How to Do Competitive Analysis: A Complete Guide (with Free Templates)

Every business, no matter the industry or size, faces competition.

If you don’t know what your competitors are up to, you could be missing out on easy opportunities to improve your online performance, grow market share, and get ahead of your competitors. That’s why I always emphasize that conducting a competitive analysis is essential to your business success. This process gives you the insights you need to respond quickly to changes in your market and capitalize on trends before it’s too late.

But here’s the question I hear most often: What should you focus on, and when you do collect information, how should you act on it?

That’s precisely where data-backed competitive analysis becomes a game-changer.

I like to compare it to a sports team preparing for a championship game. Coaches do extensive research throughout the season. They study game footage and build scouting reports on every player on the opposite team to identify their weaknesses and develop an effective plan of attack. Think of the competitive analysis as your competitors’ playbook — an important toolkit that equips you with a strategy for success.

In this guide, I’ll walk you through a step-by-step approach to competitive analysis — from the basics to advanced tools and tips.

You’ll learn how to conduct a thorough analysis of your business and translate your insights into actions that drive meaningful growth.

Ready to dive in?

What is competitive analysis?

Competitive analysis is the process of gathering, researching, and evaluating data about your market and your competitors’ core strategies—ranging from product offerings, positioning, and sales tactics to pricing models, go-to-market strategies, and more. This analysis allows you to uncover insights into competitors’ strengths, understand their strategic choices, and identify any gaps in your own strategy and focus areas.

These insights empower you to make informed, impactful business decisions that give you a competitive edge, helping you view the market landscape with clarity and revealing new avenues for growth.

In a nutshell: competitive analysis gives you the insights you need to make smart, impactful decisions that put you ahead. It helps you see the big picture, revealing new ways to grow and stay competitive.

But that’s not always easy. Gathering the data can be a challenge, and once you have it, new questions seem to pop up all the time:

• What’s driving their recent surge in customer reviews?
• Why are they branching into new product categories?
• What’s the reasoning behind their latest partnership announcement?
• Are their customers more engaged on specific social media platforms?
• What’s their approach to SEO and PPC, and which keywords are they focusing on?

If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. When I first started with competitive analysis, I felt swamped by all the details and kept finding more questions than answers. But once you get the hang of it, you’ll have a powerful way to understand your market and make more confident decisions.

Before we continue, you can start by making a copy of the Similarweb Competitive Analysis Template. It will serve as your framework for analyzing your digital performance and comparing it to key competitors.

Why is competitive analysis important in market research?

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

Well, a thorough competitive analysis can uncover valuable insights to help you:

• Learn from their successes and failures in attracting your target audience
• Identify gaps in the market that you can fill
• Shape your product development based on what customers truly value
• Build a stronger Unique Value Proposition (UVP) that sets you apart
• Develop unique positioning to differentiate your brand from competitors

But here’s the key: you need to go beyond surface-level research. This means analyzing your competitors’ products and your competitors’ marketing strategies. After all, the more thoroughly you understand their business model, the better you’ll understand their strengths and weaknesses. Should you compete head-on in their space? Or should you carve out an underserved niche where you can capitalize on micro-consumer demand?

The answer, of course, lies in research. Whether you’re launching a new product or growing an existing business, you need a deep understanding of your competitive landscape to make informed decisions that drive growth.

The key benefits of competitive analysis

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

1. Spot where competitors are winning

Digging into your competitors’ marketing strategies isn’t just about finding their weaknesses; it’s about understanding where they’re actually ahead of you and figuring out your next move. This could be in their marketing approach, product features, or something else they’re doing better. The more you know about their strengths and weaknesses, the more you can leverage that insight to win back market share.

2. Understand your target audience better

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

3. Set benchmarks for long-term growth

Competitive analysis helps you stay attuned to industry shifts because it forces you to carefully study new tactics, products, or technologies your competitors are testing. Catching these trends early empowers you to stay ahead of the curve and position your business as a forward-thinking leader in your market.

4. Make smart marketing decisions with reliable data

Running a business without data you can trust is like flying blind. Having high-quality, accurate data and using that for your competitor research helps you clearly see your competitive landscape and develop a strategy that takes into account both your competitors and your target audience.

