Mastering B2B Competitor Analysis: A How-To Guide

Long sales cycles, complex buying processes, and unclear brand positioning can make it challenging to stand out in the already crowded B2B markets.

That's where strategic competitor analysis comes in. It shows you exactly where your competitors are falling short, how they price and position their products, and where the real content gaps are, so you can build more targeted B2B marketing strategies.

In this guide, we break down how to run competitive research that leads to actual results.

What is a B2B competitor analysis?

A B2B competitor analysis is a deep dive into how other companies in your space operate, from product features and pricing to content and social media strategy.

Unlike B2C, B2B competition is more layered. You’re dealing with longer sales cycles, more decision-makers, and higher stakes. That’s why your analysis should dig into positioning, messaging, and long-term strategy—not just surface-level stats.

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How does a competitive analysis inform strategic decisions in B2B marketing?

B2B brands use competitor insights to guide everything from product development to content creation. Here’s how it drives better strategy across the board:

• Market positioning and differentiation: Your positioning tells customers why they should choose you. By mapping how others talk about their value, you can find ways to set your brand apart and claim a clear, unique space.

• Pricing strategy and value communication: Looking at competitor pricing helps you understand what buyers expect—and how others justify their price points. Use this to fine-tune your own pricing strategy and highlight the value you bring.

• Product marketing and feature prioritization: Competitor research shows which features are standard—and which ones stand out. This helps you prioritize what to build next and identify opportunities others may be missing.

• Channel strategy and go-to-market decisions: Where your competitors focus their marketing can reveal what channels work in your industry. Whether it’s LinkedIn, email, or partnerships, use this insight to shape your own go-to-market approach.

• Content strategy and thought leadership: By auditing your competitors’ content, you can spot what topics they cover, what formats they use, and where the gaps are. It’s a great way to uncover content opportunities and build stronger thought leadership.

How to run a competitive analysis as a B2B company?

B2B competitor research isn’t just about tracking what your competitors have been up to. It’s about understanding how the main players in your industry position themselves, who exactly they are targeting, and where the real opportunities are.

Take a look at the steps to run an effective B2B competitive analysis.

Identify your competitors

Before you even start the analysis process, you need to identify who your real competitors are–who’s worth tracking and who doesn’t have similar products or brand positioning. Here’s how to do that:

Check B2B marketplace and review sites

B2B marketplaces and review websites like G2 or Capterra can be great places to find your direct and indirect competitors.

Start by searching the broad categories that your products belong to (such as email automation, project management, or social media analytics).

You can also look into other categories that have the same use cases as your products to identify indirect competitors, niche startups, and regional players with a stronghold in certain local markets.

Identify potential competitors using social media hashtags

Social media hashtags can help you find rising startups that are going strong on social media but don’t yet show up on Google or G2.

You can identify who’s competing in your space and how they're framing their narrative–which can, in turn, help understand how you should differentiate your own messaging to stand apart from your competitors.

For example, if your product is a social media analytics tool, searching hashtags like #socialmediaanalytics, can reveal a mix of direct and indirect competitors.

Make sure to save competitor names and their posts that show high visibility and strong engagement.

Using customer interviews to uncover hidden competitors

Speaking to your customers might be the easiest way to reach competitor intelligence. After all, they are researching just as much to find the right partner for their business.

Whenever you have the next discovery or onboarding call with a prospective customer, be sure to ask them about the other tools they have evaluated and the top 2-3 things they are looking for in a solution.

The insights can reveal key players your ICP may be actively considering and also highlight exactly where you lag behind in the competitive landscape.

Research your competitor’s products and offerings

The next step is to understand what your competitors offer and how they package and position their main offerings. Here are the main factors to consider when researching your competitors:

Feature comparison

Start with a direct comparison of your competitors' features to analyze their:

• Core features: These are the basic features that most competitors offer, and now are the basic expectations for any product in your category.

• USP features: These are the unique functionalities that your competitors highlight as their main selling points. These might not be widely available in the market and often form the basis of their positioning.

• Missing features:  These are the features they don’t provide but are important to your target audience. Spotting these can help you identify product opportunities.

