific terms, do your competitors rank on the front page of the search results?
• What can you learn from your competitors who have a strong SEO presence?
• Is their content marketing helping them increase their market share?
• Is their content typically in long form or shorter blog posts?
• How do they format their content?
• Do they publish a lot of guest posts?

These SEO tools can also help:

• Moz SEO tools

Content marketing is one of the most effective ways to drive sales, increase engagement, and develop brand awareness. Understanding your competitors’ content marketing strategy will give you insight on where you can improve or tweak your company’s current strategy. (If you don’t have a content marketing strategy, you definitely should.) Look for answers to these questions as you peruse your competitors’ content:

• What are your competitor’s most popular posts about?
• What do the least popular posts cover?
• What is the company’s content distribution strategy?
• Are readers engaged with the content? For example, are there reader comments posted at the ends of articles or posts? If so, which topics elicited the most commentary?

Here are some tools to get you started:

• Google Trends

Website traffic

When you understand your competitors’ web traffic, you’ll have a better overall view of their businesses health. While high web traffic doesn’t automatically mean a thriving business, it’s a good indicator of positive momentum. Look for answers to these questions in your research:

• If a competitor’s traffic numbers made a big jump, what educated guesses can you make about what might have caused the increase?
• Have their traffic numbers increased recently?
• Do they have a high number of email subscribers?
• Is their website professionally designed?
• Do the pages on their website load quickly?
• Do they consistently push content on their website and blog?
• Do they have a lot of high-quality back links?

These tools can also help:

• Google Analytics

Demographic data

Knowing your competitors’ demographics can show you how to boost your marketing efforts and grow your business. They can also help you better understand your competitors’ overall marketing plan, especially their content marketing strategy. Your research should answer the overall question, “Who consumes your competitors’ content, products, and services?” More specifically, you should discover:

• Is the audience primarily male or female? Of what age?
• What are their customers’ occupations and education levels?
• What are their interests and shopping habits?
• What are their political views?
• Where do they live?
• Is there an opportunity for you to take some of their market share by changing your marketing strategy?

Asking these questions will give you valuable insight into their overall brand strategy. These tools can also help:

• Quantcast Measure
• Website Informer

Step 4: Keep researching

Competitor research isn’t a one-time venture. To keep innovating and growing, you have to keep up the research. Here’s how.

Read your competitors’ content

It should be a company-wide habit to consume your competitor’s content on a regular basis. Not only will this keep you up to date with the latest in what’s working and what’s not, but it also gives you the opportunity to respond with high-quality content of your own based on the latest popular marketing trends. Check out their social media channels One of the best ways to keep track of your competitor’s social media content is to use a social media tool, such as Hootsuite . You’ll see your competitors’ latest posts so you can always have an eye on what they’re sharing. Sign up for competitors’ mailing lists If you are looking for free insight on what your competition is doing, sign up for their product mailing list or newsletter. This alone could provide numerous ways to improve your product or service.

Common competitor research mistakes

Make sure you don’t fall into these common pitfalls.

Copying your competitors

Stealing your competitor’s intellectual property and beyond is a surefire way to hurt your brand and potentially get you into legal trouble. While it might be tempting to just tweak some of your competitor’s most popular content or service and call it your own, it will quickly crack the foundation of trust your business has worked so hard to build. Instead, keep your brand unique. Let your competitors’ work inspire you to branch out, reach farther, and create something new.

Lack of commitment

Competitor research is a long-term strategy. You can’t just Google a few business rivals and call it a day, then expect lasting value. If possible, get buy-in on your competitor research project from your entire company or at least the key decision makers. Having the resources you need to effectively research your competitors will help you make the most out of your efforts. Think of competitor research as a never-ending process, and stay up to date with what your competitors are doing on a regular basis.

Tracking the wrong metrics

If you track the wrong metrics, you’ll lose time, and you could also put your company on the wrong path, costing significant capital in the long run. Tracking the wrong metrics and drawing the wrong conclusions about the data you discover go hand in hand, so stay focused on what’s truly important. To avoid researching irrelevant data and metrics, reference your findings from the SWOT analysis and refer to your KPIs regularly. Don’t get bogged down with details that aren’t relevant to your business goals. If one of your competitors is targeting a demographic you have no intention of marketing to, don’t spend time understanding that data set.

How to use Quantcast for competitive research

If all of this sounds overwhelming, consider letting Quantcast handle the legwork. While there are many tools you can choose for competitor research, Quantcast gives you all you need to understand your business rivals in simple formats. The work is done — all you have to do is put it to use. With Quantcast’s search feature, you can quickly get a glimpse at the important metrics for most of your biggest competitors and then adjust your overall business strategy accordingly.

[Quantcast search feature]

We provide analytics and metrics in easy-to-understand visual charts that show you exactly where you stand compared to your competition. For example, after researching your competitor on Quantcast Measure, you might discover interesting things about the devices its audience uses to view content. Using that knowledge, you can improve your mobile and desktop sites.

[Simple graphs from Quantcast Measure showing website metrics]

Weathering the competitive business landscape is a constant difficulty without the proper knowledge and tools. Let competitor research help you stay relevant in the eyes of your customers, readers, and partners. Now more than ever, it’s important to stay on the top of the latest industry trends. Learn more about how Quantcast Measure can lighten your workload.     Legal Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not legal advice nor a substitute for legal counsel. Please consult your legal advisor before doing competitor research and anytime you have questions with respect to intellectual property rights.

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How to gain a competitive advantage by analyzing marketing initiatives by competitors

Written by by Jasmine Williams

Published on  November 30, 2023

Reading time  7 minutes

It doesn’t matter how niche a product or service you offer. There are probably other companies that do the same thing. Competition is a normal part of business–and it’s what drives innovation.

Digging into your competitor’s approach through a marketing competitor analysis is critical to putting together or updating your brand’s marketing strategy. It is the key to your business’s future success because when you look more closely into your competitors’ marketing, you learn from their successes and mistakes. And this informs your marketing game plan.

In this article, you’ll see why a marketing competitive analysis is important and get expert tips on conducting one.

What is competitor analysis in marketing?

Marketing competitor analysis is the process of researching and analyzing your competitors’ marketing strategies and tactics to identify their strengths and weaknesses.

Look at the four Ps of marketing —product, price, place and promotion—these are four essential factors in marketing a product or service. Analyzing this gives you a competitive edge. Once you know more about your competitors’ methods, you can avoid their pitfalls and take advantage of missed opportunities to optimize your marketing.

But who exactly are your competitors? A competitor is any business that could pull market share away from your organization now or in the future.

There are two main types of competitors: direct and indirect. Direct competitors actively compete with you for the same customers, such as a similar business in your local area. Indirect competitors are those in the same category as you but sell different products or services and target a different market.

For example, if you run a B2B CRM software company that sells to small and medium-sized businesses, a CRM for enterprise clients would be your indirect competitor.

For a marketing competitor analysis, you should focus on your direct competitors.

How to analyze marketing competitors

To analyze your competitor’s marketing strategy, you need to gather as much competitive intelligence as possible about their marketing, from web and social media to field marketing. Fortunately, there are competitive intelligence tools to make this process much easier. You’ll also need to establish criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of their efforts.

What are the steps for a marketing competitor analysis?

While you were likely already familiar with the concept of a marketing competitor analysis, you might not know exactly how to put one together from scratch. Plus, with so much data available, you might find it tough to know where to start or where to focus.

Here’s a step by step process to get you started.

1. Determine your competitors

To find your direct competitors, turn to search engines, social media and customer insights to learn who’s competing against you. Search for keywords related to your product or service and see what other businesses rank for them.

For example, a Google search for “makeup brands” highlights a few of the world’s leading makeup companies.

Also follow social media hashtags related to your product or service. For example, if you run a home office furniture company, you might follow hashtags like #ergonomicchair or #homeoffice.

You could also survey and ask your customers what other brands they considered when making a similar purchase.

2. Research their content strategy

Once you have a shortlist of competitors, look at their online content. Consider these five key factors when evaluating your competitor’s content strategy:

• Content type: Do they have a blog? Are they running paid social ads or posting organic social content? Publishing whitepapers/ebooks? Creating engaging videos? Podcasts? Take stock of the different kinds of content they’re producing.

Use tools like Meta’s Ad Library to see your competitors’ ads. Continuing with the furniture brand example, we can see that one brand, Autonomous, is currently promoting its bulk order promotion and an ErgoChair deal.

Knowing what types of discounts and products your competitors heavily promote is extremely helpful for your sales, marketing or product development strategies.

• Total amount of content: If they have a blog, see how many posts have they published. Checking out how much content they’ve developed in total could help you set expectations or benchmarks for your content.
• Publishing frequency: Are they publishing new content weekly, monthly or less often? Posting more frequently than your competitors could help you engage your audience better.
• Quality: Is their content accurate, well-researched and polished? If not, this is a clear area where your brand can pull ahead.
• Calls-to-action (CTAs): What’s their sales pitch? What unique selling propositions (USPs) do they include in the content? Use their approach as a guide—or try something entirely different to differentiate your brand. For example, scheduling software Calendly has a section on its homepage highlighting a few USPs, like its granular availability tools and easily shareable and embeddable scheduling link.

When it comes to competitor analysis, these USPs serve as a benchmark and inspiration for product development as they highlight features users expect from a scheduling tool. This will enable you to optimize your offer to compete.

3. Monitor their social media reach

According to The Sprout Social Index ™ 2023 , 68% of consumers follow brands on social to stay informed about new products or services. Look closely at your biggest competitors’ social presence and see how you compare and where to improve.

When conducting a social media competitive analysis , consider the following factors:

• Audience size: Your competitors’ follower count may indicate your biggest competition.
• Engagement: How many likes and comments does your competitor’s content get. If they’re getting a lot of attention, try to understand why.
• Hashtags: What hashtags are your competitors using? How many people are tagging your competitors in posts? These factors help you better understand your competitors’ overall discoverability and level of brand awareness.
• Top posts: Track competitor posts performing the best. Make a note of any patterns or themes and use this information to improve your content.

FYI: Sprout Social’s Listening and Competitive Analysis features make tracking these data points a breeze.

4. Keep an eye on their online presence

Conduct keyword research to see what keywords your competitors use and rank highly for, and find new opportunities for your content. News mentions tell you about how your competitors are doing in the media and provide data for sentiment analysis (i.e., how the public feels about their brand).

Sprout’s Competitive Analysis Listening tool offers a side-by-side competitor comparison of metrics like average positive sentiment. Sprout’s Listening insights also show you trends, topics and posts in your industry, all filterable by sentiment.

Online reviews also give you insight into brand sentiment. Google Alerts will keep you in the loop about your competitors’ new content, news mentions and website changes. And ofcourse, our Spike Alerts help you monitor and respond to significant increases in mentions or keywords related to your brand or industry.

5. Evaluate their website for affiliations and events

Looking into the events your competitors attend or sponsor offers insight into their target audience, brand values and personality. Sponsoring an important cause also helps a brand foster a more positive reputation, so researching competitor events and affiliations will tell you more about what your target audience cares about, which you can use to your benefit in your marketing strategy.

For example, consulting firm Accenture sponsoring AfroTech, an annual conference for Black tech professionals, highlights their commitment to inclusion and diversity.

6. Consider working with a market research firm

If all this research and analysis sounds daunting, outsource the work to a market research firm. They will gather and analyze competitor data about your competitors’ strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT). Plus, since they’re not a part of your company, they often gather more neutral, unbiased findings.

7. Summarize findings and determine next steps

You’ve collected all this data, but what does it all mean? Once you’ve completed your research, break down your marketing competitor analysis into actionable takeaways that your key stakeholders can easily understand. Summarize the key findings and most interesting points, and use charts, graphs and other visual aids to make the data more digestible. Form your next steps based on the insights you gather.