5. Build smarter (or validate your) business strategies

Every industry has its tried-and-true methods, and studying your competitors’ strategies shows you what’s working and how you might adapt those marketing tactics for your own goals. Competitive analysis doesn’t just influence your overall game plan – it also shapes the everyday marketing moves that bring that strategy to life.

How to conduct a competitive analysis in eight easy steps

1. Analyze and research your market

Before diving into competitor tactics, let’s start with the foundation: understanding your market landscape. Taking a methodical approach to collecting and analyzing market information reveals not just who you’re up against, but also how different market forces interact and influence each other.

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

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

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

To do that, we’ll be using a combination of data from competitor analysis tools and traditional market analysis methods.

2. Identify and map your main competitors

I always start by mapping out companies that offer a product or service in the same category as mine. Then, I prepare a list of competitors and categorize them into different levels using three main factors:

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

When you approach this task, keep in mind there are two main types of competitors: direct and indirect. Then in addition to these, there are also replacement competitors and potential competitors.

Let’s discuss each one.

Direct competitors

Your primary competitors fall into this category. These are businesses that are identical to yours in all three areas: they have the same target audience, offer a solution for the same problem, and are in the same product category.

For instance, if you sell orthopedic shoes for kids, direct competitors would include other ecommerce sites or brands with similar products and qualities you want to associate with your brand.

Indirect competitors

Indirect competitors overlap in one or two of the three areas. For example, they may target the same audience and address the same problem but with a different product.

Think, for example, of a company offering a surgical solution for the same condition that orthopedic footwear aims to support would be an indirect competitor. While your focus should be on direct competitors, tracking indirect ones is also wise. Industries evolve quickly, and indirect competitors may pivot into your market or launch a complementary product or app at any point.

This is especially true in the fast-growing business-to-business (B2B) landscape where companies are constantly venturing into new sectors outside their original industries, and you don’t want to be caught off guard.

Replacement competitors

Substitutes are companies that solve the same core problem differently than you do. While they might target different audiences or take a different approach, they’re still competing for your customers’ attention and budget. Take physical therapy clinics and orthopedic shoe companies—both help people with foot pain, just through different solutions. Understanding these alternative competitors is crucial because they show you where your customers might turn if they’re not satisfied with traditional options in your market.

Potential competitors

Keep an eye on potential competitors—companies that could enter your market tomorrow if they saw an opportunity. Think of major footwear brands that don’t currently make orthopedic shoes. With their resources and distribution networks, they could launch an orthopedic line practically overnight, instantly becoming formidable competitors. Staying alert to these sleeping giants helps you anticipate industry shifts and prepare for new competition before it arrives.

👉Pro tip: Mapping out these different types of competitors shows you exactly where you stand in the market—and helps you anticipate how each might try to win over your customers.

3. Create a competitive matrix

A competitive matrix is a simple but powerful tool that helps you visually compare your business to key competitors based on specific factors. It allows you to see at a glance where each competitor stands in critical areas and highlights opportunities where you might gain a competitive edge.

Here’s how to create and use a competitive matrix effectively:

Choose comparison criteria

Start by identifying the key factors you want to compare. These might include product features, pricing, target audience, market share, strengths, weaknesses, or unique selling points. Zero in on what truly drives buying decisions in your industry—the factors your customers care about most.

List competitors and your business

On one axis, list your business and each of your main competitors. Depending on what you want to analyze, this could include direct, indirect, replacement, and potential competitors.

Rate or note each criterion

Assess each competitor on your list’s performance in each criterion. You can use a numerical rating, checkmarks, or brief notes. For example, if comparing product features, you might score each business on a scale from 1 to 5 or simply note the presence of specific features.

Identify competitor strengths and weaknesses

Once your matrix is complete, patterns should start to emerge. You’ll see where competitors are strongest and where there are gaps in the market. This helps you pinpoint your competitive advantages and identify areas for improvement or differentiation.

Analyze untapped opportunities

Use the matrix to look for opportunities to differentiate your business and marketing strategy. For instance, if most competitors lack customer support or a specific product feature, this could be a chance for you to differentiate yourself.

I’ve also put together a template that you can use to map out and visualize how you compare to your key competitors:

To get a full preview and copy of our competitive matrix template – click here

4. Research your competitors’ performance and company profile

Finding your competitors starts with the simplest tool at your disposal: Google.

