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

Before I start working with a new brand, the first thing I like to do is run a competitive analysis.

The competitive analysis report will help in determining the current position of the brand in the market, identify competitors in the market, map their strengths and weaknesses, and conclusively highlight the growth opportunities available.

In this article, I’ll detail the exact process I follow to conduct competitor analysis and find out where you can rise above top brands in the market.

We’ll cover:

What is competitive analysis?

Competitive analysis is the anatomy of your competitor’s or product analysis within the context of your brand. It is the process of comparing yourself with your competition and evaluating where you stand and what your competitors are doing. A competitive analysis helps you enhance your values proposition and improve your business processes and overall revenue. It also gives you the advantage of identifying your customer base, target KPIs, cross-sell/upsell opportunities and more.

Competitive analysis helps you understand the market landscape better so that you can make smart decisions to scale your business.

All the same, keep in mind that competitive analysis is a learning experience. It’s not:

Copying successful competitors to the T.

Trying to undercut others’ pricing.

A one-and-done exercise.

But how can this exercise help your business? And what are the steps that you need to take? I’ll explore those questions by highlighting my 5-step competitive analysis framework. Step 1: Identifying your competitors & their size You can determine who you are competing with by delving into online directories. Have a look at these resources to get you started: Yelp AngiesList Foursquare (ineedhipster) Twitter Local Listings

4 Reasons to Perform Competitive Analysis

If you’re not convinced that you need to invest time and effort into analysing your competitors, you should be aware that it will leave you with a holistic perspective of the market you’re in and your position in it.

Below is an instruction that describes a task, paired with an input that provides further context. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. Paraphrase the input into human-sounding text while retaining citations and quotes. Below is an instruction that describes a task, paired with an input that provides further context. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. Here are four main reasons that I always do a competitive analysis exercise when working with brands for the first time:

Figure out what differentiates you from your competitors. When you’re looking at competitors, don’t view it only as a study of them; also use it-reflection on your what makes yours different from you’re just getting help you come up with good ideas on how to differentiate your own business.

Spot your competitors’ strengths. What are your rivals doing right to fuel their growth? How can you emulate what they do best? Researching a niche can tell you what the leading company in a certain niche did well to get to its current dominant position in the market.

Set your milestones. One of the things a competitor analysis provides is a view of the market that allows you to set your milestones by success metrics, since every business follows its own route to success. But, for instance, if your competitor takes two years to get to 10,000 customers and you’re doing the same, you are on track.

Get intimate with your audience. Great competitor analysis tools zoom in on your target audience. You hear the vital signs of your customer when you assess what they like, dislike, prefer and what they complain about when they review your competition’s brands.

The takeaway: Whether it’s for a new business or an existing business that needs a reboot, a competitive analysis won’t leave you with guesses about what your competitors are actually doing. Rather, it provides you with concrete information to develop your business strategy.

What is competitive market research?

A competitive market research is a crucial exercise where you will go more than comparing your product or service with that of your competitors’ products or service. You are gathering lots and lots of market metrics that clearly differentiate your offers from that of your competitors’ offers.

Good market research doesn’t just point out these differences between you and your competitors but exploits them, setting the stage for a sales and marketing strategy that will differ from your competitors in a crowded market.

Next we will look at the nuts and bolts of conducting a competitive analysis for your brand.

Essential Aspects to Cover in Competitive Analysis Research

Before we run through our three-step process for competitor analysis, it might be helpful to outline what to include for each competitor, generally speaking:

Overview. A summary of the company — where it’s located, target market, and target audience.

Value proposition. A conversion-readied walk-through of what they sell and what makes them different from you.

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.

With these details in mind, let’s dive into how to conduct a competitive analysis by walking through an example step-by-step.

Competitive Analysis in Marketing

Every brand would benefit from at least quarterly competitor analysis. With a competitor analysis you will:

Identify gaps in the market.

Develop new products and services.

Uncover market trends.

Market and sell more effectively.

You can see this is true, because surely learning any one of these four pieces will take your brand to the top.

Finally, some step-by-step actions to help you perform a thorough competitor analysis.

How to Conduct Competitive Analysis in 5 Quick Steps

When I work as a content marketer, I conduct a competitive analysis on different brands in order to perfect their messaging, plan their marketing strategy, and explore new channels for those brands. Here are some steps that I consciously take before I begin my competitive analysis.

