How to conduct a compelling competitor analysis

Jun 11

3 min read

As you start to build your strategy, you’ll need to understand more about the marketplace you’re trying to position yourself within. You’ll need to know who all of the key players are, what they do and how they do it. The key is to not get too caught up in comparing yourself to your competitors but more paying attention to what they do. And for this you’ll need to conduct some competitive analysis.

Competitive analysis is a fundamental exercise in building out your GTM strategy. As with creating your ICP and your messaging, conducting a proper competitor research project will reveal important information about your position within your marketplace and category and help you shape your brand narrative.

I’ve conducted dozens of competitor research projects over the years and I will always uncover something about the competition that not one other person in the company found in their research. The most common thing I usually find is a direct market and geographical competitor when I was told that the product didn’t have any competitors.

In SaaS your product will always have direct competition. It would be weird if it didn’t. It’s how you use the research you’ve conducted that will start to set you apart from other vendors.

Starting your competitor analysis

Define who your competitors are

Create buckets of competitors that you’ll examine through a certain selection criteria based on what makes them a competitor. For example, the buckets I usually sort them into, include:

Direct competitors: these are the companies that have the same ICP and solve the same problem as you.

Indirect competitors: These companies have a slightly differing approach to the same or similar problem you solve. They may have a similar ICP but not exact.

The Manuals: This is the do nothing competitor bucket - for example, using excel, using a manual work around, or not willing to replace legacy systems. Include these in your document but how you use them will be different - more on the sales enablement side of things.

Get together a list of no more than 10 in each bucket and list them all in a spreadsheet in column A. Along the top are the categories that you’re going to be researching, compiling information and comparing on.

Which leads me to…

What you should be looking at for a competitive analysis

For direct and indirect competitors, look at and record the following categories. You should include your company in this research too.

Product and features

Core vs secondary features
Where they’re investing (via release notes, blog, roadmaps)

Pricing

Pricing transparency
Plan structures and if all information is accessible
Freemium/trial models

Positioning and messaging

Homepage headline and value proposition - is it aligned to ICP?
How do they describe the problem and solution - is it clearer than yours?

Customers and traction

Who’s buying - look at case studies, testimonials, review sites (G2, Capterra)
What their customers rate about their features or dislike (pull quotes from these reviews)

Go-to-Market Strategy

Channels they’re using, for example content, paid, partnerships, outbound
Brand voice and assets

What to do with all of your research

Were your competitors all saying the same thing? What pain points are they ignoring? What use cases are underserved? This is your opportunity to differentiate, especially if you can fill any white space or gaps that you uncovered.

Next, you should probably tighten up your own messaging. For example, if your competitor is leaning heavily into all things for all people language, maybe you go sharper on depth or specificity. If they focus on features, maybe you lead with outputs. The goal isn’t to react, but to make conscious, strategic choices based on what the market is already hearing.

Finally, feed those insights into your content strategy. If customers are consistently confused about a certain feature in your competitor’s product, write about how you handle that use case better. If a competitor is dominating a particular topic, find the angle they’ve missed. Good research will inform your strategy and add fuel to the stories you tell across every channel.

To round off

Don’t skip doing the competitor analysis, you’ll always find insights that will not only help you build your GTM but also help add insights to your longer term strategy.