Start by Googling your keywords

Run searches for keywords related to your business and see who shows up—both in organic results and paid ads. For instance, typing in “[your brand] competitors” (like “Apple competitors” shown below) can reveal who Google thinks you’re competing with.

However, Google can only take you so far.

Talk to your sales team

Your sales team is a goldmine of competitor insights—they’re on the front lines, talking directly with customers who are weighing their options. They know exactly which competitors you’re up against and what questions prospects are asking about them. Don’t overlook this valuable resource right within your own walls.

👉Pro tip: If your company uses a sales management platform like Chorus, ask for access so that you can listen in on sales calls. That way, you’ll hear firsthand what your customers are looking for and which competitor tools they’re using.

Get feedback from your customers

While reaching out to your customers takes more effort than checking in with your sales team, it’s one of the most valuable ways to gain competitive insights. You can use surveys, calls, or emails to connect with customers—simply ask them which competitors they considered before choosing your product.

Beyond direct outreach, check customer review sites like G2 or Capterra. The feedback shared by both your customers and your competitors’ customers on these platforms often reveals exactly the competitive insights you’re looking for.

Use a competitor analysis tool

One of the best ways to approach competitive analysis is by using a data-driven tool – it’s scalable, efficient, and saves a lot of time. But remember, the data is only really relevant fort your business if you can easily filter it to pull out what’s relevant. Ultimately, trying to do this without the right tool won’t get you far, and will cost you valuable time and money, which is why investing in the right one is absolutely crucial. 

Let me show you how it works in practice. Let’s take a look at foodinsight.org using Similarweb’s Website Performance tool.

I’ll demonstrate what this might look like. Let’s analyze foodinsight.org using Similarweb’s Website Performance tool.

We’ll first look at the Similar Sites report. This is the ultimate competitor discovery power tool. Why? It’s based on multiple data points, including:

• Content
• Audience
• Keywords
• Referrals

Using multiple data points together helps you find your closest true competitors since no single factor tells the whole story. A site might share your keywords but target a different audience or have similar content but serve a different market entirely. This tool, though gives you a more holistic analysis.

As you can see in the example above, the tool lists several competitors for the site I analyzed. That being said, if you do find that the sites it lists are irrelevant to your market, you can easily exclude them using the industry filter.

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

At this stage, you should have a list of sites that share similar metrics. Let’s now get a little more granular and focus on organic and paid media competitors.

Find your organic marketing competitors

A site that targets similar keywords to yours isn’t necessarily a direct competitor—in fact, businesses from entirely different industries often target the same keywords. These are your organic competitors, and they’re worth understanding even if they don’t compete for your customers.

So, before analyzing organic competitor data, verify they’re actually serving your market.

To demonstrate this process, let’s look at foodinsight.org in the Similarweb Organic Competitors report, which finds competitors based on keyword overlap.

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

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

Since foodinsight.org is a content-publishing website in the Nutrition Diets and Fitness industry, I used the industry filter and the website type filter in the example below.

Find your paid competitors

You should also look at which sites are running paid ads targeting your keywords—these are your paid search competitors.

Below, we can see foodinsight.org’s paid search competitors in Similarweb.

Just like the Organic Competitors report, filter these paid search competitors to focus on businesses in your industry. This narrows your list to direct competitors who are actively running ads.

Now that you’ve identified your true competitors, what’s next?

5. Perform a SWOT analysis to identify strengths and weaknesses

The SWOT analysis is my go-to framework for sizing up the competitive landscape. It looks at internal Strengths (S) and Weaknesses (W), plus external Opportunities (O) and Threats (T)—both for your business and your competitors. This simple framework helps you see the market clearly and make strategic decisions based on real competitive dynamics.

Through SWOT analysis, you’ll understand exactly where you stand: your vulnerabilities, your opportunities, and how market forces shape your competitive position.

To get started, set up a meeting room and whiteboard and gather your team. Divide the whiteboard into four quadrants, labeling them:

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

Begin brainstorming with your team and fill each quadrant with as many points as possible. I recommend starting with opportunities and threats — understanding these external factors gives you a clearer view of your competitive landscape. Then tackle your strengths and weaknesses. Having those external factors already mapped out usually helps you spot internal factors that either address or relate to them.