Benefits of a marketing competitor analysis

Even if your competitors don’t change, your general market will. From evolving consumer behavior to new technological developments, your business must be aware of, and ready to, adapt to these shifts.

Plus, with the right tools for competitor analysis , you can quickly collect, refine and incorporate this data into your marketing strategy. For example, adding Sprout’s marketing toolkit makes competitive analysis less daunting and more automated.

Here are a few more ways regular competitor analysis marketing helps you stay agile and ahead of the curve.

Optimize product placement

Look at how your competitors position their products compared to yours. Analyze their messaging, branding and packaging to see how your products or services compare and what you can do better. Also, look at the channels they use to distribute their products, such as retail stores, online marketplaces or direct-to-consumer sales. If there are any channels they don’t use effectively, this could be an opportunity for your brand to shine.

Determine product outlook

Monitoring your competitors’ product releases and updates may uncover areas where they are falling behind. Fill in these gaps to better position your brand. Analyzing your competitors’ marketing strategies helps you anticipate upcoming product launches or promotions that could impact your sales.

Establish benchmarks

Comparing your competitors’ marketing metrics, such as website traffic, social media engagement and conversion rates, allows you to set competitive benchmarks for improvement. Competitor analysis also often reveals industry best practices to incorporate into your marketing strategy.

Gain a competitive edge with marketing competitor analysis

A marketing competitor analysis is valuable for any business that wants to stay competitive and grow its market share. Keep an eye on your competitors to identify new growth opportunities, benchmark your performance and adapt to changes in the market.

Try Sprout free for 30 days and use our competitive analysis reports to get a leg up on your competition.

• Competitive Strategies
• Review Sites

Everything you need to know to conduct a competitive analysis (plus template)

• Marketing Disciplines

Competitive insights: 6 essential market factors and how you can collect them

• Leveling Up

How to build a competitive analysis report with examples and tools

• Customer Experience

Business intelligence reporting: making sense of your organization’s data

• Now on slide

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11 Strong Tips on How to Research Competitors [+Template]

Competitor research is crucial to the success of any product or service as no business operates in a vacuum. But the usual tactics of market research may not be sufficient to reveal critical competitive intelligence. Competitor research needs a specialized set of processes that use data to uncover actionable intelligence. 

This doesn’t mean that the process must be complicated or tedious. Using proven methods and frameworks, businesses of any size can objectively research their competitors without having to set aside significant resources or time. This will help them to better price and position their products and services and even develop solutions that are in sync with the expected market forces. 

Based on a comprehensive analysis of successful firms, here are 11 tips that you can use to uncover crucial competitive intelligence. You will also find a competitor research template at the end of this article.

1. Build a Tiered Competitor List

The first step in gaining competitive intelligence would be to make a tiered list of your three or four top competitors. These are the businesses you would need to track in-depth. Some could be direct rivals and some might have a different core competency but with products or services that would compete with yours. 

You should also research emerging competitors as most of these challenger brands would have disruptive technologies or processes. According to research, there’s a 77 percent chance that your greatest competitor might still be unknown to you. 

Your tier 1 list of ~3-5 competitors should be tracked in-depth. This means configuring AI-based platforms to track the competitors and to enhance that with primary and secondary research including things like win-loss interviews performed regularly. For the tier 2 list, you should start with mainly tracking news alerts on a weekly or monthly basis so you’re not caught off guard by any surprising developments but also so you manage your time accordingly. 

How do I find a company's competitors?

To discover who your top competitors are, ask your sales, product, and marketing teams. They will have a list of companies they track. If you’re in a new market or looking for emerging competitors, check out who is sponsoring events, advertising on similar keywords (tools like SEMRush are great for this), and who is writing content or posting on social media with similar topics.

Ideally, you will have a field in your CRM to track which competitors are coming up frequently in deals. This will help expose top competitors based on the frequency they come up in deals, show who you win vs. lose against, and emerging competitors.

Read our comprehensive guide on how to perform market research . Well-performed market research helps you discover potential customers, understand the overall market size, and the competitive dynamics within that space.

2. Go Beyond News and Websites

A cursory search of news outlets or websites doesn’t constitute competitor research. What you find could be outdated or irrelevant data. That’s why you should find alternative data from unbiased sources.

You should look at online research reports, job postings (with the required expertise), thought leadership pieces from your competitors’ leaders, social media posts, etc. You should also pay attention to what market analysts have to say about your competitors. 

Additionally, when you’re looking at performing competitor research on tier 1 competitors, consider hiring a vendor to perform primary research and deliver a SWOT analysis for a truly unbiased view of what you need to do to stand out and win against the competition.

3. Leverage the Power of AI to Automate the Process

It can be difficult for humans to do the monitoring and filtering considering the number of sources and the regularity with which you will have to do it. That’s why you should use AI to monitor and filter these channels. 

You can use technology to collect data and generate insights. You can also use natural language processing (NLP) for analyzing unstructured data. 

Keep in mind when starting with AI that it takes time for AI to learn what is truly relevant. It will likely take a few weeks or months to fine-tune the relevancy. Furthermore, don’t stop with AI data collection and filtering. It doesn’t matter if you have a lot of data on competitors if you’re unable to apply it to build to an outcome. Make sure the platform you are using includes data visualization and a curated analysis on top. This will really level up your competitor research and take it from interesting to actionable.

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4. Win/Loss Sales Analysis

Another important source for competitor research would be the data from your sales conversions. You can analyze your sales transcripts and compare your performance against those of your competitors. 

Importantly, you should interview your prospects regardless of your ability to convert the leads. This might shed light on how others would have approached them and what the influential factors would have been. It would also help to engage with your existing customers post their contract renewal. 

There is a myriad of great intelligence you can gather from a competitor win/loss analysis. You can learn about pitching styles, pricing and discounts, market perception, etc. All this will help shine a light on how your strategy is coming together for a sustainable advantage. A best practice here is to group the feedback you’re getting by parameters like geography, company size, industry, etc. which will also help inform where you fit the best.

5. Talk to Suppliers

Your suppliers and vendors are also credible sources to gauge competitive intelligence. Hold detailed discussions with them to understand what others are demanding from them. Even if they don’t divulge much, you might unearth some general trends. 

This will also allow you to learn how suppliers work with your competitors. You will know the differences between the two systems which will also reveal their agility. 

6. Hire from Your Competitors

You don’t have to publicly state it when you recruit but you can mention the skill sets that your competitors may have. This is another instance where technology can be of help. You can use AI to filter candidates from your competitors. 

This is especially true for key roles. Once they get into the system, you’ll gain valuable insight into the operations of your competitors. Any successful hire will also encourage others to jump ship from your competition.

7. Leverage Primary & Secondary Research 

Whenever there are linguistic or socio-cultural considerations, primary and secondary research can help you in competitor research. Broad sectoral analysis might downplay those influences but pointed research into your competition might reveal what makes them perform the way they do. 

In particular when doing competitor research in regions like Europe, make sure to work with a person or vendor that can understand how the diverse culture impacts the needs and answers.

Other than conducting research, you can also get competitor research from third-party sources like credible research institutions or universities. This is how you discover needle-in-a-haystack findings.

8. Centralize Intelligence

The intelligence you gather should be centrally curated. It should also be easy to understand for stakeholders within the system. This means it needs to be elegantly visualized , formatted, summarized, and easily searchable. 

This centralized intelligence should also be easy to access without the need for bureaucratic permissions. Having a central knowledge management tool to collect intelligence and store intelligence is great. Make sure this platform has strong search capabilities given the amount of research that will be collected. Furthermore, having SSO capabilities is a major plus to make it easy to implement.

Once you’re convinced about the authenticity, you should integrate it with your collaborative tools like Slack, Teams, Salesforce, or Dynamics. The most effective enterprise teams typically setup their integrations 6-12 months after initial configuration.  This ensures the research being shared is relevant and actionable.

9. Gather Continuously 

Competitor research shouldn’t be an annual or quarterly activity or something you do when you have a product to launch or market to enter. You need to monitor it regularly and diligently, with daily or weekly reports to gain an advantage. 

Individuals who leverage competitive intelligence weekly are two times more likely to drive impact, according to a study by SCIP.

Continuous monitoring also means you won’t miss a beat on what’s happening and you have the ability to stay ahead of market trends. 

10. Knowledge Curation Should Enable Actions 

The focus shouldn’t be just to accumulate competitive intelligence. It should be to collate insights and make them actionable for the internal stakeholders. Voluminous and nebulous reports seldom lead to proactive measures. 

Source the key takeaways and summarize them keeping in mind the demands of the internal teams who will have to use it. For example, a white paper on the organizational structure of your competitors would be too generic for any department to take action. 

11. Proactively Deliver Intelligence

To gain impact from competitive research, you need to proactively deliver intel to key stakeholders. How to research competitors in the gigabytes of new data being thrown onto the web every day? Google Alerts is a great way to get started for free. There are a lot of competitive intelligence platforms that provide additional collection, filtering, distribution, and customization options. You can set up Google alerts to know if your competitors are in the news. But ensure that these are personalized to the needs of the user. You can also use newsletters to proactively deliver competitive intelligence. 

Don’t rely on someone to remember to look. They will have to be alerted. In other words, your system shouldn’t be surprised by what your competitor does. 

The average business has 5 main competitors and 20 lesser competitors. Competitor research isn’t just a luxury anymore. It’s what organizations will have to consciously pursue to effectively acquire, retain, and grow their customer base. 

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What Is Competitive Analysis and How to Do It Effectively

• 15 min read

Rebecca Strehlow, Copywriter at Crunchbase

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

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

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

What is competitive analysis? 

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

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

Benefits of competitor analysis

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

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

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

How to do competitor analysis 

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

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

1. Identify your competitors

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. Define your objectives

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

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

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

3. Collect data

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

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

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

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

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

4. Look for the 4 Ps

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

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

Place (distribution)

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

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

5. Conduct a SWOT analysis

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

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

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

Competitive analysis templates

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

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

1. Competitor research template

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

2. Competitor matrix template

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

3. Social media competitor analysis template

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

4. SWOT analysis template

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

Competitive analysis examples

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

1. Apple vs. Samsung

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

2. Coca-Cola vs. Pepsi

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

3. Amazon vs. Walmart

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

4. Airbnb vs. Booking.com

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

5. Nike vs. Adidas

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

Competitor analysis tools 

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

1. Crunchbase

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

2. Brandwatch

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

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

4. SimilarWeb

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

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

Achieve sustainable growth with competitor analysis

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

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

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Competitor Analysis: What It Is and How to Conduct One

Discover the benefits of a competitor analysis and learn how to conduct one for your business.

No business operates in a bubble. If you’re a small business owner, chances are you think about your competition a lot. But what should you focus on, and what should you do with that information?

That’s where a competitor analysis can help. At any stage of your business, it’s worth taking time to conduct one. You’ll identify competitors, research their marketing strategies, and assess your brand’s strengths and weaknesses.

Before any big game, a good sports team spends time studying their opponent. Coaches will do research, watch game footage, and put together a scouting report on each opposing player. A competitor analysis is like a scouting report for your business—a tool for designing a game plan that helps your company succeed.

What is a competitor analysis?

A competitor analysis, also referred to as a competitive analysis, is the process of identifying competitors in your industry and researching their different marketing strategies. You can use this information as a point of comparison to identify your company’s strengths and weaknesses relative to each competitor.

You can do a competitor analysis at a high level, or you can dive into one specific aspect of your competitors’ businesses. This article will focus on how to conduct a general competitive analysis, but you’ll want to tailor this process to match the needs and goals of your business.

Why do a competitor analysis?

More often than not, small business owners find themselves juggling many tasks at once. Even amid a busy schedule, though, it’s worth taking the time to do a competitor analysis.