Pricing strategy analysis and positioning

Your competitor’s pricing is a direct indicator of their brand positioning, go-to-market strategy, market maturity, and the type of customers they want to attract.

To analyze a competitor’s pricing strategy, look into their

• Pricing model and structure: Do they charge based on the number of users, access to specific features, or usage?

• Free trials: Do they offer a free trial? If so, how long is it, and how many of the features are included? If freemium plans are available, what are their key limitations?

• Promotions: Are they running seasonal discounts, new customer offers, or referral programs to drive adoption?

• Pricing transparency: Is their pricing clearly listed on the website or hidden behind a ‘Contact Sales’ CTA?

Value proposition differentiation analysis

Two competitors may offer the same core product and solve the same problem, but the way they position their products, target their audience, and build a story around their product can be very different. This is exactly why analyzing value propositions is important.

For example, Asana positions itself primarily as a team management tool.

ClickUp, on the other hand, leans heavily into ‘one app to replace them all’ messaging.

Here are the main factors to look into when analyzing your competitor’s positioning

• Homepage messaging: What is the core message on their homepage? Are they targeting a specific pain point and/or ICP?

• Main use cases: What are the main use cases they are prioritizing first? It can tell you where they believe they have a competitive edge.

• Industries or roles they target: Are they targeting product managers, founders, or IT teams? Do they mention specific industries like SaaS, healthcare, or fintech?

• Focused features: Which features show up the most on the home page, product tour, or demo videos?

Analyze your competitors’ marketing and content strategy

Once you’ve identified your main competitors and mapped their products and positioning, audit their marketing and content strategy to analyze how they attract and convert leads.

Content audit and topic gap analysis

Look into the type of content they are producing across different channels, including their website, email, webinars, and social media.

• Are there certain content pillars or formats they publish more than others?
• What is their posting frequency on different channels?
• Are they producing more top-of-funnel (TOFU) or bottom-of-funnel (BOFU) content?
• What kind of social media content is getting the maximum engagement and traction?

Try to look for overused topics and the topics they’re overlooking right now. These content gaps can be your opportunity to create sharper, more relevant on-brand content.

SEO competitive analysis for B2B keywords

Use tools like Ahrefs or Semrush to run an SEO competitive analysis and see where your competitors rank in organic search.

Start by identifying the top-ranking keywords and pages of your competitors and then analyze their backlinking strategies.

Social media strategy benchmarking

Start your analysis with an overall performance benchmarking using tools like Socialinsider, which allow you to benchmark across different social media channels.

You can track follower growth rate over time, compare engagement by content type, and even analyze top-performing posts to evaluate how your competitors perform against each other and the whole industry.

To benchmark competitor growth using Socialinsider, add their social media profiles to your dashboard → Go to Benchmark → Choose relevant KPIs from the right-hand panel (such as total followers, new followers today, follower growth, and growth percentage).

Post frequency and platform focus

Once you’ve benchmarked overall social media metrics, get into the individual strategy analysis. Here’s what to track (and how Socialinsider helps you do it):

See which platforms are being prioritized by your competitors and how consistently they post.

Follower count and growth trends

Track how the competitors are growing their audience over time. If there are any sudden spikes in growth rates, look into the reasons.

Engagement and impressions

Engagement and impressions can tell you how relevant a competitor’s content is to their audience. Tracking both allows you to differentiate between content that simply gets seen and content that drives real interaction from users.

Once you’ve benchmarked the follower growth KPIs, you can repeat the same steps to track engagement and impressions.

Top-performing content pillars

Socialinsider uses AI to automatically tag social media posts into content themes. You can also set up custom content pillars to track how different themes perform across competitors.

Best-performing posts

Analyze your competitor’s social media strategy across different channels to spot the common patterns in their best-performing content. For example, Semrush’s best-performing Instagram posts in a recent analysis were the ones featuring real people.

Seeing this trend, our social media manager decided to run an experiment to test whether posts featuring real people could drive similar results on Instagram and LinkedIn. (It just started, so for the moment, we don’t have a conclusion yet. But we’ll keep you updated.)