As you work through this guide, you’ll find items to add to your SWOT analysis. For example, a channel analysis may show you which marketing channels are generating a lot of traffic for your competitors that you hadn’t considered important. You’ll definitely want to add these insights to your board.

Ready to start your SWOT analysis? Here’s an easy-to-follow template you can use right away!

To get a copy of our SWOT analysis template – click here

6. Understand your competitors’ target audience

So far, we’ve analyzed your competitors. But to get a complete picture, you must also analyze their customers directly.

Understanding audience demographics is your first big-picture priority – it shapes everything from pricing to tone to market positioning.

Let’s look at audience geography and demographics using the Audience tab in Similarweb’s Website Analysis tool.

The Geography report shows us each competitor’s traffic share by country.

Next, let’s dive into target audience demographics. For example, if we analyze foodinsight.org and its competitors, we find they mainly reach a female audience with an age distribution spanning 25 to 64 years.

To refine these insights further, you can filter by gender and age to understand specific audience segments.

Analyzing your competitors’ content—on both their websites and social media—gives you valuable insights into what resonates with their audience. A quick exploration of their pages can be surprisingly revealing.

Keep an eye on their social media presence, follower counts, engagement rates, and popular posts. Notice how audiences interact – are they liking, commenting, sharing, or even creating posts themselves? Also, look for partnerships with influencers; these relationships can tell you a lot about their target audience’s preferences.

Looking at your competitors’ content—both on their websites and social media—reveals what interests their audience. You’ll be surprised how much you can learn from simply exploring their pages.

To dig even deeper into audience interests, let’s take a data-driven approach.

The Similarweb Audience Interests report highlights the topics that appear most frequently across the domains you select. While this report covers a wide range of topics, you can use the Industry filter to focus on those that are most relevant to your market.

The example above shows the interests of visitors to the site hotpot.ai, which is in the Graphics Multimedia and Web Design industry. This high-level view reveals the broad topics and themes that preoccupy this audience.

This high-level view is invaluable, but don’t stop at general interests. Conduct a situational analysis to understand how different situations—such as prior knowledge, attention level, and processing ability—impact your audience’s engagement with content.

Look for customer reviews

What a company says about itself only tells part of the story—to truly understand your competitors, you need to see them through their customers’ eyes:

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

In some industries, review sites may already compare products head-to-head. Keep in mind that many of these sites are run by affiliates who earn commissions, so they may lean toward promoting one product over another. However, they often provide thorough, hands-on testing and feature comparisons, shedding light on competitor details that may not be widely advertised.

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

Here’s a preview of a template I’ve created to help you compare audience data across three different website types—B2B, Transactional, and Informative—using Similarweb data. Feel free to use it for your own analysis! Click here to get a copy.

7. Research your competitors’ 4 Ps

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

The 4 Ps include:

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

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

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

📣 Promotion: Promotion includes how your business informs your audience about your product(s) so that they make a purchase. It includes advertising, public relations, sales promotions, personal selling, and other communication strategies.

⏰ Timing: Timing is a crucial element in any marketing strategy. For example, you’ll want to start promoting back-to-school products before the beginning of a school year.

8. Deep-dive into your competitors’ marketing strategies

i. Create a company overview

After you’ve identified your main competitors and analyzed their audiences, it’s time to gather background information on them.

Make sure your company overview includes the following:

Basic information such as company size, location, employee count, and year established. You can easily access information like this from national business registers, official government sites, and even social networks like LinkedIn.

Then add financial and business information, including stock value, owners, investors, acquisitions, and mergers. You can view a company’s financial statements or find information on business review sites like Dun & Bradstreet, Hover, etc. For startups and tech companies, check sites such as Indiegogo and Kickstarter.

Next, map out each competitor’s market presence. Analyze their market share, brand awareness, product range and categories, and delivery channels (like mobile apps and physical stores).

I’d recommend that you regularly monitor your market position, market share, and brand awareness by creating a Custom Industry in the Similarweb Market Intelligence add-on.

Add your site and your competitors to set it up. This will show you how your site is performing within a market you have defined.

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

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

To gain deeper insight into these brands, let’s examine how their audiences respond to their businesses through Loyalty and Retention. With high levels of returning and exclusive visitors, Diet Doctor, Gaps Diet, and Eat Right are leading the market.