• Identify your business’s strengths and weaknesses

By studying how your competitors are perceived, you can draw conclusions about your own brand’s strengths and weaknesses. Knowing your company’s strengths can inform your positioning in the market, or the image of your product or service that you want members of your target audience to have in their minds. It’s essential to clearly communicate to potential customers why your product or service is the best choice of all those available.

Being aware of your company’s weaknesses is just as important in helping your business grow. Understanding where you fall short of your customers’ expectations can help you identify areas where you may want to invest time and resources.

You might learn that customers prefer your competitors’ customer service, for example. Study your competition to find out what they’re doing right, and see what you can apply to your business.

• Understand your market

While identifying competitors, you may find companies that you didn’t know about or that you didn’t consider part of your competition before. Knowing who your competitors are is the first step to surpassing them.

Conducting a thorough assessment of what your competitors offer may also help you identify areas where your market is underserved. If you find gaps between what your competitors offer and what customers want, you can make the first move and expand your own offerings to satisfy those unmet customer needs.

• Spot industry trends

Studying the competition can also help you see which way the industry as a whole is moving. However, you should never do something just because your competitors are doing it. Copying the competition without really considering your own place in the market rarely, if ever, leads to success.

If you see your competitors doing something that you’re not, don’t rush to replicate their offering. Instead, evaluate what your customers’ needs are and how you can create value for them. It’s often better to zag when everyone else zigs .

• Set benchmarks for future growth

When doing a competitor analysis, you should include companies that are both larger and smaller than your own. Studying well-established businesses in your industry can give you a model of what success looks like and a reference point against which to compare your future growth. On the other hand, researching new entrants into your industry tells you what companies may threaten your market share in the future.

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When should you do a competitor analysis?

Conducting a thorough competitive analysis is always a good idea when starting a new business. However, a competitor analysis isn’t just for startups.

Periodically revisiting and updating your competitor analysis, or conducting one from scratch, will help you identify new trends in the market and maintain a competitive advantage over other companies in your industry.

How to do a competitor analysis

Figuring out what to focus on when conducting a competitive analysis can be tricky. Below are 6 steps to help you get started. Before you begin your competitor analysis, consider what you want to get out of it. Add any other areas of research that align with these goals.

1. Identify your competitors

To create a list of potential competitors, consider where your customers would turn if they didn’t buy from your company. An easy way to start is to search your product name or category on Google or another search engine and explore the results. You can also survey or interview existing customers to ask them what alternatives they considered before deciding on your product or service.

When you finalize your list, aim to include a diverse set of companies to get an accurate assessment of what the market is like. You should consider businesses that fall into each of the 3 categories of competitors.

Direct competitors

Direct competitors sell a similar product or service to a similar target audience. These are likely the companies that first come to mind when you think of your competition. For example, McDonald’s likely considers other fast food burger chains like Wendy’s and Burger King to be its direct competitors.

Indirect competitors

Indirect competitors sell a different product or service in the same category but target an audience similar to yours. For example, takeout pizza restaurants like Domino’s and Papa John’s are indirect competitors of McDonald’s.

Replacement competitors

Replacement competitors exist outside your product category, but they satisfy a similar customer need. For McDonald’s, replacement competitors could be any solution that consumers turn to when they’re hungry, including products such as frozen meals. Of the 3 types of competitors, replacement competitors are the hardest to identify.

When conducting a competitor analysis, you should focus most of your attention on direct and indirect competitors. Still, it’s worth briefly taking stock of potential replacement competitors that could threaten your business prospects.

2. Create a competitor matrix

Before you dive into your competitor analysis , take a moment to get organized. A competitor matrix, also known as a competitor grid, is a table or spreadsheet you can use to compile your research. This will make it easier to compare your findings across competitors and spot larger trends.

Start by devoting one row or column to each competitor that you’ve identified. On the other axis, list data points or categories of information you’d like to find out about each competitor. Don’t worry if you’re not sure what you should be looking for at this point. You can also always add more categories as you progress through your research.

3. Gather background information

Once you have a list of competitors to research, start learning about their businesses. Look for the most basic information first, and then build your way up from there. Start by looking at company websites, social media pages, and any news articles that have been published about them. Here’s some basic information that you may want to look for.

Company history

This includes information such as founding date, funding sources, and any mergers or acquisitions they have been involved with. You can often find this information by reading the “About” section of their website or browsing past press releases from the company. Studying how your competitors got to where they are today will give you a more complete understanding of their businesses.

This will vary greatly based on your industry. If you’re in the e-commerce business, you could be competing against companies that sell their products worldwide. For traditional brick-and-mortar businesses, your competition is likely highly localized. Either way, it’s always smart to know where your competition is based and where they sell.

Company size

How many people do your competitors employ? LinkedIn and Glassdoor are helpful resources for this kind of data. You’ll also want to look into how many customers your competitors have and how much revenue they generate. This information will likely be easily accessible online for larger companies. For smaller and privately held companies, you might have to make do with rough estimates. Knowing how large your competitors are will help you better contextualize the rest of the data you collect.

4. Profile your competition’s target customers

A company is nothing without its customers. Getting an idea of who your competitors sell to will tell you a lot about their businesses. To pinpoint the target customer for any business:

• Read their mission statement .
• Look at what kind of messaging they use.
• Track who they interact with on social media.
• See if they feature any existing customers in their content.

Use this information to construct a profile of who your competitors are trying to reach with their products or services. These customer profiles will probably resemble your own target customers—these are your competitors, after all—so make note of even small differences.

5. Focus on the 4 P’s

Now that you’ve identified the target customer for each competitor, it’s time to look into how they go about reaching that segment of the market. This will require a deep dive into their marketing strategies.

The marketing mix , also known as the 4 P’s—product, price, promotion, and place—covers the must-have elements when bringing a product to market. As part of your research, ask yourself the following questions for each competitor you’ve selected.

• What are they selling?
• What features are included in their product or service?
• What is most appealing to customers about the product or service? What are some weak points of the product or service? (Pro tip: Check out customer reviews.)
• What kind of pricing model do they use? Is it a one-time purchase or a subscription?
• How much do they charge for their product or service? Do they offer sales or discounts?
• How does their pricing reflect the quality, or perceived quality, of their product or service?
• How do they get the word out about their product or service? What advertising channels (social media, email marketing , print advertisements, etc.) do they use?
• What elements of their product or service do they emphasize? What’s their unique selling proposition ?
• What’s their company story? How do they talk about their brand?
• Where do they sell their product? Do they sell online or in brick-and-mortar locations?
• Do they sell to customers directly, or do they partner with retailers or third-party marketplaces?

These questions are meant to be a starting point. Feel free to expand on them and tailor your questions to your industry and the goals of your research.

You’ll likely find a lot of information. Try to condense your findings into short bullet points that you can easily reference later. Be sure to include quantitative data where appropriate if you’re able to find it.

6. Analyze strengths and weaknesses—yours and your competitors’

Using the information you’ve collected, consider the strengths and weaknesses of each of your selected competitors. Ask yourself why consumers choose a particular company’s product or service over the other available options. Record your conclusions in your spreadsheet.

Last, consider your own company’s strengths and weaknesses. How does your business compare to the competitors you’ve researched? Knowing what sets your business apart from the competition—and where it falls short of expectations—can help you better serve your target customers.

A competitor analysis sets you up for success

Completing a competitive analysis isn’t the end of your strategic planning—it’s just the beginning. Don’t let your hard work go to waste. Use the insights you’ve collected to guide your strategic decision-making.

Not sure where to start? It can be helpful to conduct a SWOT analysis , in which you evaluate your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This can help you sift through the information you collected during your competitor analysis and identify actionable next steps for your business.

Using a competitive analysis as part of your strategic planning is an ongoing process. You can always refer back to your research whenever you need to make an important decision for your business. To stay ahead of the competition, you should regularly revisit and update your competitor analysis.

Whether your company is big or small, well established or just starting out, it’s essential to keep your competition in mind. Conduct a competitor analysis today to set your business up for success.

Competitor Analysis FAQ

Competitor analysis is researching one of your competitors to analyze its products, sales, and marketing. Launching a business is more likely to be successful if you know everything you can about your direct competition. Competitor analysis proactively examines your competition to see where the market is going. A competitor analysis sets your business up for success.

Why do competitor analysis?

The competitor analysis definition includes analysis. After you gather information on your competitors, look at their digital content . What is working? If you were a customer, what parts of your competitor's social media presence appeal to you? Better yet, what would appeal to customers even more?

When you analyze your competitors, you will see their strengths and weaknesses. But the real advantage is the ideas the analysis stimulates. Jot down what you are thinking, and make a list of all the actionable items that you can implement.

A competitor analysis will:

You should do competitor analysis before you launch your business and whenever you make a strategic change. Ideally, you should do a competitor analysis at least twice a year. Some experts recommend monthly or quarterly analysis of your top e-commerce competitors.

What is the meaning of competitor analysis?

Competitor analysis lets you know what products and services they are offering, but also how they are marketing and selling those products. You can use the findings to find best practices, exploit competitors' weaknesses, and gain more customers.

How do you do competition analysis?

There are many ways to do a competitive analysis, but there are 4 basic steps:

• Identify your competition including direct competitors, indirect competitors, and substitute competitors.
• Gather information on products, services, pricing, service area, reputation, and marketing tactics.
• Compare the strengths and weaknesses of each competitor.
• Build on your competition’s strengths and weaknesses to create a competitive advantage.

Is competitor analysis the same as SWOT analysis?

SWOT analysis is a type of competitor analysis that looks at your competition's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Competitor analysis can go beyond SWOT to create new ways to increase market share.

Why do we do competitor analysis?

We do competitor analysis to understand the strengths and weaknesses of our competitors. Competitor analysis is proactive rather than reactive so that you can step out and lead the competition instead of trying to catch up.

What are the types of competitor analysis?

Types of competitor analysis include SWOT analysis, the customer journey map, and growth-share matrix . The customer journey is the story your customer creates with your branding, digital footprint, and products. A growth-share matrix is a visual tool to determine where to focus business activities.

What are the objectives of competitor analysis?

The objectives of competitor analysis are to study the changing market environment to predict market supply and demand. Then adjust your business strategy to optimize for the new conditions.

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Competitor Analysis

What is competitor analysis?

What are the benefits of competitor analysis, who are your competitors, what are the different aspects of competitive analysis, steps to performing competitive analysis, using competitor research to understand the wider picture, how often should i do competitor analysis, what tools can i use to do competitor analysis, taking action on your competitor analysis, see how qualtrics strategic brand works, competitor analysis & competitive market research.

25 min read Part of crafting a robust brand strategy involves understanding the competitive landscape. Find out why learning this context through competitor analysis is a vital ingredient in building your competitive advantage.

A foundational part of crafting a brand strategy relies on market orientation, i.e. the process of identifying and meeting the stated or hidden needs or wants of customers .

However, a critical part of your strategy is also associated with choosing how you want to compete, which naturally requires an understanding of the competition as well as your overall market share.

Focusing attention on your current and potential competition will help zero in on specific claims that you believe distinguish your brand from its competitors. The more you can understand the brands that directly and indirectly compete in your area of business or industry, the better you’re equipped to capitalize on opportunities and mitigate the threats to your own business.

That way you can ensure you are one step ahead of the game and the competition.

Learn about our competitive benchmarking study

Category competitors vs. the wider market

While it is important to pay attention to your most relevant competitors, businesses can be at risk by only focusing on what they believe are their category competitors.

However, what can really impact your market share is not seeing a category disruptor or a business redefining the category itself. In recent years, we have seen numerous examples of this – from Facebook and Google becoming major advertising channels to Amazon and eBay disrupting retail.

The ability to redefine a category by shifting the offered benefits to differentiate in new and unexpected ways was the foundational idea developed in The Blue Ocean Strategy .

It’s critical for businesses and brands to attend to this challenge, periodically take a broader view of industry trends, and look beyond their own category. Talk to consumers who have left your category – that way, you can understand if the “category” is losing consumers and what categories, outside of your own, you might be competing with.

