Discover how to create a competitive analysis report to understand where your brand sits in the market and identify areas of improvement.
As a marketer, you are always looking for the next big thing to boost your brandâs presence and revenue.
But where do you find this inspiration? Instead of shooting arrows in the dark, what if you could turn to proven strategies?
One way to get this inspiration is by running a competitor analysis. And better yet, combining all the insights and benchmarking metrics into a competitive analysis report, that shows your team the direction to take and how to turn data into strategies.
In this guide, weâll learn why competitive analysis reports are crucial, how to make one, and the tools you can use to simplify this task. Letâs jump right in.
What does the process of creating a competitive analysis report tool like? Discover the steps needed to create effective reports- from defining goals, identifying competitors and setting analysis categories to running a SWOT analysis and compiling insights.
Understand what manual and automated data gathering implies and what research methods and tools are most effective.
Leverage helpful templates to simplify your work like the ones we've created for you.
A competitive analysis report is a document that evaluates your competitors to understand their strengths, weaknesses, strategies, and brand positioning. It shows you their performance and how your brand compares to others in your industry.
It typically contains information on top competitors, their profile, and details like:
With this competitorâs activity audit, you get a new lens to look at and build strategies for your business.
Run a competitive performance analysis!
Spy on your competitor's social media data, get content inspiration and strategy optimization insights!
Start your 14-days FREE trial!Instead of adding metrics to your report randomly, hereâs a step-by-step process that will help you build an effective competitive analysis report.
What is your business goal right now? Is it to increase visibility? Or to generate revenue as quickly as possible? This business objective should act as a guide for how to conduct your competitive analysis.
It will also define the type of research you will do (comprehensive or aimed at just a couple of verticals) and the metrics you should focus on.
Letâs take an example to understand this.
Business goal: Increase brand visibility through social media
What to focus on for competitive analysis:
The more specific your business goal, the more targeted your competitorâs activity analysis.
To get the most effective analytics from your competitive market analysis, you need to nail down the right competitors. For instance, in our earlier example of running an analysis focused on social, you need to find those competitors that are targeting social media specifically for visibility.
We generally target three types of competitors for our analysis:
You can find these competitors using a combination of the following:
You should aim for 3-4 competitors to make this analysis of the competitorsâ performance detailed without it feeling too overwhelming.
Unless you want to focus on just one vertical, you will be analyzing your competitors across different strategies. Instead of haphazardly trying to get these details together, we recommend breaking them down into sections.
Here are some common verticals to include in your competitorâs analytics.
How are your competitors making money? How are they different in the eyes of your shared audience?
Thatâs where market positioning and business model analysis come in.
Market positioning looks at how a competitor presents itself. For example, are they the âpremiumâ option, the âbudget-friendlyâ choice, or the most âeffective solutionâ?
Business model analysis digs into how they make money. Do they have subscriptions, focus on one-time sales, prioritize freemium and convert later, or make money from additional services?
How does this help? Letâs take an example.
If you run a project management tool and a competitor brands themselves as âthe easiest tool for startupsâ with a freemium model, thatâs a clear positioning. If another targets enterprises and charges per seat, thatâs a different strategy.
Analyzing this helps you find gaps. Maybe no one is targeting mid-sized teams with a simple pricing tier. Thatâs your opportunity.
A product/service offering comparison helps you break down what competitors sell, the features they include, and what their customers actually value. Remember, itâs not limited to just listing the features or differences. Itâs about understanding why customers choose them over you (or vice versa).
To conduct this, go to your competitorâs website. Look at their homepage. What do they talk about mainly? Next, check their Product/Features section. What are the core features/capabilities they are offering? Are there any features that provide an innovative solution you donât offer? Note it down as their competitive advantage.
This comparison helps spot gaps in your own offering, opportunities to differentiate, or areas where you might be overdelivering without charging for it. These insights present in your competitor analysis report will shape your roadmap and messaging.
Go through your competitorâs pricing on the website. See what they charge for similar plans or services.
Donât limit your analysis to seeing who offers the cheapest or most expensive plan. See which competitor is most successful in giving the most perceived value for the price.
You can even find the basis for modifying your pricing strategy if necessary. For example, if you find that youâre charging less than most competitors and still delivering as much value, you can either raise your pricing (within reason) or pivot your marketing messaging to focus on affordability.
For example, look at the copy on Mailmodoâs pricing page.
To make this claim, they needed to ensure they were offering competitive pricing to other brands in their industry.
On the other hand, if your product is priced higher than your competitors', ask yourself: Are you delivering enough value to justify the difference? If the answer is no, you have two options: enhance your offering by adding features, use cases, or better support, or revisit your pricing to better align with customer expectations.
What tone do your competitors often use? How do they position themselves in ads, website copy, or even emails? What pain points are they addressing? Are they making any bold promises?
By studying their marketing materials and messaging, you can refine your own brand voice, align better with your audience, and spot where competitors might be overpromising or underdelivering.