1. Identify and categorize all competitors.

The first step is obvious, but not trivial: make a list of every single competitor you can think of, even the little guys way down the list. It is better to know all the competition than to arbitrarily choose to ignore a few.

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

Direct competitors. Brands that offer the same product/service as you to the same target audience. People are likely to compare you to the direct competitors while making a buying decision. (Example: Arcade and Storylane are direct competitors in the demo automation category).

Indirect competitor. These companies are solving the same customer job, in the same way that you are, but they’re doing it in a different category. They tee you up for expansions into new, adjacent solutions. For instance, Scribe and Whatfix both solve the problem of documentation + internal training.

Legacy competitor. These are current, long-standing companies in your industry. They’ve been in business for years and are the ‘go to’ brand name in the industry. For example, Ahrefs is a legacy competitor in the SEO space.

New entrants. These are companies that are new to the market with a fresh business model and novel value propositions. They threaten existing brands in interesting ways. ChatGPT, for example, was a novel disruptor in the conversational AI space that surpassed several brands.

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

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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.

As soon as you understand all of that competition, it’s time to start analysing them and placing your own position in the respective market. This is an important step, because you will now be able to establish your respective market share and customer satisfaction level. You will even be able to identify the largest shares of the pie (big guns) in your industry, which are your leading competitors, that you should put into your analysis report or take up in depth in your minds.

You can do this too, plus you will see what already exists so you know what is lacking; you can cover those spots in an already competitive landscape and find opportunities for your brand to still capitalise on when you know what customers already have.

In order to display market players’ positions, construct a graph having two criteria: market share (Y-axis) and customer satisfaction (X-axis). The afterwards populate your competitors inside the different quadrants:

Niche. Low share but high customer satisfaction. They’d be popular with a small number of customers and be doing a good job targeting them.

Challengers. This brands are not popular with consumers but could have a good market share. They could be a new entrants with a strong sales and marketing strategy.

Leaders. You can’t find a bigger market share or happier consumers. These brands are the big dog, with a great reputation among your customers.

High performers. These are a new breed of entrants who achieve high scores on the customer satisfaction axis and yet have a low market share. They are an interesting option for people not keen on buying from big players.

This chart will tell you just how much supply you’re dealing with. It’ll also point out how you can ramp up, and how you can compete with existing brands.

Testing It Out

Figure from the G2 market landscape grid showing all competitors to Trello in the project management category.The trello company’s goal, now that it is an established top-of-mind brand, would be to be seen in two quadrants – the “Leaders” and “High Performers”.

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3. Extensively benchmark key competitors.

Step 2 will help you zoom in from dozens of competitors to the few that are the most important to aim for. You are now ready to assess each one in full detail and prepare a benchmarking report.

Keep in mind that this exercise is not an competitor, but to determined – objectively – what the positives and negatives of all the brands are.

Here are the core factors to consider when benchmarking competitors:

Quality. How well do their products/services measure up? Where you know the details, you can compare features to get a sense of how they’re winning over you in people’s minds. If you’re lucky, there may be reviews available to help understand what users think of the quality being offered.

Price. Document the price points for each competitor to understand what makes these companies tick. Interview their customers if you have to – what is value for money in the eyes of the users?

Customer service. Check how it is delivered – through chat, phone, email, knowledge base and so forth. There are also customer ratings across multiple 3rd party sites.

Reputation. As with any industry, you’ll want to look up the reputation of the competitors in the space so that you can get a sense of how people perceive or feel about each brand. Make sure you look out for negative or critical claims for each competitor.

Financial health: If possible, identify any key performance indicators that show how a brand is faring financially. Good metrics to track: revenue growth and profit margins.

This part of your competitive analysis will be a mixture of primary and secondary research. It’s a good idea to spend as much time as possible on this step to make sure your competitive analysis is as airtight as possible.

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

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Testing It Out

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

4. Deep dive into their marketing strategy.

Although the first few steps will tell you where you can develop your core product or service, you also need to discover how competitors are selling their products.

You really have to dig in and figure out their sales process and how they engage with their buyers. I dissect every channel, explain what I was hearing, and then highlight the voice and the brand personality that’s being used.

Here are a few key marketing channels to explore:

Website. Analyze the website structure and copy to understand their positioning and brand voice.

Subscribe to some emails, to get to know their rhythm and copywriting voice, the kind of content shared, etc.

Paid ads. Check if any competitor is running paid advertisement on search engine using tools such as Ahrefs and Semrush.