Competitor analysis is used by the most successful businesses to remain forward-looking – it helps you revise strategy based on the insights you uncover and amplify what works.

Competitive analysis also helps businesses understand how they can improve by better serving their customers, based on customer feedback around other competing businesses in their market.

Businesses are better off if they know how they are faring when competing for market share, and why.

Businesses not executing regular competitive analysis risk not understanding when and why consumers prefer their competitors, not identifying their competitive vulnerabilities, and not seeing new threats and opportunities.

When marketers have a strong knowledge of their brand, it can be tempting to think that competitor analysis is an unnecessary exercise, but this is a common misconception.

Customer decision-making isn’t always straightforward or rational, but by asking your customers about their beliefs, attitudes, behaviors, and experiences toward you and your competitors, you can build an accurate picture of how to become a more significant part of their everyday lives.

Most importantly: you can find actionable insights that lead to practical, positive changes to your marketing strategies, product or service, or business as a whole. This, ultimately, means that competitor analysis is a vital tool in cultivating a competitive edge.

Image credit: QuickBooks

Direct, indirect, aspirational – all your competitors matter, and it’s important you understand their significance to what you’re trying to achieve, and where and how you will decide to compete. First, let’s look at how to find yours :

Ask your customers

The reason for this is that what we assume isn’t always true. People don’t stick to categories the way we often think they do – sometimes they think of alternatives that we might miss.

Only by talking to existing or potential customers can you reflect their point of view and understand their behaviors, your business’ role within that, and the wider competitive landscape.

Desk research

Read feature articles and industry trend reports and get a gauge for what’s here and now, and also on the horizon. That way you can stay one step ahead of your competitors and lead the market.

Online tools

There are a host of digital tools to help you hone in on a list of your competitors. Google Trends, for example, lets you see search results for various terms. Maps is a simple way to find locally-based rivals, while, SocialMention scours social media channels for brand mentions based on any search query.

The next thing you need to do is classify the competitors you’ve found into one of four groups:

1. Direct competitors

The brands that first come to mind when you think about your competition. They’re in your sector or neighborhood, marketing products and services that do the same like-for-like job as yours.

2. Indirect competitors

They address the same customer needs as your business does, but they do it differently. Your target audience will overlap with theirs but won’t be an exact match.

3. Substitute competitors

These don’t sell the same products but compete for consumer spending, e.g. bars, cafés, restaurants, delis, and supermarkets all compete for lunchtime trade on a main street.

4. New entrants

Competitors who have recently entered a market offering the same products or services.

With all this in mind, keep the lens wide and try to maintain an open mind. Try to take as broad a view of the competitive landscape as you can. Not only will you understand the context in which you operate better, but you will learn more too. Some of the best businesses take ideas that are working well in other markets and replicate them in their sphere.

For example, rather than looking to understand a beer brand’s market share, think of the competition as ‘share of throat.’ Why? Because not everyone likes beer, but they might like wine or gin – and these are often in competition with beer as someone’s drink of choice.

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Marketing research, as applied to competitive analysis, is key to helping us understand consumer sentiment toward brands and products, as well as those of our competitors and how they influence the market.

This is because you’re asking the people that actually use them, or those who choose not to, and gaining valuable insight into why.

But this can be broken down into specific topics:

• Who is the target audience of your competitors?
• What do people like/dislike about the product/service/brand sentiment?
• Why do people like/dislike the product/service/brand? And why do they use/not use the brand?
• When do people use them? Are there particular circumstances or occasions of use?
• How much would a customer spend, and why?
• Are they front of mind for the customer when it comes to buying or using a product/service?
• But most importantly, how does this stand up against you?

An effective way of conducting a competitor analysis is to break it down into stages, using the questions above as your framework.

Firstly, ask yourself – What do I already know?

Begin by conducting stakeholder interviews and tap into their vision and experience of the brand. See the market landscape from their perspective – it might be different from yours or your colleagues’. Then undertake desk research to get more insight into any broader trends that may be emerging, as well as review recent marketing research that may contain information about your competitors. It is key to begin any new marketing research efforts with some clear ideas about what you might find.

Secondly, ask yourself – what don’t I know?

But how do I know what I don’t know? – you might ask. Begin by casting your net wide, and then bring it in as you hone in on the information important to your business.

Any thorough competitor analysis will want to absorb and compare as much information as possible – but it’s crucial that you look at the right information that’s relevant for your business.

In essence, though, competitor analysis is all about information gathering. Generally, there are four business areas to concentrate on, which we’ll cover below. Some of them will require specialized competitor analysis tools, while others rely more on desk research and a bit of digging.

These metrics are the core numbers and details associated with your competitor as a business. And within that sphere, you can group those into sections like revenue, customers, funding, and basic info.

Whereas the latter might be a simple case of filling out details on your competitors’ number of employees, the name of their C-suite executives, locations, etc. via sources like LinkedIn or CrunchBase , metrics like revenue are harder to figure out.

Start by googling their names alongside ‘revenue’ or ‘customers’ to see what you can uncover from their website, press releases, and investor keynotes. If that doesn’t work, you can also try a business directory like Dun & Bradstreet .

2. Products and services

Understanding the products or services that your competitors offer is the key to finding market differentiation for your brand. The first thing you’ll need to do is answer a few basic qualitative questions:

• What are your competitors selling?
• What is their USP
• What key features are offered?
• What technology are they using?

Most of this information can likely be found on their website, but you should also consult their LinkedIn posts, job ads, and tools like BuiltWith to fill in any gaps.

After that, you can move on to more quantitative details around price. Questions to answer here include:

• How much does their product cost?
• Is that more or less than your closest equivalent?
• Is it a subscription or a one-off fee?
• Do your competitors offer more packages than you?

3. Target market and customer awareness

Whom are your competitors trying to sell to? Is it the same kind of customer your own company wants to attract? And, importantly, is it working? You can get a decent handle on that last question by monitoring both share of voice and sentiment. Most social listening and competitor analysis tools (more on those in a bit) will be able to track this for you.

The crucial part with both is: how does your competitor’s share of voice or sentiment rankings stack up to yours? It’s only really by tracking a range of competitors that you can apply meaning and context to the results your brand sees.

Social listening can also help you learn what customers are saying about your competitors and whether they’re listening. It’s also useful to see what kind of things your competitors are saying on their social channels – and on which ones.

For instance, if your competitor is posting more on say, TikTok than LinkedIn, then you can make an educated assumption that they’re probably looking to attract a younger audience.

4. Marketing strategy

The meta-information around the above line of inquiry can help you fill in a few more blanks, too. For example, you’ll learn the geographical markets your competitor is focussed on alongside which ones they aren’t, and you’ll soon develop a full picture of their online presence as it relates to their target market.

But beyond that, a vital part of competitor analysis is in examining direct and indirect competitors’ marketing strategies as a whole. And there are many areas to dive into:

Advertising

Alongside TV and other traditional ATL advertising, it’s helpful to use competitor analysis tools to find out how (and how often) other brands are running ads online. You’ll want to see how your advertising output matches up against your rivals’ Google, YouTube, Display, Facebook, and Twitter ads.

Social media and influencer marketing

As mentioned in the section above, it’s important to know where your direct competitors are focussing their efforts when it comes to social posting. Moreover, if you monitor engagement levels per platform, you’ll learn which channels it’s best for you to prioritize.

Content marketing

Are your competitors blogging? Do they publish thought-leadership pieces on LinkedIn? Do they make regular videos on their YouTube channel? Do they own or sponsor a podcast? And is any of it working? Learning what others are publishing and tracking engagement can be a useful benchmarking exercise, or – again – it can highlight potential gaps in the market.

SEO performance

Tracking content marketing will likely lead to monitoring the SEO performance of your direct competitors. There are several online tools (like PowerSuite, Ahrefs, Rank Tracker, and SimilarWeb) that can help you find out what keywords other brands are ranking for, and how you stack up in comparison.

Understanding this is crucial for adjusting your marketing strategy, to win a greater share of common search results in your industry.

Lead handling

Familiarize yourself with your competitors’ lead and sales process by venturing down it yourself. Watch a tutorial, book a demo, or make contact with their sales teams to see how much of the process is gated, how seamless things are, and how long responses take.

Similarly, competitors’ customer service is also something to keep an eye on: how do your rivals handle it? Take a look at Twitter complaints and note down their response times, or you could even email them with a ‘query’ of your own.

At this point, it’s also useful to gather insight on your designated topics from the point of view of the consumer. Marketers have various tools available to them to do this – surveys , social media listening, and purchasing panel data (E.g. Nielsen Panel, IRI), each serving a particular purpose.

Brands can leverage surveys to assess attitudes ; passive data can be used to understand behavior; and panels for market penetration and share. All of these, when used together, help to understand the sentiment and opinion about particular topics and competitors and give a broader view of the market.

You may want to segment this research too, so you can see how different audiences behave differently from competitors in the market. This will help you to establish where you are performing strongly, and how you can improve in relation to your competitors. Whilst knowing this information is great, it’s just as important to listen and act on the insights that arise from it.

There are tools to help with this. For example, the Qualtrics BrandXM platform can help you focus on the important points of action recommended in the platform.

Qualitative collection methods also play an important role. For example, social media listening tools are great at helping understand the share of voice and can help you set key metric benchmarks.

These can be used in partnership with more traditional qualitative collection methods too, like focus groups and interviews. Use these methods to dig deeper and talk to people to understand what drives their attitudes and behaviors.

At Qualtrics, we work with partners to help you facilitate this qualitative research. By pulling this qualitative data into BrandXM , you can quantify it and pull out trends and valuable insights in your dashboard. This will help you with your strategy moving forward.

Research only reflects a certain point in time, so if you want to stay ahead of the competition then you need to make sure that this data is maintained for accuracy. Many businesses find themselves wrong-footed, not because they did something wrong, but because they failed to anticipate changes in the market.

This is why keeping a pulse on how the business competes is important. Maintain an awareness of who’s gaining attention and who’s losing traction, amongst who too.

Do so by updating this research periodically, be it once a year, bi-annually, or every quarter. That way, whenever a change in strategy is taking place you can draw on the most recent data to establish this foundation for the change.

Traditionally, competitor analysis and other similar studies have been outsourced to agencies. However, these studies were often expensive, were slow to complete, and only reflected one point in time and you didn’t have access to real-time data. With advancements in technology, brands have far greater accessibility to tools that mean they can take this discipline in-house.

Complex processes and data have now been greatly simplified , so now everyone can be an expert with access to vital insights in real-time.

Qualtrics (quantitative and qualitative)

From usage & attitude studies to segmentation, brand perception , or awareness and perception tracking, Qualtrics BrandXM can get you up and running in no time. With all data in one platform, you can spend less time collating and cleaning survey responses, and more time listening and acting on your insights.

Qualtrics can also pull in all of your qualitative data at scale, giving you a holistic view of your competitors so you know how you compare. We also work with partners to give you the most comprehensive tool for competitor research. The partners listed below can be used to collect customer feedback about the competitive landscape in qualitative and quantitative formats.

Using Qualtrics, you’ll be able to see a holistic, unified snapshot of your place in the market, alongside a host of suggested actions for how to improve.

Qualtrics Research Services

If you don’t have an in-house team available to manage your data, Qualtrics research services can help. Our expert team oversees everything for you, from designing your studies, finding the right respondents, launching your surveys, and reporting on the results – so you can focus on taking action to improve your business. We’re with you every step of the way.

External partners:

Livinglens (qualitative).

LivingLens captures & analyses video content via speech, actions & sentiment, translating human behavior into insights. This makes working with video efficient and scalable, turning it into a usable data asset that you can gather insights from quickly.