Once you’ve gathered company overviews for your competitors, the next step is to analyze their web traffic metrics. Pay special attention to those in the top-right of the matrix – these are the companies you’ll want to monitor more closely to decide who to analyze further.

If a company has multiple online properties, it might be helpful to use the Similarweb Company Analysis tool to get a comprehensive view of all its digital assets.

For instance, when analyzing Verizon, we noticed they operate three main domains:

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

To analyze overall traffic and engagement, we combined all three Verizon company properties into a single view. Below, you can see the combined unique visitors across these properties over a six-month period.

You can also track the following metrics to get a more granular view of their traffic over time.

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

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

ii. Website competitive analysis

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

Now, let’s analyze their website performance to uncover:

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

Let’s start with some digital data from the Similarweb Website Analysis report for foodinsight.org and its key competitors.

Let’s take a closer look together:

Looking at traffic & engagement, we see that dietdoctor.com is getting substantially more traffic than its competitors, followed by ketocycle.diet. That said, traffic on its own can only tell us so much. Let’s qualify our findings with other engagement metrics.

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

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

Above, we can see that dietdoctor.com is winning in organic search and direct traffic. Direct traffic indicates that they have better brand recognition than their competitors.

Take a look at the advertising landscape – ketocycle.diet is investing heavily in paid search while competitors ignore this channel entirely. This could be a significant opportunity for any one of these players to increase their site traffic.

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

Track your competitors’ performance over time using a Similarweb Competitive Tracker. This lets you benchmark your performance, plan your strategy, and measure your progress against the competition.

With the competitive tracker, you can monitor up to 25 competitors at once, comparing your site’s performance against theirs across every marketing channel. You’ll see exactly where they’re gaining or losing traffic, helping you understand where you stand in the market.

You can also see new ad creatives they’ve created and discover new trending keywords all from one convenient location.

Moreover, your tracker will highlight note-worthy insights across all your key metrics.

After you’ve finished analyzing your competitors’ website traffic, you’ll want to dig into keyword strategies.

iii. Analyze your competitors’ keyword and content strategy

You have already seen your competitors’ big-picture, strategic approaches at this stage. Now, it’s time to go to the Similarweb Keywords report. This report will help you understand how your competitors appear in search results, for both paid and organic listings, giving you insights into both their SEO and PPC keyword strategies.

Compare all your top competitors’ keywords in one view to get the full picture of your market. You can then filter this combined data to spot patterns and opportunities.

Let’s dig deeper into those SEO investments we spotted in the Channels report. Non-branded keywords reveal their SEO strategies, while branded keywords show how well they’re performing in terms of their brand, which essentially indicates brand awareness.

Since we’re dealing with a large number of keywords, let’s filter by topic. For diet-focused sites, we can start by analyzing keywords related to diet plans.

The topic filter helps you focus on what matters—while these sites may compete for organic traffic, not every keyword is relevant to your business. Use it to quickly identify where you’re truly competing and explore topics your competitors target that you might have overlooked.

See your competitors’ best-performing content

To uncover what drives your competitors’ success, explore their top-performing landing pages. Below, you’ll find the leading pages for foodinsight.org.

This report highlights all the keywords each page ranks for, along with a trend graph showing performance over time. Easily identify the most relevant terms for your business and add them to a keyword list to track your traffic share against competitors on an ongoing basis.

For instance, the report below shows foodinsight.org’s traffic share for the selected terms over the past 13 months. While their organic traffic share grew from 2% last year to 5% now, there’s still room for growth in terms of TAM.

Pro Tip: You can add these keywords to a dedicated campaign in your rank tracker. Use the tracker to monitor your organic rankings and optimize your pages to capture more traffic share.

iv.  Analyze your competitors’ PPC campaigns

Understanding which content and keywords your competitors use is just the start. To gain a competitive edge, you’ll need to dive into their pay-per-click (PPC) strategies as well.

That’s where Similarweb’s suite of competitive analysis tools for PPC comes in.

Find your PPC competitors
Start with Similarweb’s Paid Competitors tool to conduct a PPC competitive analysis by entering your website to see your landscape. This tool shows your top competitors along with the degree of overlap, helping you visualize where you stand in comparison.

Switch between metrics like total traffic, paid traffic, search overlap, and shared keyword percentage to identify your closest competitors and see where you need to focus.