Thought leadership. After consuming a couple of the brand’s thought leadership efforts, convert to supplemental content assets that include podcasts, webinars, courses, and more.

Digital PR .Is a brand spending money on digital PR to make noise for the business? Check out the strategy.

Social media. Check how energetically brands utilise specific social channels, and what type of content is best resonating with them currently.

Partnerships. Look for high-paid partnerships, examine individual reports for brands that work together with various other companies that are contributed to the revenue of that establishment.

It will help you to plan your own marketing efforts in a focused manner. You can make a thorough note about the complete marketing strategy of your rival company.

5. Perform a SWOT analysis.

The final exercise in the competitive analysis is a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis template for each company. You’ll record every strength, weakness, opportunity and threat for each competitor. This is the final step and allows you to put together all your research and answer the 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 map this data visually if you wish (I would use Miro, for example), but once you make your visual depiction of this data, you’ll get a better feel for which of these competitors you can actually leap over.

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Testing It Out

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

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

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1. Determine who your competitors are.

First, you’ll need to figure out the right universe of comparison against the data. If you’re a business owner, chances are it will be against competition specific to your business. What works for Apple might not work for your brand. We like to segment your ‘competitors’ into direct and cross-category.

These brands remain on your radar at all times, as they have the potential to jump zones and become a direct competitor. Using our previous example, Stitch Fix could start a workout line, and then Fabletics would have even more to worry about.

This is also a reason to run competitor analysis regularly. The market can – and will – change any time, and if you’re not checking in regularly, you won’t see those changes until it’s too late.

2. Determine what products your competitors offer.

You will have to analyse the competitor’s range of products and services and the quality of the products and services that are being pushed forth by them. You must also find out the prices at which the competitor is selling the products as also any kind of discounts that is being offered to the customers.

Some questions to consider include:

Are they a low-cost or high-cost provider?

Are they working mainly on volume sales or one-off purchases?

What is their market share?

What are the characteristics and needs of their ideal customers?

Are they using different pricing strategies for online purchases versus brick-and-mortar?

How does the company differentiate itself from its competitors?

How do they distribute their products/services?

3. Research your competitors’ sales tactics and results.

Running a sales analysis of your competitors can be a bit tricky.

You’ll want to track down the answers to questions such as:

What does the sales process look like?

What channels are they selling through?

Do they have multiple locations, and how does this give them an advantage?

Are they expanding? Scaling down?

Do they have partner reselling programs?

What are the causes behind their competitors stealing their customers away? Their reasons for getting divorced?

What are their revenues each year? What about total sales volume?

Do they regularly discount their products or services?

How involved is a salesperson in the process?

These quantitative data points will help you understand just how competitive the sales process is, and what informational advantages you need to give your sales reps so they can compete on where it counts: at the end of the sales cycle.

It’s only the publicly held firms that post annual reports online, and you’ll have to do the detective work for the privately owned ones.

You could find parts of this in your CRM by looking for those customers who mentioned they were thinking about your competitor, and follow up with them.

Find out what made them choose your product or service over others out there.

If you find a competitor, challenge your sales team to drill down and ask why that competitor made the grade. If you’ve lost the deal, be sure to call and ask why you lost to the competitor.

4. Check our our competitors’ prices, and what extras they offer.

There are a couple large considerations that help you arrive at a proper price for your product – and knowing what your competitors are charging for a similar product or service is a big one.

If you think your product has better features than your competitor’s one, or you have more factors in favour, your product has to be more expensive than the industry price.

Still, if you do that, you’d better make sure your salespeople are prepared to articulate why your product is worth the higher price.

Otherwise, maybe you think that there’s little competition for inexpensive products within your industry. If that’s the case, then you might position yourself to charge less than your competitors and appeal to price-sensitive prospects who don’t want to spend a ton on a great product.

Sure, obviously there are other issues to get right when setting a price for your product – but you want to know what everyone else is charging for similar stuff so that you stay competitive and know you’re pricing your product in a way that feels comparative to your prospects.

Furthermore, check your competitors’ benefits and how you can match their perks to compete: For example, their competitors give a major referral discounts or 30 days of the trial version for free.

Those might be the benefits that are turning away the very customers you’re trying to appeal to, so if it seems like something your brand would do, see where you could provide those same perks, or provide some perks unique to your brand if others don’t offer benefits to consumers.

