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How to Perform a Best-in-Class Competitor Analysis (w/ Template)

Get a full competitive analysis framework that's been real-world tested, and learn the tips and tricks for capturing competitor data and conducting research

You will learn

• The value of running a competitor analysis and how to get your stakeholders on board
• Clear and actionable steps for figuring out who your competitors are
• An easy-to-follow playbook for creating a competitor analysis steeped in research and data

Competitor analysis can be hard .

It’s particularly hard (and confusing and incredibly time-consuming) if you’re relatively new in business . Most of the data is ridiculously difficult to get. Even if you manage to dig something up, you always seem to be left with more questions than answers.

How did they manage to get $10M in funding?

Did that absurdly expensive ad campaign pay off?

Did their CEO leave because things aren’t going well at the company?

What does it all mean?

At least that’s what I felt when I was just getting started with competitive analysis. Whether you’re facing a similar struggle or just aren’t sure where to start, I hope this article will help you navigate through every step of the process.

In this article, I will share the competitive analysis framework my team and I have developed (through weeks of research and dozens of iterations), and give you some tips on where to look for data that isn’t publicly available so you can have a competitive advantage .

But before we start…

What is competitor analysis?

Competitor analysis is the process of evaluating your direct competitors’ companies, products, and marketing strategies.

To make your analysis truly useful, it’s important to:

• Pick the right competitors to analyze
• Know which aspects of your competitors’ business are worth analyzing
• Know where to look for the data
• Understand how you can use the insights to improve your own business.

Which brings us to why competitor analysis is worth doing in the first place.

Who can benefit from an analysis framework?

This framework will work well for entrepreneurs , business owners , startup founders , product managers , creators , and marketers .

It covers business metrics, a product analysis, and a marketing assessment, with the marketing bit being a little more in-depth. Feel free to skip certain parts if you’re only interested in one aspect, or better yet, delegate some steps to respective teams if you can.

It doesn’t matter much what kind of product you’re selling or how mature your business is. To use this framework, you may already have a fully functional product, an MVP, or even just a product idea. I’ll be using certain analysis tools to facilitate and automate certain bits of the process. Most of them are either freemium or have a free trial available, so all that you’ll need to invest into the analysis is your own time.

Done properly, competitive analysis will give you plenty of quantitative and qualitative data to back your own business decisions and business strategy (and no, I’m not talking about cloning your competitors’ strategies to come up with a second best product, although this can sometimes work ).

Namely, it can help you:

• Develop (or validate) your Unique Value Proposition
• Prioritize your product development by focusing on the aspects of competitors’ products customers value the most
• Improve your product by capitalizing on competitors’ weaknesses customers complain about
• Find your competitors' strengths to get benchmarks to measure your growth against
• Uncover market segments that aren’t fully served by competitors
• Create a new product category by identifying gaps between what your competitors offer and what the customers need

Who even are your competitors?

I can sense you rolling your eyes at me, but hear me out.

If you’re serious about competitive analysis, it’s not enough to just evaluate the two Industry Leaders everyone’s talking about (that kind of analysis will likely get you depressed real quick).

The competitors you pick for the analysis determine the insights you’ll get at the end, and the decisions you’ll make, based in part on those insights. That’s why including different kinds of competitors (big and small, direct and indirect) into the analysis is critical if you want the results to be comprehensive.

Here’s a handy way to think about your competition that’s based off of Myk Pono’s classification :

It’s best to include at least one competitor from each category into your analysis to make it truly comprehensive.

Whether you can instantly think of over a dozen competitors or can barely recall five, it’s a good idea to turn to Google or a different a search engine ( DuckDuckGo , anyone?) and look up your product category. Examine the products within the top 50 results, along with the ads that are displayed in response to your query — more likely than not, you’ll come across companies you’ve forgotten about, or maybe even learn about a few newcomers.

To give you an example, I’m going to imagine I’m launching a vacation rental website — an alternative to AirBnB. Here’s what my list of competitors may look like broken down by categories:

Now that you have a comprehensive list of your competitors with similar products, it’s time to start the actual analysis.

As you go through the process, feel free to use this Google Sheets template I’ve created.

In the spreadsheet, I like to divide the factors into collapsable sections (yes, these do get pretty lengthy). I also tend to add comments under each aspect with details or links that provide more info. Depending on the stage you’re at with your business, you can also add in a column for your own product to quickly see how it compares to competitors.

What’s included in a competitor analysis framework

• Business & Company metrics 1.1. Company overview 1.2. Funding 1.3. Revenue & customers
• Product 2.1. Product features 2.2. Pricing 2.3. Perks 2.4. Technology
• Customers & awareness 3.1. Share of Voice 3.2. Sentiment 3.3. Key topics 3.4. Geography 3.5. Social media platforms
• Marketing 4.1. SEO 4.2. Social media 4.3. Advertising 4.4. Influencers and other partners 4.5. Content Marketing 4.6. Customer acquisition 4.7. Sales 4.8. Customer service 4.9. Unique strengths

I’ll go into depth about each section below, and again feel free to grab this competitor analysis template to follow along .

1. Business & Company metrics

1.1. company overview.

Your analysis should start with digging up the basic info about your competitors: things like the company’s founding year, the names of the CEO and other key people, locations of the company’s offices, how many employees work there, etc.

You’ll usually find bits of this information on competitors’ websites.

The company’s LinkedIn profile is often useful, particularly for employee counts.

And for info on key people, offices, and founding date, CrunchBase is a great resource.

Your competitors’ job openings can also be found on their websites, LinkedIn, and job search sites like Glassdoor and Indeed . Knowing who they are hiring and which teams they are expanding will give you an idea of what steps they’re about to take, both product- and marketing-wise. Are they about to hire their first sales rep or content marketer? Are they looking for a developer with a specific skill set? Combined with what you know about your industry, your competition’s job openings will tell you a lot about where they are going with their business.

You could also take things one step further and see if you can get an understanding of competitors’ corporate culture. The best place to dig through employee reviews is Glassdoor . There, you can find out what employees think about the culture, the team, the pay, the management – and those are often honest opinions because a lot of the feedback is anonymous.

1.2. Funding

Knowing when, how much, and from whom your competitors received funding can also be important, particularly if you plan on raising capital yourself. It will give you a solid idea on how much funding you can expect to get.

On top of that, venture capitalists (VCs) tend to invest in only one company in a given category so as not to cannibalize their own investments. If an VCs’ name is missing from your competitors’ funding history, they might be a good candidate for you: they missed out on the chance to work with a successful competitor, but now they have the opportunity to invest into a promising startup in the industry (you!).

1.3. Revenue & customers

Your competitors’ revenue and number of customers deserve a separate section in your spreadsheet. For some companies, you’ll be able to find estimates on Owler , but those will often be very rough. A Google search for the name of your competitor combined with the words “revenue,” “customers,” etc. might lead you to interviews or press releases where the companies share this information (because, well, everyone likes to brag).

That said, I bet you won’t be able to find every competitor’s revenue figures this way. To help you dig deeper, I have two hacks to share that go beyond a simple Google search:

Hack #1: Set up alerts for competitors’ interviews and conference presentations.

This one requires some time, but it’s very effective in the long run: you’ll be surprised at just how much your competitors give away at event presentations and in interviews, without being aware of you listening. All you need to do is sign up for Awario (there’s a free 14-day trial available), create an alert for the names of your competitors’ CEOs or other key figures (don’t forget to put the names in double quotes to search for an exact match), and select YouTube as the source for the search. And that’s it! You can now binge-watch those videos right in Awario, without having to leave the tool for a minute, noting your findings along the way.

Hack #2: Use this revenue formula

Jason Lemkin of SaaStr offers a simple formula you can use to calculate a competitor’s revenue estimate, provided you know how many people work there. Take the number of employees the company has listed on its LinkedIn profile and multiply that by $150,000 if well-funded ($200,000 if modestly funded). This should give you an estimate you can work with.

Employee count * $150,000 = Revenue estimate

These details, combined with company info like founding year and employee counts, are important so you can use them as a benchmark against your own growth. How much time did it take each of your competitors to get to the revenue figures they have today? Are you doing as well as a current market leader back when it was an early-stage business?

It’s time to evaluate your competitors’ products or services, the actual things they’re selling. What kind of technology are they using to build it? What is their core selling point? Are there any perks that come with the product: a freemium version, complementary free tools, or services?

2.1. Product features

Let’s get down to the core of your competitors’ business – their product and its key features. A word of caution: this will likely be the longest bit of your spreadsheet.

It’s a good idea to divide the features into groups of related ones to keep things organized.

2.2. Pricing

Assessing competitors’ pricing pages is another crucial step in your analysis (if pricing isn’t available on their website, try reaching out to their sales team).

Here are some questions to consider:

• Can you uncover a segment of the market that doesn’t seem to be fully served by competitors’ plans?
• Say, do they have an affordable plan for startups or small businesses? Discounts for students or non-profits?
• Are there data-heavy options available for agencies and big brands, with Enterprise features like an API or white-label options?

Another thing you can draw from competitors’ pricing strategies is great ideas for A/B testing . Do they offer monthly or annual plans? (If it’s both, what is the default option?) How many packages have they got? Identify the opportunities for your experiments, and prioritize the ones that are common for several competitors.

Dig through your competitors’ websites to see if they offer something complimentary with their product. Do they have a free trial or a freemium version? Are there any “free” tools their customers get access to, or perhaps a perks program in partnership with other tools?

2.4. Technology

Competitors’ technology is an important aspect to assess for tech companies. BuiltWith is a great (and free) tool to figure out the tech stack that a competitor uses. Just type in the URL, and you’ll be able to see what technology the website runs on, along with any third-party scripts and plugins it uses, everything from analytics systems, email marketing services, to A/B testing tools, and CRMs.

A lean alternative to BuiltWith is What Runs , which is a browser extension that analyzes any webpage you’re on.

On top of that, looking at competitors’ job postings (yes, again) is a great way to see what kind of technology stack they’re using by analyzing the skills they require from candidates. To look for job openings, check your competitors’ websites and job search sites like Glassdoor and Indeed .

3. Customers & awareness

Your next big step in analyzing the competition is looking at what their customers have to say about them. In this section, you’ll look at each brand’s Share of Voice, the sentiment behind their mentions, the key topics customers bring up when they talk about your competitors, and more. To measure these, you’ll need a social listening tool like Awario or Mention .

3.1. Share of Voice

Ideally, you’d want to measure the market share for each of your competitors. But alas, it’s nearly impossible. One substitute metric you could use is Share of Voice – the volume of mentions your competitors get on social media and the web compared to each other.

To measure share of voice , create an alert for each competitor’s brand in Awario, give the tool some time to collect the mentions, and jump to the Alert Comparison report to see how much each competitor is talked about on social and the web.

It’s a good idea to keep these alerts running for the long-term (as opposed to just looking at Share of Voice once). This way, you’ll be able to see spikes in their volume of mentions, track what their customers are saying, and see how their (and your own) Share of Voice evolves over time.

3.2. Sentiment

The caveat of measuring the level of awareness a competitor has is that awareness isn’t always a good thing. What if there’s been a data scandal one of the competitors is involved in? What if their customer service is horrible, causing an influx of negative mentions?

That’s not the only reason why measuring the sentiment behind the mentions of your competitors is important. It will also help you understand what these companies’ customers love and hate about their product the most.

On top of that, it can also serve as a benchmark when you analyze the sentiment behind the mentions of your own brand and product. Let’s say, 40% of your mentions are positive, 20% are negative, and the rest are neutral. How do you know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing without a benchmark?

3.3. Key topics

What do your customers focus on when they mention your competitors’ products or write customer reviews?

What do they love and hate the most?

Identifying the key topics within your competitors’ mentions will give quick answers to these questions so you don’t have to dig through mentions by hand. You can find these topic clouds in a social listening dashboard. From there, you can click on any topic to explore the mentions in-depth.

Interestingly, these topic clouds can also offer insight into various aspects of your competitors’ business – and they may help you fill the gaps in other sections in your competitor analysis spreadsheet. Here’s one example: those are the key topics for Loom, a screen recording app, from which you can learn a few useful things if you look closely.

Looks like the company a) has just raised some money, b) offers remote jobs, and c) has just announced a new feature they’re building. And you discovered all that at a glance! Of course, you can further explore any topic by clicking on it to see all the mentions that contain the word/phrase.

3.4. Geography

Looking at the geography and demographics of your competitors’ mentions will let you figure out which markets they are focusing on the most (and, with any luck, find an area that isn’t too saturated yet). You’ll find a map of each brand’s mentions in Awario’s dashboard and reports, along with the breakdown of mentions by language.

Try adjusting the date range in the report to see if there’s been any changes in languages/countries recently. This could mean that your competitors are focusing on a new emerging market – an opportunity you might be interested to explore.

3.5. Social media platforms

Just like with geography, this one will give you an idea on where your competitors’ audience hangs out so you can use these findings in your own marketing strategy and social media strategy. On top of that, if you see platforms that appear to be heavily underused (but do look relevant), those may also be worth experimenting with. Just like with the previous factors, you can compare the platforms side-by-side using Awario’s Alert Comparison report.

4. Marketing

From the SEO perspective, there are two most important things about competition you should focus on: the keywords they rank for and the backlinks they’ve got. The former will give you a solid idea on what type of search terms bring them traffic and sales (so you can shape your own keyword strategy), and the latter will show what authoritative websites in your niche link to them (those will likely be relevant to your website too).

For both tasks, you can use SEO PowerSuite (you can get the free version here ). The toolkit includes 4 apps for different aspects of SEO, but we’ll only need 2 of those to analyze competitors.

Rank Tracker will help you with the keywords. Navigate to the tool’s Ranking Keywords module and type in a competitor’s URL. You’ll see a list of terms they rank for, along with the search volume for each term in your country of choice. It’s a good idea to move the most popular terms to Target Keywords right away so you can keep them for your records. Repeat the process for every competitor, noting their estimated search traffic and top keywords they rank for.

For backlink analysis, you’ll need SEO SpyGlass. Launch the tool and create a project for one of your competitors. Next, jump to Domain Comparison . One by one, specify your competitors’ websites and take a look at how they compare.

Next, jump to Link Intersection – a module that shows you the domains that link to more than one of your competitors. You can sort them by InLink Rank to see the most authoritative websites on your list. Those are likely relevant industry websites that will make a great addition to your backlink profile – make sure to save them so you can reach out and see if you can get a backlink from there.

4.2. Social media

The next step is analyzing what, when, and how your competitors are doing on social media. Rival IQ is a useful tool for this task, and they have a 14-day free trial available. Once you’ve signed up for the tool, specify your competitors’ websites, and the platform will automatically pull their social media profiles.

From there, you’ll be able to see which social networks they’re active on, how many followers they have, how much engagement their posts get, etc. Those insights will be handy to benchmark your own strategy against. The tool will also show you the best times and days of the week to post, based on the engagement competitors’ posts get.

On top of that, it may be a good idea to research if your competitors have a community on social media – a Facebook group or a subreddit dedicated to their product. How big is the community? Are the users engaged?

4.3. Advertising

To get an idea of your competitors’ ad strategy, SimilarWeb is a great (and free) starting point. Enter the URL of a competitor’s website and navigate to the Search section – it will show you if your competitors have any search ads running, and, if they do, what their target keywords are.

The Display section below will show you whether a competitor is running any display ads, and, if they are, which platforms bring them the most traffic.

For Facebook ads, simply open a competitor’s Facebook page and click on Info and ads .

Alternatively, you can use Facebook’s Ad Library to search for your competitors’ ads. Unfortunately, these tools won’t reveal targeting rules your competitors use, but you’ll still get a solid idea of how many ads they’re running, and perhaps get inspiration for your own advertising efforts.

If native ads or other kinds of paid content are a thing in your niche, you can also try searching for “sponsored by [competitor]”, “author” “[competitor]”, etc. in a search engine of your choice (the quotes will make sure you’re looking for an exact match, and all of the words in the query are taken into account). Take note of authoritative platforms you come across and try reaching out to them to inquire about sponsored posts.

4.4. Influencers and other partners

At this point, we’re interested in exploring the partnerships your competitors have that help spread the word about their products. We’ll look at influencers endorsing your competition, publishers they work with, and media platforms they guest blog on, if any.