To conduct a similar experiment, use Socialinsider’s manual tagging feature. Create a custom tag (such as ‘posts with people’) and assign it to relevant posts. This lets you isolate performance by content type and track results over time.

Lead generation and nurturing funnel analysis

Getting a peak into your competitor’s funnel can help you analyze how they are actively getting leads and nurturing them toward making a sale. You can also use the data to spot gaps in your own funnel.

Here’s what to look for in your competitor’s lead generation strategy.

Lead magnets: Are they using any eBooks, templates, or ROI calculators to capture leads? Where are they sharing these lead magnets?

Gated vs ungated content: Are the key resources behind detailed forms or are they freely available and optimized for SEO?

Funnel touchpoints: What are the follow up email sequences and nurture campaigns used to move leads through the marketing funnel?

Retargeting: What are the main retargeting strategies being used–paid ads, email campaigns, or anything else?

Understand their sales process and start a customer experience analysis

Analyzing your competitors’ end-to-end buyer journey and customer experience can help you understand how they build trust, shorten decision cycles, and drive loyalty.

The B2B buyer journey and competitive touchpoints

The goal here is to understand how they convert prospective customers into long-term buyers. Use some burner emails to sign up for your competitor’s tools and track the entire B2B buyer journey and different touchpoints.

• Is the funnel product-led (free trials, self-serve signup) or sales-led (demos, SDR outreach)?
• How quickly does a sales rep respond to a demo request?
• Do they use automated follow-ups, human outreach, or both?
• Are retargeting ads active on LinkedIn, Google, or Facebook post-visit?

Customer onboarding experience evaluation

Onboarding is the stage where customers form their very first impressions, and it's also the place where drop-offs often occur when the expectations aren’t met.  Analyzing your competitor’s onboarding flow can tell you how quickly they deliver value to new users and where your own brand’s experience might be falling short.

Here’s what you should look out for:

• Do they offer tooltips, product tours, or checklists once users log in?
• Is there a “Getting Started” dashboard?
• Do they send a welcome series that educates and nudges toward activation?
• Do they offer 1:1 onboarding calls or chat support?

Support and customer success program benchmarking

Analyzing your competitors’ support systems and customer success programs can tell you how they reduce churn and manage customer expectations.

Here’s how to evaluate their approach:

• Do they offer 24/7 live chat, or is the support limited to business hours?
• Do they rely on email, chat, phone, or community forums?
• Are there self-service options like a comprehensive help center or AI chatbots?
• Are high-value accounts assigned a dedicated account manager?
• How quickly do they respond to tickets or queries?

Advanced B2B competitive intelligence techniques

Companies operating in B2B industries also use advanced tools to learn how competitors grow their brands and scale to win in the market.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator for competitive research

LinkedIn Sales Navigator isn’t just for prospecting. It’s also helpful in tracking competitors.

Here’s how B2B marketers can use it as part of their LinkedIn marketing strategy for competitive analysis:

• Track hiring trends: If your competitor is hiring multiple Account Executives (AEs) or Sales Development Representatives (SDRs) in a specific region, they may be getting ready to expand in that region.

• Check their sales team structure: Check how many Account Executives (AEs), Customer Success Managers (CSMs), and sales leaders they have. A high number of AEs could suggest a focus on customer acquisition. More CSMs could indicate an emphasis on retention and onboarding.

Partnership and integration strategies

For B2B brands, partnerships, and integrations reveal how competitors are positioning themselves within their ICP’s workflow, which platforms or tools they’re aligning with to build credibility, and how they’re expanding into new B2B markets.

Analyzing the following can give you more competitor insights:

• Go-to-market strategy: Check which tools your competitors are partnering or integrating with. For example, if a CRM platform integrates with an email marketing tool like Mailchimp, it likely means they’re targeting marketing and sales teams with a bundled solution.

• ICP focus: If your competitors have introduced new integrations, it could signal a shift in their ICP. For example, launching a native integration with Shopify could indicate a push into the eCommerce or DTC space.

Create an actionable optimization strategy based on the insights gathered

All that competitive analysis will only lead to a waste of time if you don’t use the insights to make better decisions.

