The Ultimate Guide to Competitor Analysis

Understanding your competition isn't optional — it's essential for survival and growth. 

 But competitive intelligence is about more than simply knowing what your rivals are doing. It's about understanding the landscape in which your organization operates, defining meaningful metrics for success, and using those insights to make smarter strategic decisions. 

In this comprehensive guide, we'll walk you through everything you need to know about competitor analysis, from identifying different types of competitors to performing in-depth competitive intelligence research that actually drives business results. 

What is competitor analysis?

Competitor analysis is the process of identifying your competitors and evaluating their strategies, strengths, weaknesses, and market position to understand where your business fits in the landscape. It helps you discover opportunities, anticipate threats, and make informed decisions about your own strategy. 

The goal isn't to copy what competitors are doing. Rather, it's to understand the context in which you operate, learn from both their successes and failures, and identify white space opportunities where you can differentiate. 

Types of competitors

Before you can analyze your competition, you need to identify who they actually are. There isn't just one type of competitor out there — understanding the nuances is critical for effective analysis. 

Direct competitors

These companies offer the same service or products as you in the same geographical area, targeting the same audience and serving the same needs. 

For example, if you sell craft beer, your direct competitors are other craft beer brands sold in similar retail locations, at similar price points, targeting the same demographic of beer enthusiasts. 

Indirect competitors

These companies offer the same or similar services and products to you in the same area but serve a different need or purpose, or target a different audience. 

Using the beer example, an indirect competitor might be a wine brand. The wine is sold in the same retailers, but the product is different and the target market is also somewhat different, with some overlap. While not a direct threat, they could still capture some of your business if their product convinces someone to choose a glass of red over a beer. 

Tertiary competitors

There's also a third type: tertiary competitors. These are companies that sell products vaguely linked to yours but don't directly compete. 

A brand selling flavored sparkling water or artisanal soda could be a tertiary competitor to a beer brand. While they're not competing for the same purchase decision right now, that could change. 

Why monitor tertiary competitors? These players could become direct or indirect competitors if they decide to pivot their product line, or if consumer behavior shifts. For instance, the growing sober-curious movement in 2025 has turned many no-alcohol beverage brands into more serious competitors for beer and spirits companies. 

You don't need to research tertiary competitors as deeply, but keeping an eye on major changes or developments can help you anticipate market shifts before they impact your business. 

How to approach competitive intelligence

Many teams make a critical mistake: they obsess over tracking competitors without using that information strategically. 

As Evelyn Castillo, Brandwatch Solution Strategist, explains: "What I talk to our clients about a lot is highlighting the intelligence aspect of competitor intelligence — it's not just about knowing what's out there, tracking volumes, and comparing yourself. What's important is what you learn from it, how that informs action, and how those actions fit with the objectives of your organization." 

The truth is, simply knowing what competitors are doing isn't valuable if you don't know what to do with that information. Worse, teams often fall into the trap of copying competitors' tactics even when those actions don't align with their own business goals. 

Start with business objectives

Successful competitive intelligence doesn't begin with tactical questions. It starts with your company's objectives, around which you can build meaningful research questions. 

"The easy questions are 'What's our share of voice? What are our competitors doing?'" says Evelyn. "The more sophisticated questions we get are 'When we look at competitors, when we look at perceptions, what is it that people love about those brands? What is it that makes those brands competitors? What makes them top of mind?'" 

If your organization's goal is to be seen as the most sustainable brand in your category, comparing marketing activities with unsustainable competitors might not be the most relevant analysis. Instead, you might want to measure consumer perception of sustainability across your competitive set. 

Define meaningful metrics

One of Evelyn's favorite clients to work with is a large luxury fashion brand that has mastered its competitive intelligence strategy. "I feel like the biggest advantage for this brand is that they're very strategic in terms of how they do their competitor analysis. It isn't, again, about the share of voice," says Evelyn. "It's a very in-depth analysis where they say 'these are our business objectives, this is where we sit, and this is where we want to be.' Then they can begin understanding where their competitors are winning, and where they fall on the same criteria the brand is measuring themselves against." 