For the analysis, you’ll need the same social media monitoring alerts for your competitors’ brand you’ve already created in Awario. In your feed, make sure to group the mentions by Authors and sort them by Reach to see the most influential posts first (Reach is calculated based on the number of followers and engagements on social media, and based on the site’s estimated traffic for results from news, blogs, and the web).

This will let you see the most influential posts that mention your competition, including social media posts and blog articles from around the web. Take note of the influencers or publishers they work with – chances are they will be happy to work with you as well.

On top of that, you can also turn to SimilarWeb to see what referral sources are bringing the most visits to your competitors’ websites. Chances are you’ll also find a bunch of blogs and media platforms that generate substantial traffic to their sites.

4.5. Content Marketing

If content is part of your competitors’ strategy, it’s important that you analyze their blog and what they tend to write about. Are the readers engaged? Do the posts get shared around social media a lot? Does the competitor accept guest posts?

BuzzSumo is a great tool to help you out. It will show you the most shared posts on any blog within the past year, so you can get inspiration for your own posts and a better idea of what kind of content resonates with your target audience the best.

4.6. Customer acquisition

I know, a lot of the points above were actually customer acquisition techniques; but this section is reserved for the ones that weren’t outlined before. Do your competitors have a referral strategy? Do they have an affiliate program? Do they sponsor or exhibit at industry conferences? Do they acquire customers in any other creative way?

If applicable, it’s also important to analyze your competitors’ sales strategy. Do they do product demos? What does contacting a rep look like? Is there a phone number you can call?

The best thing to do is try and book a demo (or a call) with every company yourself, taking careful note of every step. Do they require filling out dozens of fields for you to talk to sales? Will they refuse to hold a demo just because your company is “too small”? Is their time zone convenient? How long does it take them to reply?

All of this will help you spot strengths and weaknesses in your competitors’ sales strategy to help you shape your own.

4.8. Customer service

Does every competitor offer Customer Support for all customers, or does it start with a particular plan? What channels do they provide support on: is it email, live chat, phone, social media, or all of the above? What is their response time? Do they offer Account Management for Enterprise customers?

Analyzing your competitors’ customer service will help you improve your own. The truth is, in large companies, customer care is often almost non-existent; for a new business in the industry, that’s a great area to capitalize on. If that’s true in your case, make sure to highlight the quality of your customer service on your website.

4.9. Unique strengths

Is there anything else that gives a competitor on your list an unfair advantage over everyone else? For example, is their CEO or somebody else on the team an industry influencer? Does the company publish amazing books that are also free? Have the founders launched successful products before? Make note of each competitor’s unique strengths that are hard to emulate.

What’s next?

Once you’re done with every step of competitive analysis, I’m sure you’ve got a clear understanding of the market and more than a handful of ideas on how to improve your own product. While the research is still fresh in your mind, one bonus step I’d highly recommend to everyone performing the analysis is to map your competitors on a Strategy Canvas (from the book Blue Ocean Strategy ).

A Strategy Canvas is a chart that breaks down your competitors by various aspects of their businesses and products (the pricing and other aspects specific to your product category).

The easiest way to plot this is a line chart, with each factor assigned a score depending on how well it is executed.

Here’s an example from the book: a Strategy Canvas for Southwest, one of the first low-cost airlines in the US, compared to the 2 categories that could be considered its competitors: air travel at the time and car travel.

Source: Blue Ocean Strategy

Depending on the kind of competitors you’ve analyzed, you’ll likely see that most of them follow one or two distinct patterns: those will be the major categories you’re competing with (though they may not be as different as cars and airplanes). It’s time to plot your own product on the canvas and see how it compares to the competitors.

Finally, think of ways to make your product stand out. From your research, recall the things your audience needs more and less of. Blue Ocean Strategy offers a nice way to think about the factors on the canvas in terms of applying them to your own product, called the Eliminate-Reduce-Raise-Create Grid.

• Think of features you could eliminate to lower the cost of your solution : the ones that seem superfluous, are rarely mentioned by customers, and are particularly costly. For Southwest vs. traditional airlines, those were seating class choices and hub connectivity.
• Think of the factors you can reduce way below the industry standard : the ones that need to be there, but can be leveled down significantly. It’s great if price is going to be one of them! For Southwest, those were the prices, meals, and lounges.
• Time to think about the aspects you’ll raise well above the industry standard , especially if they won’t cost you a fortune. What do customers wish they’d get more of? For Southwest, that was the friendliness of the service and the speed of travel.
• Lastly, try and create new features that your closest competitors don’t offer (or borrow them from another product category). With Southwest, it was the frequent departures that traditional airlines didn’t have – but car travel did.

Remember: the idea of a competitive analysis isn’t to steal what they’re doing, it is to understand where your business falls in the market and find new opportunities to make your product stand out.

Eventually, focusing on your customers and gaps between supply and demand will serve you much better than focusing on the competition. And that’s what competitor analysis is for – finding ways to serve the customer better.

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

How to Create a Competitor Analysis Report (with Examples)

Written by: Midori Nediger Nov 09, 2023

Your business will always have competition.

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

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

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

What is a competitive analysis report?

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

Typically, a competitive analysis report will contain:

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

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

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

But how do you actually create a competitive analysis report?

How to make competitor analysis report :

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

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

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

1. Start with a competitor overview

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

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

Like the template below, each competitor profile might include:

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

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

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

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

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

You can conduct primary market research, with:

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

Or secondary market research, by:

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

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

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

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

3. Compare product features in a feature comparison matrix

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4. Summarize your strengths and weaknesses in a SWOT analysis

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

That’s what makes the SWOT analysis so essential.

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

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

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

Here are some questions to kickstart your SWOT analysis:

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

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

5. Show where you fit in the competitive landscape

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

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

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

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

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

Competitor analysis examples for strategic planning

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

1. Competitor analysis example for marketing specialists

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

Competitor analysis focus:

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

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

2. Competitor analysis example for SME business development managers

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

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

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

3. Competitor analysis example for product managers

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

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

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

How to present a competitor analysis

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

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

3 tips to improve your competitive analysis report design

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

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

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

1. Start with a competitor analysis template

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

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

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

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

2. Keep core design elements like colors and fonts consistent

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

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

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

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

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

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

And written summaries will only get you so far.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Free Competitive Analysis Templates: Learn about Customers and Competitors to Grow Your Business

By Joe Weller | March 19, 2018

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When engaging in competitive analysis, you can use a template to consider and capture details of the marketing landscape in which your business exists in order to improve your marketing decisions. More importantly, these templates help you focus on gathering information on your competitive landscape and deducing business lessons from that data, rather than mulling over which factors you should study.

In this article, we cover what competitive analysis is, what a competitive analysis template should include, and where to look for information in your analysis. We also offer free, downloadable templates in Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Google Docs formats — all of these templates are customizable so you can include the particular information that’s relevant to your organization and analysis exercise. Find templates for the web, social media, small and general business analysis, and the presentation of your findings.

Competitive Analysis Templates for Web and Social Media Analysis

Competitive analysis report.

If you are reviewing websites to understand usability and structure, you want to know what content sites have in common, what content is unique and interesting, and what common navigational features appear. Use this report to capture features of competitor websites, or adapt it to perform competitive analyses on other aspects of businesses.This template proves space to record details of search functionality and any other pertinent features.

‌ Download Competitive Analysis Report - WORD

Online Social Media Analysis Template

To study social media strategy, you want a template that allows you to look for all the social media channels you and your competitors are engaged with. This template also helps you see how many followers each competitor garners, and prompts you to consider who the product target market includes and what the product branding entails.

Download Online Strategy Competitive Analysis Template

Excel  |  PDF

Competitive Analysis Template for Small Business

Small business competitive analysis template.

When creating a competitive analysis for your small business, you want to conduct a thorough review of all facets of marketing. Start by determining who your competitors are, what you think you already know about them, and what you know about your own business. Next, describe target markets, products and pricing, media strategies, and perform a SWOT analysis.

Download Small Business Competitive Analysis Template

Word  |  PDF

Competitive Analysis Landscape Template

In addition to the usual queries about business factors, you may also want a template that reminds you why you are conducting the analysis. Complete this template for your own company and then for your competitors.

Download Competitive Analysis Landscape Template

Excel  |  Word  |  PDF

Competitive Analysis Template for Evaluating Results vs. Unique Value Propositions

By grading competitors on value proposition, content strategy, and funnel efficiency, you can derive an idea of how successful companies are in their marketing strategies. Use Excel formulas and your scores will automatically total and appear on a heat graph.

‌ Download Value Proposition Comparative Analysis

Approaches to the Presentation of Competitive Analysis Template Data

Particularly if you must present your findings to stakeholders throughout your company, certain additions can expedite conveying your message:

• Define Your Target Audience for the Analysis Presentation: You can also create multiple presentations aimed at different audiences, such as a summary for executives and a PowerPoint for marketing, sales, and development.
• Add Each Competitor’s Logo: This helps to differentiate among companies in the document and can convey significant information about each brand.
• Show the Product: If you can, add images of the competitor’s products or images that convey the nature of their services.
• Use High-Resolution Graphics: They heighten impact.
• Consider the Company Description: Include the tagline, slogan, mission statement, and value proposition. In addition, discuss how companies position and describe themselves.
• Keep Information Consistent: All competitors should be described with the same type of information and level of detail to avoid bias.
• Look at the Good They Do: When reviewing competitor strengths and weaknesses, don’t just consider the weaknesses; think about what makes their customers happy.

Competitive Analysis Presentation Template

Try the following PowerPoint template for company presentations. The template provides tips for explaining the purpose of an analysis to non-marketing team members and leaves room to discuss factors in the competitive landscape, environmental pressures, and much more.

‌ Download Competitive Analysis Presentation Template

Why Use Competitive Analysis?

Competitive analysis (CA) — sometimes called competitor analysis — is a vital process to help businesses stay on the cutting edge and anticipate market changes that they can use to their advantage. Competitive analyses, which should be conducted periodically, can help you strategize and plan for company growth by discovering opportunities and threats. From a media strategy perspective, the analysis of competitor collateral is essential for launching effective SEO-driven campaigns. SEO analysis reveals what keywords and approaches work, both for you and your competitors, and which campaigns should receive focus. Analyses also offer you a view into your company’s position in the competitive landscape.

Although in the context of marketing, the word “competitive” suggests focus on “the other” (i.e., the rival), many marketing gurus believe that the heart of any marketing activity begins with the customer. An analysis of competitors helps you to better serve customers. By understanding what customers think competitors do well, you can craft a value proposition for your own company that allows you to shine in the marketplace.

Jeffrey Wilke is the CEO of Worldwide Consumer at Amazon.com Inc. He  advocates , “First of all, I’m focused on customers and not competitors. Competitors’ strategy changes all the time. We don’t want to distract ourselves from customers by obsessing over what competitors are doing or not doing.”

Competitive analysis puts a spotlight on the strengths and weaknesses of competing organizations as well as your own. A detailed review helps uncover potential opportunities. Most significantly, though, you must actually use the collected data in your new campaign to reap the benefits. Otherwise, competitive analysis is just an exercise.

To summarize, competitive analysis enables your organization to do the following:

• Reveal your company’s and your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses
• Identify the path to opportunities for increased competitive advantage
• Help the entire company to understand the competitive landscape
• Contribute to defining your value proposition (that is, help you differentiate from competitors)
• Inform strategic planning

The Parts of a Competitive Analysis Template

• A competitive analysis template helps ensure that you store captured information. It can also ensure that analysis is consistent from year to year. Above all, using a template guarantees that your primary efforts are put toward gathering and evaluating information, not into deciding what criteria to study and how to format notes.

Templates may have a specific focus. For example, for online and social media strategy, a template may list all social media platforms and each company’s number of followers. CA templates generally include the following sections:

1. Company Information:

• The overview and profile provide general information about your company and its competitors.
• Profiled competitors are usually direct competitors: those who offer a comparable product or service in the same area. A review of indirect competitors (those who offer a slightly different product or service that could substitute for yours) provides clues to potential direct competition or new opportunities for your business.
• Background information on a competitor may include the location of their head office, the number of employees, recent acquisitions, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings, and the names of key staff members.
• This section also includes the company’s mission statement, slogan, tagline, and main value proposition.

2. Product Information:

• The product and service portion of this section describes the products and services offered.
• Pricing details include list prices for key products and services.
• Distribution channel details include information about affiliates, retailers, and wholesalers.

3. Market Information:

The target market (personas) area of this section looks at collateral and social media to determine the competitor’s target audience. You can combine this information into customer personas . Target audience information prepares you for when customers leave your competitors.

• Reviewing online presence is key today. Note all of your competitors’ social media channels and web pages. Also, document any other web pages where competitors are referenced.
• Understanding the context of social media channels can help you grasp the essence of a target market. For example, LinkedIn is aimed at professionals.
• Consider the brand messaging and tone on social media. Cultivate your company’s own voice.
• Market share is expressed as a percentage of the business that the company owns. Some marketing specialists think that knowing competitor market share is unnecessary. They believe you should focus on your own market share.

4. SWOT Analysis :

• SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Perform a SWOT analysis to identify what competitors are doing right, and what customers are complaining about. Also, you can assess how well a competitor is achieving their goals based on their apparent positioning. Use a competitor’s weaknesses to understand how you can fill gaps to make their customers your customers.

5. Competitive Advantage:

• Competitive advantage boils down to why a customer likes them better. In other words, what’s unique about the product or service that draws customers?

How to Find Market Information to Complete Competitive Analysis Templates

Today’s digital world makes much of competitive analysis easier. Nevertheless, don’t discount the value of other paths to help you learn about your industry and niche. Visit competitor locations, talk to their customers, look at printed collateral (such as brochures, form mailers, trade shows, newsletters, and bulletins), and talk to your competitors. The following list includes some of the main methods for finding company information:

• Google: Search with pertinent keywords.
• LinkedIn: This site offers information on company size, locations, hiring, and key personnel.
• Yahoo Finance: Check this for financial background on organizations.
• AngelList: This resource lists startups, investors, and job openings at startups.
• Crunchbase : This outlines new products and companies and their investments.
• Alexa, SimilarWeb, and Other Online Tools: Use web search tools to find the traffic on keywords, backlinks, and more.
• Hoover and Manta: Find organization financial and structural information.
• SEC Filings: Peruse SEC corporate filings for key information about a company’s financial endeavors and financial health.
• Purchased Data: Buy database collections of consumer and corporate data.
• Website , YouTube, and Facebook Comments: Discover what users and customers really think about your products and services as well as those of your competitors.

Social Media and Web Research

Very few, if any, businesses can excel today without some social media presence. Consider these tips when reviewing social media strategy:

• Brick-and-mortar establishments may be different from online competition.
• Backlinks are pages that link to other businesses’ pages, but not yours. Backlink analysis helps you gain links to your page from important sites.
• Keyword gap analysis highlights keywords you don’t currently have on your site that rank well for other competitors.
• Consider the brand story, and note which social media channels the site supports.
• Keep in mind that your actual product or service competitors may differ from your SEO competitors because of paid ads. It’s possible that the brick-and-mortar competitor is less important than the online competitor. For SEO research, survey domain authority, the keywords that attract traffic, and the amount of traffic for each of those keywords.

Improve Your Competitive Analysis with Work Management in Smartsheet

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The Smartsheet platform makes it easy to plan, capture, manage, and report on work from anywhere, helping your team be more effective and get more done. Report on key metrics and get real-time visibility into work as it happens with roll-up reports, dashboards, and automated workflows built to keep your team connected and informed.

When teams have clarity into the work getting done, there’s no telling how much more they can accomplish in the same amount of time. Try Smartsheet for free, today.

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Marketing competitor analysis templates

How do marketing teams maintain dominance? Analyzing market competition is a vital component of your marketing strategy . You need to closely monitor the other companies that are trying to attract your target buyers — so you can determine how to engage and convert those potential customers more effectively than they can.

Your research should consider all of the alternatives available to your prospective customers (including direct and indirect competitors), the marketing tactics your competitors use, and how they communicate the benefits of their offering. This research helps you define superior go-to-market strategies that can create competitive advantages.