5. Ensure you’re meeting competitive shipping costs.

Did you know expensive shipping is the number one reason for cart abandonment?

For instance, a current price battle that could sway shoppers to one brand over another is free shipping. So a business operating in an industry where shipping is a cost-sensitive issue could check out competitor prices and make sure the company matches – not surpassed – those price points.

If your competitors offer free shipping, you will likely want to do so too – if you can. If not, consider how you could distinguish your business in another way – be it a customer loyalty programme, a holiday discount or a giveaway on social media.

6. Analyze how your competitors market their products.

The fastest way I know to get a sense of your competitor’s marketing pursuits is to dissect their website. It will tell you how accessible and resonant their assets are, and maybe you can A/B test some of your own landing pages or website. If so, take note of the following items, and jot down the URL for later:

Do they have a blog?

Are they creating whitepapers or e-books?

Do they post videos or webinars?

Do they have a podcast?

Are they using static visual content such as infographics and cartoons?

What about slide decks?

Do they have a FAQs section?

Are there featured articles?

Do you see press releases?

Do they have a media kit?

What about case studies?

Do they publish buying guides and data sheets?

What online and offline advertising campaigns are they running?

7. Take note of your competition’s content strategy.

Then, look at the number of them. Do they have several hundred blog posts or a handful? Five white papers or one e-book?

Then, how often are they publishing those content assets? Are they popping out a new blog post each week or each month? How often does a new e-book or case study appear?

It’s a fair bet that, if you stumble across a strong bank of content, the competitor you’re investigating has been publishing more or less consistently. If the topics your competitor is writing about chime with your own lead-generation tactics, then this content might be a decent pointer.

From there, you should evaluate the quality of their posts. If their content is lousy, then it won‘t matter how often they post, because most of their audience won’t want to consume it.

Sidestep every piece and chose a small handful of samples to review Mindlessly churning through every piece is daunting. Choosing a small handful of samples to review instead makes the task much more digestible.

Your sampler, therefore, needs to cover the spectrum of topics that your competitor addresses and for which they receive the most traffic. With that in mind, you’ll have a reasonably ‘complete’ picture of what this brand’s followers consume regularly.

When analyzing your competitor’s content, consider the following questions:

How accurate is their content?

Are spelling or grammar errors present?

How detailed is their content? (‘Journalism 101’, scratching the surface – or ‘features squares’, high-end ideas?)

What tone do they use?

Is this text written in a manner that is easy to read? (Is the writer making use of bullet points, bold headings and numbered lists?)

Are they ad-free and open to everyone, or do their readers have to actively sign up?

Who is writing their content? (In-house team? One person? Multiple contributors?)

Is there a visible byline or bio attached to their articles?

And as you scan, take note of what

Do you immediately scroll past those generic stock photos, or do you see custom illustrations and images and think wow? And if they are still just the stock photos, do their overlays of text quotes or calls to action at least appear related to whatever it is that particular business is selling?

If their photos are custom, were they sourced from a freelancer, or do they look like they’re done in-house?

Now, armed with a strong grasp of your competitor’s content marketing strategy, it’s time to determine whether it’s paying off for the company.

8. Learn what technology stack your competitors use.

Knowing what technologies your rivals are employing can be crucial in helping your company reduce the friction and increase the momentum of the machine in your workplace.

For example, perhaps you saw a testimonial about a competitor’s customer service – but in the course of your research, you’ve determined that the customer uses some beefy (literally) customer service software that you haven’t been taking advantage of.

This information should arm you with the opportunity to outperform your competitors’ processes.

To find out what software your competitors are using, enter the company’s URL into Built With. The site will deliver a search report, telling you what software your competitor is running behind the scenes: everything from content management systems to third-party plugins (analytics systems, CRMs, etc).

Alternatively, you can check competitors’ job openings, especially for engineer or web developer roles, which will often list the tools that they are looking for their potential candidate to be familiar with – a creative way to get insight into the technology of your competitors.

9. Analyze the level of engagement on your competitor’s content.

And to figure out how interesting their content is to their target audience, you’ll need to see how well it performs with their readers.

Check the average number of comments, shares and likes on your competitors content And see if:

Certain topics resonate better than others.

The comments are negative, positive, or mixed.

People are tweeting about specific topics more than others.

Readers respond better to Facebook updates about certain content.

Are they tagging content (if so, how many tags per topic)? Do they have social follow and share buttons on their content (if so, front, back, or both)?