This approach isn't just beneficial to a single team. By going beyond vanity metrics like likes and mention volumes, the team can demonstrate how different initiatives shifted consumer perception, or how the brand moved up in specific categories important to the wider business. These insights can be communicated to executives and acted upon across the organization. 

How to identify your competitors

1. Start with the obvious

List the competitors you already know about. These are the brands you encounter regularly, the ones that win the same RFPs, or the companies your sales team mentions losing deals to. 

2. Ask your customers

Your customers often know your competitive set better than you do. They've researched options, compared features, and made decisions based on those comparisons. Market research through customer interviews provides invaluable competitive intelligence. 

Conduct customer interviews or surveys asking: 

• What other brands did you consider before choosing us? 
• What alternatives would you use if our product/service wasn't available? 
• What brands do you think of as similar to ours? 

3. Search for industry keywords and prompts

Use Google and LLMs (like ChatGPT) to find companies appearing in search results for relevant keywords and prompts. If someone searching for "sustainable athletic wear" finds both your brand and another, you’ve got competition. 

4. Use social listening

Social listening tools like Brandwatch Consumer Research can identify brands being mentioned alongside yours, or brands being discussed in the context of the same needs your product solves. 

5. Check review sites and comparison pages

Look at sites where your product is reviewed. What other products appear on the same pages? What brands are you being compared to? 

6. Look beyond direct competitors

As Evelyn notes: "Something that not enough clients do when looking at the competitive landscape is analysis within the category that's unbranded, especially in order to discover new brands. I feel like people really underestimate new entrants to the market." 

She provides an example: "A good example is in the feminine care category—if you're losing market share in feminine products you might think 'Oh, have people moved to tampons? What's happening?' The reality is there have been these new entrants to the market with products like sustainable cups, but if you were just looking at your known competitors you'd be making assumptions about what was driving that decline in consumption. You've got to take a step back when doing a landscape report to get that discovery aspect." 

What to analyze about your competitors

Once you've identified your competitors, what should you actually analyze? Here are the key areas: 

Company overview 

• Mission and values 
• Company history and founding story 
• Size and scale (employees, revenue, funding) 
• Market position and reputation 
• Geographic presence 

Products and services 

• Product/service lineup 
• Pricing strategy 
• Unique features or capabilities 
• Quality and reviews 
• Product roadmap (if available) 

Target audience 

• Who they're targeting 
• Customer demographics 
• Pain points they address 
• Customer personas 
• Market segments they focus on 

Marketing and content strategy 

• Messaging and positioning 
• Content topics and themes 
• Publishing frequency 
• Channels and platforms they use 
• Campaign themes and approaches 
• SEO and keyword strategy 

Sales and distribution 

• Sales channels (direct, partners, resellers) 
• Sales process and cycle 
• Pricing models 
• Distribution network 
• Customer acquisition tactics 

Customer experience 

• Onboarding process 
• Support channels and quality 
• Customer reviews and sentiment 
• Net promoter score or customer satisfaction score (if available) 
• Customer retention signals 

Strengths and weaknesses 

• What they do exceptionally well 
• Where they fall short 
• Gaps in their offering 
• Vulnerabilities or threats they face 
• Opportunities they're missing 

How to perform a competitive landscape analysis

A competitive landscape analysis gives you a bird's-eye view of your entire market, including both known competitors and emerging players. 

Step 1: Create unbranded queries

Rather than only searching for specific competitor brand names, create searches that capture category-level conversations. This helps you discover new entrants and emerging trends. 

For example, if you're in the fitness app space, instead of only tracking "Peloton" and "Strava," you might search for conversations about "home workout apps," "fitness tracking," and "exercise motivation." 

Using Brandwatch Consumer Research, you can build queries that capture these broader category conversations. The platform searches back to 2010, so you can see how the landscape has evolved over time. 

Step 2: Analyze key topics and themes

Once you've captured category-level conversation, analyze what topics are emerging. What are people talking about? What needs are they expressing? What products or features are they comparing? 