The free competitor analysis templates provided here are purpose-built for marketing teams. Each one includes a wide range of examples to capture important research about who your competitors are, what products and services they offer, and their strengths and weaknesses. These templates are also useful for analyzing the messages and channels other companies in your market use, so you can better understand their market presence and determine how to establish a competitive advantage.

Jump ahead here:

What is a competitive marketing strategy?

What are the types of marketing competitor analysis, competitor analysis templates.

A competitive marketing strategy is critical to ensure that your campaigns and programs capture more customers than your competitor. Running creative marketing campaigns that resonate with customers, more effectively targeting customers with digital advertisements, and establishing a lower price point are all examples of ways marketing teams create a competitive advantage over other products.

Consider these questions when assessing your competitive marketing strategy:

Who are the other companies competing in your space?

What products or services do they offer?

What is each competitor’s market share?

What are their strengths and weaknesses?

What channels do they use?

How can your messaging differentiate your products and services?

Competitive analysis is one tool marketers use to better understand how to formulate the right strategy. It is important to perform competitive analyses on a regular basis because the market landscape can shift quickly as competitors raise funding, shift priorities, or develop new features. You will want to know when these changes happen so you can adjust your marketing tactics accordingly.

There are many types of competitor analysis. Choosing the right type depends on the information you want to capture and how you will use your findings. Teams typically start with a high-level analysis and then move into more detailed views of specific channels.

Listed below are the prebuilt examples included in this guide:

Spreadsheets and static presentations are easily available to marketing teams. Mature marketing organizations use a collaborative web-based tool to capture competitive research. Try Aha! free for 30 days. It is perfect for marketing teams that want to set strategy, build plans, and mange programs and campaigns — all in one place.

Not ready for purpose-built software? You can download our competitor analysis templates below for free and tailor each one to your specific needs.

Competitive landscape

Visualize all of your competitors in a single view using this template. See how the position of your company compares to other competitors in the market. This type of high-level analysis is helpful when you want to present a summary view to marketing and product leadership teams. You can easily change the quadrant titles and the x and y axis labels to reflect your assessment of the market.

Competitor profile

Create a detailed profile for each of your key competitors using this customizable template. Capture essential information about their organization, customers, products, as well as strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities. This helps your marketing team form a clear understanding of who they are competing against. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of each competitor helps the team acquire, keep, and grow customers more effectively.

Competitor overview

This template is a useful way to organize competitive research about all of your rivals in a single location. It includes two sections — company and marketing. Use the company section to summarize details about each company and their products and services. Capture what keywords they rank well for, what collateral they produce, or what events they hold in the marketing section. Gathering information about your competition using a consistent format helps you collect and analyze key data.

Market and positioning analysis

This matrix is perfect for capturing the marketing strategies that each competitor uses to target buyers. What media channels do they use to promote new offerings? How much are they spending on ads? These are key questions that help you understand the marketing strategies your competitors use. It also allows you to identify potential weaknesses in their plans so you can increase your own competitive advantage.

Messaging analysis

This template helps you distill the key messages other companies in your market use to attract and engage potential customers. Use it to understand how other companies communicate with target buyers — including their tagline, what problems they address, and the promise of how their offering will address those problems. You can then strengthen your core message by adjusting your go-to-market strategy and positioning according to what you find.

Value proposition analysis

Use this template to evaluate your competitors' value propositions. This is a great way to compare the key messages your competitors use to communicate the benefits of their product. It allows you to rate the core messages that address your customers' needs so you can see how your position in the market compares. This gives you important insights into how competitors are targeting potential customers and the messaging they use, so you can identify ways to strengthen your communication plan.

Search engine competitive analysis

This template is ideal for analyzing your competitors' search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. With the help of your SEO tool , you can capture details about keyword rankings and website traffic volume by source. Understanding the domain authority of each competitor helps you identify where you need to boost your own SEO performance. Many marketing teams use this information to optimize content creation around target keywords to help bring in more organic traffic.

Social media analysis

This template helps you evaluate your competition's presence on social media platforms, such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Understanding which platforms your competitors are active on, how many followers they have, and the level of engagement gives you insights into what is resonating in your industry. This shows where there is opportunity to improve your own posts. If you do this exercise on a regular basis — monthly, for example — you can easily track how many followers you are gaining and how many your competition is losing.

Sales battlecard

Battlecards are a useful tool for helping sales teams respond to competitor claims. This template helps you summarize the unique differentiators that set your offering apart and the strengths and weaknesses of each competitor. This better equips your sales team to respond to competitors' claims and address any questions or objections prospective customers might raise during the buying process.

Plan, collaborate, and launch — all in one tool. Try Aha! free for 30 days.

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Competitor analysis templates

How to use competitor analysis templates to get ahead

Analyze your competitors' strengths and weaknesses to gain an edge with our comprehensive competitor analysis template.

Last updated

13 May 2024

Reviewed by

How to use competitor analysis templates to get ahead of the competition 

In business, knowledge is power. If you know the ins and outs of your competitors, you’re in a very strong position to compete with their offerings.

So how do you gain more knowledge to outwit your competition? The simplest, most effective way to uncover your competitors' strategies is through a competitor analysis template.

In this detailed guide, you'll learn how to use a competitor analysis template to surge ahead of the competition and gain a leading edge.

What is a competitor analysis template?

A competitor analysis template is a blueprint that outlines your competitors and their: 

Products or services

Target market

Financial performance

Marketing strategies

A competitive analysis template sets you up for researching your competitors’ tiniest details and unique complexities. 

Using a simple competitor analysis template means you can answer crucial questions, including:

Who are you competing with, and what are they offering?

How does your product or service compare?

Do your competitors' marketing strategies and financial performance differ from yours?

What are their strengths and weaknesses?

What's your unique selling point (USP)? 

In what areas are your competitors doing better than you, and how can you level up?

What's the overall competitiveness in your industry?

Ultimately, a competitor analysis template allows you to identify your competitors' pain points and use this knowledge to beat them in the market.

Why use a competitor analysis template?

The best place to flesh out a specific competitor analysis is with a template. It acts as an organized, high-level outline, helping you derive valuable insights about your competition. 

Benefits of a competitor analysis template include:

Building better product, marketing, and sales strategies

Singling out underserved opportunities in the market 

Capitalizing on your competitors' weaknesses to grow your market share

Allowing you to make informed decisions about your campaigns 

Creating sustainable competitive advantages

Helping you plan for future investments

Competitive analysis example: What are the most popular ones?

One example of a competitive analysis is brand awareness. In a brand awareness analysis, you aim to pinpoint how much of your target market is familiar with the competitor's brand. 

Customers tend to buy what they recognize, and it can be difficult to challenge a well-known brand. Thankfully, with the help of a well-laid-out competitor analysis template, you'll know what it takes to challenge and possibly outsmart your industry’s big names.

Other popular examples of competitor analysis include:

Identify the strengths and weaknesses of the competitor's products

Customer experience:

Evaluate the customer experience of a product or service 

Financials:

Examine their financial performance and resources

Consider their marketing strategies, such as promotional activities and pricing

8 simple steps for using a competitor analysis template

As there are many competitive analyses, you might want to perform several. Depending on the specific use case, you should tweak your standard competitor analysis template. 

Still, you’ll include some aspects in all use cases, such as:

Step 1: Complete your competitor profile

A template is worth its weight in gold when it shows you exactly what you need to beat. 

Research and pinpoint any product or service that currently solves the problem you’re targeting. Then, write a short profile for each competitor.

Each competitor profile might include:

The company's market share and revenue

The company's size 

Information about their management team

An overview of how customers perceive the company

A broad description of the company's strengths and weaknesses

This information will help you get a big-picture view of the market landscape.

Tip:  To find competitors in your market, use Google or Amazon to look up your product or service. The top results that come up are likely your rivals. 

Take note of direct and indirect competitors to see how new markets affect your business. If you're new in the industry or serve a niche market, you might need to dive deeper into the rankings to discover your competitors.

Step 2: Describe your competitors' product or service information

The product information section is arguably the most crucial part of the competitor analysis. Break your products and competitors' products down to the last detail to clearly define what sets everyone apart.

An obvious inclusion in this section is the price points of your offerings and your competitors'.

Other than that, you might want to include attributes such as:

Product/service features

Number of features

Ease of use

Brand/image/style

Customer service

Tip:  You may have multiple products to analyze, but focusing on your competitor’s flagship product is often important. This is typically the first product they launched, the core solution to customer issues, and likely their highest-selling product.

Step 3: Include details about their target audience

You can only use a competitor analysis template with extensive target audience research. This is all about gathering information to understand your competitors' target customers, as these are likely the same customers you’re selling to.

When doing your target audience analysis, consider the following factors:

Marital status

The data paints a basic image of your competitors' buyer persona's day-to-day tasks, activities, and buying decisions, familiarizing you with their core customers. Include all these details in your template. 

Somewhere down the line, you can use this information to influence your business and marketing decisions, allowing you to plan for unforeseen market disruptions.

Tip:  Demographic factors like age and gender tell you  who  is buying your competitors' products or services, while psychographics reveal  why  they buy them. Psychographics cover attitudes, personality, values, interests, hobbies, and more. 

Step 4: Gather information about your competitors' marketing strategy

Knowing the nuts and bolts of your competitors' marketing strategy is a great way to identify their strengths and weaknesses. You can use these to improve your marketing strategy, so this is an absolute must-have in your template.

Here are the specific aspects of your competitors' strategies to keep an eye on:

What tone do they use? 

Do they have a CTA in their meta description?

Pay attention to their titles and meta descriptions: 

What's unique about their product's logo, shape, graphics, or messaging?

SEO performance:

Focus on their most valuable organic content, existing rankings, past rankings, and their backlink profile.

 Where are they spending their money? What's their copy like? Do they purchase display ads?

Analytics data:

 Assess their visitor and page view performance, traffic volume, site referrals, and most shared content.

Social media:

 Check them out on Facebook, Instagram, and other social media channels to understand what they're doing.

Newsletters:

 Sign up for their newsletter and pay close attention to their signup process, onboarding, and targeted e-mails.

Tip:  The more exhaustive this section is, the closer you are to nailing your marketing strategy. So include as many details as you can. Use competitor research tools to get accurate numbers if you have the budget.

Step 5: Lay out their financials

Another section that you should include in your competitive analysis template is financial performance. You already know your competitors' pricing structure at this point, so you'll want to look further into their financials. 

Some of the details you should seek out and incorporate into your template include:

Make sites like Crunchbase, YCharts, and Mattermark your ally. They can compile many relevant data points you’d normally find on a financial statement.

Targets and sales

You can estimate rival sales targets and actuals by collecting and combining figures posted publicly on Indeed, LinkedIn, and Glassdoor.

If you need more pricing data, use advanced Google search (company name + pricing) to uncover the financial data you're looking for. 

Alternatives are G2Crowd, Get App, and TrustRadius—these websites compile user reviews for thousands of software products, and you can use the pricing filter to get the data you need.

Tip: Financial statements are teeming with jargon. It can be overwhelming to understand everything, but an excellent financial dictionary can help.

Step 6: Compile information about the market

What's your competitors' percentage of market share? What's yours? List that information under this section of your template. 

It's also prudent to gather additional market information, such as:

Web presence:

How popular are your competitors' websites compared to yours?

Market position:

How are your competitors positioned in the market? What about you?

Overall competitiveness:

Are there any new companies threatening the market? Has an existing company recently revamped its product offering to gain the upper hand? 

Tip: Making assumptions without exploring certain trends is a recipe for disaster. Always make decisions based on numbers, studies, and solid facts, not guesswork.

Step 7: Perform a SWOT analysis

Here, you'll get to really compare your company against your competitors. A SWOT analysis allows you to identify your company's strengths and weaknesses. You can turn these weaknesses into opportunities while assessing threats from your competition.

During a SWOT analysis, ask:

What do we do best? What advantages do we have?

Weaknesses:

What could we improve? What disadvantages do we have?

Opportunities:

  How can we turn our strengths and weaknesses into opportunities? What gaps in the market could we fill today?

  What obstacles do we face? Could any of our weaknesses prevent our team from meeting our goals?

Tip: The information you gathered in the previous steps will be helpful for your SWOT analysis. Go back as many times as you need to. 

Step 8: Determine your competitive advantage

It's time to answer the most critical questions of all: 

What gives you an edge over the competition? 

What areas set you apart from the competition?

How can you continue to capitalize on these areas? 

With steps 1-7 already locked in, you have more than enough information to accurately define your competitive advantage.

Tip: Ensure facts back up your competitive advantage. If you don't envision that advantage eliciting an enthusiastic response from potential clients, investors, or stakeholders, repeat the step until you get it right. 

After all, your competitive advantage is your value proposition and will become the defining statement of your company in the long haul.

Analyze the result of competitor analysis in Dovetail

Wrapping up.

There you have it—a deep dive into using a competitor analysis template to get ahead of the competition.

Learning about your competitors' weaknesses and strengths can give you the tools to boost your market strategy. If you don't know what you're up against, you can't beat them. 

Be sure to include space in each section for information about your company and competitors to make the most of your template. 

Competitor analysis template

Use a competitor analysis template to get ahead of the competition

How do I run a competitive analysis with my template?

To run a competitive analysis with your template, research and fill in the blanks on the following: 

Product and target audience data

Marketing strategy

Market information

A SWOT analysis

This information makes creating a complete comparison of your company and your competitors easy.

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How to Run a Competitor Analysis [Free Guide]

Published: May 18, 2023

Many marketers don’t take advantage of competitor audits, so we have to ask: When was the last time you performed a competitor analysis for your brand? If it’s been a while or you aren’t sure how to do a competitor analysis, we can help you through the process.

Too often, a competitor analysis is reserved for the early days of a company or the launch of a new product. But knowing how your competitors are positioning their products is key to ensuring that your content remains relevant.

In this post, you’ll learn the benefits of revisiting your competitor analysis, as well as tips to get it right.

Table of Contents

What is a competitor analysis?

Benefits of competitor analysis, how to conduct a competitive analysis.

• Competitive Analysis Template
• Competitive Analysis Example

At its most basic level, a competitor analysis identifies your peers in the industry and then takes a deeper look at what they are doing. You can see how you’re doing in comparison and gain insights about what you can be doing better. It’s a smart strategy for identifying trends and pinpointing opportunities to become more competitive in your niche.

The first and most obvious benefit of a competitor analysis is understanding your position in the market. You can understand where your peers are excelling whether or not you are keeping up.

If the honest answer is that you’re not — that’s okay! Now you know. After the analysis, you can begin an open conversation about how to improve.

1. You can grow your business.

Marketers and competitive research professionals agree that staying on top of your competitor leads to more success. HubSpot research found 90% of marketers report positive impacts on their business from using competitive research as part of their strategy.

2. You’ll see more revenue.

The benefits of competitor analysis can be financial as well. In fact, 68% of marketers see positive revenue impacts with a weekly evaluation of competitive research.

Consistency here is key. Competitor analysis has proven to be most valuable when firms ditch the inconsistent drop-ins and incorporate the practice into their scheduled marketing operations.

3. You’ll find new opportunities.

A thorough analysis of your competition could reveal opportunities — like gaps in your competitor’s offerings. Identifying missing functionality is an opportunity to meet buyer demands that your rivals overlook.

4. Your business can maintain relevance.

With a competitor analysis, you can note what your peers are doing really well. You can then emulate their successful strategies to catch the attention of more buyers.

So, how do you start? Follow the steps below to evaluate your competitor, learn from your buyers, and then curate your information.

1. Understand your industry.

The first step is to complete Porter’s Five Forces analysis . It’s a way of determining the level of competitive rivalry in your industry. This framework prompts you to start thinking about how to be more competitive within your market — or if you are more or less likely to find success in a new market.

You’ll evaluate the threat of new entrants, the strength of buyer power, the threat of substitution, and how supplier power affects your ability to be competitive in the niche you want to occupy.

2. Understand your competition.

Doing a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) on your competitor is the next step. This is invaluable research specifically focused on one rival at a time, and it’s where you’ll start looking for trends in their content strategy and investigating their SEO results.

Proactively seek these out so you can start creating solutions to be more competitive.

3. Understand your buyers.

There are various ways to conduct surveys and perform focus groups, but at the heart of it is getting information straight from the source. Your buyers understand their needs, wants, and what impedes them. It is imperative to consult them.