10. Observe how they promote their marketing content.

From engagement, you‘ll move right along to your competitor’s content promotion strategy.

Keyword density in the copy itself

Image ALT text tags

Use of internal linking

This series of questions can also help you narrow your focus:

Which keywords are your competitors focusing on that you still haven’t tapped into?

In terms of content, what are they sharing and linking to? Compare it with yours.

Which social media platforms are your target audience using?

What other sites are linking back to your competitor’s site but not yours?

Who else is sharing what your competitors are publishing?

Who is referring traffic to your competitor’s site?

What is the difficulty for your desired keywords? There are numerous free (and paid) tools out there that will give you a full SEO audit of your competitor.

11. Look at their social media presence, strategies, and go-to platforms.

The final destination of your social media audit should be your competitor’s social-media accounts, and their engagement rate.

How does competition use social media to generate brand engagement? What social-sharing buttons come with each article on their site? Do they have a link to their social channels in the header/footer/somewhere else on the site? Is this button visible? Do they have calls-to-action with these buttons?

If your competitors use a social network where you do not have a presence, then it might make sense to learn more about that network and how it may also be able to help you succeed.

Want to know if it could be worth investing time in that new social media platform? Go to your competitor’s social media accounts and check their engagement rate on those sites. See if they’re on these relevant sites:

Facebook.

Twitter.

Instagram.

Snapchat.

LinkedIn.

YouTube.

Pinterest.

Then, take note of the following quantitative items from each platform:

Number of fans/followers.

Posting frequency and consistency.

Content engagement. (Are users leaving comments or sharing their posts?)

Content virality. (How many shares, repins, and retweets do their posts get?)

Using the same kind of judgment you applied to their content marketing output, now take a very fine-tooth comb to analysing their social media tactics.

What are they posting? Are they posting in order to get people to landing pages and into some sort of a funnel and turning that into leads? Or is it visual content that’s going out there in order to get people to engage with your brand and get awareness?

Is this original copy? Or curated stuff? Do they produce aggregated content from others? Are these the same people creating all the time? What feel does the copy have overall?

What sort of engagement does their competition experience? How many of their followers engage with their postings?

Once you have collected this data, you can produce an overall grade for the quality of your competitor’s content. This will give you a standard by which the rest of your competitors can also be graded with the same sort of scale.

12. Perform a SWOT Analysis to learn their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

After taking a look at each building block in your competitor analysis (business, sales, marketing), start getting into the habit of running a simplified SWOT analysis as well.

This implies that you’ll factor in your opponent’s strength, weakness, opportunities and threats each time you review an aggregate score.

Some questions to get you started include:

What is your competitor doing well? (Products, content marketing, social

Where does your competitor have the advantage over your brand?

What is the weakest area for your competitor?

Where does your brand have the advantage over your competitor?

What could they do better with?

In what areas would you consider this competitor a threat?

Are there opportunities in the market that your competitor has identified?

That way you can see where their weaknesses are and where yours are. Then you can start positioning your company, and you might just see a way to improve on your own brand.

Competitive Product Analysis

Product analysis examines the distinctive elements – and the similarities – in products in the same general category.

If someone else in your market niche is selling products that could be peeling off your market share – you’d better be on top of it.

Building on the previous example, we can drill down and identify some of the underlying distinctions in product offers.

1. Assess your current product pricing.

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

There are three models of The Nintendo Switch on sale: The lite version is the cheapest at $199, the standard one at $299, and the new OLED model costs $349.

Sony sells its PlayStation 5 console in two versions: the standard edition ($499) and the digital ($399) – the latter not coming with a disc drive.

2. Compare key features.

Following is an instruction that describes a task, paired with an input that provides further context. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. Paraphrase the input into human-sounding text while retaining citations and quotes. Next is a comparison of important features. When thinking about our console example, this means comparing things like processing speed, memory, and hard drive storage.

3. Pinpoint differentiators.

Having just used them as basic features, we will now use them as differentiators.
From a superficial look at the chart above, you can see that the PS5 is surpassing its competitors, but the data provides us with only a portion of the picture.

Here’s why: One of the attractions of its standard and OLED Switch models is that you can play them either as handheld consoles or else hooked up to TVs via a base station, with the big selling point – and the branding – that you can ‘switch’ at any time.

The Playstation offering, on the other hand, has leaned into market-exclusive games, available only on its system, to help distinguish it from its competition.