For example, if your positioning matches theirs, you donât necessarily have to change it. But you do have to back it up better. Imagine multiple budgeting apps claiming to âmake saving money simple.â
Instead of changing your message, you could reinforce it by offering a cleaner user interface, more helpful automations, and real customer stories that prove it actually is simple.
You can even understand what kind of tone and messaging resonates well with your audience. Based on these insights, your team can refine the messaging you use to represent your brand.
What online marketing strategies are your competitors using? Are they sticking to blogs? Or they mix it up with events, webinars, referral marketing, and influencer marketing?
You can even see their top traffic sources by using tools like Semrush.
This will show you which channels are performing the best for them. Use these tools to go deeper and understand their content strategies.
For example, we generally use SEO tools to understand our competitors' overall marketing strategy. For each strategy, we look at audience reaction and engagement, channel dominance, frequency of different content formats, and top-performing content pillars.
Based on these insights, our team then identifies gaps we can fill, doubles down on whatâs working in our industry, and experiments with new formats or channels that our competitors havenât explored yet.
Think about this â approximately 8 out of every 10 U.S. online shoppers use social media to shop. This shows why brands are investing heavily in social media.
But is it enough to just have a presence? Probably not. Youâre fighting for attention with other competitors in your niche. Hereâs how to compare your performance to competitors on social media and include the insights in your competitor analysis reports.
PS: Tools like Socialinsider can quickly help you with this.
You can then do a micro-level social media audit for each competitor. For example, if your competitor is gaining followers fast on Instagram with majority of Reels content, it could signal the audienceâs content preferences.
You can get this social media data in a few clicks using the competitive benchmarking feature on Socialinsider.
For example, here we see that while Instagram and Facebook has the highest number of followers for BMW, TikTok is quickly growing with an impressive follower growth rate.
Donât just stop here. Dig deeper to see platform-specific performance in terms of brand engagement across channels.
Next, compare competitors' KPIs against your own social media metrics to find gaps and capitalize on them with your channel strategies.
This can reveal what the audience expects or values in your niche. And how is it helpful? It allows you to discover what other relevant topics your brand could join, enabling the opportunity to come up with something fresh and maybe even dominate the space by doing it better.
Once you've done all the steps presented so far, you can go into reviewing each competitorâs best-performing posts to identify patterns in content format (for example, video vs. image), tone of voice, publishing time, or hashtags used.
For example, if a competitor responds within an hour and thanks every commenter, that sets a strong benchmark. By comparing their approach with yours, you can identify areas to improve your engagement and customer experience.
Customer experience can be a big differentiator if most products and services in your industry are similar. By analyzing customer experience and satisfaction, you can see how your competitors are delighting users and where theyâre falling short.
Start by reading reviews on platforms like G2, Reddit, or even app stores. Look for patterns. Are customers complaining about clunky onboarding, poor customer service, or missing features? Or are they consistently praising ease of use, quick support, or a specific functionality?
For example, if we look at Asanaâs reviews on G2, we can see that most of the recent reviews are positive. This shows that their product and pricing strategies are working well, and itâs a good competitor to learn from. We can even dig further into what their users value the most and use it for our strategies.
You can also analyze social media mentions and customer testimonials on their site to gauge brand sentiment. Are customers loyal, passive, or frustrated?
By comparing customer feedback across your category, youâll understand how you stack up. More importantly, youâll find concrete ideas to improve product experience, refine positioning, and win over users who feel underserved by existing solutions.
Once youâve gathered all the competitor data, whatâs next? Time to make sense of it with a SWOT analysis.
SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. It helps you turn raw data into clear, strategic insights.
Start by listing your strengths compared to competitors. Maybe your product is easier to use, or your customer support is more responsive. Then list your weaknesses. Perhaps you have fewer features or a smaller online presence.
Next, look at the opportunities in the market. Are competitors ignoring a certain customer segment? Are they slow to adopt new channels like Threads or AI chat? Finally, consider external threats, like a well-funded new entrant or shifting customer expectations.
Instead of simply copying your competitorsâ strategies, SWOT analysis forces you to step back and look at the bigger picture. For example, what youâre already doing well, where youâre falling short, and where your biggest opportunities or risks lie based on what others in your space are doing.
Imagine youâve spent weeks researching your competitors. You have data on their pricing, messaging, social media, content, customer reviews, and more.
Keeping the data in a spreadsheet or a slide deck is all bark and no bite. The real value lies in turning competitor insights into clear next steps.
Start by summarizing key takeaways for each core area, like marketing, sales, pricing, product, social media strategy, and customer experience. To make it easier and more actionable, frame your notes around simple, strategic questions like:
Keep the format of this action plan simple. Use bullet points, short summaries, and clear next steps. Instead of just sharing it with your marketing or product team, we recommend involving all relevant teams. This keeps everyone aligned.