4. Present your findings.

There’s a reason that Scientist and Science Communicator are different job titles. You can do all the research in the world, but it won’t make an impact until the people in the trenches understand and can make use of the information.

PowerPoint is still very prevalent in big business, so putting forward a focused and concise slide presentation with infographics is the way to go.

Our Market Research Kit includes a resource for getting started with data visualization for marketers.

Competitive Analysis Templates

So you’re ready to conduct a competitive analysis. These templates can help you get started.

1. HubSpot’s Marketing Strategy Kit

Our Marketing Strategy Kit includes resources for getting started with your competitive analysis, including Porter’s five forces analysis and a SWOT analysis template.

You’ll also find guidance on conducting fact-finding surveys and focus groups, creating buyer personas, and a plug-and-play PowerPoint presentation to help you share your findings.

This is the empty SWOT template we provide inside the Market Research Kit. Here you can gather your findings and keep them organized on one sheet. This chart can easily be plugged into the provided PowerPoint presentation, making sharing findings a breeze.

The MECLABS Institute has a series of competitive analysis documents. If you’re looking to understand the forces shaping your industry, MECLABS’ resources can help you compile the research.

All of the charts that you complete can easily be turned into slides. The visuals make your analysis easy to understand.

3. Semrush Market Explorer

You may feel overwhelmed about starting your research from scratch. Semrush can help. Before you start surveying the marketplace on foot, you can assess your competition entirely online.

Semrush offers a free trial that includes market research tools. Here you can see the size of your industry, available niches for your business to fill, and your competitors’ market potential.

You’ll also see how well your business can position itself with online search engines.

Competitive Analysis Example: The Coffee Shop

Let’s say you want to start a new coffee shop in Boston that specializes in making Asian-inspired lattes. To see the viability of your new business, you would start with the following competitive analysis.

Porter’s Five Forces Analysis

Let’s start by determining the level of competitive rivalry for your business. We’ll explore how the business compares to other coffee shops using Porter’s Five Forces.

1. Competition in the Industry

• Boston has a large number of coffee shops, including large chains. Your business will need to compete with large players like Dunkin’ and Starbucks.
• Coffee companies Jaho and Ogawa also serve Asian-inspired drinks. You’ll want to make sure that your shop is in a different neighborhood to avoid competition.
• While many Asian restaurants sell coffee, they also sell full meals. Your coffee shop offers a different type of experience, so you are less likely to compete with these establishments.

2. Potential of New Entrants

• As a drink company, you’re not just competing with coffee shops. Boston’s budding boba scene may distract from your business.

3. Power of Suppliers

• If you’re using imported ingredients at your shop, you’ll rely on suppliers to run your business. How reliable is your supplier? Do you have a backup if your primary supplier cannot complete an order?
• Instead of having a logo custom printed on your cups, you have a stamp that you can use on your items. You can then use any supplier for cups and sleeves, allowing you to secure the best price.

4. Power of Customers

• Let’s say your storefront is near a local college campus. You’ll have a continuous flow of customers as students come in and out to study.
• However, these customers have tight budgets. You may need to lower your prices to keep these college students coming back multiple times a week, instead of once a month.

5. Threat of Substitute Products

• Coffee has gotten more expensive in recent years. Customers may be more likely to make their own coffee at home.
• Larger players have rewards apps, which offer perks like free drinks. You may lose customers to these players that offer free products.

Running a SWOT Analysis

A SWOT analysis can help you better position your brand in your market. For our coffee shop, let’s run a SWOT analysis on Jaho, another Asian-inspired coffee joint in Boston.

From this SWOT analysis, we learned the following:

• The location of your store will be beneficial for the business. Your coffee shop will be in a neighborhood that Jaho does not currently serve.
• Having a nice seating area will be essential. You want to make sure your shop has the same cozy atmosphere.
• Your menu should include flavors that Jaho does not. This allows your lattes to stand out.

Customer Research

To understand how your potential customers interact with coffee shops, you’ll need to conduct additional research.

Let’s say you’re not ready to interview potential customers. Instead, you can research the demographics of your area. That includes the age and income breakdowns of your customers.

You can also review the Yelp pages of nearby coffee shops. This will help you understand what makes for a good or bad experience in your customers’ eyes.

After this research has been compiled, it’s time to present your findings to your business partner. Then you can make sure your insights are incorporated into your business.

Making the Most of a Competitive Analysis

As you conduct competitor research, make sure you understand how findings affect your business. Pull in relevant statistics to show how you compare. This allows you to make the most of your research and helps demonstrate your points to stakeholders.

Creating as much context around your research as possible is the best way to make connections and find novel solutions. So get digging, get visual, and get more competitive!

Don't forget to share this post!

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Research your rivals’ winning strategies with a competitor analysis template

Whether you’re comparing price points, pain points, or user pathways, FigJam’s collaborative competitor analysis tools can help you learn from—and surpass—your competition.

Competitor analysis template

Work with your collaborators and product managers to study your competitors in an interactive, easy-to-master setting.

Crush the competition

Lay out your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses next to yours with a competitor analysis tool, then take what works and leave what doesn’t.

Gain 360º of insight: Update and improve your strategies for sales, marketing, products, and more.

Make sense of the market: Understand what’s out there through a competitive analysis report in order to stand out.

Seize opportunities: Use tools for competitor analysis to see what’s working—and what isn’t—and apply your learnings to your products and services.

Winning teams work as teams

If you want to outperform your competitive landscape, you have to work together. With a collaborative whiteboard from FigJam, you can chat with teammates via text or audio, express yourself with sticky notes and emotes, and encourage a little friendly competition when you need a break with in-browser games.

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How do you do competitor analysis?

To begin your competitor analysis, you’ll need to draw a table with your company name placed next to your main competitor, or multiple competitors you’ve identified. When selecting your competition, seek out businesses with similar offerings, identities, and values. Three to four competitors is usually enough.

From there, you’ll research the competitors product(s) and services offered and slot them into your table. With all of the information listed out, you should be able to see where you have a competitive edge with your target audience and where you’re falling behind.

When using a tool for competitor analysis, your goal is to be as thorough and unbiased as possible. If your comparison shows that one competitor outshines you in most categories, that’s okay! You’re looking for ways to improve yourself, not boast about how amazing your business already is.

What to include in competitor analysis?

Most competitor analysis templates will include some or all of the following categories:

• Competitive advantage/disadvantage
• Similar capabilities
• Product quality
• Strengths and weaknesses
• Customer support
• Promotions and marketing
• User experience

Depending on your industry, you may also want to compare more specific features, such as “Delivery options,” “Employees,” or “Location.” Ask yourself, “What is competitor analysis helping me uncover?” and you’ll know which areas to examine.

Why are competitor analyses important?

As much as we like to think our businesses occupy a unique niche in the market, the reality is that most teams have direct competitors. Competitor analysis is valuable because it acknowledges those other businesses. It highlights the fact that there’s always something to learn—even from your “opponents.”

Filling out a template for competitor analysis also keeps you up to date on market trends, helping you stay ahead rather than fall behind. What’s more, an analysis can save you time and money in the long run. Rather than wasting resources on ideas you think might work, you can find out if your competition has tried anything similar and see how it went.

Wondering how to present competitor analysis once it’s done? With FigJam, your working document is presentable as-is. With out-of-the-box shapes and branded content available throughout, even your competitor analysis example will outshine the competition.

Other templates you might like

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10 Competitive Analysis Templates

Free Resource

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

Templates in this Offer Include:

• Two-Feature Competitive Landscape Chart
• Competitor Strategic Overview
• Content Marketing Analysis Template
• You vs. Competitor Side-By-Side
• Competitor Battle Card
• Multiple Competitor Feature Comparison
• Multiple Competitors Scoring Card
• SWOT Analysis Template
• Categorical Feature Comparison Template
• Review Tracker

Competitive Analysis is Key

To capture a sizable share of your market, it's necessary to know where you stand against your competitors. That's why competitive analysis is a key component of your organizational growth strategy. 

Whether you're analyzing a competitor's social media engagement, customer reviews, product features, or sales strategy – it's imperative to centralize your analysis in a single location.

That's why we've create ten competitive analysis templates. Download these templates to conduct a thorough analysis on one or many of the competitors in your landscape. 

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Competitor Analysis and Market Research PowerPoint Templates

When planning your business, market research is one of the most important tasks to work in. It allows you to set your target market, understand potential customers and their needs, and evaluate the competition in order to get an advantage over them. These market research and competitor analysis PowerPoint templates will help you convey all your findings to your team and build a strategic business plan accordingly.

As always, all the PowerPoint templates that you’ll find here are completely free . You just need to register at Templates by 24Slides, and you’ll be ready to download as many templates as you want, forever . No fees or tricks, they’re really completely free!

And even better, they are completely editable. Alter them as much as you want to fit your brand colors and your previous presentations. You can add specific slides to your own presentation, or even mix-and-match to create the perfect template for you.

Free Market Research PowerPoint Templates

Here you’ll find some of the most popular tools used by businesses all around the globe. The best thing about this market research PowerPoint templates is that they’re very detailed, as they’re designed with a specific tool in mind. You’ll be able to download SWOT and PEST analysis, Porter’s Five Forces, Blue Ocean Strategy (among others) presentation templates that are meant to bring out the most of each framework and convey perfectly each of its points.

SWOT PowerPoint Templates

SWOT Analysis is one of the most popular frameworks for business strategic planning. It’s an amazing tool that focuses on identifying Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats in order to evaluate the competitive position of your business in the market. SWOT analyses allow you to highlight both inner and external attributes that will influence your market presence. The market research PowerPoint templates that you’ll find here are specifically designed to help you convey each of the elements of a great SWOT analysis .

From four quadrants slides to show your SWOT analysis overview to specific slides for each point, these PowerPoint templates will make sure that your market research is crystal clear.

Ultimate SWOT Analysis Template Pack

If you want slides that convey professionalism and all the work you’ve invested in your market research, you can’t go wrong with this ultimate SWOT analysis pack. It has several different designs that will help you give the audience a complete overview of the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats of your business. But it also includes an attribute-specific slide in order for you to give more depth to it. In short, it’s an outstanding market research PowerPoint template!

Playful SWOT PowerPoint Template

This market research PowerPoint template is perfect for showcasing all your brand’s creativity and innovation. This SWOT analysis template features bright colors, unique layouts, and custom made illustrations. Make sure your presentation stands out with these unique slides! It also includes maps, circle graphs, and pyramid charts for you to fit all your information in the most visually appealing way possible.

SWOT Analysis Presentation Templates

Looking for something colorful to catch your audience’s eyes, but more serious than the last one? Then you might want to check out this market research SWOT PowerPoint template. This SWOT template’s unique layout and designs will help you keep your audience’s attention throughout the presentation. And its slides are filled with custom icons that will help you convey more ideas more efficiently.

SWOT PowerPoint Template

If you’re all about a minimalist style, then this market research PowerPoint template is the one for you. Its all-blue design is perfect for conveying professionalism and trustworthiness. Here you’ll find several different options of attribute specific slides. You’ll be able to give your audience a complete look into each of the SWOT analysis categories through its graphs and charts.

Porter’s Five Forces PowerPoint Templates

Porter’s Five Forces is another very well-known framework in the business world. Just like its name suggests, Harvard professor Michael Porter identified 5 main factors that can influence a business environment. These market research PowerPoint template will help you guide your audience through your findings in Competitive Rivalry, Supplier Power, Buyer Power, Threat of Substitution, and Threat of New Entry.

Porter’s Five Forces Analysis Template

This creative market research PowerPoint template will help you make an outstanding presentation. It has specific slides to help you highlight each of Porter’s Five Forces in your presentation. And its five-color design is perfect for conveying all your information while still keeping a bright, eye-catching design.

Corporate Porter’s Five Forces PowerPoint Template

If you’re looking for a more corporate, business-like design for Porter’s Five Forces framework, consider taking a look at this market research PowerPoint template.

Porter’s Five Forces Slides

If you want to convey a more fun, playful side of your company, then check out this design! Work on your competitor analysis with this PowerPoint template’s custom illustrations. Its unique icons will help you show your audience all your research concerning competitive rivalry for your business.

Other Market Research Tools PowerPoint Templates

Of course, there are many ways and tools you can use to work on your market analysis. Here you’ll find other popular tools 24Slides designers have taken into consideration to design amazing market research PowerPoint Templates.

Blue Ocean Strategy

The Blue Ocean Strategy is completely unique when talking about market analysis tools. Instead of facing high-competition, overcrowded markets, Blue Ocean Strategy focuses on creating your own market niche. This market research PowerPoint will help you apply all the Blue Ocean Strategy main points and convey your discoveries to your audience.

Go To Market Strategy Template

A Go-to-market strategy is another very popular option among all kinds of businesses. Its main focus is to evaluate how and when to introduce a product or service into the market. This of course means identifying and analyzing your target audience and market. And then, creating a sales and marketing plan accordingly. This free market research PowerPoint template will help you make the most out of this outstanding business strategy.

Corporate PEST Analysis Template

Just like a SWOT analysis, PEST analyses are based on a four-element organization. But unlike SWOT, a PEST analysis focused on external factors that might influence your business’ performance. Use this market research PowerPoint template to show your audience the Political, Economical, Social, and Technological factors that might affect your business.

Free Competitor Analysis PowerPoint Templates

Identifying and understanding your competitors is a key point of market research. In order to gain an advantage over your rivals, knowing what they’re offering and what makes your product unique in comparison is vital for a good marketing and sales strategy. This competitor analysis PowerPoint templates will help you focus on exactly that!

Competitor Analysis PowerPoint Template

This corporate take on the competitor analysis PowerPoint templates is all about data and numbers. You’ll find slides with all kinds of charts and graphs so you can present all your findings in a more effective, visually appealing way.

Creative Competitor Analysis Template

Stay one step ahead of your rivals with this competitor analysis PowerPoint template. Its race-themed slide is perfect for conveying the urgency and importance of staying at the top. It even includes a SWOT analysis slide for you to evaluate your competitors’ strengths and opportunities and take advantage of the weaknesses and threats.

Competitor PowerPoint Template

Work on your own product and brand differential value by examining what your direct competitors are doing. This competitor analysis PowerPoint template is perfect for analyzing and comparing several different products and brands at once. Its amazing comparative slides will help you showcase all the similarities and differences between different products.

Get More Free Business PowerPoint Templates

These market research and competitor analysis PowerPoint templates will definitely help you take your business strategy one step above. Knowing the circumstance that might affect your target market and what are your rivals working on will help you define better your sales and marketing strategies.

These are just some of the amazing slides that you’ll find in our Templates by 24Slides platform. Many of the business-oriented template packs that you’ll find there also include market research and competitor analysis templates. So if you haven’t found what you’ve been looking for, you’ll find hundreds of options more there! And of course, they’re all completely free .

However, if you’re looking for something more sophisticated, then you might want to consider professional custom PowerPoint design . 24Slides amazing designers will make sure that your slides showcase all your information as best as possible, make an impression on your audience, and convey your brand perfectly. You can just forget about editing templates and relax, and let professionals do what they do best!

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• Make the Perfect SWOT Analysis Presentation (Plus Free Templates)
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40 Free Competitor Analysis Templates (Excel & Word)

Big businesses often employ people assigned to conduct a competitor analysis regularly. The main objective of this process and filling out a competitor research template is to assess the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors and pinpoint any gaps in the marketplace. This analysis will help your company improve your services or products so you can serve your customers better. It could also lead to an increase in profits, Most of the successful companies know the importance of analyzing their competitors at different stages of their businesses.

• 1 Competitor Analysis Templates
• 2 What is competitive analysis?
• 3 Competitive Matrix Templates
• 4.1 Direct competitors
• 4.2 Indirect competitors
• 4.3 Substitute competitors
• 5 Competitor Research Templates
• 6.1 Understand the market
• 6.2 Spot the trends in the industry
• 6.3 Set benchmarks for your company’s growth in the future
• 7 Competitor Analysis Examples
• 8 How do you write a competitor analysis?

Competitor Analysis Templates

What is competitive analysis.