4. Identify market gaps.

A final step in a competitive product analysis is exploring where market gaps might allow your company to get ahead.

Another emerging possibility within the console market is the delivery of content on demand through cloud services instead of through hardware devices.

Companies such as Nvidia and Google have already begun to play in that space, and if they can find ways around the bottleneck issues of bandwidth and latency, it could reshape the market on a mass scale.

Competitive Analysis Example

What are you doing to keep up? When are you the same, and when are you different? This, in short, is the purpose of competitor analysis.

Knowing where your brand and those of your competitors overlap and differ positions you to make informed, strategic decisions that can help you grow your brand.

Sure, it may be obvious how competitive analysis is supposed to help offer opportunities for growth and insight. However, it’s one thing to glean that just once, and another to actually perform a viable analysis that produces real insights and actionable next steps in your marketing plan. Of course, we’re not going to leave you hanging there — no MarketingLand-wannabe we’re not. A quick example should suffice.

Sony vs. Nintendo: Not all fun and games.

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

Sony’s latest Playstation 5 is now available, but initial stocks have been met with supply-constrained sales.

Nintendo’s console-handheld hybrid Switch has been on the market for four years, and continues to sell well, particularly to teenagers and children.

This is a situation that many companies, on both sides of the fence, are now facing up to; some have been investing heavily in new products designed to dislodge established market incumbents, while others want to make sure that hard-earned sales are not lost.

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

1. Determine who your competitors are.

Our example is Sony vs Nintendo but, given its general vertical in the market, Microsoft’s Xbox needs to be accounted for as well.

This is essential for analysis; even if you’re testing against a few specific competitors – and how they stack up – you still want to compare your product or service against other similar market offerings.

2. Determine what products your competitors offer.

PlayStation comes in digital and standard edition for the PS5, while Nintendo produces three different versions of its console.

Yet both market peripherals in addition to their own console products – Sony’s perpetual poser peripheral can be add-ons to consoles or VR equipment, while Nintendo sells gaming peripherals – steering wheels, tennis rackets and, especially, different controller configurations.

3. Research your competitors’ sales tactics and results.

However, their sales approaches and marketing strategies are quite different, as represented by Sony and Nintendo.

Through a mixture of scarcity (thanks in part to the ongoing global semiconductor shortage, the PS5 remains in staggeringly low volumes available), Sony has seen healthy demand courtesy of these dual strategies. Nintendo, for its part, has kept the pricing of its latest console – the Switch – low, but has also gone broader, targeting families as a core consumer.

This effort is further endorsed by the cheaper and more compact Switch Lite product line, for which the core concept of the system is a big selling point among children.

Here are the numbers: Nintendo has moved 14.3 million consoles as of the end of September 2021, and Sony has sold 7.8 million consoles.

4. What price are others charging, as well as what freebies are on offer?

It’s Sony, which are at the higher price point: the PS5 is $499, compared with Nintendo’s peak at $349. Both have dedicated digital marketplaces and the ability to download new games or services quickly and easily.

It is flexibilty and fidelity, then, that are at issue here. The Switch is flexible – you can plug it into your television and play it like a standard home console console, or take it with you as a handheld system.

Gamers interested in the highest-fidelity experience with the latest graphics can rely on the PS5’s superior hardware and processing power.

5. Analyze how your competitors market their products.

Just look at the advertising campaigns sent out by Nintendo – in contrast to Sony, whose trailers feature real gameplay footage and emphasise exclusive titles that are available only on its platform.

Since then, the company has inked exclusive deals with several high-profile game developers for access to both emerging and old IPs.

Nintendo’s own marketing features vibrantly coloured advertisements featuring happy families playing together, or children using their smaller Switches during car journeys.

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

Engagement helps drive sales and encourage repeat purchases.

While there are many metrics for measuring engagement, social media is one of the most straightforward: the more followers, the more engagement and the more impact on the market.

In our example, Sony has a big advantage over Nintendo: The official Playstation Facebook page has 38 million followers, whereas Nintendo has only 5 million.

Competitive Analysis Templates

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

To help make that even easier, we’ve build 10 free templates that allow you to see where you stand against the rest – and how you can boost your market share.

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

Strengths. Where are your strengths? Some of them may be intellectual property such as trademarks or copyrights, others a unique set of products, or a workforce that is superior to the competition’s.

Areas for improvement. Here you might refer to potential problems of pricing, leadership, staff turnover and new competitive threats in the market.

