What Is a Competitor Analysis? (+ Simple 9 Step Process)

Competitor analysis is a way to identify your brand’s competition beyond the obvious rivals.

Specifically, a competitive analysis compares:

• Market position and share
• Revenue (when available)
• Recent growth patterns
• Pricing strategy
• Product tiers

Depending on your industry, there may be other things you’ll want to examine as well.

This article shows you how to analyze competitors to make sure you’re getting the most out of your marketing efforts. It also links to trends and tools you can use when performing your analysis.

Let’s jump in.

Two Types of Competition

Companies typically compete on two levels: market competition and content competition. How you identify and analyze each competitor may require different approaches.

Market Competitors

In market competition, businesses vie for customer dollars.

For example, a project management company like Asana might compete with Monday.com for business customers. But they also face competition from simpler solutions like spreadsheets or email systems that solve the same problems differently.

Market competitors break down into three subcategories:

• Direct Competitors provide similar products or services and target the same audience. If you run a meal kit service, other brands like Blue Apron or HelloFresh are your direct competitors. Analyzing their pricing, marketing, and product features helps clarify how you can stand out.
• Indirect competitors offer products or services that solve your customer’s problems in different ways. For example, Google Sheets would be an indirect competitor to a project management tool like Asana. Indirect competitors attract budget-conscious customers who want simple solutions.
• Substitute competitors solve the same problem through different means. For example, bread making machines are a substitute for store-bought artisan bread.

Direct Competition	Indirect Competition	Substitute Competition
Same audience	Same audience	Same audience
Similar products	Different products	Different methods
May have different pricing and features	Attracts budget-conscious consumers	Attracts customers with different lifestyles, resources, or values

Semrush Market Explorer shows market shares, growth rates, and audience insights, helping you to find both direct and indirect competitors.

Understanding which brands compete with you in the marketplace is critical. You want to convince current and potential customers that your brand is better than these other brands.

Content Competitors

Content competition occurs when you contend for attention in the same marketing spaces as brands with different services. It can also mean competing with general ideas.

For example, “Asana” is a brand name associated with both a project management tool and a bouldering retailer (Asana Climbing). Likewise “Monday” might refer either to the project management tool or to the first day of the week.

Searching for one of these brands might raise content about other brands or concepts. Publishing content that outperforms similarly named – but unrelated – brands makes it easier for potential customers to find your brand.

Competitive Analysis Process

Creating detailed competitor profiles helps with tracking and analysis. We’ll show you how to put these profiles together in 9 steps.

1. Build a Monitoring System

One-time analysis provides limited value. Smart companies create systematic ways to track competitive changes.

Share competitor insights through regular briefings and keeping teams aligned on market changes. Remember that different teams have different requirements. For example, product teams may need technical details, while sales teams may need benefits, features, and pricing data.

Public sources of competitive intelligence include:

• Annual reports and SEC filings
• Patent applications
• Press releases and news coverage
• Social media posts
• Product documentation
• Customer reviews and forums

Set up a way to easily gather and share relevant materials across your team or company. For example, use a shared drive or cloud storage account to save source materials for analysis.

Remember to stay within legal and ethical boundaries when gathering information.

2. Identify Emerging Trends

Markets change constantly. Yesterday's main competitor might focus on different segments today. Keeping an eye on emerging trends helps you anticipate where your competition is heading.

New startups might lack market share, but they bring innovative approaches that could reshape the industry. Meanwhile, established companies entering adjacent markets might take advantage of existing customer relationships to gain traction.

Regular analysis helps you spot shifts early. Schedule quarterly deep dives into competitor activities, supplementing your ongoing monitoring.

• Review assumptions
• Track three clear metrics over time
• Build results into planning
• Document the impact of changes
• Share insights regularly
• Update strategies accordingly

Track changes in:

• Messaging and positioning
• Product features and updates
• Target market focus
• Pricing strategies
• Partnership announcements
• Marketing channels

Monitor these potential disruption sources:

• Innovative startups
• Adjacent market entries
• Technology shifts
• Customer behavior changes
• Regulatory changes
• Market consolidation

Efficient companies track potential disruptions before they become existential threats. Use trend-tracking tools like Exploding Topics Pro to see mentions of brands, products, and individuals across channels.

3. Analyze Online Presence

The online presence of your competitors tells an important story. Search engine optimization (SEO) tools reveal competitors you might miss through traditional market research.

There are 3 ways to discover your competition’s online presence using Semrush:

• Organic Research shows which keywords drive traffic and how their visibility has changed over time.
• Backlink Analytics lets you dig into backlinks to find out who the competitor is working with.
• Organic Competitors shows sites that rank for many of the same keywords as yours.