Competitor analysis is a business plan that entails comprehensive research of your main competitors for the purpose of gaining insights into their sales, marketing strategies, and products. Based on this analysis, you can develop and implement better business strategies, ward off your competitors, and capture a bigger share of the market. This analysis will also help your company:

• Learn how your competitors work and pinpoint potential opportunities for you to outdo them.
• Be always be on top of the market trends to ensure that your service or product is consistently meeting or even exceeding the standards.
• Identify the unique value proposition of your service or product and what makes it stand out from the competitors. This is very helpful for your marketing efforts in the future.
• Identify what your competitors do well so you can keep staying relevant while ensuring that both your marketing campaigns and product outperform the market standards.
• Pinpoint where your competitors fall short. This will help you pinpoint the areas of opportunities in the marketplace so you can test out new marketing strategies that your competitors haven’t tried yet.
• Learn through customer reviews what’s missing in the product of your competitors and think about how you can add those missing features to your product.
• Provide your company with a benchmark against which you can measure your company’s growth.

Competitive Matrix Templates

Why do you need a competitor analysis template.

The main purpose of conducting a competitor analysis and creating a competitive matrix template is to learn about and understand the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors, then compare them with your own. You need to do this study for several reasons:

• To help you recognize how to improve your business strategy.
• To tell you how to outperform your competitors in areas that will attract the attention of your customers.
• To give you a competitive edge over your competitors.

Before conducting this analysis, you need to understand your competitors first. You can do this by answering these questions:

• What service do they provide or what product do they offer?
• Do you share the same or similar target audiences?
• Do they operate close to your business?

Remember that the competitors in your locale aren’t your only competitors. Remember that the competitors you choose for your analysis will determine the insights you will gain and that you will base the decisions you will make partly on those insights. This is one reason why including the different types of competitors is essential:

Direct competitors

These competitors offer the same services or products as you. They’re also aimed at the same customer base and market with the same goals of market share growth and profit. Direct competitors target the same audience, sell the same products, and have the same distribution model.

Indirect competitors

These competitors belong to another company that offers the same services or products as direct competitors. But the difference is that your end goals aren’t the same.

Substitute competitors

These competitors also belong to another company that offers services or products to your customers that you provide too.

After determining the type of competitors you will compare your business with, it’s time to conduct the analysis.

Competitor Research Templates

How to conduct a competitor analysis.

As a small business owner, you might find yourself juggling several tasks all at once. But even with such a busy schedule, it’s always worth sparing some time to do a retail competitor analysis or any other analysis depending on the nature of your business. Following are steps you may want to consider when conducting the process.

With this analysis, you can draw conclusions about your product’s weaknesses and strengths if you learn more about your competitors. You need to know your company’s strengths to determine your position in the market. Therefore, it’s necessary to communicate clearly to your customers why the service or product you offer is the best choice available.

Knowing your weaknesses is also important in the growth of your company. If you can understand where you fall short, you can identify the areas where you want to invest more resources and time. This is why you need to study your competitors to find out what they’re doing right and see if you can improve your business through the insights you gain.  Here is the process for conducting this analysis:

Understand the market

Before identifying your competitors, you might discover that there are companies that you’ve never heard of before so you didn’t consider them competitors. If you want to do better than the competition, you must know all of them first. You need to conduct a thorough evaluation of what your competitors offer as this could help you identify the areas where you aren’t performing well.

You might also discover gaps between your competitors’ offerings and your customer’s needs. If you do, make this your first move when expanding your offerings so that you can satisfy those unmet needs.

Spot the trends in the industry

You need to find out which way the industry leans towards. But you shouldn’t just do it because your competitors do it too. Copying your competition without considering your place in the market rarely leads to success.

Don’t just replicate what your competitors offer either. A better alternative is to evaluate the needs of your customers and think of how you can create something of value for them. It’s better to do something on your own than copy what everyone else does.

Set benchmarks for your company’s growth in the future

It’s a good idea to include companies that are both smaller and bigger than your own. Take a close look at the well-established companies as they will provide you with a model of what success is all about and a reference point against which you can compare your advancements in the future. Researching newer companies in the industry is also a good idea to learn about which companies might threaten your market share in the future.

Competitor Analysis Examples

How do you write a competitor analysis.

How many details you want to include in your eCommerce competitor analysis example will depend on your goals and the stage of your business growth. For instance, if you own a start-up business, you can create a report that mainly focuses on market research. If your company is well-established, you may have to include details on emerging competitors. Here are the steps to follow when writing a competitor analysis report:

Begin by creating an overview of your competitors

To create a solid report, you need to show exactly what your company should beat to find success. You need to audit any service or product that is currently solving the issue your business is also trying to solve. Also, you must write a brief profile for each competitor including details like:

• The market share and revenue of each competitor.
• The size of each competitor and details about their management teams.
• A general description of their weaknesses and strengths.
• An overview of how the customers perceive each company.

This overview will help you get a big-picture view of the market.

Begin your market research to discover industry trends and customer personas

Creating this report requires comprehensive market research. This involves gathering relevant information that will help you understand your customers while identifying opportunities for growth and recognizing industry trends.

This research will also help you put together customer personas that will serve as your guides to your marketing and business decisions. It will also help you plan for any changes that might cause marketplace disruptions. You can conduct market research using the following:

• Online questionnaires or surveys
• Customer interviews
• Focus groups conducted in person
• By purchasing a product of your competitor to examine their delivery and packaging experience
• Reading the records of your company
• Examining the existing economic conditions
• Researching significant technological developments

When putting market research together, consider providing a high-level summary of the current industry trends. You can even include details about the demographics of specific segments. But if you’re working with an adviser or consultant who has difficulties convincing skeptical stakeholders, you will need a good competitor report. Make sure to cover everything from consumer profiles to market forecasts, as these will help you get decision-makers and clients on board.

Use a feature comparison matrix to compare product features

Here, you will compare your product with other products and this is a very important part of the competitor analysis. You need to break down your product and your competitor’s product one feature at a time. You will find out what sets all companies apart. Aside from specific product features, include attributes like:

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

The most used format for a features analysis is a simple matrix where you place all businesses on one side and the relevant features on the other. With such a format, you can rate or check how well you perform. Often, the matrix can become very long, and working on it could be very tedious.

If you want to focus on only the things that provide the most value to your customers, you can present your comparisons in a more engaging way by using infographics. It’s recommended to talk to real people who have used your product and the products of your competitors. This will give you a more accurate picture of how your customers perceive the competition.

Summarize using a SWOT analysis

Expect things to get a bit challenging when conducting research for your competitor analysis. First, you will handle volumes of data that many people won’t even understand. This is where SWOT analysis comes in. It’s a framework that will help you evaluate your competitive position by writing down your key Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.

It will also serve as a summary of your competitive analysis report for those who don’t want to read all the details. Download a competitor analysis template and use an online SWOT analysis tool to customize your template. Here are the things you need for your SWOT analysis:

• To find out your strengths, learn about what you’re doing really well in terms of products, marketing, sales, technology, branding, and more.
• To find out your weaknesses, learn about the things you’re struggling with and what’s holding you back.
• To find out your opportunities, learn about the weakest area of your biggest competitor, gaps in the existing market that still exist, and any changes that have recently happened to your business or the market.
• To find out your threats, learn about what your biggest competitor does better than you, the new products or features they’re working on, and the issues you aren’t addressing.

You can arrange your SWOT analysis in a list although using color-coded quadrants can be very helpful too.

Find out where your business fits in the competitive market

After the SWOT analysis, the next step is to look at the bigger picture. Based on the analysis, you need to figure out where each of your biggest competitors currently fits into the competitive market. The most common way to do this is by first identifying the dimensions that are most important for significant competitiveness, then plotting those on a matrix.

Focus on where your business fits in the market based on your biggest weaknesses and strengths or the biggest opportunities and threats you identified in your SWOT analysis. You can also summarize in words, the benefits, and features that set your product apart from the competition. This is a good way to end your report on a high note.

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Competitive Analysis Template

Get a leading edge over the competition by using the competitor analysis template. Identify the other companies you're competing with and how your product or service compares.

Trusted by 65M+ users and leading companies

About the Competitive Analysis Template

The competitive analysis template is where you will analyze and evaluate the competitive landscape for products, services, and companies. 

With a simple competitive analysis template, you will be able to answer these questions: 

Who are the other companies you’re competing with? 

How does your product or service compare? 

What makes you stand out? 

What are your competitors doing well that you can learn from? 

The benefits of the competitive analysis template

When you use a competitive landscape template, you will gain knowledge that can inform your product, marketing, sales strategies, and potentially your business strategy for the future.

By conducting a competitor analysis, you can learn about the market, what’s working and not working for your customers or potential customers, and where there are areas of opportunity for your company.

When you use Miro’s competitive analysis template, you will be able to see everything in one shared space, where you can easily make notes, add stickies, and invite your team to collaborate in real-time or asynchronously.  

How to use the competitive analysis template

There are many different competitive analysis examples, and you may want to perform one for each use case. For instance, you can do one for your digital marketing strategy, one for your website, and one for in-person events, to name just a few.  

You may want to make adjustments to the competitive analysis template depending on the specific use case, but here are a few common elements you will have in all of them:

Step 1: Start by filling out your company information. 

You may wish to include some high-level information about your company, such as your mission, values, value proposition, etc., as well as an overview of your main competitors. 

The competitors you list here will often be your direct competitors who offer a comparable product or service. 

Step 2: Describe your product/service information. 

This can include various price points of your main offerings and your channels to acquire new customers. If you know this information about your competitors, you can list it here, too.

Step 3: Gather information about the market. 

This may include your percentage of market share (and the respective percentages of the competitors you’ve listed), your competitors’ social media and web presence, and how your company is positioned in the market. 

Step 4: Perform a SWOT analysis .

Determine your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in comparison with the competitors you’ve identified. 

Step 5: Define your competitive advantage.

With all the information you’ve gathered in the previous steps, you can now define your competitive advantage. 

What areas separate you from the competition, and how can you continue to make the most of them?

Can I customize the template to include additional competitors or specific criteria?

The template can be tailored to your specific needs by allowing you to add more competitors or criteria relevant to your industry or market. This customization feature enables you to create a highly valuable competitor analysis report that is relevant to your business needs.

How frequently should I update the competitive analysis using this template?

To stay competitive in your industry, it is crucial to continuously monitor your competition. The competitive analysis process should be ongoing, and your template should be updated regularly to ensure you have the most accurate and up-to-date information. At a minimum, you should aim to update the competitive landscape template once a year, but it's important to also update it when there are any significant changes in your industry or market. By doing so, you can identify emerging trends or threats and make informed decisions to stay ahead of the competition.

Is there a recommended format for presenting the information within the template?

There is no specific format for presenting the information within the template. However, presenting the information clearly and concisely is always good practice, using headings and subheadings wherever necessary. Consider using bullet points or numbered lists to make the information more readable. Ultimately, the format you choose will depend on the type of information you're presenting and the intended audience.

Get started with this template right now.

Digital Marketing Plan Template

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Crafting an effective digital marketing strategy can be a daunting task, but the Digital Marketing Plan Template can make it easier for you. This tool allows you to map out every channel tactic and is particularly beneficial in fostering collaboration among team members in a centralized space. The template's clear structure and intuitive editing features ensure a well-defined digital marketing strategy while also encouraging real-time collaboration. With the ability to seamlessly collaborate, share insights, and collectively contribute, your team can create a dynamic and successful digital marketing plan.

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Likert Scale Template

Desk Research, Decision Making, Product Management

It’s not always easy to measure complex, highly subjective data — like how people feel about your product, service, or experience. But the Likert scale is designed to help you do it. This scale allows your existing or potential customers to respond to a statement or question with a range of phrases or numbers (e.g., from “strongly agree” to “neutral,” to “strongly disagree,” or from 1 to 5). The goal is to ask your customer some specific questions to turn into easy-to-interpret actionable user insights.

Eisenhower Matrix Template

Leadership, Strategic Planning, Prioritization

Have an overwhelming list of to-dos? Prioritize them based on two key factors: urgency and importance. It worked for American president Dwight D. Eisenhower, and it can work for you—this decision-making framework will help you know where to start and how to plan your day. With our template, you can easily build an Eisenhower Matrix with a quadrant of key areas (Do, Schedule, Delegate, and Don’t Do) and revisit it throughout the day as your priorities change.

Porter's Five Forces Template

Leadership, Strategic Planning, Market Research

Developed by Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter, Porter’s Five Forces has become one of the most popular and highly regarded business strategy tools available for teams. Use Porter’s Five Forces to measure the strength of your current competition and decide which markets you might be able to move into. Porter’s Five Forces include: supplier power, buyer power, rivalry among existing competitors, the threat of substitute products or services, the threat of substitute products and services, and the threat of new entrants.

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

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

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

Complete guide to competitive analysis

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is competitive analysis?

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

A competitive analysis helps you answer questions such as:

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

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

Why do a competitive analysis?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to do a competitive analysis

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

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

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

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

1. Create a shortlist of your competitors

There are three types of competitors:

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

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

Look inward

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

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

In its core, the product canvas covers:

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

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

Research obsessively

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

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

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

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

2. Do a deep dive on each competitor

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

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

Company profile

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

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

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

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

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

The information you’re looking for includes:

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

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

And the ideal customer profile for Etsy sellers:

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

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

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

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

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

List the following information:

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. Develop a holistic overview and strategy

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

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

Competitive matrix

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

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

A competitive matrix for our example would look like this:

Battle cards

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

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

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

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

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

Alternative competitive analysis frameworks

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

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

The Five Forces model

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

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

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

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

Customer journey map

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

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

Free competitive analysis templates

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

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

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

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

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

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How to Write a Market Analysis: Guidelines & Templates

Written by: Unenabasi Ekeruke

Whether you're starting a new business or improving existing business processes, you’ll need a detailed market analysis. Not having a proper assessment of your market will make it difficult, if not impossible, to achieve your business goals.

On top of that, you'll end up leaving money, customers and growth opportunities on the table. And your competitors will grasp it.

A market analysis tells you everything you need to know about your industry, competitors, customers that directly affect the growth of your business.

According to Think with Google , 40% of marketers leverage consumer research to make decisions. Getting it right with market analysis helps you make sound decisions, putting you a step ahead of your competitors.

Conducting a market analysis might appear daunting and complex. We've created this guide to discuss what a market analysis is, the components of market analysis and templates to help you create your own.

Let's get to it.

Here’s a short selection of 8 easy-to-edit market analysis templates you can edit, share and download with Visme. View more templates below:

Table of Contents

What is a market analysis.

• Benefits of a Market Analysis

What Are the Components of a Market Analysis?

9 market analysis templates, how to conduct a market analysis.

• Get to Work: Create Market Analysis with Visme
• A market analysis is a detailed assessment of the market for a product, service or business.
• Market analysis are vital for making informed decisions, staying up to date with emerging trends, developing the right offerings for your market, forecasting potential revenue and gauging business performance.
• A market analysis is composed of an industry description and outlook, a market description, market trends, a competitive analysis, key success factors, market projections and environmental factors.
• To conduct an analysis of the market, you must define your objective, identify your target market, gather competitor data, assess market trends, do a SWOT analysis and summarize the findings into a market analysis document.
• Take advantage of all the business features available in the editor to create your market analysis.
• Access an extensive library of templates , integrated analytics, collaboration and workflow features, plus millions of design assets right at your fingertips to streamline your business process.

A market analysis is an assessment of the industry or market for a product, service, or business. This analysis gives you an overview of all the elements that affect your specific market. Analyzing your market or industry helps you:

• Assess the attractiveness of the market
• Uncover opportunities for growth
• Develop strategies to overcome obstacles and edge out the competition
• Better position your business to serve customers right

A market analysis isn't just for writing business plans or marketing plans . It can be conducted as part of activities for launching new products or services, diversifying into new industries, or revamping your current business strategy.

For example, let's say you're looking for a gap in the market to create a new product or service. A thorough market analysis can point you in the right direction of what's most in demand.

A market analysis isn't a one-time event. If you want your efforts to be successful, keep your market knowledge up-to-date using a marketing dashboard .

You can use a marketing analysis at different stages of your business. It can be helpful to conduct it once or twice a year to keep up to date with major changes in the market.