Opportunities. This SWOT subsection is sometimes matched to the ‘S’ and ‘O’ elements of the main analysis; you might see potential new market niches, or changes in consumer trends, or new technologies being developed by your company in this subsection.

Threats. These could be new taxes or regulations on existing products, or a growing number of similar products competing against yours for a share of the same market space.

Competitive Analysis: FAQs

What is a competitive analysis framework?

A competitive analysis framework is an organised method of analysing rivals with the aim to identify their strengths, weaknesses, opporutunities and threats.

This framework helps companies identify areas where they can compete, and determine how best to position their businesses in the market. It can also help them decide which strategic directions they should follow.

It could necessitate tracking factors that are specific to the industry, even specific to the company’s particular goals – product features, market share, pricing, etc.

How do you do a good competitive analysis?

Conducting a thorough competitive analysis involves several steps:

Identify competitors. Start by listing key competitors in your market, both direct and indirect.

Evaluate their products/services. Analyze what they’re selling and how it compares to your offerings.

Analyze market position. Determine their market share, brand perception, and unique value proposition.

Check their marketing strategies. Observe their advertising, content marketing, PR efforts, and online presence.

Assess their financial health. If available, review financial statements, annual reports, or investor presentations.

Some inspiring feedback from customers. Ask them what they like and dislike about competitors. Ask them questions. Review submissions.

Update on a regular basis. The marketplace changes, and your competitors change their plans and strategy, so keep your analysis fresh.

What are the 5 parts of a competitive analysis?

The five key components of a competitive analysis include:

Company overview. A brief snapshot of the competitor, including its history, size, and mission.

Type of analyses: Copy/paste an analysis of their products/services and compare it with yours.

Marketing strategy. Insights into their promotional tactics, target audience, and unique selling propositions.

Operational analysis. An understanding of their supply chain, distribution, and customer service practices.

Strengths and weaknesses. A thorough assessment of what the competitor does well, and where they might fail.

What are the 3 C’s in a competitive analysis?

The 3 C’s is a strategic model that could help us to think better about the broader business environment by considering three important factors – the consumer landscape; financial and economic conditions; and current affairs. The consumer landscape: Profile the way of life of your target consumers (or society as a whole). This includes knowledge about their family structure, clothes, interest, entertainment, professions, work habits, custom and culture, and languages.

At the same time, pay attention to their current desire demands and life challenges, such as their employment situation (job hunting, promotions or changes), lifestyle shift (movement into metropolitan areas), and other important matters (pensions, insurance plans, health, career). In short, you should be familiar with the behaviours, attitudes, concerns and values of your target consumers.

Financial and economic conditions: Recognise the financial and economic conditions. How much money do your target consumers have, and how much debt do they owe? Are prices increasing or shrinking, affecting consumer sentiment? How has the country’s performance in sports affected its commercial mindset and desire for travel overseas? Is your company’s sector or industry performing well or poorly? How is this affecting the expectations of your target consumers?

Think about how you might address your consumers’ questions about whether your company can provide work or a sense of financial security during times of economic downturn such as the COVID-19 pandemic. How is the stock market performing? Is the business and investment environment optimistic or clouded by skepticism? Is your company’s stock price rising or falling?

Are your target consumers facing hardships in terms of debt and financial savings? How can you help alleviate their situation in ways that benefit both them and your company’s market share? Current affairs: The world is filled with current affairs, and many companies and their leaders are inexperienced in addressing them.

Company. Understanding your own strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

Customers. Knowing who your target audience is, what they value, and how they behave.

Competitors. Analyzing direct and indirect competitors to determine market dynamics and potential threats.

Is SWOT analysis a competitive analysis?

Yes, SWOT analysis is a competitive analysis.SWOT is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats; it ‘s a broad framework for analyzing the strategic position of a business.

A SWOT analysis can be run internally, looking at the attributes of the company itself, or it can be used as a tool for conducting a competitive analysis: looking at a competitor’s SWOT so that you can identify where your business has the advantage or might be vulnerable.

How does your business stack up?

To be able to accurately benchmark your competitors, you need a base measure, which also comes in handy should you ever need to do a SWOT analysis.

Consider your year-end business, sales and marketing reports presentation from a neutral and impartial perspective in the same manner as you evaluate your competitors. Merely document the data as you would a competitor, and chart this as your benchmark to the outside world.