Voxpopme (qualitative)

Whilst focus groups are still valuable, new approaches are being developed at scale that are changing the way we do market research . One example is Voxpopme , which “helps connect brands with consumers through real-time video feedback.” If you want to do in-store/shelf testing vs. interviews, digital usability testing, or tracking studies , Voxpopme gives access to qualitative insight at speed and scale for various use cases. Make the most of

Voxpopme’s on-demand community, or access your audience and capture, analyze and share insights from your customers all over the world.

BrandWatch (qualitative – social listening)

Various tools can help with social listening, and Qualtrics has an integration with a few partners – such as Brandwatch . Brandwatch gives “structure and meaning to the voices of billions of people, so you can make decisions that truly fit with consumer and buyer needs.” If you are just beginning to analyze your competitors and the market, social listening is your ally.

The reason for this is because it may (helpfully) challenge your perceptions of what you think is true by learning what your customers are saying about you and your competitors in their context. Brandwatch can also do scene analysis from sources such as pictures to help businesses understand the context in which they, and their competitors, are being consumed.

If you’ve used the right tools and completed all the steps above, you should have a robust view of the competitor landscape. And that means it’s time to take your learnings and use them to form a competitive advantage.

Exactly how you do that will depend on what you learn about industry trends, your market share, what your target audience thinks, and how your major competitors behave, but you should be able to spot areas for improvement in your offering.

But here are a few ideas of how to turn competitor analysis into actionable points:

1. Market your brand where they don’t

If you know that your competitors have left a gap for you to fill, it’s time to adjust your online marketing strategy to do just that. That might mean executing a new content marketing push on platforms that are being underserved by the competition. It could mean responding to people on social media who are currently being ignored. Or it could be working to ensure that your SEO performance puts you at the top of SERPs for more keywords.

2. Adjust pricing or features

If your competitor analysis shows that a direct or indirect competitor offers better value than you, then it’s time to make some adjustments. See if you can identify superfluous parts of the supply chain or other processes that allow you to carve out a stronger value proposition. That could even mean a change in how your products or services are offered – for instance adding a monthly subscription tier instead of just an annual one.

3. Act on known pain points

As mentioned, a truly comprehensive competitive analysis should include collating feedback from new and potential customers. With their responses, you might find experience gaps that nobody in the industry is helping to close. That then provides an opportunity to evolve your offering in such a way as to give people what they currently can’t get – and in an easier way.

And remember: Qualtrics can help you take action on your findings, and stay in the loop with where your brand sits in relation to your competitors.

Find out more about our competitive benchmarking study

Related resources

Question to ask for competitor analysis 4 min read, how to find your competitors 12 min read.

Market Segmentation

Market Fragmentation 9 min read

Brand Perception

Brand Sentiment 18 min read

Brand intelligence 12 min read.

Brand Awareness

How to Increase Brand Awareness 17 min read

How to build a brand 14 min read, request demo.

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What is competitor research?

Table of Contents

Why conduct competitor research?

How do i conduct competitor research, step 1: identify your competitors, direct vs indirect competitors, step 2: create a competitor matrix, step 3: learn about your competitors, step 4: learn about your competitors’ customers, step 5: analyse your and your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, when should i do a competitor analysis, enhance your strengths with one simple app.

As a small business owner, you probably think about your competition a lot. After all, no matter what your focus is, your customers will likely have other brands competing for their attention. So it’s vital to know about your competitors to help you present yourself in a unique light. That’s where competitor research comes in. 

This guide will help you understand how competitor research works by answering the following:

Competitor research, also referred to as competitive analysis, is the process you use to identify competitors in your industry and learn about their solutions, marketing strategies , pricing, and so on. You can use the information you uncover to identify your strengths and weaknesses in relation to each competitor.

You can either do a general competitor analysis on a high level or dive into one specific aspect, such as marketing or product features. If you’re conducting the research for a business plan, you can learn more about it in this guide . 

Competitor analysis helps you learn how other brands in your industry work and identify opportunities to present yourself as the better option. In other words, competitor research helps you identify your unique selling point (USP) and how you’re different from your competitors.

You can also find out what your competitors do that customers respond well to and where they fall short. All this information empowers you to create a brand and solution that stands out in the marketplace. Plus, you can use your research to build marketing campaigns that appeal to and attract your ideal customers. 

Conducting this research also enables you to stay on top of industry trends and changes in customer demand . This way, you can ensure your product consistently meets industry standards. 

Follow the steps below to conduct your competitor research.

First, you need to identify who you actually compete with so you can find the right information. To do this, you need to consider where your customers would turn if they didn’t choose your business. 

An easy way to start is to Google your solution or category and see what comes up. You can also have your existing customers fill in a survey about alternatives they considered before choosing your business. Beware not to make your list too long as you won’t have enough time to research each competitor thoroughly. A list of around ten competitors is plenty. 

• Direct competitors operate in the same area as your business and offer a solution that’s a similar substitute for yours. 
• Indirect competitors are businesses that provide different solutions to yours that could still solve the same problem or satisfy the same customer need.

A competitor matrix is a table, spreadsheet or alike that you use to compile your research. Doing this will help you stay organised and get a clearer view of your findings, and you can use the competitor matrix to compare your competitors and spot any trends. Try assigning colours to each competitor and trend to make your research even more straightforward.

Once you have your matrix and a list of competitors to research, it’s time to learn about their businesses. Start with the basic information and build your way up from there. Look at competitor websites, social media, and anything that’s been published about these companies.

Here’s some basic information that you may want to look for:

• Company name
• Company size
• Product or service range
• Sales tactics
• Marketing methods
• Branding and colours
• Communication style
• Social media

Learning about your competitors’ customers will tell you a lot about their businesses. Here are a few things you can look at to pinpoint your competitors’ target customers:

• Read their mission statement.
• Look at the messaging they use.
• Track who your competitors interact with on social media.
• Check if competitors feature existing customers in their content.

If you want, you can use this information to create customer profiles to give you a good idea of who your competitors try to sell to. These profiles will likely be similar to your own, so make a note of even the slightest differences. 

Finally, use the information you’ve collected to identify your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses. Ask yourself why customers would choose or reject a company’s product and record your conclusions in your matrix. 

Also, consider your own strengths and weaknesses and compare them to your competitors. Determine where your solution is better and where you could improve to compete with similar brands. Doing this will help you serve your target customers better. 

It’s useful to conduct competitor research when starting a new business, but that’s not the only time you’ll benefit from it. Competitive analysis is an excellent tool to use at every stage of the business lifecycle. 

Examples of times to research competitors include:

• Before introducing a new product or service
• To help you create more effective marketing campaigns
• When looking to improve your customer service
• Identifying new trends in the market

If you’re not sure where to start, it’s helpful to do a SWOT analysis where you evaluate your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Doing this can help you identify actionable next steps to move your business forward. 

One of the best ways to gain a competitive advantage over your competitors is to have systems in place that help you operate efficiently and, in turn, serve your customers more effectively. An excellent way to do this is to streamline your financial management.

Countingup is the business current account with built-in accounting software that allows you to manage all your financial data in one place. With features like automatic expense categorisation, invoicing on the go, receipt capture tools, tax estimates, and cash flow insights, you can confidently keep on top of your business finances wherever you are. 

You can also share your bookkeeping with your accountant instantly without worrying about duplication errors, data lags or inaccuracies. Seamless, simple, and straightforward! 

Start your three-month free trial today.  Find out more here .

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The Ultimate Guide to Competitive Research for Small Businesses Are you interested in competitive research? Click here for the ultimate guide to competitive analysis for small businesses that you're sure to love.

By Jimmy Newson • Feb 1, 2022

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

In this digital age, competition seems to be more rampant than ever. The attention of customers is scattered due to the many choices they enjoy. Proper competitive research is fundamental to shield and set your business apart.

The best way to stay ahead of your competition is to be aware of them. If you're interested in competitive research, keep reading. Here's the ultimate guide on how to use competitive analysis effectively.

What is competitive research?

Competitive research is the act of gathering and analyzing information about your industry. It helps you understand your competitors' strengths and weaknesses. Effective competitive research is thorough. It looks at your competitor's marketing strategies, competitive advantages and content strategy.

The primary goal of competitive research is to establish what your competitors are up to and the threat they pose to your business. That way you can create more informed marketing strategies and even reposition to overcome these threats.

It's crucial to conduct competitive research if you're serious about the sustainability of your business. Otherwise, your competitors may outshine you and chop your market share.

Here are the reasons you should think about competitive research.

Related: How to Better Strategize Your Marketing

Understand your market

Fifty percent of businesses fail within the first five years. And one of the primary reasons they fail is due to a lack of uniqueness and value. Building a robust audience without a unique value proposition or selling point is challenging.

Competitive analysis helps you discover the core strengths and strategies of your competitors. It also shows you what's lacking in your market. The ability to understand your competitor and figure out their weakness is the key to improving your USP to your customers.

Improve marketing processes

Your customers buy from you because your products fulfill their needs. If they prefer your competitors to you, it means your competitor's product, service, or marketing is better.

You need to understand shopping dynamics and the reasons customers buy your products . You're likely to get caught in price and convenience wars without competitor analysis.

Market research helps you look at the big marketing picture. You'll understand what drives customers to buy and why some choose rival products. Competitor information can inform your new marketing strategy.

Discover market gaps

A SWOT analysis of competitors partly focuses on competitor weaknesses and their opportunities. These two aspects can help you discover market gaps in your industry.

You're always in a battle to keep your market share and expand into new segments or areas. The best thing that can happen to you is to uncover and capitalize on competitor weaknesses.

Performing a SWOT analysis can also help you discover underserved audiences and unaddressed needs in your industry. You can maximize your research data to position your small business as unique and cater to the underserved niche.

Related: The Ins and Outs of SWOT Analysis for Marketing Growth

Informs your content strategy

Effective content marketing starts with market research and competitor analysis. You need to know what keywords and strategies your competitor uses before launching your content strategy.

One big part of content marketing is doing competitive content analysis. You need to understand the gaps and opportunities in your competitor's content marketing strategy.

Competitive content analysis will thus involve looking at your competitor's product strategies, quality of content, and SEO. After this analysis, you can create unique and more informed content to differentiate your business.

Keep reading below to learn how to conduct competitive research for your business.

Identify your competitors

The primary reason to do business research is to know who you're up against. And that is your competitors. They're inevitable, and you must know how to counter them to stand a chance in your market.

Your competitors can be physical or digital. Physical competitors compete with you for your market share often locally. Digital competitors are those businesses that compete against you through digital marketing.

The first step to finding your direct or physical competitor is to conduct market research. Talk to your current customers to see which products they've considered or liked. Look for those businesses selling a similar product or an alternative to your product.

Evaluate online forums and reviews to investigate your audience's interests. Look for the products or services that earn more recommendations and ratings in your industry.

Conduct an SEO analysis to identify your digital competitors. You can determine which businesses are likely to lure your audience by doing a competitive SEO analysis. These could be businesses using keywords like yours.

Your digital or indirect competitors create content that will likely attract your customer. Another way to find your digital competitors is to look at Google search engine results. Search on Google or a professional keyword research tool using your primary keywords and analyze the results.

Review competitor products

The next stage of competitive research is competitive product analysis. This is a thorough analysis of a competitor's products to find their strengths and weaknesses.

As a start-up business founder or small business owner, you need to know whether your product has what it takes to succeed. Product analysis offers you data that you can use to innovate your products. Product analysis helps you to understand whether existing products are helping customers. Customer feedback about competitor products can help you distinguish and set your product apart.

The easy way to conduct a competitive product analysis is to buy a competitor's products. You'll get into your customer's shoes which helps you understand their needs. Visit all product pages on your competitors' websites and review the description. Look at the details and benefits of their product. Establish the more likable features of their product and identify what their customer may not like.

Analyze competitor sales funnel

Analyzing your competitors' sales funnel can provide valuable insights into your customer's needs. A sales funnel shows all the stages competitor clients go through before buying.

You can establish what attracts people to their business and their challenges before buying. For example, you can establish users' experience with a competitor's website or content.