This analysis often reveals white space opportunities — customer needs that aren't being met by existing solutions. 

Step 3: Identify new entrants

Keep an eye out for brand names you haven't tracked before. New competitors can disrupt markets quickly, especially in the age of direct-to-consumer brands and viral TikTok products. 

We've seen countless examples of challenger brands rapidly gaining market share through social media and community building. The earlier you spot these trends, the sooner you can respond. 

Step 4: Continuously update your analysis

Competitive landscape analysis isn't a one-time project. New trends emerge constantly, and what seemed like a tertiary competitor last year might be a direct threat today. 

Set up ongoing monitoring and review your landscape quarterly or whenever you notice significant market shifts. 

How to measure share of voice with social listening

Share of voice is a common competitive metric, but it's often measured poorly or used inappropriately. 

Creating consistent queries

Evelyn has found a recurring issue when auditing client setups: "You know your brand in a way that no one else does. And you think you know your competitors, but you really don't know your competitors in the same depth. So what I'll often find when checking over client queries is a very robust search for their own brand, including hashtags for every campaign that ever existed." 

This creates an apples-to-oranges comparison. If you're tracking every variation of your brand name, every campaign hashtag, and every product mention, but only tracking your competitor's main brand name, you'll artificially inflate your share of voice. 

For accurate share of voice measurement, your queries need to be comparable. For your both your brand and competitor brands, include: 

• Main brand name and common misspellings 
• Official product names 
• Major campaign hashtags (only currently active) 

"Trying to keep it as apples to apples as possible is really important when analyzing share of voice. Otherwise, you're just going to inflate how much your brand is talked about," Evelyn explains. 

Use share of voice strategically

Raw mention volume isn't always meaningful. What matters is share of voice in contexts that align with your business objectives. 

If your goal is to be top-of-mind for consumers looking for eco-friendly options in your category, measure share of voice specifically in sustainability conversations, not just overall mentions. 

You might search for phrases like "eco-friendly," "sustainable," and similar terms, then measure which brands dominate those conversations. 

Alternatively, you can train tools like Brandwatch Consumer Research to recognize mentions related to sustainability using Custom Classifiers. You simply provide examples of sustainability-focused mentions, and the tool will categorize similar mentions automatically. 

Compare on specific dimensions

Rather than just comparing overall mention volume, look at: 

• Share of voice in specific product categories 
• Share of voice in specific customer segments 
• Share of voice around specific values or attributes 
• Share of voice in key geographic markets 

Track over time

Share of voice is most valuable when tracked over time. Are you gaining or losing ground? What events or actions drove changes? 

With tools like Brandwatch Consumer Research, you can visualize share of voice trends over months or years, helping you understand the impact of your marketing initiatives. 

How to set up competitor benchmarking

Competitor benchmarking takes share of voice a step further, helping you understand how you compare to competitors across multiple dimensions. 

Use historical data

Historical data is crucial for meaningful benchmarking. 

"Historical data is the best way to track shifts in behavior and assumptions," Evelyn says. "And whether you're comparing yourself to your competitors, or whether you're comparing yourself from now to some time in the past, or both, benchmarking is a big advantage. Being able to say Brand A was owning this space once upon a time and now they've shifted, that inspires curiosity. Why are they shifting? Why have perceptions changed? What have they done to make that happen?" 

With platforms like Brandwatch, you can access public conversation data going back 10 years – a decade of context for understanding market evolution. 

Look at aspirational brands

Don't limit your benchmarking to direct competitors. 

"Something we've done with clients before is to look at aspirational brands," Evelyn explains. "If you want to make a change, instead of looking at competitors let's look at those who have done what you want to do successfully. Let's look back in time and see what we can replicate to our advantage." 

For instance, if you're a traditional retailer trying to build a stronger direct-to-consumer presence, you might benchmark against digitally-native brands that successfully made that transition, even if they're in different categories. Brand tracking across aspirational brands can provide valuable insights for your own growth strategy. 