Identify the Traffic Leaders
After pinpointing your PPC competitors, determine who’s capturing the largest share of paid traffic. This will reveal the strategies worth prioritizing. Use Similarweb’s Paid Search feature to compare your website with up to four competitors to see their paid traffic trends over a specific period.

Analyze their PPC spend
Effective budget allocation is crucial in PPC. Learning from your competitors’ spending strategies helps you make informed decisions. With Similarweb’s PPC tools, you can:

• Determine the budget needed to claim top spots in your industry
• Reduce wasted spend by focusing on high-ROI keywords
• Spot seasonality trends in ad spending, revealing the best times to reach your target audience

Dive into their paid search strategy
With Similarweb’s PPC Keyword Analyzer, you can enter top competitors, filter by paid traffic, and exclude branded terms to reveal keywords that consistently drive paid traffic to their websites. Then, analyze each term’s traffic volume, clicks, CPC, and keyword difficulty to reveal where you can optimize your campaigns and take your PPC performance to the next level.

Review their best-performing ads
In PPC, the ad itself is the main attraction. Keywords can bring visibility, but compelling ads drive engagement. Use Similarweb’s Search Ads Analytics to examine your competitors’ top-performing ads exactly as they appear in search results.

Analyze copy, traffic share, estimated impressions, keywords, ad positions, and more to understand what sparks action in your audience.

v. Analyze your competitors’ lead generation strategies

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

Document everything systematically to save time and store ideas for your funnel.

Focus on identifying:

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

vi. Analyze your competitors’ social media strategy

Monitor your competitors’ social media accounts—their Twitter (X), LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok activity to reveal valuable insights.

Pay attention to their campaigns, product launches, events, and company milestones. This intelligence can shape your own digital strategy and brand positioning.

Here are four steps to do this effectively:

1. Identify your social media competitors

Make sure to focus your social media competitive analysis on:

• Direct competitors: These are brands offering similar products or services
• Indirect competitors: These are brands targeting the same audience, even if their offerings are different
• Audience competitors: These are brands your target audience follows and engages with

You can use Similarweb’s Audience Interests report to identify the top pages and profiles relevant to your industry and target audience and add them to your competitor list.

 

2. Identify key social media platforms

By taking the top 5 brands on your competitor list and seeing which of their social media platforms are the most active, you’ll get a good idea of where your target audience “hangs out” online.You’ll want to focus your analysis on:

• Platform usage: Determine which platforms your competitors prioritize
• Platform performance: Assess how effectively each platform drives traffic to their site

3. Monitor your competitors’ content strategy

Engagement on social media is all well and good, but ideally, you want social media engagement to convert into website visits and loyal customers. To do that, you need high-quality content that resonates with your audiences.Look out for:

• Content type: Analyze the mix of text, images, videos, and other formats
• Posting frequency: Observe how often they post
• Content quality: Evaluate the quality and relevance of their content

Using Similarweb’s Social Overview report, you can see how effective social media is as a marketing channel for your competitors and how much traffic comes from each platform.

4. Track audience engagement

Unlike content, engagement is king for social media! So make sure to focus your analysis on:

• Likes, shares, and comments: Measure the level of interaction
• Traffic from social: Assess how much traffic they get from social media
• Traffic share: Analyze traffic share among competitors

A great starting point is to use a dedicated template to track your competitor’s key social media platforms and their overall growth strategies. My team uses this Social Media Competitive Analysis Template, which you might find helpful too:

To get a full preview and copy of our social media analysis template – click here

👉Pro tip: By understanding your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, you can optimize your social media strategy and even your content plan, gain a competitive edge, and ultimately drive more traffic to your website.

vii. Analyze your competitors’ partnerships and affiliates

Affiliate marketing spending is expected to surpass $15.7 billion globally in 2024. By studying your competitors’ affiliate partnerships, you can refine your own strategy to capture a bigger piece of this growing market.

Similarweb’s competitor analysis tools help you identify and evaluate potential partners to drive website traffic and build brand recognition through strategic backlinks.