You want to understand your competitors' sales and marketing methods. Analyzing a sales funnel is the way to know how your competitors' sales processes look like.

If they're attracting many customers, you may want to know how they create high-quality lead magnets. You'll also want to learn more about their content market strategies.

A competitor's failures across their sales funnel can help you discover ways to boost your users' experience. Look at the causes of their bounce rates, abandoned carts and poor conversions.

The best way to analyze your competitor's sales funnel is to sign up for their email list, consume their content and audit their website. Find out how they approach customer engagements and user experience.

Review your competitors' marketing approach

A high-level competitive analysis looks at competitor marketing approaches. Your competitors are likely beating you because of their marketing skills and creativity.

Tracking your competitor's marketing strategy is the easiest way to identify their strengths and weaknesses. The first step in developing a successful marketing strategy is understanding your competitor's tactics.

Marketing strategies are also evolving fast. Your competitors can leave you behind if you're not keeping up with the times. Business research can show trends in marketing and highlight gaps in your strategy.

The best place to learn about your competitor's marketing approach is to check their website—review SEO aspects like titles, meta descriptions, keyword use and content style.

Keep track of your competitors by setting alerts on their brands. You can get updated whenever they're mentioned online or on Google. This way, you can also know when they share new content.

Related: 6 Insights You Can Gain From the Top Pages of Your Competitors

Look at their social media strategy

Social media is one of the most popular engagement tools. Seventy-three percent of businesses believe social media has been effective for their marketing efforts. And 54% of social browsers use social media to look for products.

A social media competitive analysis is crucial to figure out how to dominate and appeal to your audience. It's the secret to standing out on social media. You'll want to know which platforms your competitors are using and how they're using them. This way, you can choose the right targeting platforms and figure out the right content for your audience. It would help if you also looked at your competitors' social marketing strategy to build an informed and effective strategy. Look at your competitors' content style, content type and posting times.

Use analytics to measure your engagement rates and compare results to your competitors. A benchmark will help you know if your social marketing strategy needs improvements.

Identify areas for improvement

Competitive research reveals market gaps and arms you with data to improve your marketing strategy. It's a tool that helps show your current stand plus your potential in your industry.

You need to make the most of competitive analysis data to take your business to the next level. And for success, you have to normalize competitive research in your business.

Continue to track and observe how your competitors evolve. Keep your eyes on trends and the latest market practices to stay ahead of your competition. This way, you can maintain an up-to-date marketing strategy to boost your competitive edge.

Master how to conduct competitive research

As a small business or start-up founder, you can not risk without knowing what and who you're up against. Many proactive competitors are striving to control your industry. The way forward is to learn and master how to develop a foolproof competitive research strategy for your business.

Founder - Moving Forward Small Business | Jimmy Newson Consulting

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Science communication competition brings research into the real world

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Laurence Willemet remembers countless family dinners where curious faces turned to her with shades of the same question: “What is it, exactly, that you do with robots?”

It’s a familiar scenario for MIT students exploring topics outside of their family’s scope of knowledge — distilling complex concepts without slides or jargon, plumbing the depths with nothing but lay terms. “It was during these moments,” Willemet says, “that I realized the importance of clear communication and the power of storytelling.”

Participating in the MIT Research Slam, then, felt like one of her family dinners.

The finalists in the 2024 MIT Research Slam competition met head-to-head on Wednesday, April 17 at a live, in-person showcase event. Four PhD candidates and four postdoc finalists demonstrated their topic mastery and storytelling skills by conveying complex ideas in only 180 seconds to an educated audience unfamiliar with the field or project at hand.

The Research Slam follows the format of the 3-Minute Thesis competition, which takes place annually at over 200 universities around the world. Both an exciting competition and a rigorous professional development training opportunity, the event serves an opportunity to learn for everyone involved.

One of this year’s competitors, Bhavish Dinakar, explains it this way: “Participating in the Research Slam was a fantastic opportunity to bring my research from the lab into the real world. In addition to being a helpful exercise in public speaking and communication, the three-minute time limit forces us to learn the art of distilling years of detailed experiments into a digestible story that non-experts can understand.”

Leading up to the event, participants joined training workshops on pitch content and delivery, and had the opportunity to work one-on-one with educators from the Writing and Communication Center, English Language Studies, Career Advising and Professional Development, and the Engineering Communication Labs, all of which co-sponsored and co-produced the event. This interdepartmental team offered support for the full arc of the competition, from early story development to one-on-one practice sessions.

The showcase was jovially emceed by Eric Grunwald, director of English language learning. He shared his thoughts on the night: “I was thrilled with the enthusiasm and skill shown by all the presenters in sharing their work in this context. I was also delighted by the crowd’s enthusiasm and their many insightful questions. All in all, another very successful slam.”

A panel of accomplished judges with distinct perspectives on research communication gave feedback after each of the talks: Deborah Blum, director of the Knight Science Journalism Program at MIT; Denzil Streete, senior associate dean and director of graduate education; and Emma Yee, scientific editor at the journal Cell .

Deborah Blum aptly summed up her experience: “It was a pleasure as a science journalist to be a judge and to listen to this smart group of MIT grad students and postdocs explain their research with such style, humor, and intelligence. It was a reminder of the importance the university places on the value of scientists who communicate. And this matters. We need more scientists who can explain their work clearly, explain science to the public, and help us build a science-literate world.”

After all the talks, the judges provided constructive and substantive feedback for the contestants. It was a close competition, but in the end, Bhavish Dinakar was the judges’ choice for first place, and the audience agreed, awarding him the Audience Choice award. Omar Rutledge’s strong performance earned him the runner-up position. Among the postdoc competitors, Laurence Willemet won first place and Audience Choice, with Most Kaniz Moriam earning the runner-up award.

Postdoc Kaniz Mariam noted that she felt privileged to participate in the showcase. “This experience has enhanced my ability to communicate research effectively and boosted my confidence in sharing my work with a broader audience. I am eager to apply the lessons learned from this enriching experience to future endeavors and continue contributing to MIT's dynamic research community. The MIT Research Slam Showcase wasn't just about winning; it was about the thrill of sharing knowledge and inspiring others. Special thanks to Chris Featherman and Elena Kallestinova from the MIT Communication Lab for their guidance in practical communication skills. ”

Double winner Laurence Willemet related the competition to experiences in her daily life. Her interest in the Research Slam was rooted in countless family dinners filled with curiosity. “‘What is it exactly that you do with robots?’ they would ask, prompting me to unravel the complexities of my research in layman’s terms. Each time, I found myself grappling with the task of distilling intricate concepts into digestible nuggets of information, relying solely on words to convey the depth of my work. It was during these moments, stripped of slides and scientific jargon, that I realized the importance of clear communication and the power of storytelling. And so, when the opportunity arose to participate in the Research Slam, it felt akin to one of those family dinners for me.”

The first place finishers received a $600 cash prize, while the runners-up and audience choice winners each received $300.

Last year’s winner in the PhD category, Neha Bokil, candidate in biology working on her dissertation in the lab of David Page, is set to represent MIT at the Three Minute Thesis Northeast Regional Competition later this month, which is organized by the Northeastern Association of Graduate Schools.

A full list of slam finalists and the titles of their talks is below.

  PhD Contestants: 

• Pradeep Natarajan, Chemical Engineering (ChemE), “What can coffee-brewing teach us about brain disease?”
• Omar Rutledge, Brain and Cognitive Sciences, “Investigating the effects of cannabidiol (CBD) on social anxiety disorder”
• Bhavish Dinakar, ChemE, “A boost from batteries: making chemical reactions faster”
• Sydney Dolan, Aeronautics and Astronautics, “Creating traffic signals for space”

  Postdocs: 

• Augusto Gandia, Architecture and Planning, “Cyber modeling — computational morphogenesis via ‘smart’ models”
• Laurence Willemet, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, “Remote touch for teleoperation”
• Most Kaniz Moriam, Mechanical Engineering, “Improving recyclability of cellulose-based textile wastes”
• Mohammed Aatif Shahab, ChemE, “Eye-based human engineering for enhanced industrial safety” 

Research Slam organizers included Diana Chien, director of MIT School of Engineering Communication Lab ; Elena Kallestinova, director of MIT Writing and Communication Center ; Alexis Boyer, assistant director, Graduate Career Services, Career Advising and Professional Development (CAPD); Amanda Cornwall, associate director, Graduate Student Professional Development, CAPD; and Eric Grunwald, director of English Language Studies. This event was sponsored by the Office of Graduate Education, the Office of Postdoctoral Services, the Writing and Communication Center, MIT Career Advising and Professional Development , English Language Studies, and the MIT School of Engineering Communication Labs.

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• MIT English Language Studies

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Third annual MIT Research Slam showcase highlights PhD and postdoc communication skills

MIT Research Slam showcases postdoc and PhD communication skills

Third annual Science Slam becomes first virtual Research Slam

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Shaping Sustainable Research "Shark"-style

"shark"-style research competition.

Leadership at Yale Urology has committed again to back its new tradition of “Shark Tank,” a departmental research competition patterned after the television show of the same name, which aims to promote innovation that can include even risky ideas.

During this, the competition’s second year, two teams have received funding to work on original projects.

Urinary Tract Infections and Spina Bifida

A team led by Adam Hittelman, MD, PhD, and Darryl Martin, PhD, will use its funding to try to identify new treatments for urinary tract infections in the pediatric spina bifida population.

“We are excited to receive the urology pilot grant,” says Hittelman. “Recurrent urinary tract infections are an especially challenging problem with this group [of patients]. We hope to collect enough initial data to apply for an NIH grant.”

Chair Isaac Y. Kim, MD, PhD, MBA, started the program in 2023 to serve as seed money – encouraging faculty to take calculated risks and try new approaches across divisions that may lead to innovative solutions. With enough data, it is possible these groups may receive sustainable backing and move the dial on patient care.

Bladder Cancer, Chemo, and Surgery

Fed Ghali, MD, and John Onofrey, PhD, lead the other team awarded in this year’s competition. They are set on answering the question asked by a subset of bladder cancer patients having surgery after chemo: "If there was no cancer in the bladder, why did I need to have this big surgery?”

“It turns out at least part of the answer is that we do not have a reliable way to identify chemo-responders that have been made cancer-free until their bladder is already removed and assessed by a pathologist,” says Ghali.

Through their research, titled "Integrating machine learning and radiomics for automated assessment of pathologic response following neoadjuvant chemotherapy in muscle-invasive bladder cancer,” Drs. Ghali and Onofrey are eager to see where it will lead patient care.

They have already begun to gather data and organize the next steps of their study, with a particular focus on technology.

“Dr. Onofrey and his associates specialize in machine learning and artificial intelligence for evaluating imaging studies. For instance, he and his lab use CT scans to glean all kinds of information that humans can’t extract by standard methods of interpretation,” says Ghali. “It’s possible this technology could help us identify those super-responders to chemotherapy and perhaps avoid radical surgery in up to 40% of patients.”

Needle Tract Circulating Tumor Cells

The Department of Urology’s inaugural “Shark Tank” competition in 2023 had several winners, including Darryl Martin, PhD, and Ralph Devito, MD.

Their research aims to determine the prevalence of needle tract circulating tumor cells, which are cancer cells that break away from the primary tumor and enter the bloodstream.

“We are still in the project's data collection phase but are very excited about its direction,” says Martin. “Dr. Devito and I have established a strong collaboration and are working well together. The project's next phase will be data analysis and manuscript preparation, and then we will seek additional funding opportunities.”

Yale Urology’s new vice chair of research, Michael Leapman, MD, MHS, says he is pleased with the overall progress of the competition. “The pilot awards represent an exciting investment, allowing investigators to ask innovative and provocative questions that may translate into new discoveries in the future.”