What to benchmark

Consider benchmarking across: 

• Consumer sentiment and perception 
• Engagement rates and community strength 
• Share of voice in key categories 
• Product ratings and reviews 
• Customer satisfaction signals 
• Brand associations and attributes 
• Crisis response and reputation management 
• Social media engagement 

Visualize your benchmarking

Create dashboards that show how your metrics compare to competitors over time. This makes it easy to spot trends, communicate insights to stakeholders, and track progress toward goals. 

For example, you might visualize: 

• Month-over-month sentiment changes across your competitive set 
• Conversation volume around specific product features 
• Evolution of brand attributes and associations 
• Geographic variations in competitive performance 

Conducting a SWOT analysis

Once you've gathered competitive intelligence, organize it using a SWOT framework for each major competitor. 

Strengths

What advantages do they have? This might include: 

• Strong brand recognition 
• Superior product features 
• Larger marketing budget 
• Better distribution network 
• More engaged community 
• Patents or proprietary technology 

Weaknesses

Where are they vulnerable? 

• Poor customer service reputation 
• Product quality issues 
• Higher prices 
• Limited geographic presence 
• Outdated technology 
• Slow innovation pace 

Opportunities

What favorable circumstances might they capitalize on? 

• Emerging market trends aligned with their strengths 
• New distribution channels 
• Regulatory changes in their favor 
• Partnership possibilities 
• Adjacent markets to expand into 

Threats

What external factors pose risks to them? 

• New competitors entering the market 
• Changing consumer preferences 
• Economic conditions 
• Supply chain vulnerabilities 
• Regulatory challenges 

Best practices for competitive analysis

1. Make it regular

Don't just analyze competitors when you're preparing for a board meeting or launching a new product. Build ongoing competitive intelligence into your workflow. Set up: 

• Monthly competitive landscape reviews 
• Quarterly deep-dives on key competitors 
• Real-time alerts for significant competitor news or events 

2. Focus on learning, not copying

The goal isn't to replicate what competitors do. It's to understand the strategic landscape and find opportunities to differentiate. 

Ask yourself: What can we learn from this? How does it inform our strategy? Not: Should we do the same thing? 

3. Share insights across teams

Competitive intelligence shouldn't live in a silo. Share relevant insights with: 

• Product teams (feature gaps and opportunities) 
• Marketing teams (messaging and positioning insights) 
• Sales teams (competitive battlecards and objection handling) 
• Executive leadership (strategic implications) 

4. Track both perception and reality

What competitors actually do matters, but how customers perceive them matters just as much. A competitor might have an objectively superior product, but if customers don't perceive that value, they won't buy it. 

Use social listening to understand the gap between what competitors claim and how customers actually experience their brands.

5. Don't ignore indirect and emerging competitors

Your biggest competitive threat five years from now could be on your radar today. Stay alert to: 

• Adjacent categories that might converge with yours 
• New business models disrupting traditional approaches 
• Geographic expansion by regional players 
• Well-funded startups in stealth mode 

Conclusion

Competitor analysis is both an art and a science. It requires rigorous data collection and analysis, but also strategic thinking about what that data means for your business. 

The best competitive intelligence programs start with clear business objectives, use sophisticated tools and techniques to gather insights, and translate those insights into actionable strategies across the organization. 

Remember what Evelyn emphasized: "What I talk to our clients about a lot is highlighting the intelligence aspect of competitor intelligence—it's not just about knowing what's out there, tracking volumes, and comparing yourself. What's important is what you learn from it, how that informs action, and how those actions fit with the objectives of your organization." 

Your goal isn't to copy competitors or obsess over their every move. It's to deeply understand your competitive landscape, identify opportunities to differentiate, and make smarter strategic decisions that help your business win. 

Whether you're conducting your first competitive analysis or refining an existing program, the frameworks, techniques, and best practices in this guide will help you develop competitive intelligence that actually drives results. Start with your business objectives, ask strategic questions, gather meaningful data, and turn those insights into action.