With a detailed marketing analysis, you can gather valuable insights into:

• The size of the market in terms of value and volume
• Potential customer segments
• Demand for products or services and buying patterns
• The purchasing habits of customers
• Barriers to entry
• Regulations
• Competition (including their strengths and weaknesses)
• The overall market dynamics that influence the prices of products
• Forces affecting the behaviors of industry players and customers

5 Benefits of a Market Analysis

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A market analysis is valuable to your marketing deck . It provides a core understanding of your market and puts your business in the driving seat for success.

Here are some of the other reasons you need a market analysis for your business.

1. Make Informed Decisions

A market analysis gives you insight into market trends, competitors and key success factors. You're able to spot risks, threats and opportunities for growth. This information helps you develop a targeted business strategy and make the right decisions to drive growth.

2. Stay Up to Date With Emerging Trends

By conducting market analysis, you can stay on top of industry trends and see what your competitors aren't seeing. Taking advantage of this information puts you a step ahead of other players in your industry.

3. Develop the Right Offerings for Your Market

Market research and analysis involve listening to the market and communicating with customers. While conducting market analysis, you want to identify these things.

• Who or what influences their purchase decisions?
• What do they expect from brands?
• Why do customers choose your products over those of your competition?
• How do your customers use your products and how do they meet their needs?
• Does your product have the right product-market fit ?

You are better positioned to provide targeted solutions when you have a firm grasp of what customers want. Plus, you can use that information to tailor your business's offerings to your customers' needs.

While building your market analysis, use Google Analytics to assess how your website visitors are reacting to your product and service offerings. Analyze data like where they’re finding your products, how long they’re spending on your pages and where they’re dropping off. Visualize the Google Analytics data in your market analysis report with the help of Visme's integration with Google Analytics .

4. Forecast Potential Revenue and Future Earnings

A market forecast is a critical component of marketing analysis. It predicts the trends, financial projections and characteristics of your target market.

This forecast gives you an idea of what revenue, cost and profit margins to expect. You can tweak your business plan and budget accordingly.

5. Gauge Business Performance

Without metrics, it can be challenging to gauge your business performance. This is where a market analysis comes in handy. It provides benchmarks for measuring your business performance against other companies in your niche.

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A market analysis gives you a holistic view of the industries you’re interested in or currently operating in. The components of your market analysis should include:

• Industry description and outlook
• A description of your target market and trends
• Analysis of key competitors
• Key success factors in your industry
• Projections
• Environmental Factors

Let’s look at each of these components in more detail.

1. Industry Description and Outlook

When preparing your market analysis, you want to conduct an in-depth analysis of your industry to determine the current state and your industry's future. This section should have the following information:

• What the industry offers
• Size of your industry
• Emerging trends in the industry
• Rate of growth and the potential for growth
• Sustainability of the industry

These measures give a broad overview of your industry. For example, let’s say your business is operating in the software industry. You'll want to describe how large the industry is, the current growth rate and the projected growth rate over the next few years.

To gather statistics, reports and studies about your industry, leverage credible sources like:

• Government agencies
• Trade associations
• Local chamber of commerce

2. Market Description

In this section, you want to narrow down your data to focus on the specific market you're operating in.

From the software example above, the target market could be a specific niche within the software industry, like the finance or productivity software market.

By digging into the specifics of your target population, you're able to forecast how viable the market is and how profitable it will be to sell your solution to these customers. You'll also decide the best strategy to get value from this specific market.

Notice how the infographic template below provides detailed market analysis data about the virtual reality (VR) market.

3. Market Trends

Once you grasp your market description, double down on the occurrences that impact your industry over time. These trends could be short-term, intermediate and long-term.

Here you want to hone in to see how your market started, how it has evolved and where it's headed.

Why is this important? Monitoring the trends that affect your business ensures you aren't caught off-guard. Plus, it keeps you a step ahead of your competitors.

Here are some of the trends you'll have to keep an eye on:

• Changes in consumer preferences
• Change in market demographics
• Technological advancements
• Demand for specific products or services
• The supplier's influence over prices
• Price fluctuations and sensitivity

Not sure how to monitor trends unique to your target market? Here are some ideas:

• Read industry publications. Browse websites like Think with Google , Google Trends , Pew Research Center and US Census Business Data . They can provide a bigger picture of your market, consumer behavior and how it relates to the economy.
• Leverage industry trends analytics. You'll find a huge repository of data about past and current trends in your markets.
• Observe your competitors. If your major competitors are going in a particular direction in the market, they probably have access to insights that you don't have. Observing them can help you make more informed decisions.
• Attend industry events. Network with industry leaders and other relevant people and subscribe to newsletters.

Identifying market trends is mostly about keeping your ears to the ground and listening out for approaching shifts in your industry. As you explore these trends, you should track how your offerings align, fit in, or operate counter to the trends.

4. Competitive Analysis

Analyzing your competitive landscape involves identifying who your competitors are and where they stack up against you.

The competitive analysis gives a bird's eye view of:

• Who your direct and indirect competitors are
• Their products' quality and pricing
• Their marketing strategy and overall business strategy
• What makes your competitors stand out
• What your competitors' strengths and weaknesses are
• What enables you to outperform your competitors?

The beauty of competitive analysis is that it gives you a clearer idea of what you're up against. You can identify aspects of your business that need improvement to enable you to measure up or stay competitive in your industry.

Here's an excellent example of competitive data for your market analysis.

Much like market trends, the competitive landscapes for various markets change over time. And depending on what metrics you're looking at, you may get different results. Hence the need to make your competitive analysis an ongoing process.

Let's look at the various ways you can analyze the competitive environment.

Investigate Your Competitors

You can check out your competitors, websites, social media pages, news, press releases and other marketing content. You can even shop from them, read testimonials and reviews and conduct surveys . You're sure to have a clearer idea of why customers buy from them or what makes them stand out.

Using Porter’s Five Forces

Porter's Five Forces analyzes five major competitive forces that shape every market. They include:

• The bargaining power of suppliers
• The bargaining power of buyers
• The competitive rivalry
• The threat of substitute products
• The threat of new entrants

Bargaining power of suppliers analyses the number of suppliers in your industry and how easy it is to raise their prices. Suppliers have more power when they are fewer and raising prices can impact your profitability.

Bargaining power of buyers examines the influence that buyers have on prices and quality. Consumers have control when they are fewer. And because there are multiple sellers, they can easily switch to your rivals.

Competitive rivalry describes how intense the competition is in your market. Here you want to find out the following:

• How many competitors exist in the market?
• What is the quality and quantity of their offering compared to yours?

The threat of substitute products examines how easy it is for customers to switch to competing products. Customers will often find cheaper substitutes that cut their expenses, which may, in turn, affect your profitability.

The threat of new entrants examines how easy or difficult it is for new businesses to join your market. The easier it is for new firms to enter your market, the greater the number of competitors and the smaller your market share.

SWOT Analysis

A SWOT analysis is an excellent framework for evaluating your competitive position and making strategic decisions. This framework organizes your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to your business into a simple two-by-two grid.

Strengths and weaknesses are internal to your company. They include things you can change or have some control over. Examples include your team, intellectual property, patents, location and other resources.

Opportunities and threats are external. These are things that happen in the larger market. Essentially, you have no control over them. Examples include customer shopping trends, competitors, increasing demand for certain products, prices of raw materials and economic growth or decline.

Use the SWOT analysis template below as a guide to build on your strengths, address your weaknesses, seize new opportunities and minimize threats or risks.

Strategic Group Analysis

This tool also effectively analyzes the rivalry among competitors within your industry. It groups companies and analyzes their competitive positions based on common characteristics such as:

• Company size
• Product quality and features
• Number of market segments served
• Distribution channels
• Product and service diversity
• Price policy
• Technological position
• Vertical integration
• Financial or operating leverage

5. Key Success Factors

The key success factors in any industry include those competitive factors that impact the ability of businesses to thrive in the marketplace. These factors may include:

• Competitive capabilities
• Product and service attributes
• Operational strategies
• Marketing strategies
• People and processes

By evaluating key success factors, you can:

• Grasp the key elements you need to compete in your target market and become sustainable.
• Identify your areas of strength and where you need improvement.
• Identify pathways to achieve your business goals and objectives.
• Ensure the success and continued growth of your business.

If you're starting your business, find out what the top players in your industry are doing right. Check out their business model and how they structure their business in response to changing business environments.

6. Market Projections

This section should project financial forecasts, future numbers and trends in your target market. Here you want to hone in on significant numbers like:

• Market segments
• Market size and value
• Projected sales volume
• Average purchase value per customer
• Market share
• Pricing structure
• Gross and net margin within the industry

To get a near-accurate projection, you'll have to combine information from multiple sources including:

• Market trends
• Competitor analysis
• Customer descriptions and
• Purchase behavior

While forecasting your market, avoid making educated guesses that don't add up. Rather collect data from reliable sourcres.

Tools like Statista and Euromonitor provide detailed forecasts and market information relevant to different industries.

Check out how this graphic highlights key market data and projections.

7. Environmental Factors

These are outside factors that exert an external influence on your business. They include economic, social, political, legal and technological factors.

Although you have limited control of these factors, you must study and include them in your market analysis.

Why's that? They can improve or disrupt your business processes.

Having a bird's eye view of these factors from different angles lets you identify and resolve the problems they can cause.

One of the most popular ways to measure environmental factors is the PESTLE analysis model . Here are some things to consider when carrying out a PESTLE analysis.

• Social factors in your business environment. They include lifestyle trends, demographic considerations, socio-economic status, location, consumer beliefs and values.
• The political climate. These include government policies, free trade disputes, taxation, laws, competition regulations, import restrictions, fiscal policy initiatives .
• Economic factors. They include interest rates, foreign exchange rates and economic policies.
• Technological innovations and trends likely to affect the market, such as automation, cybersecurity, 5G and the internet of things (IoT).
• Legal factors include employment laws, intellectual property laws, safety standards and consumer protection laws.
• Environmental considerations like carbon footprint, climate change impacts, extreme weather events.

Now you know the components that go into detailed market analysis. The next step is to create it for your next marketing presentation .

Let's look at some of our editable templates for creating your market analysis.

1. Market Analysis

Whether you're starting a new business or switching up your business strategy, this market analysis presentation template is an excellent starting point. It provides a perfect structure for uncovering, analyzing and reporting trends in your target market.

The template features an overview page that enables you to summarize key information. The following page uses unique data widgets like pie charts , bar charts , maps and line graphs to summarize important data like:

• Global trends
• Survey results
• Survey results by country
• Trends over time
• Key takeaways

This market analysis example is fully editable, making it a perfect fit for businesses in any industry. Simply plug in your data, figures and statistics and other important market data.

Visme has a rich library of built-in shapes , icons , stock photos , videos and animations. Feel free to make this template your own by adding your logo and changing the fonts , colors , images and videos. You have everything to ignite your creative spark and make a solid impression on your audience.

2. SWOT Analysis

This beautiful SWOT analysis template gives investors and other key stakeholders a detailed view of your business' competitive landscape.

The 4-page presentation captures your company's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. At a glance, you'll have a clearer view of where your brand sits within the wider market and identify potential growth opportunities.

A SWOT analysis is a company-wide activity and requires collaborative efforts. You want to consider your SWOT from many angles and ensure nothing is left out. Our software makes it super-easy for you to collaborate with your team to conduct your SWOT analysis.

You can set up a workspace for your organization and invite team members to collaborate and manage roles from your dashboard.

Team members can make changes, drop comments and more.

What's more, your SWOT analysis doesn't have to be some boring document staring at your audience. Spice it up with interactivity by adding animations, videos, images and graphics.

You can share that document with your audience via a link that automatically updates when you change the design or content.

3. Competitive Analysis

To capture a sizable share of your market, you must determine how you stack up against your competitors in your market. Whether you're analyzing a competitor's business-level strategy, market share, target market, or competitive advantage, this market research template offers side-by-side comparison in an infographic layout. It also centralizes your market analysis in a single location, making it accessible to your team for decision making.

The data illustrations and beautiful icons, pictures and graphics make the template visually appealing. You can engage your readers and quickly grab their attention with this colorful competitive analysis template.

Feel free to tweak fonts and colors and add logos to showcase your brand image.

When creating with the Visme editor, take advantage of all the features that Visme AI has to offer. Create complete documents from a text prompt with the AI Document Generator , get help writing headers and text with the AI Writer.

Craft unique visuals with the AI Image Generator , remove backgrounds to create cutouts from photos with the AI Background Remover , and edit your images with the integrated AI Edit Tools .

4. Marketing SWOT Analysis

With this professional SWOT analysis infographic, you can visualize that information in an immersive and engaging way. Visme's intuitive drag-and-drop editor lets you whip up beautiful documents using your design ideas.

This marketing analysis template lets you easily swap the existing fonts, images, icons and texts and opt for more vibrant colors for your document.

Work on this SWOT analysis together with your team using Visme’s workflow feature . Assign each section to one team member at a time and see what ideas they come up with. Then, assign the others until several people have added their input to the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Then, check it together to see what stands out the most and finalize the graphic.

5. Market Segmentation

Market segmentation lets you identify different groups within your target market. You can maximize your efforts by delivering more targeted offerings to them. Use this attractive market assessment template to share information about the characteristics of your market segments.

The template showcases these key elements of your market analysis.

• Short induction of your product, service, or solution
• Company profile
• The problem statement and what you're looking to achieve with the market segment
• Demographic, geographic, psychographic and behavioral segmentation
• Value proposition statement

The template is fully customizable. So you can edit this marketing presentation deck to match your business. Tweak the design, typefaces, visuals and other elements to suit your taste.

6. Industry Trends

Explore the events that will change the trajectory of your industry with this striking industry trends infographic template. Using this template, you can present a brand infographic on patterns relating to price, sales, consumption, buying behavior, marketing and other areas in your industry.

You don't need professional design experience to tweak this template into an informative marketing deck. Visme's professional online editor and customizable templates give you a creative edge. You can personalize this template to reflect your company's branding by adding logos, icons, colors and fonts relevant to your messaging.

Using Visme's brand kit feature, you can save your corporate brand and apply it to any project with a few clicks. Upload your logos, color palettes, fonts and other design assets and your brand kit will be set up within seconds.

7. Competitor Analysis Worksheet

This marketing deck worksheet is a huge time saver. It has everything you need to organize and communicate the details of your competitive research.

While the SWOT we discussed earlier focuses on your brand, this one is different. This SWOT analysis sheds light on your competitors' strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and strengths.

The template has a minimalist design and a simplistic layout. However, Visme gives you the creative freedom to cut, copy and paste anything you like until you are satisfied with the final version.

Once done, you can easily share your competitor analysis worksheet with relevant stakeholders using a link that automatically updates when you change your design. You can also embed your content on your website or blog using a code or download it in PDF, PNG, PowerPoint and HTML5 file formats.

8. Market Share

Build your market analysis and share relevant information about market segments, market share, size and opportunities using this beautiful template.

The template will help inform your business plan and strategy and communicate the size of the opportunity to potential investors.

Visme has thousands of designs, fonts, stock images, themes and assets to make your infographic pop. Make this template your own by adding new text and images and bold headings to emphasize titles. Customize your color scheme, icons and fonts and watch your infographic transform into a compelling graphic.

Not convinced? Take a look at what small business owner Jessica L. has to say;

Small Business Owner

9. SWOT Analysis Infographics

Break down competitor information with this customizable SWOT analysis that leaves an impression on your audience.

This SWOT marketing infographic is fully editable. You can spice up your infographics by adding your brand colors, typefaces and high-quality icons and images, all sourced from Visme's extensive collections of design assets.

If you want to present facts and data, Visme has your back. Our software has a wide variety of interactive tools and data widgets, including graphs, maps, charts, pictograms and much more. You can also make your infographic dynamic by adding animated characters, illustrations and clickable icons with customizable repetitions, speed and colors.

Step 1: Define your objective

Clearly outline what you aim to achieve with the market analysis, whether it’s launching a new product or entering a different demographic.

Step 2: Identify your target market

Pinpoint the specific group of customers you intend to serve, considering demographics, psychographics and buying behavior. Use Visme feedback forms to assess how your product or service is helping your current clients and pinpoint issues early on.