Here are the main steps you need to take:

1. Identify the top affiliates in your space

Using Similarweb’s Competitor Affiliates tool, you can view the websites that drive the most referral traffic to your competitors. This reveals how your affiliate network compares to theirs and helps you spot new partnership opportunities.
2. Assess their traffic quality

Not all referral traffic is created equal, and you don’t want to pay for low-quality traffic. Similarweb’s Engagement metrics allow you to assess the quality of affiliate traffic, focusing on bounce rates, session duration, and other indicators to ensure potential affiliates deliver engaged audiences.
3. Evaluate industry benchmarks

Similarweb has a wide range of solutions for business benchmarking, but if you’re using it to identify partners, check their performance within your industry to see typical traffic volumes and conversion rates.

You can also use the platform to understand affiliate norms in your industry, benchmark your referral traffic, and identify top publishers. This offers a broader view of successful affiliate strategies.

But wait, there’s more. 

If you’re at the stage of evaluating potential affiliates or partners and need a more detailed breakdown of that research process, take a look at this guide, where we cover How to Find Your Competitors’ Affiliates.

Competitive analysis templates

Now that you understand what makes a competitive analysis effective, let’s put it into practice. Our templates and comprehensive, up-to-date datasets give you everything you need to dive deep. (Curious about our data? Head over to our data page for more.)

But before we dive into the templates, let’s talk about some of the most popular frameworks that make competitive analysis systematic and insightful:

Competitive analysis frameworks

1. SWOT Analysis—This classic framework is ideal for pinpointing your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses. It’s particularly useful for uncovering potential competitive advantages and areas for improvement in your business.

2. Porter’s Five Forces – Created by Harvard professor Michael Porter, this framework looks at five essential forces shaping every industry:

• Intensity of competitive rivalry
• The threat of new entrants
• Bargaining power of buyers
• Bargaining power of suppliers
• Threat of substitutes

Using Porter’s Five Forces, you can get a clearer picture of the market dynamics affecting your business.

3. Growth-Share Matrix – If you manage a diverse product portfolio, this matrix can help you strategize which products to focus on. It classifies your offerings into four categories:

• ⭐ Stars: High-growth, high-market-share products to keep investing in
• ❓ Question Marks: High-growth, low-market-share products that you’ll need to assess—either to turn into stars or reconsider
• 🐄 Cash Cows: Low-growth, high-market-share products that fund your other investments.
• 🐕 Pets: Low-growth, low-market-share products you should consider repositioning or phasing out

This approach shows where to channel your resources and which products might need a strategic shift.

4. Customer Journey Map – A customer journey map is a visual story of your customers’ interactions with your brand. Start by mapping every customer channel—your website, social media, email, customer support, and in-store (if applicable). Track the customer experience across these touchpoints, highlighting engagement metrics, brand responses, and opportunities to improve the journey.

Want more frameworks? Check out our complete list of competitive analysis frameworks for more on this topic.

Free templates for effective competitive analysis

Ready to take action? We’ve included a set of downloadable templates throughout the blog to streamline your competitive analysis. You can also find them here below:

Competitive Analysis Template

Get a copy of our full competitive analysis template here

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Audience Analysis Template

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Competitive Matrix Template

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SWOT Analysis Template

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Buyer Persona Template

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Social Media Analysis Template

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Use these competitive analysis templates to hit the ground running with proven frameworks. They’ll help you uncover insights faster!

Key use cases for competitive analysis

Competitive analysis is a powerful tool that can and should fuel every function in your business, from marketing to product development and beyond. Here are a few examples of how your company can leverage it to make smarter decisions and maintain a competitive edge:

1. Competitive analysis to fuel and drive business strategy –

At the highest level, competitive analysis informs key business strategies that shape your company’s future. Insights from competitors can guide pricing models, help identify expansion opportunities, and illuminate shifts in market demand.Leadership can also use this analysis to stay agile in a dynamic landscape, adjusting strategic priorities and ensuring that the company is always positioned to compete effectively.

2. Competitive analysis within your marketing functions – 

Competitive analysis gives your marketing team a powerful lens into the landscape. It helps them understand how competitors are positioning themselves, which messaging resonates with audiences, and which tactics they’re prioritizing.With these insights, marketers can fine-tune their own positioning, adopt proven strategies, and even identify unique angles that help your brand stand out. It’s like having a playbook on what works—and what doesn’t—in your industry.