4. Understand Technology Stack

The technology choices your competitors make impact their capabilities and limitations.

Your technology analysis should examine:

• Customer service systems
• Payment processing solutions
• Analytics tools
• Marketing automation platforms
• Mobile capabilities
• Integration options

Knowing how competitors are meeting customer demand can help you identify their probable strengths and weaknesses. You might even uncover better ways to meet the same demand.

Use competitive analysis tools like BuiltWith to reveal the platforms and systems powering your competitors’ operations. Then, compare and contrast them to your own setup.

5. Analyze Marketing Tactics

A competitor's marketing strategy reveals its priorities and resources.

When examining email campaigns through tools like Mailcharts, notice how messaging changes across customer segments. A company sending different emails to enterprise and small business customers signals a multi-tier market approach.

Likewise, social media activity can reveal key insights through:

• Post frequency and timing
• Content type preferences
• Message engagement rates
• Audience interaction patterns
• Platform focus areas

The mix of organic and paid promotion also signals strategy. For example, a heavy focus on pay-per click (PPC) campaigns might mean the company is struggling to rank organically. They might also be targeting a specific competitor.

Watch paid search patterns in Semrush's Advertising Research. When a rival increases spending on enterprise-focused keywords while reducing small business terms, they're likely shifting market focus.

Content and Communication Patterns

Monitor these elements in competitors’ content:

• Topic coverage depth
• Content gaps and focus areas
• Publishing frequency
• Content types and formats
• Audience targeting
• Expert positioning
• Resource allocation

Track publishing patterns using tools like BuzzSumo. When competitors increase content production in specific areas, they're often responding to customer demand.

Sales Strategy and Pricing Models

Price changes often signal deeper strategic shifts.

• Lower prices might reveal pressure from new market entrants.
• Premium pricing paired with new enterprise features suggests an upmarket move.

Watch how competitors structure their pricing tiers.

For example, when Monday.com introduced per-seat pricing for larger teams while maintaining flat rates for small businesses, they showed different value propositions for each market segment.

When rivals drop prices, sometimes maintaining premium positioning serves better than joining a race to the bottom.

Partnership and Integration Networks

Partnership announcements merit special attention. Microsoft's integration with OpenAI sparked a wave of AI features across the software industry.

Similar shifts happen at smaller scales. When several competitors integrate with the same e-commerce platform, they're betting on that platform's growth.

6. Analyze Customer Experience

Your competitor analysis should examine:

• Website usability and design
• Onboarding processes
• Customer support quality
• User reviews and feedback
• Sales team responsiveness
• Common complaints and praise
• Response times and methods

Contact their sales team as a potential customer. Their sales process often reveals their ideal customer profile and competitive advantages.

7. Look For Investment Signals

Watch for these investment indicators:

• Infrastructure spending – Are they laying out big IT expenditures? Building or renovating physical spaces? Revamping their website?
• Marketing budget shifts – Are they focusing on a new market segment? Doubling down on existing audiences?
• Channel investment changes – Have they increased social media posting? Are they launching on a new platform? Have they ramped up website content production?
• Geographic expansion signals – Have they moved into a new state, region, or country? Are they increasing physical marketing presence in certain locations?
• Product development focus – Do earnings reports mention research and development? Are engineers and product people talking about exciting developments in public forums (conferences, interviews, etc.)?
• Technology adoption patterns – Are they leading the way or following tech industry trends?

Where competitors spend time, effort, and money is the best hint for what they plan to do in the future.

8. Watch Talent Movement

Track where competitors are hiring talent. Look at which roles they’re prioritizing:

• A surge in product management hires often precedes major feature launches.
• New sales territories signal geographic expansion plans.
• C-suite and upper management postings may indicate a change in strategic direction.

LinkedIn company pages and job listings can provide general intelligence. For more specific information, you might want to look at niche recruiting companies for the areas you’re interested in.

9. Turn Competitor Analysis into Action

Raw data needs context to drive decisions. When you spot a competitor's move, ask:

• Does this change affect our market position?
• What customer needs drive this change?
• Should we respond?
• What resources would a response require?
• How urgent is the threat or opportunity?

You don’t necessarily need to change what you’re doing just because a competitor starts doing something differently. Doing this competitor analysis will help you discern what your best options are.

Analyze and Repeat Your Competitor Analysis

Competitor analysis works best as a focused tool for making specific business decisions. When done regularly, it helps you spot opportunities, avoid market blind spots, and build stronger market positions.

For more information, check out how to find low-competition keywords and learn how keyword gap analysis can help you create content that challenges your top competitors.