Step 3: Gather relevant data on competitors

Research competitors and conduct a market share analysis of their pricing strategies, market positioning, and key strengths and weaknesses.

Step 4: Assess market trends and dynamics

Stay informed about current and emerging trends, economic factors, and industry changes that may impact your market. Use a marketing dashboard that includes all the vital metrics your team wants to track.

Step 5: Do a SWOT analysis

Evaluate your internal strengths and weaknesses as well as external opportunities and threats to develop a comprehensive understanding of your position in the market. Anticipate challenges that may arise, allowing for proactive planning.

Step 6: Summarize findings to inform strategic decisions

Consolidate your analysis into actionable insights to guide business strategies and decision-making. Use Visme to help you create a market analysis document that’s impactful and easy to follow. Then, share it with your team using Visme’s different sharing and publishing options like PDF, HTML5 or a digital flipbook.

Create Your Market Analysis with Visme

One of the biggest setbacks you'll face in business is lacking an understanding of your industry or target market. That's where a market analysis becomes useful and having a detailed one will save you the heartache.

It gives you a bird's eye view of market conditions, competitors, consumer behavior and other factors that impact your business.

Without detailed market analysis, you'll miss out on growth opportunities, make poor business decisions and lose out to your competitors.

A market analysis isn't a one-off activity. You need to make it an ongoing process. We recommend using Visme's market analysis template to collect and share detailed information about your market. Best of all, you don't need to be a professional designer to know how to use our tool.

Effortlessly create insightful marketing reports and more with Visme.

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About the Author

Unenabasi is a content expert with many years of experience in digital marketing, business development, and strategy. He loves to help brands tell stories that drive engagement, growth, and competitive advantage. He’s adept at creating compelling content on lifestyle, marketing, business, e-commerce, and technology. When he’s not taking the content world by storm, Unenabasi enjoys playing or watching soccer.

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Template Highlights

• Download this competitive analysis template as an Excel spreadsheet, a Word document, or a PDF.
• Complete the top row with the names of your top competitors.
• Now, complete the second column by adding information about your company. Be honest about your weaknesses!
• Complete the column for each of your competitors, finding the information online, by calling a colleague, or through your personal experience in the market.
• By comparing across the columns, you can get a better sense of how your company compares to your competition.

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Competitive analysis template.

COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS

OUR COMPANY

COMPETING COMPANY 1

COMPETING COMPANY 2

COMPETING COMPANY 3

COMPETING COMPANY 4

COMPANY NAME

TARGET CUSTOMER

BRAND PERSONALITY

Frequently Asked Questions

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13 Competitor Analysis Templates That Will Help You Dominate Your Market

In the fast-paced corporate world with increasing competition, businesses must find ways to stay ahead of the competition. 

But how to do that? 

One way to have an edge over your competitors and in the market is by performing competitor analysis. 

It will help you understand the competitive landscape around you and where your business stands in the market by collecting and analyzing data about their products, prices, advertising strategies, and customers, along with the current market trends.

This way, you can identify their strengths and weaknesses, uncover market opportunities, and adjust your business strategy accordingly.

Let’s discuss what competitor analysis is, its benefits, and some of the best competitor analysis templates that you can use to stay ahead in the market. 

Competitor Analysis Templates and Their Benefits

Competitor analysis templates are reusable pieces of code that you can download and use for performing competitor analysis. It aims to collect information and insights that give your company an edge over your competitors.

Competition analysis templates make it easier for business owners to understand their competitors more, gauge their strategies, and make better decisions. Here’s how they are helpful. 

• Learning competitor insights: Competitor analysis templates help businesses gather information about their competitors’ strategies in terms of pricing, marketing, product offerings, and customer targeting. This information helps identify loopholes in their strategies so that you don’t make those mistakes.
• Identifying strengths and weaknesses: With templates, you can quickly enable systematic assessment of competitors’ strengths and weaknesses to enhance their products more while working on weak points.
• Recognizing market positioning: Evaluating competitors’ positions in the market becomes easier with competitor analysis templates. By understanding the unique value they offer and how they promote their brand, businesses can design effective marketing strategies and improve their market positioning.
• Efficient analysis: Templates provide a well-organized framework for competition research, addressing all relevant aspects, from product features to customer service. This simplifies the analytical process and ensures important data is noticed quickly.
• Tracking competitors over time: Templates enable businesses to monitor changes in competitors’ market positioning and tactics over time. This way, businesses can stay informed about the evolving competitive landscape and adjust their strategies accordingly.
• Benchmarking performance: Templates allow businesses to compare their key performance indicators (KPIs) with that of competitors to identify areas for improvement and set growth objectives.

Different Parts of Competitor Analysis

Company info.

Competitor analysis involves studying your competitors’ history, structure, and background. It helps you understand their positive points, negative points, and tactics. 

• Begin by examining the company’s background, such as when it was founded, its founders, and its structure. 
• Focus on their top executives and management
• Analyze their products/services, pricing, and promotional strategies
• Evaluate their reputation, customers, and market share

Product Info

Studying your competitors’ data helps you understand their products and services. Look closely at important details like product information, specifications, costs, standards, and unique features. 

This gives you an insight into what attracts customers to the offerings. By understanding your competitors, you can identify opportunities and stay competitive. So, when developing your marketing plan , pay attention to the specific details of their products.

Market Info

Competitor analysis involves understanding the market. It begins by identifying the target market, including the customers and their preferences. Factors like geography, gender, age, and market share of the competitor are considered.

Additionally, analyzing market trends helps predict future directions and make informed business decisions.

Business Model

Analyzing your competitors’ business models involves examining various aspects of their strategies. This includes finding out how they generate revenue, distribute their products, build relationships, and gain a competitive edge. 

By studying their revenue streams, you can identify their most profitable sources of income. Similarly, researching their distribution channels helps you understand how they reach customers.

Moreover, try knowing about what differentiates them in the market. You can also uncover cooperative relationships that benefit both parties by identifying their partnerships and alliances.

Target Market

Analyzing your competitors’ target market, their customers, and what motivates the customers is crucial for competitive analysis. This involves studying the preferences, needs, and behaviors of their audience.

It will help you improve and customize your marketing strategies and effectively engage your target by creating compelling messages. 

Strength and Weakness

Understanding where your competitors strive and where they struggle is crucial. It helps you allocate resources wisely and shape your plans accordingly. This includes assessing their technical capabilities, customer base, and operational efficiency.

By gathering this information, you can identify opportunities for your company to excel while gaining a competitive advantage. 

Where to Implement Competitor Analysis

Competitor analysis is crucial for your company’s success. You can develop effective plans and make informed decisions by researching and understanding your competitors. It can be implemented in the following areas:

Product Development

• Learn about your competitors’ products and services, identifying their positives and negatives
• Identify all the gaps in the market that your company can fill with unique offerings
• Understand customers’ preferences and expectations to improve your products

Marketing Strategies

• Examine your competitors’ marketing initiatives to craft effective strategies
• Explore untapped marketing channels or techniques to attract new customers
• Highlight specific qualities or advantages that set your company apart from others
• Compare your prices with your competitors to improve competitiveness.
• Consider whether you can offer lower or premium pricing based on your value proposition .
• Adjust your pricing approach to increase profits while maintaining customer appeal

Acquiring New Customers

• Determine which customer groups your competitors are successfully targeting
• Identify the best positioning for your company to attract and retain customers
• Create targeted marketing messages that address customer pain points and differentiate your business

Finding Market Opportunities 

• Find areas where competitors lack customer service, presenting opportunities for your company
• Discover untapped markets or emerging trends that can drive growth

Now, let’s look at some of the best competitor analysis templates.

Miro ’s competitor analysis templates are a helpful tool that can help companies understand their competitors better. It has a clear structure that collects and analyzes specific data to generate insights like competitors’ strengths, weaknesses, and market positions. 

Features and Benefits :

• Product comparison: You can assess competitor products’ specifications, costs, and unique selling points.
• Marketing strategy: Analyze competitors’ target market, channels, messaging, and techniques.
• SWOT analysis: It identifies each competitor’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
• Market share analysis: It will help you examine competitors’ market share, growth patterns, and customer preferences.
• Customer feedback: You can collect information from social media comments, ratings, and sentiments using user-friendly and attractive templates.

Lucidchart is a popular platform that offers plenty of useful competitor analysis templates that can help you amplify your marketing strategies by performing thorough competitor analysis. 

• Competitor profiles: Create detailed profiles of each competitor, including their history, market presence, and unique selling points.
• Target audience analysis: Identify and understand your competitors’ target market’s characteristics, preferences, and behavior.
• Market share assessment: Analyze each competitor’s market share and track changes over time.
• Pricing and value proposition: Compare your competitors’ products’ pricing structures, packages, and value propositions.
• Marketing channels: Examine how competitors utilize marketing channels such as social media, advertisement, and content marketing .
• Brand perception: Analyze how consumers perceive your competitors’ brands and brand positioning strategies.

HubSpot competitor analysis templates help companies gather and analyze information about their competitors and get a comprehensive understanding of the market, enabling companies to make informed decisions. 

Features and Benefits

• Detailed info: Documents relevant competitor information, including their name, industry position, and target market.
• Marketing strategies: Identifies and evaluates the promotional strategies employed by competitors.
• Product comparison: Compares competitor goods and services specifications, costs, and customer testimonials.
• Content analysis: Analyzes the content on competitors’ blogs, social media accounts, and email marketing campaigns.
• SEO analysis: Examines competitors’ backlink profiles, keyword rankings, and website performance.

Someka ’s competitor analysis templates aim to provide a complete understanding of the competitive environment in the industry, empowering companies so that they can make better marketing strategies. 

• Competitor Profile: Capture important details about each competitor, such as their history, location, and target market.
• Market share analysis: Analyze each competitor’s market share to understand their position in the industry.
• Customer analysis: Identify each competitor’s target market’s demographics, preferences, and purchasing behavior.
• Pricing analysis: Evaluate the pricing tactics employed by competitor businesses, including discounts, special offers, and pricing structures.
• Social media analysis: Examine competitors’ social media presence, followers, engagement, and content strategies.
• Review analysis: Analyze online reviews, ratings, and customer comments to gauge customer satisfaction.

Smartsheet templates offer a systematic framework for conducting competitor analysis by offering many features and capabilities.

• Market trends: Identify and assess market trends and developments that impact competitors.
• Competitive positioning: Examine how competitors differentiate their products and establish their position in the market.
• Distribution channels: Find out about the channels through which competitors market their goods or services.
• Partnerships and collaborations: Analyze partnerships and collaborations formed by competitor companies to gain a competitive advantage.
• Customer satisfaction: Collect and evaluate customer reviews and satisfaction scores related to competitors’ products.
• Brand perception: Consider the brand reputation and consumer perception when assessing how the market views those competitors.

SlideTeam ’s templates are unique yet user-friendly and effective, helping companies make solid business decisions through effective competitor analysis.

• Market research: Gather and analyze market information and competitor-related trends.
• Competitive advantage: Identify and evaluate each competitor’s unique strengths and advantages.
• Market share analysis: Assess competitor companies’ market share and growth patterns.
• Customer perception: Understand how consumers perceive competitor brands and products through surveys or feedback analysis.
• Marketing channels: Find out about the different marketing channels your competitors use, like social media, advertising, and collaborations.
• Product and service improvements: Examine the enhancements made by competitors to their offerings and how they differentiate themselves in the market.

Praxie offers useful templates to help businesses gain insights into the industry and make smarter marketing strategies. 

• Market research: Investigate target markets, customer segmentation , and how your competitors position themselves.
• Brand identity: Examine your competitors’ visual identity, messaging, and logo to understand how they position their brand.
• Customer experience: Analyze the user experience, customer satisfaction, and customer service your competitors provide.
• Sales and distribution channels: Explore the sales and distribution methods employed by your competitors, such as partnerships, online marketplaces, and retail channels.
• Advertising and promotions: Evaluate your competitor s’ advertising strategies, marketing initiatives, and distribution methods to understand their messaging and target audience.
• Innovation and technology: Explore how your competitors utilize innovation, technology, and research and development (R&D) to gain a competitive advantage.

Beautiful.ai

Beautiful.ai ’s competitor analysis templates have visually appealing and engaging layouts, offering useful insights into competitors. 

• Market segmentation: Consider the target market segments that your competitors focus on and adjust your products accordingly.
• Customer experience: Evaluate the customer touchpoints, overall experience, and customer journey of your competitors to identify areas for improvement.
• Product innovations: Analyze your competitors’ product or service innovations, patents, and technological advancements.
• Marketing campaigns: Assess the effectiveness of your competitors’ marketing initiatives, including their messaging, advertising, and promotions.
• Market expansion: Analyze the strategies employed by your competitors while entering new markets.

Airtable is an excellent platform where you can get awesome competitor analysis templates if you wish to get a competitive edge in the market. Airtable templates can help you collect crucial competitor data and analyze it to shape your business. 

• Market share analysis: Assess the market shares of your competitors and understand their relative positions.
• Customer insights: Gather customer opinions and testimonials about your competitors’ products and services.
• Pricing analysis: Compare pricing structures and product offerings to determine how other businesses are positioned.
• Distribution channels: Examine how your competitors distribute their products to reach their target market.
• Social media engagement : Evaluate your competition’s presence, activity levels, and content strategy.
• Brand perception: Discover how customers and the public perceive those competitors.

Moqups will allow you to effectively perform competitor analysis with the help of its competitor analysis templates that are easy to use and customize based on your needs. 

• Market presence: Gather information about your competitors’ market share, customer base, and brand positioning.
• User experience analysis: Evaluate your competitors’ websites and applications’ visual appeal, usability, and navigation.
• Feature comparison: Assess the features and capabilities of your competitors’ products and services.
• Pricing analysis: Examine your competitors’ pricing plans, discounts, and strategies.
• Customer feedback : Collect and analyze customer feedback, endorsements, and competitor reviews.
• Marketing channels: Explore your competitors’ marketing channels, such as social media platforms, advertising campaigns, and content distribution.

Whiteboards

Whiteboards provide businesses with beautiful and feature-rich competitor analysis templates for gaining important data about their competitors. You can collect key information about each competitor, including their goals, principles, and background.

• Target audience analysis: Understand your competitors’ ideal customers’ specific characteristics, preferences, and needs.
• Marketing channels: Identify the platforms and marketing channels used by competitor companies to reach their target market.
• Pricing and value proposition: Evaluate the pricing strategies and unique features of your competitors’ products or services.
• Customer experience: Examine the overall level of customer service your competitors provide, along with their ratings and reviews.

Adroll ’s competitor analysis templates have a simple and well-organized layout so that you can easily get started with your analysis process. 

• Business info: Get an overview of each competitor, including details about their brand positioning, target market, and key messaging.
• Advertising platforms: Examine how competitors utilize advertising on social media, search engines, and display networks.
• Ad creative: Analyze competitors’ different types of advertisements, including their design and messaging.
• Ad performance: Track the performance of competitor ads, including engagement metrics, click-through rates, and conversion rates.
• Keyword analysis: Identify the keywords competitors use in their campaigns.

Get your competitor analysis templates from Atlassian , which is a powerful platform that has an array of offerings for businesses.

Atlassian ‘s templates will help you understand and evaluate your competitors by aggregating and analyzing their business data.

• Competitors overview: Gain information about your primary competitors’ markets, products, and services.
• Market share and positioning analysis: Analyze your competitors’ market shares and positions, enabling you to understand your position better.
• Product comparison: This allows you to assess the features, pricing, and overall quality of your products or services compared to your competitors.
• Marketing techniques and strategies: Examine the marketing techniques and strategies employed by your competitors, which can guide your marketing approach.
• Customer feedback: Gather consumer reviews and comments about your competitors for improvement.

Competition analysis is crucial for companies thriving in a highly competitive industry. By conducting thorough research on your competitors, you can gather vital information to shape your business decisions.

So, consider any of the above competitor analysis templates to collect and analyze competitor data and ultimately stay ahead of the competition.

You may also explore some free SWOT analysis templates .

Competitor SWOT analysis template

Created by:

What is a competitor SWOT analysis template?

Our competitor SWOT analysis template is a resource used by competitive intelligence and product marketing professionals to evaluate the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) of your company in comparison to your competitors.