Here’s how to turn those insights into strategic next steps for your brand.

Product development prioritization based on competitive gaps

After you have already reviewed where your competitors are falling short, you can prioritize product features that fill these gaps. This can help your product stand out and offer something others don’t.

Let’s say multiple customer reviews mention that a competitor’s tool doesn’t support real-time collaboration. You can use this opportunity to prioritize features like shared workspaces or multi-user editing and highlight them as core differentiators in your brand messaging.

Marketing message differentiation strategies

If your competitor is positioning themselves with messaging like ‘affordable pricing’ or ‘fastest,’ don’t compete on the same narrative unless you’re confident you can outperform them. Instead, differentiate your brand by focusing on a specific ICP or use case.

For instance, if a competitor targets startups and small teams by highlighting simplicity and fast setup, you can position your tool as a better fit for mid-market or enterprise companies that need advanced controls, integrations, or compliance features.

Pricing strategy adjustments

Analyze your competitors’ pricing to identify gaps and opportunities for simplifying your pricing plans and adding more value to them. Pay special attention to how competitors bundle their products with usage-based limitations and premium add-ons.

For instance, if a competitor offers limited support in lower-tier plans and you see many customer reviews complaining about this, you can offer full support across all of your pricing plans to stand out and provide a strong, value-based reason to justify your pricing.

Industry-specific B2B competitor analysis considerations

Your approach to competitor research and analysis will depend directly on the dynamics of your industry and how it works. Take a look at the key things to keep in mind across major verticals when performing competitor analysis.

SaaS and technology companies

SaaS competitors usually have fast iteration cycles, lean sales, and high reliance on digital channels. Here’s what you should prioritize for a competitor analysis:

• Are they offering free trials, freemium plans, or onboarding walkthroughs?
• Are there any changelogs or app updates to track how often new features are launched?
• Are they scaling their content marketing efforts to improve customer education through SEO blogs, webinars, comparison pages, or social media reports?

Professional services and consulting

In service-based industries, it's important to look into how your competitors position themselves, showcase their expertise, and drive customer acquisition.

Your competitive research should include information such as:

• Is pricing transparent, or is it provided upon request? Do they offer fixed packages or custom quotes?
• Who is their main ICP? Which industries or company sizes do they focus on?
• Are they using outbound strategies or relying on referrals to get new clients
• Are they publishing any reports or podcasts to establish authority?

Manufacturing and industrial B2B

When it comes to industrial sectors, the sales process is longer and tied to distribution, which is why you should look into your competitor’s distribution channels and product range.

Your competitive landscape research should answer the following questions.

• What is their distribution strategy: partners, agents, or direct to customers?
• Do they use 3D catalogs, technical datasheets, or videos for product education
• Are they going to any major trade shows? If yes, where do they exhibit, and how do they position their brand at these events?

Healthcare and regulated industries

In regulated industries like healthcare and pharma, what can be said publicly and how is often tightly controlled. For competitor analysis, you should focus on their tone of messaging, preferred channels, and regional compliance.

When you research competitors in this space, you should look into:

• Are competitors creating localized versions of their websites to meet region-specific compliance requirements?
  
• What tone and messaging do they use in customer-facing content: educational, product-focused, or compliance-led?
  
• Do they invest in thought leadership, case studies, or whitepapers to build credibility within tight regulatory boundaries?
  
• Which channels are they most active on: LinkedIn, offline events, or industry webinars?
  

For instance, Werfen, a global diagnostics company, operates across regions with strict regulatory differences. They needed localized marketing strategies to comply with local laws.

To benchmark effectively, they use Socialinsider to:

• Compare performance across competitors;
• Auto-tag posts based on content themes and compliance sensitivity;
• Generate executive summaries with insights for internal teams.

This helps them monitor both direct competitors and indirect competitors without breaching compliance boundaries.

Final thoughts

Competitor analysis can reveal market gaps and help you build more data-backed strategies. To execute it effectively, track competitors' products, pricing, messaging, and marketing tactics.

With Socialinsider, you can perform in-depth social media competitor analysis, benchmark competitors across social channels, track engagement trends and identify what content works best, so you can turn insights into action.