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• Michael S. Leapman, MD, MHS Associate Professor of Urology; Clinical Program Leader, Prostate & Urologic Cancers Program, Yale Cancer Center; Assistant Professor, Chronic Disease Epidemiology
• Darryl T. Martin, PhD Assistant Professor
• John Onofrey, PhD Assistant Professor of Radiology & Biomedical Imaging and of Urology

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Huawei has been secretly funding research in America after being blacklisted

The money’s being funneled through a washington-based foundation and a university competition..

Chinese tech giant Huawei has been secretly funding research in America despite being blacklisted, as reported by Bloomberg . The cutting-edge research is happening at universities, including Harvard, and the money is being funneled through an independent Washington-based research foundation, along with a competition for scientists.

Bloomberg found that Huawei was the sole funder of a research competition that has awarded millions of dollars since 2022 and attracted hundreds of proposals from scientists. Some of these scientists are at top US universities that have banned researchers from working with the company.

What’s the big deal? The fear is that this research could lead to innovations that give China a leg up with regard to both defense contracting and commercial interests, according to Kevin Wolf, a partner at the business-focused law firm Akin who specializes in export controls. Optica, the foundation behind all of this, has posted online that it is interested in “high-sensitivity optical sensors and detectors," among other categories of research.

“It’s a bad look for a prestigious research foundation to be anonymously accepting money from a Chinese company that raises so many national security concerns for the US government,” said James Mulvenon, a defense contractor who has worked on research security issues and co-authored several books on industrial espionage.

It’s worth noting that this money funneling operation doesn’t look to be illegal, as research intended for publication doesn’t fall under the purview of the ban. Huawei operates similar competitions in other parts of the world, though openly. People who participated in the US-based research competition didn’t even know that Huawei was involved, believing the money to come from Optica. The competition awards $1 million per year and Optica didn’t give any indication that Huawei was supplying the cash.

A Huawei spokesperson told Bloomberg that the company and the Optica Foundation created the competition to support global research and promote academic communication, saying that it remained anonymous to keep from being seen as a promotion of some kind. Optica’s CEO, Liz Rogan, said in a statement that many foundation donors “prefer to remain anonymous” and that “there is nothing unusual about this practice.” She also said that the entire board knew about Huawei’s involvement and that everyone signed off on it. Bloomberg did note that the Huawei-backed competition was the only one on Optica’s website that didn’t list individual and corporate financial sponsors.

Huawei has been wrapped in a web of US restrictions these past several years. We can’t buy the vast majority of Huawei products in America , as the company’s been effectively banned. This all started in 2019 when President Trump signed an executive order that banned the sale and use of telecom equipment that posed “unacceptable" risks to national security. At the time, Trump said that “foreign adversaries” were exploiting security holes that would eventually lead to "potentially catastrophic effects.” Wait, Trump used the words “potentially catastrophic effects?” Wild.

To that end, the company has faced numerous claims that it installs backdoors in networks for the purpose of data theft, though there’s no proof of actual theft and the company denies the accusations. Huawei has also been accused of employing Chinese spies to influence an investigation and documents seem to indicate Huawei’s involvement in China’s surveillance efforts .

Some expected President Biden to reverse Trump’s executive order when it expired in 2021 , but he headed in the opposite direction. Not only does the order stand, but Biden signed a law that blocked Huawei from obtaining an FCC license and he banned American investments in China’s high tech industries. We aren’t cozying up to China anytime soon, so Huawei will continue to be persona non grata on this side of the pond (the company still does booming business in Europe.)

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Winners announced for 16th annual Materials Visualization Competition

The winners of the 16th annual Materials Visualization Competition (MVC), a scientific visual and artistic competition sponsored by the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (MatSE) and the Materials Research Institute (MRI) at Penn State, have been announced. MVC celebrates the quality of research in materials at Penn State and promotes awareness of materials science through visualization.

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FTC Announces Rule Banning Noncompetes

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Today, the Federal Trade Commission issued a final rule to promote competition by banning noncompetes nationwide, protecting the fundamental freedom of workers to change jobs, increasing innovation, and fostering new business formation.

“Noncompete clauses keep wages low, suppress new ideas, and rob the American economy of dynamism, including from the more than 8,500 new startups that would be created a year once noncompetes are banned,” said FTC Chair Lina M. Khan. “The FTC’s final rule to ban noncompetes will ensure Americans have the freedom to pursue a new job, start a new business, or bring a new idea to market.”

The FTC estimates that the final rule banning noncompetes will lead to new business formation growing by 2.7% per year, resulting in more than 8,500 additional new businesses created each year. The final rule is expected to result in higher earnings for workers, with estimated earnings increasing for the average worker by an additional $524 per year, and it is expected to lower health care costs by up to $194 billion over the next decade. In addition, the final rule is expected to help drive innovation, leading to an estimated average increase of 17,000 to 29,000 more patents each year for the next 10 years under the final rule.

Noncompetes are a widespread and often exploitative practice imposing contractual conditions that prevent workers from taking a new job or starting a new business. Noncompetes often force workers to either stay in a job they want to leave or bear other significant harms and costs, such as being forced to switch to a lower-paying field, being forced to relocate, being forced to leave the workforce altogether, or being forced to defend against expensive litigation. An estimated 30 million workers—nearly one in five Americans—are subject to a noncompete.

Under the FTC’s new rule, existing noncompetes for the vast majority of workers will no longer be enforceable after the rule’s effective date. Existing noncompetes for senior executives - who represent less than 0.75% of workers - can remain in force under the FTC’s final rule, but employers are banned from entering into or attempting to enforce any new noncompetes, even if they involve senior executives. Employers will be required to provide notice to workers other than senior executives who are bound by an existing noncompete that they will not be enforcing any noncompetes against them.

In January 2023, the FTC issued a  proposed rule which was subject to a 90-day public comment period. The FTC received more than 26,000 comments on the proposed rule, with over 25,000 comments in support of the FTC’s proposed ban on noncompetes. The comments informed the FTC’s final rulemaking process, with the FTC carefully reviewing each comment and making changes to the proposed rule in response to the public’s feedback.

In the final rule, the Commission has determined that it is an unfair method of competition, and therefore a violation of Section 5 of the FTC Act, for employers to enter into noncompetes with workers and to enforce certain noncompetes.

The Commission found that noncompetes tend to negatively affect competitive conditions in labor markets by inhibiting efficient matching between workers and employers. The Commission also found that noncompetes tend to negatively affect competitive conditions in product and service markets, inhibiting new business formation and innovation. There is also evidence that noncompetes lead to increased market concentration and higher prices for consumers.

Alternatives to Noncompetes

The Commission found that employers have several alternatives to noncompetes that still enable firms to protect their investments without having to enforce a noncompete.

Trade secret laws and non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) both provide employers with well-established means to protect proprietary and other sensitive information. Researchers estimate that over 95% of workers with a noncompete already have an NDA.

The Commission also finds that instead of using noncompetes to lock in workers, employers that wish to retain employees can compete on the merits for the worker’s labor services by improving wages and working conditions.

Changes from the NPRM

Under the final rule, existing noncompetes for senior executives can remain in force. Employers, however, are prohibited from entering into or enforcing new noncompetes with senior executives. The final rule defines senior executives as workers earning more than $151,164 annually and who are in policy-making positions.

Additionally, the Commission has eliminated a provision in the proposed rule that would have required employers to legally modify existing noncompetes by formally rescinding them. That change will help to streamline compliance.

Instead, under the final rule, employers will simply have to provide notice to workers bound to an existing noncompete that the noncompete agreement will not be enforced against them in the future. To aid employers’ compliance with this requirement, the Commission has included model language in the final rule that employers can use to communicate to workers. 

The Commission vote to approve the issuance of the final rule was 3-2 with Commissioners Melissa Holyoak and Andrew N. Ferguson voting no. Commissioners Rebecca Kelly Slaughter , Alvaro Bedoya , Melissa Holyoak and Andrew N. Ferguson each issued separate statements. Chair Lina M. Khan will issue a separate statement.

The final rule will become effective 120 days after publication in the Federal Register.

Once the rule is effective, market participants can report information about a suspected violation of the rule to the Bureau of Competition by emailing  [email protected] . 

The Federal Trade Commission develops policy initiatives on issues that affect competition, consumers, and the U.S. economy. The FTC will never demand money, make threats, tell you to transfer money, or promise you a prize. Follow the  FTC on social media , read  consumer alerts  and the  business blog , and  sign up to get the latest FTC news and alerts .

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Nearly 100 submissions to the 2024 Student Research Poster Competition & Experiential Learning Expo

Congratulations to the winners of the 2024 Student Research Poster Competition and their faculty advisors. This year’s event was expanded and its name changed to the Student Research Poster Competition & Experiential Learning Expo to include a poster session for those who had experiential learning opportunities, such as internships, co-ops, study abroad or work with student organizations.  

All together, 99 students participated, with 70 research posters backed by 42 faculty advisors, both up from last year. Of the 70 posters, 21 were from undergraduates.

There were 29 new submissions on the experiential learning portion, included 19 co-ops/internships, four senior design projects, five student orgs, and one study abroad experience.

Sixty-eight volunteered as judges, including industry employees, alums, and 14 faculty members from the college. A thank-you also goes out to the eight sponsors and 25 students and staff members who supported or helped to stage this event.

Graduate Awards

First Place: Seyed Faridedin Rafie,  Materials Science & Engineering Advisor: Nidal Abu-Zahra, Associate Professor, Materials Science & Engineering

Second Place: Zayeed Bin Mamun , Mechanical Engineering Advisor: Roshan D’Souza , Associate Professor and Richard and Joanne Grigg Professor, Mechanical Engineering

Third Place: Kada Kada , Mechanical Engineering Advisor: Ryoichi Amano, Professor and Joanne Grigg Faculty Fellow, Mechanical Engineering

Michael Krauski Memorial Award

Hamza Alnawafah , Mechanical Engineering Advisor: Ryoichi Amano, Professor and Joanne Grigg Faculty Fellow, Mechanical Engineering

Undergraduate Awards

First Place: Cameron Lee , Data Science Advisor: Inga Wang (Associate Professor, School of Rehabilitation Sciences & Technology)

Second Place: Nicholas Birschbach , Electrical Engineering Advisor: Shuaiqi Shen, Assistant Professor, Electrical Engineering

Third Place: Anna Lutz , Mechanical Engineering Advisor: Rani El Hajjar, Associate Professor, Civil & Environmental Engineering

The Emerging and Pandemic Infections Consortium (EPIC) is an integrated network for researchers, trainees and partners working to confront infectious disease challenges. We unite members across the University of Toronto and its hospital partners to accelerate cross-disciplinary work in the understanding and development of new countermeasures against pathogens. A key pillar of EPIC’s work is training the next generation of infectious disease research leaders that will help stop future pandemics and reduce the societal burdens of infectious disease.  

EPIC Research Mobility Awards supports high-calibre doctoral students or postdoctoral fellows developing new skillsets and strengthening global linkages by providing financial support for them to undertake research training or complete collaborative field work outside of Toronto. Through these opportunities, Research Mobility Award recipients will bring back new knowledge and techniques to our local infectious disease research community and strengthen our research network’s ties to national and international research partners.    

We are pleased to share the results of the 2024 Researcher Mobility Awards competition to support travel between January 1 and December 31, 2024. 

Funding statistics

Total investment, trainees supported, university divisions, hospital partners, countries visited, meet our 2024 researcher mobility awards recipients.