This template aims to help businesses understand their competitive landscape, identify areas for improvement, and uncover potential opportunities and threats. By analyzing both internal and external factors, companies can make informed strategic decisions to enhance their market position.

Who's it for?

This SWOT analysis template is designed for product marketing managers, business analysts, and strategic planners who need to assess their competitive environment. It's also useful for those involved in market research , competitive analysis, and strategic planning.

The tool is really designed to benefit anyone looking to gain a deeper understanding of their company's standing relative to its competitors – and to identify strategic initiatives for growth and improvement.

How to use the template

Gather data.

Start by collecting information about your company and competitors. Use various sources such as customer feedback, industry reports, competitor websites, and market research to compile comprehensive data.

Analyze strengths

• Your Company : List what you do better than your competitors. This could include superior product features, strong customer relationships, skilled staff, or effective marketing strategies.
• Competitors : Identify what your competitors excel at that you may not be doing well. This could include high engagement webinars, advanced technology, or better customer service.

Identify weaknesses

• Your Company : Acknowledge areas where you lag behind competitors. These could be long customer service wait times, missing features, or poor SEO rankings.
• Competitors : Pinpoint your competitors' weaknesses, backed by evidence such as negative customer reviews or declining market share.

Spot opportunities

• Your Company : Look for emerging trends or untapped markets based on your competitor and customer research. Consider new features, market expansions, or press opportunities that could benefit your business.
• Competitors : Assess opportunities that your competitors are ready to seize or are better positioned to capitalize on.

Evaluate threats

• Your Company : Consider potential obstacles that could hinder your success. Think about new competitors, regulatory changes, technological advancements, or shifts in customer needs.
• Competitors : Identify threats to your competitors' success and how they might pose a direct threat to you, such as rapid growth or market expansion.

Compare and strategize

Use the collected information to compare your company with competitors. Identify areas where you can leverage your strengths, address weaknesses, seize opportunities, and mitigate threats. Develop strategic initiatives based on this analysis to improve your competitive position.

Ready to sharpen your competitive edge? Download your competitor SWOT analysis template now and start making informed strategic decisions!

Download your SWOT analysis template

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How to Do Competitor Research in Less than 30 Minutes? 

Table of contents.

Time is precious in a marketer’s life, and traditional competitor analysis can be time-consuming. Lucky us, AI tools have transformed this process, providing quick and accurate insights.

For example, using Brand Assistant (inside the Brand24 tool), I analyzed Spotify’s market position. The data showed that Spotify had a reach of 7.3 billion, much higher than Tidal’s 628.5 million. It also showed that Tidal has 10% negative sentiment, while Spotify has only 3%. It turned out that Tidal is somehow linked with completely irrelevant topics!

This AI analysis offers Tidal insights to fine-tune its presence in these places. That’s just one aspect of competitor research and it offers so much more!

Let’s dive deeper, shall we?

Competitor research is the process of identifying and analyzing your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses to improve your own business strategies. It helps you understand market trends, spot opportunities, and stay ahead of the competition. This is done by gathering data through tools, surveys, and direct comparisons. 

Table of contents:

What is competitor research? Definition

Purposes of competitor research.

• Step 1: Ask AI tools

Step 2: Ask the target audience

Step 3: benchmark with competitor, challenges in competitor research.

Competitors’ research involves identifying their strengths and weaknesses, evaluating their products or services to understand the market, and finding ways to set your business apart.

Analyzing the products and services of your main competitors can provide valuable insights into the target market and industry trends.

Conduct competitor research!

Conducting a competitive analysis holds great potential for improving your own insights.

When I was a teenager, I loved crafts and made many of them. However, I needed money to buy materials. That’s when I had the fantastic idea of opening an online shop on Etsy.

I was pretty sure that I wouldn’t have problems selling my work, but what I didn’t predict was that I wouldn’t be able to keep up with producing new ones.

I wondered, “How can I make this work?” and decided to take a look at other similar small businesses. I realized that most people don’t paint each pattern once but keep repeating them. That was the game-changer!

I incorporated this idea into my “business strategy” and kept doing a great job.

You may think this example is silly, and yep, I agree. Perhaps I shouldn’t compare a teenager’s little artsy shop with a REAL BIG business.

But isn’t the process similar? The benefit of a competitor analysis is clear.

Just on a different level 😉

What else can a competitive analysis give you?

Here’s a list of benefits of a competitor research:

• You gain a clear understanding of where your direct competitors excel and where they falter, allowing you to identify opportunities for improving your marketing strategy and brand awareness .
• It’s a fantastic way to learn about the latest trends, consumer preferences, and demands within your industry, helping you to stay relevant and responsive.
• It lets you identify potential threats from direct competitors early, giving you time to develop strategies to counteract them effectively.
• You can discover gaps in your competitors’ offerings.
• You can meet the needs of your own target audience better by analyzing how competitors interact with their customers (including competitors customer service and their marketing strategies).
• It enables to set benchmarks based on competitors’ performance to measure your own growth and success and ensure you maintain or exceed industry trends.
• It’s possible to recognize more efficient processes and practices used by competitors, which can streamline your own business operations and reduce costs.
• You can learn from the effective sales strategies of competitors to enhance your own sales process and increase market share.
• It allows you to understand where competitors are investing (new technologies, markets, or customer segments) to inform your own investment decisions.

So, now that you (most probably) want to do a competitive analysis – let me explain how to do it.

Get insights about your competitors!

How to do competitor research?

There are many ways to do market research, from the least efficient – manual analysis to the most effective…

Hah, got you!

Did you really think it would be just one option?

A detailed competitive analysis is a complex process. I divided it into 3 steps:

Step 1 Ask AI tools

AI still has its lovers or haters… But it undoubtedly speeds up the tasks we would do much longer. In fact, competitive analysis is one of them. The key is to ask the right questions and use advanced tools.

So, ready for a quick test?

I wanted to find information about the direct and indirect competitors to Spotify, find key competitors to Spotify and identify market gaps in the music industry.

These are the questions I asked:

• Who are Spotify’s key competitors?
• How does the music streaming market landscape look like?
• How does Spotify’s sentiment look like compared to Tidal?

Here’s what the answers of ChatGPT 4.0 look like.

• “Who are Spotify’s key competitors?”

The competitors it listed are very accurate, and include some less obvious brands – for example, I wouldn’t find Deezer, it’s a quite specific platform.

• “How does the music streaming market landscape look like?”

The second answer isn’t satisfying to me. I feel like it’s very general, while I expected some hard data in competitive analysis:

And here’s a final answer:

• “How does Spotify’s sentiment look like compared to Tidal?”

This one is quite interesting, but again – super general. Plus, it didn’t provide any actual data.

However, doing a similar competitive analysis manually would take me much longer than 5 minutes, which is exactly how much time I spent on writing these questions and getting answers.

Try Brand24’s AI features!

I like that this tool also provided links to resources so I can easily double-check the information.

This is a more detailed answer on competitive market research. I like the fact that it didn’t provide just the topics but also the specific brand that covers it.

So, as you can easily see, these well-known AI tools are mainly based on search engine data. They will not correctly answer the question of real time data or specific data-driven analysis.

That’s where Brand24’s Brand Assistant comes in handy as it combines the data from the media monitoring tool with ChatGPT “knowledge”.

Brand Assistant

This feature is super similar to the previously mentioned tools. It’s also based on a chat where you ask questions (prompts) to get the answers.

But the main difference is that Brand Assistant is based on data from monitored projects and can present conclusions, insights, and competitive analysis report that ChatGPT and Perplexity won’t. These two tools only give general conclusions and recommendations.

In terms of competitive analysis it’s a super powerful tool, but to harness its full potential – you need to set up projects also for your competitors. 

That way the tool will combine the monitoring data of your brand, your competitors and the general knowledge that ChatGPT has.

Get AI Brand Assistant!

These are the answers from the Brand Assistant:

Brand Assistant uses real-time data from monitored projects to present a comprehensive list of competitors. This ensures accuracy and relevancy, offering a more detailed and up-to-date competitive landscape.

While ChatGPT and Perplexity offer broad and general answers to this question, Brand Assistant provides specific, data-driven insights.

By combining media monitoring data with AI, Brand Assistant delivers a nuanced view of the market landscape, highlighting key players, emerging trends, and potential market gaps with greater accuracy and detail (and actual numbers!).

Brand Assistant stands out in sentiment analysis by using real-time data to compare Spotify’s sentiment with Tidal’s.

Unlike the general and often non-specific responses from ChatGPT and Perplexity, Brand Assistant offers detailed sentiment analysis based on current media monitoring data.

Plus, it even generated a chart to present this sentiment competitor analysis:

Want to test it for yourself?

Analyze your competitors using AI!

Here’s a ready-to-use list of prompts for Brand Assistant:

• How does [your brand]’s user growth compare to [competitors] in the past quarter?
• How does the public sentiment towards [your brand] compare to that of [competitors] on social media platforms?
• Has there been a noticeable shift in the number of negative mentions by [your brand] compared to [competitors] ?
• What trends are emerging in [your industry] preferences, and how are [competitors] adapting to these trends?
• Are there any significant partnerships or collaborations that [competitors] have engaged in that could influence [your brand]’s position in the market?
• What is the geographic market penetration of [your brand] versus competitors, and are there new markets that competitors are tapping into effectively?
• What is the level of brand loyalty for [your brand] users compared to those of other services, such as [competitors] ?
• How did the sentiment of [your brand] changed during the last 3 months and compare it to [competitors]?

Try Brand Assistant!

Next, it’s time to go straight to the source: your target audience.

Talking directly to the people you’re trying to reach can provide valuable insights that no AI tool can match.

Yes, it’s more time-consuming than AI analysis, but the insights you gain can be incredibly valuable and more focused on your brand.

Tips for conducting effective interviews:

• Make sure your questions are clear and directly related to the information you need.
• Combine online surveys, face-to-face interviews, and focus groups to get a well-rounded view.
• Encourage participation by offering small rewards, such as discounts or freebies.
• Look for patterns and trends in the responses to gain actionable insights.
• Avoid leading questions to ensure you get honest, unbiased feedback.

By engaging with your audience, you can uncover hidden preferences, frustrations, and needs.

This step, though time-intensive, can help tailor your strategies to better meet your audience’s expectations, setting you apart from your competitors.

The final step I’ll discuss is benchmarking the results of your competitor research with a competing brand/product/company, etc.

Why is this important, and what value does it provide?

Benchmarking against your competitors helps you understand where you stand in the market.

By analyzing their strengths and weaknesses in relation to your own, you can identify competitive advantage, opportunities for improvement, and areas where you already excel.

This comparison is crucial for setting realistic goals and developing strategies that leverage your own business competitive advantage.

But how to do it?

The easiest way is by using competitor analysis tools .

For example, using the Comparison tab in Brand24, you can directly compare key metrics such as:

• Social Media Reach
• Non-social Reach
• Online Presence Score
• Advertising Value Equivalency (AVE)
• UGC (user generated content)
• Share of Voice

This competitor analysis highlights where your direct competitors are performing well and where they might be falling short, giving you a clear picture of the competitive landscape.

Here’s what it looks like for Spotify and its competitors:

As you can see, Spotify is ruling the music streaming industry!

However, these stats are pretty dry. I personally love to understand the “why” behind them.

Research your competitors!

So why not ask the Brand Assistant?

Let’s find out what’s behind the negative brand mentions of Spotify and why Tidal has so many of them.

It turns out that Tidal’s problem might not be directly related to the service itself but to how the brand is associated with other negatively charged topics.

Isn’t it interesting?

I think the recommendation from Brand Assistant to monitor those mentions even though not having direct link to their service is a great tip. These are some dangerous spheres for the brand and it’s best to be aware how these conversations emerge. It can help to prevent a potential PR crisis.

Let’s now use it as a competitor analysis tool. I asked “How Spoify’s sentiment compares to Tidal’s during the last month?”

And as you can see, it did an amazing job!

Normally I’d have to spent at least an hour to compare this data (even having projects in a social listening tool for both brands).

But the Brand Assistant counted everything and gave me a clear analysis in less than 3 minutes.

Try AI Brand Assistant!

Competitive analysis is a complex process that has its limitations. However, being aware of some challenges makes it easier to overcome them.

That’s why I curated a list of potential challenges in competitor analysis:

• Data availability and accuracy Finding reliable and up-to-date data on competitors can be difficult as the publicly available information may be limited and outdated.
• Interpreting data correctly Analyzing large volumes of data requires expertise and is a crucial part of competitive analysis. Misinterpretation can lead to incorrect conclusions and marketing strategies.
• Resource intensive Conducting thorough competitor research can be time-consuming and costly. That’s why smaller businesses may lack the resources for comprehensive competitive analysis.
• Rapid market changes The market landscape can change quickly, making it hard to keep research current.
• Bias and subjectivity Personal biases can influence how data is interpreted and used.
• Access to proprietary information Some valuable competitor information is proprietary and not publicly accessible. This limits the scope of analysis and insights that can be gathered.
• Legal and ethical concerns Gathering a competitive edge must be done legally and ethically. And avoiding practices that could lead to legal issues or damage reputation is crucial.
• Changing consumer preferences Understanding and predicting shifts in competitors’ markets can be complex. Plus, competitor strategies may not always be aligned with these changes.
• Technological advancements Staying updated with technological changes that affect the industry is essential. At the same time, competitors may adopt new technologies faster, creating a gap.
• Integration of insights Effectively integrating competitor insights into your strategy can be challenging. They change really fast, and sometimes, it’s hard to even identify gaps, not to mention address them.

In today’s fast-paced marketing world, competitor analysis isn’t just important – it’s crucial for staying ahead of the game and keeping up with industry trends.

I think using AI tools is the best thing you can do. 

With their help, you can easily identify market trends, understand your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, and uncover new opportunities for growth.

These tools provide valuable data that can help you stay ahead of the competition, fine-tune your marketing strategies, and enhance your brand’s market share.

Final thoughts:

• Competitor analysis is a crucial part of any successful business strategy. It ensures you remain aware of the target market, adapt to changes quickly, and maintain a competitive advantage.
• AI tools save time and provide much more precise insights that manual analysis cannot match. They are indispensable for modern competitor analysis.
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Market Research Brief

Comprehensive market research brief.

Prepared by: [YOUR NAME]

Executive Summary:

The market research conducted on the cosmetics industry reveals a growing trend toward natural and organic products among consumers. Recommendations include expanding the product line to include more organic options and enhancing marketing efforts to target environmentally conscious consumers.

Introduction:

The purpose of this market research is to analyze the current trends and dynamics within the fast-food industry in urban areas. By examining consumer preferences and competitor strategies, we aim to identify opportunities for growth and innovation.

Market Overview:

The urban fast-food market is estimated to be worth $100 billion globally, with a projected annual growth rate of 5%. Major players include McDonald's, Burger King, and KFC, but smaller chains and independent restaurants also compete for market share.

Consumer Insights:

Millennials and Gen Z consumers show a preference for healthier fast-food options, including plant-based alternatives and customizable menus. Convenience and affordability remain key factors influencing purchase decisions.

Product/Service Analysis:

Our analysis indicates that our current menu lacks diversity and does not cater sufficiently to health-conscious consumers. Customer feedback suggests a desire for more vegetarian and vegan options as well as smaller portion sizes.

Competitive Analysis:

Competitors such as Subway and Chipotle have successfully capitalized on the demand for customizable, healthier food options. Their emphasis on fresh ingredients and transparent sourcing has resonated with consumers and posed a threat to traditional fast-food chains.

SWOT Analysis:

This SWOT analysis table provides a structured assessment of the company's internal strengths and weaknesses, as well as external opportunities and threats. It helps identify strategic areas for improvement and growth in the fast-food industry.

Recommendations:

Expand the menu to include more vegetarian and vegan options. Launch a marketing campaign highlighting the freshness and quality of ingredients. Partner with food delivery platforms to reach a wider audience.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, the market research highlights the need for our fast-food chain to adapt to changing consumer preferences and market trends. By implementing the recommended strategies, we can position ourselves for continued growth and success in the competitive urban market.

Appendices:

Survey results detailing consumer preferences.

Data tables showing the market share of key competitors.

Additional analysis of emerging trends in the fast-food industry.

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