3. Competitive analysis to support sales – 

For sales teams, knowing what competitors are offering and where prospects’ needs overlap with your own solutions is invaluable. Competitive analysis highlights gaps you can exploit and strengths you can emphasize in conversations with prospects.For instance, if a competitor lacks a key feature that your product has, your team can highlight this difference as a selling point. This level of insight helps sales reps position your product more strategically, speak directly to customers’ needs, and close deals more effectively.

4. Competitive analysis for better, more aligned product development – 

The product team can use competitive analysis to stay attuned to what users really want. By examining competitors’ product features, customer feedback, and updates, your team can make informed choices about what to prioritize on your own roadmap.

For example, you might want to use competitive analysis to research and answer: What features are most requested? What pain points do users want addressed? And how is your competition responding to these needs? This ensures that your product development and future roadmap remains relevant and competitive, addressing customer needs more fully.

Competitive analysis isn’t a one-time activity – it’s a continuous process you need to carry out as a way to guide your decision-making across key business functions.

Below, we walk you through what that typically looks like, with a focus on your market research and digital marketing.

Setting up a periodic review process

A competitive analysis is a powerful tool in your business toolkit, but only if done regularly within a structured review process. Setting up periodic reviews ensures that your insights stay relevant and actionable as the market evolves and new opportunities arise.

A well-defined review process should include concrete business recommendations and specific action items, as well as a system for follow-ups to track progress.

Most businesses find that monthly or quarterly reviews are ideal for keeping a pulse on the competitive landscape. However, for more tactical decisions—like adjusting keyword focus, budgeting for ad campaigns, or responding to seasonal trends—weekly or even daily reviews are considered best practices.

Review your competitive analysis during key business moments—like strategy shifts, product launches, or market expansion. This deeper analysis helps you adjust goals, spot gaps, and identify quick wins. Make it a regular practice, and you’ll confidently navigate market changes, always staying one step ahead.

Top tools for competitive analysis

When it comes to competitive analysis, having the right tools in your arsenal can make all the difference. These tools allow you to access, visualize, and interpret valuable competitor data, helping you stay one step ahead. Here’s a closer look at some of the top tools and how they can support your strategy:

1. Similarweb

Similarweb is a comprehensive platform that gives you the full picture of your competitive landscape. With access to fresh, up-to-date data, you can uncover insights into competitors’ website traffic, audience engagement, and marketing channels. Similarweb provides granular metrics across all digital channels, and it’s essential for making data-driven decisions about growing your market share.

2. SpyFu

SpyFu lets you peek into your competitors’ SEO and PPC strategies. Enter a domain, and you’ll see precisely where competitors appear on Google and Bing—their organic rankings, target keywords, and ad spend. It’s particularly valuable for understanding their paid search tactics and finding new keyword opportunities.

3. Surfer

Surfer analyzes your content against top-ranking pages in real time, helping you adopt the strategies that work for your competitors. You’ll also see how to optimize your content to meet search intent and audience expectations—essential insights for improving your search rankings.

4. BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo shows you which competitor content performs best—from blog posts to videos to infographics. You’ll see the most shared and engaging pieces in your market, helping you spot content trends and opportunities your competitors have missed.

For a more detailed breakdown of each tool’s features, pricing, and ideal use cases, check out our list here: Best Competitor Analysis Tools.

Not all of these competitor analysis tools will be relevant for every business. However, with the right tool for your needs, you’ll be fully equipped to dive deep into your competitors’ marketing strategies and uncover actionable insights.

Combining accurate data with a well-crafted strategy allows you to conduct effective competitor analysis, position your business to capture more market share, and stay ahead of industry shifts.

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

We’ve covered it all—from assessing the broader market to breaking down competitor strategies and understanding how they serve their audiences.

You now have a blueprint for uncovering opportunities and building a strategy that plays to your strengths while targeting competitor gaps. Remember, though, the key is having reliable, comprehensive data.

With Similarweb’s up-to-date data and competitive analysis tools, you’ll have the fresh insights you need to understand traffic patterns and market share. So, you’re ready to analyze your market—and win it.

FAQs

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

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

How can I conduct a successful competition analysis?
Use Similarweb to determine the demographic makeup of your customer base across desktop and mobile. Identify the sites consumers visit, evaluate emerging or declining performers, and find industry trends and marketing strategies you can implement in your business.

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