You can share this action plan in your competitorâs research report using a simple spreadsheet or dedicated competitor intelligence tools.
Should you just rely on competitive benchmarking and studying the competitorâs online presence? Or should you also talk to customers and get feedback from customer-facing teams?
Letâs understand the difference between these research methods and when you should opt for each one.
This consists of first-hand data that you collect directly from sources. The usual methods are:
When to use this method?
This consists of existing data you gather from public or third-party sources. The usual methods are:
When to use this method?
Do you feel lost in a sea of spreadsheets while running a competitive analysis? Or worse yet, do you spend weeks just gathering data?
Competitive analysis tools can make this process quicker and easier. So you can spend time strategizing instead of working on trivial tasks. Letâs look at the top 4 tools and how to use them.
Kompyte is a powerful tool for monitoring your competitors without manually checking their websites or marketing every day. Here are four key ways this tool can help build a competitorâs performance analysis report.
With Socialinsider, you can understand how your brand and competitors perform on social media. You can go beyond basic metrics to get a full picture of whatâs working and whatâs not.
Here are the four key ways our tool can help out.
Want to know your competitorsâ SEO strategies? Ahrefs gives you a complete picture of how they are ranking on Google and why. Letâs explore all that you can do with this tool.
They also offer a lot of additional tools you can use to optimize your SEO strategy.
Want to see what customers think about you, and your competitors? Typeform helps build interactive, engaging surveys for your primary research. Hereâs how to use this tool:
You can share these surveys via email, social media, or embed them on your site.
Imagine your team finds a backdoor login to a competitorâs private customer dashboard or scrapes gated content meant only for paid users. It might feel like a clever hack. But itâs not just unethical, it could be illegal.
Here are three ethical considerations you should not overlook:
Instead of starting from scratch, what if you had a template that listed all the key data points you need to gather? It would give you a clear structure, save time, and ensure you donât miss critical competitive insights.
Here are three templates for you to download and get started with.
What if you could turn hours of competitor research into a one-page summary your entire team actually reads? Thatâs exactly what this template will help you do.
Instead of digging through pages of notes, you get a clear snapshot of who your competitors are, what theyâre doing well, where theyâre falling short, and what you should do next.
Whether youâre planning a campaign, pitching a strategy, or updating your boss, this template keeps everyone on the same page and focused on what really matters.
For example, Iâll fill this template for a competitive analysis we did for BMW.
You can either keep this in a tabular format or use Google Sheets. We've put together the above-exemplified template for you to easily navigate through data and observations
PS: We also recommend using tools like Notion, where you can link pages and sub-pages in case someone wants to see the analysis in detail.
What if you could clearly see how you stack up against your competitors, across every key area of business? A comprehensive competitive analysis report template helps you gather and organize insights on your competitorsâ products, pricing, messaging, digital presence, social media, customer sentiment, and more.
Hereâs a SWOT analysis downloadable template you can use.
Want a quick overview of how your brand stacks up against the competition? This template gives you just that, at a glance. No need to dig through long reports. This template summarizes key insights like product features, pricing, marketing channels, and social media performance side by side for each competitor.
It's perfect for busy teams that need fast, reliable intel to make strategic decisions. Whether you're in a meeting or brainstorming new campaigns, this dashboard helps you spot gaps, strengths, and opportunities in seconds.
A competitor analysis report uncovers what your competitors are doing, why they are implementing certain strategies, and the gaps you can fill.
This gives your team a clear direction where they can utilize their time and energy. Note that you should keep updating these reports every few months to ensure your business strategies stay relevant. Ready to get started with your competitive analysis?
Use Socialinsider to track your competitorâs social strategy, find content gaps, and analyze performance.
Social media managers, brand strategists, product marketers, and even founders rely on competitive analysis reports to stay ahead. These reports solve problems like stagnating engagement, unclear positioning, or underperforming campaigns by showing what competitors are doing differentlyâand whatâs working for them. Itâs not just about watching others; itâs about finding your next move with confidence.
A strong report doesnât just collect dataâit connects the dots. It highlights where your brand wins, where itâs falling short, and why. It includes both macro-level benchmarking and platform-specific breakdowns, digs into content performance, and ends with clear, actionable insights. Bonus points if it sparks strategic conversations across teams.
Quarterly is the sweet spot for most brands, giving you a consistent view of shifts in the market and performance trends. But timing also depends on what youâre planningâbefore launching a new product, entering a new channel, or testing a new campaign, a fresh competitive snapshot is a must. Think of it as part of your strategic check-in, not just a reporting task.
ââA competitive analysis report is only as good as the clarity it offers. To make sure your findings lead to real impact, here are a few best practices to keep in mind:
Competitive analysis can be a goldmineâbut only if done right. Here are a few common mistakes to watch out for:
Track & analyze your competitors and get top social media metrics and more!
Use in-depth data to measure your social accountsâ performance, analyze competitors, and gain insights to improve your strategy.