Sophie-Marie Aicher

Sunnybrook Research Institute

Destination: Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

Purpose: Develop novel white-tailed deer cell lines and organoids to investigat antiviral responses to SARS-CoV-2 infection 

Supervisor: Samira Mubareka (Sunnybrook Research Institute)

Wale Ajiboye

Unity Health Toronto

Destination:  Lagos, Nigeria

Purpose: Observing and learning from HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) implementation projects in key populations in Nigeria

Supervisor: Sean Rourke (Unity Health Toronto)

Severino Jefferson Ribeiro da Silva

Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy

Destination: Recife, Brazil

Purpose:  Conduct clinical diagnostic trials and demostrate local reagent biomanufacturing on-site in research labs

Supervisor: Keith Pardee (University of Toronto, Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy)

Hammad Durrani

Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation

Destination: Islamabad, Pakistan

Purpose: Conduct a qualitative process evaluation of a COVID-19 and non-communicable diseases integrated m-Health project at primary care in rural Pakistan

Supervisor: Xiaolin Wei (University of Toronto, Dalla Lana School of Public Health)

Chidumebi Idemili

Destination:  Atlanta, USA

Purpose: To attend the Summer Institute in Statistics and Modeling in Infectious Diseases (SISMID), a two-week intensive course on advanced methods for mathematical modeling

Supervisor: Sharmistha Mishra (Unity Health Toronto)

Jiazhen Jin

Department of Molecular Genetics

Destination:  New York City, USA

Purpose:  To learn and apply an HIV-1 latency model system 

Supervisor: Alan Cochrane (University of Toronto, Temerty Faculty of Medicine)

Destination: Melbourne, Australia

Purpose: To study clinical trial design and outcome selection, trial conduct and informed consent, and analytic approaches in large pragmatic trials

Supervisors: Nick Daneman (Sunnybrook Research Institute), Rob Fowler (Sunnybrook Research Institute)

James Pollock

Department of Immunology

Destination:  Nairobi, Kenya

Purpose: To attend a research retreat with the University of Nairobi STD/HIV/SRH Collaborative Working Group and to visit

Supervisor: Rupert Kaul (University Health Network)

Nancy Tahmo

Division of Epidemiology

Jinny Tsang

Destination:  Kalisizo, Uganda

Purpose: To conduct a study on how penile-vaginal sex and a microbiome-targeting treatment can impact susceptibility to HIV  

Justin Vigar

Destination:  Bogota, Columbia

Purpose: To validate a low-cost diagnostic platform for dengue virus as part of a large international, multi-site patient trial

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Destination:  Melbourne, Australia

Purpose: To study health system perspectives on the use of doxycycline as prophylaxis for bacterial sexually transmitted infections

Supervisor: Daniel Grace (University of Toronto, Dalla Lana School of Public Health)

Previous competition results

2023 Researcher Mobility Awards competition

EPIC announces recipients of 2024 Inspire Summer Studentships and Researcher Mobility Awards

April 30, 2024

EPIC Researcher Mobility Awards enable immersive international training experiences for doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows

June 22, 2023

Microsoft taps Sanctuary AI for general-purpose robot research

Microsoft, it seems, is hedging its bets when it comes to general-purpose robotics AI. At the end of February, the Windows maker spearheaded a massive $675 million Series B in Bay Area-based Figure. Today, the tech giant announced a collaboration with Figure competitor Sanctuary AI, best known for its humanoid robot, Phoenix.

The Sanctuary partnership really gets to the heart of Microsoft’s interest in the category: artificial general intelligence. It’s a concept that comes up a lot when discussing humanoid robots — too often, I would argue, given the state of things. While such breakthroughs are likely several years off (at least), they’re required for humanoid robots to reach the long promised “general-purpose status.”

In essence, that means robots that can learn and reason like humans. That represents a potential quantum leap for robotic capabilities, which have traditionally been limited to one or two tasks. The humanoid form factor opens these systems to a far broader range of motion than single-purpose systems, but they will ultimately need the intelligence to match.

“Creating systems that think like, and understand us, is one of the biggest civilization-level technical problems and opportunities that we will ever face,” Sanctuary co-founder and CEO Geordie Rose notes. “A challenge like this requires the best global minds to work together. We’re excited to be working with Microsoft to unlock the next generation of AI models that will power general-purpose robots.”

Such a partnership deepens Microsoft’s commitment to AI development and delivers a partner who can design hardware to those specifications. Sanctuary has been operating in the space for some time now, and recently scored a pilot partnership with Magna , which will bring the latest version of Phoenix to car plants.

All told, Sanctuary robots “have been tested across 400 customer-defined tasks across 15 different industries.” Of course, we’re still in the very early stages of all of this.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates spoke about his own interest in humanoids earlier this year. Neither Sanctuary nor Figure got a mention, though he did spend some time discussing competitors Agility and Apptronik.

Microsoft isn’t alone in hedging its bets in the category. OpenAI (another Microsoft partner) has made its own investments in both Figure and competitor 1X.

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New Study Bolsters Idea of Athletic Differences Between Men and Trans Women

Research financed by the International Olympic Committee introduced new data to the unsettled and fractious debate about bans on transgender athletes.

By Jeré Longman

A new study financed by the International Olympic Committee found that transgender female athletes showed greater handgrip strength — an indicator of overall muscle strength — but lower jumping ability, lung function and relative cardiovascular fitness compared with women whose gender was assigned female at birth.

That data, which also compared trans women with men, contradicted a broad claim often made by proponents of rules that bar transgender women from competing in women’s sports. It also led the study’s authors to caution against a rush to expand such policies, which already bar transgender athletes from a handful of Olympic sports.

The study’s most important finding, according to one of its authors, Yannis Pitsiladis, a member of the I.O.C.’s medical and scientific commission, was that, given physiological differences, “Trans women are not biological men.”

Alternately praised and criticized, the study added an intriguing data set to an unsettled and often politicized debate that may only grow louder with the Paris Olympics and a U.S. presidential election approaching.

The authors cautioned against the presumption of immutable and disproportionate advantages for transgender female athletes who compete in women’s sports, and they advised against “precautionary bans and sport eligibility exclusions” that were not based on sport-specific research.

Outright bans, though, continue to proliferate. Twenty-five U.S. states now have laws or regulations barring transgender athletes from competing in girls and women’s sports, according to the Movement Advancement Project , a nonprofit that focuses on gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender parity. And the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics , the governing body for smaller colleges, this month barred transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports unless their sex was assigned female at birth and they had not undergone hormone therapy.

Two of the most visible sports at this summer’s Paris Games — swimming and track and field — along with cycling have effectively barred transgender female athletes who went through puberty as males. Rugby has instituted a total ban on trans female athletes, citing safety concerns, and those permitted to participate in other sports often face stricter requirements in suppressing their levels of testosterone.

The International Olympic Committee has left eligibility rules for transgender female athletes up to the global federations that govern individual sports. And while the Olympic committee provided financing for the study — as it does on a variety of topics through a research fund — Olympic officials had no input or influence on the results, Dr. Pitsiladis said.

In general, the argument for the bans has been that profound advantages gained from testosterone-fueled male puberty — broader shoulders, bigger hands, longer torsos, and greater muscle mass, strength, bone density and heart and lung capacity — give transgender female athletes an inequitable and largely irreversible competitive edge.

The new laboratory-based, peer-reviewed and I.O.C.-funded study at the University of Brighton, published this month in the British Journal of Sports Medicine , tested 19 cisgender men (those whose gender identity matches the sex they were assigned at birth) and 12 trans men, along with 23 trans women and 21 cisgender women.

All of the participants played competitive sports or underwent physical training at least three times a week. And all of the trans female athletes had undergone at least a year of treatment suppressing their testosterone levels and taking estrogen supplementation, the researchers said. None of the participants were athletes competing at the national or international level.

The study found that transgender female participants showed greater handgrip strength than cisgender female participants but lower lung function and relative VO2 max, the amount of oxygen used when exercising. Transgender female athletes also scored below cisgender women and men on a jumping test that measured lower-body power.

The study acknowledged some limitations, including its small sample size and the fact that the athletes were not followed over the long term as they transitioned. And, as previous research has indicated, it found that transgender female athletes did retain at least one advantage over cisgender female athletes — a measurement of handgrip strength .

But it is a combination of factors, not a single parameter, that determines athletic performance, said Dr. Pitsiladis, a professor of sport and exercise science.

Athletes who grow taller and heavier after going through puberty as males must “carry this big skeleton with a smaller engine” after transitioning, he said. He cited volleyball as an example, saying that, for transgender female athletes, “the jumping and blocking will not be to the same height as they were doing before. And they may find that, overall, their performance is less good.”

But Michael J. Joyner, a doctor at the Mayo Clinic who studies the physiology of male and female athletes, said that, based on his research and the research of others, science supports the bans in elite sports, where events can be decided by the smallest of margins.

“We know testosterone is performance enhancing,” Dr. Joyner said. “And we know testosterone has residual effects.” Additionally, he added, declines in performance by trans women after taking drugs to suppress their testosterone levels do not fully reduce the typical differences in athletic performance between men and women.

Supporters of transgender athletes, and some scientists who disagree with bans, have accused governing bodies and lawmakers of enacting solutions for a problem that doesn’t exist. There are few elite trans female athletes, they have noted. And there has been limited scientific study of presumed unalterable advantages in strength, power and aerobic capacity gained by experiencing puberty as a male.

For those who have competed in the Olympics, results have varied widely. At the 2021 Tokyo Games, Quinn , a soccer player who is trans nonbinary and was assigned female at birth, helped Canada’s team win a gold medal. But Laurel Hubbard , a transgender weight lifter from New Zealand, failed to complete a lift in her event.

“The idea that trans women are going to take over women’s sports is ludicrous,” said Joanna Harper, a leading researcher of trans athletes and a postdoctoral scholar at Oregon Health & Science University.

Dr. Harper, who is transgender, said it was important for sports to consider physiological differences between transgender women and cisgender women and that she supported certain restrictions, such as requiring the suppression of testosterone levels. But she called blanket bans “unnecessary and unjustified” and said she welcomed the I.O.C.-funded study.

“This fear that trans women aren’t really women, that they’re men who are invading women’s sports, and that trans women will carry all of their male athleticism, their athletic capabilities, into women’s sports — neither of those things are true,” Dr. Harper said.

Sebastian Coe, the president of World Athletics, which governs global track and field, acknowledged that the science remains unresolved. But the organization decided to bar transgender female athletes from international track and field, he said, because “I’m not going to take a risk on this.”

“We think this is in the best interest of preserving the female category,” Mr. Coe said.

In at least two prominent cases, the fight over transgender bans has moved to the courts. The former University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas is challenging a ban imposed by World Aquatics, swimming’s global governing body, after she won the 500-yard freestyle race at the 2022 N.C.A.A. championships. That victory made Thomas, who had been among the best men’s swimmers in the Ivy League, the first known trans athlete to win a women’s championship event in college sports’ top division.

Thomas did not dominate all of her races, though, finishing tied for fifth in a second race and eighth in a third. Her winning time in the 500 was more than nine seconds slower than the N.C.A.A. record. Her case, filed at the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport, is not expected to be resolved before the Paris Olympics begin in July.

Meanwhile, more than a dozen current and former U.S. college athletes, including at least one who competed against Thomas, sued the N.C.A.A. last month . They claimed that, by letting Thomas participate in the national championships, the organization had violated their rights under Title IX, the law that prohibits sex discrimination at institutions that receive federal funding. (Title IX has also been relied upon to argue in favor of transgender female athletes.)

Outsports , a website that reports on L.G.B.T.Q. issues, hailed the I.O.C.-funded study as a “landmark” that concluded that “blanket sports bans are a mistake.” But some scientists and athletes called the study deeply flawed in an article in The Telegraph , which labeled the suggestion that transgender women are at a disadvantage in sports a “new low” for the I.O.C.

So heated is the debate that Dr. Pitsiladis said he and his research team have received threats. That, he warned, could lead other scientists to shy away from pursuing research on the topic.

“Why would any scientist do this if you’re going to get totally slammed and character-assassinated?” he said. “This is no longer a science matter. Unfortunately, it’s become a political matter.”

Jeré Longman covers international sports, focusing on competitive, social, cultural and political issues around the world. More about Jeré Longman