The Ultimate Guide to Competitive Analysis (+ Templates)

Before you start jotting down notes, you'll want to find a competitive analysis template that works for your business. There are several options, but here are some of our favorite competitive analysis templates you can use.

Competitive Analysis Template #1: Battle Card

在HubSpot的此竞争分析模板中，您将详细介绍有关竞争对手的信息，例如：

• 竞争对手的名字
• Basic facts: Location, number of employees, year founded, annual revenue, number of customers
• Key products
• Pricing model
• Their unique selling proposition
• Competitor media coverage
• Competitor strengths and how your brand can beat them
• Competitor weaknesses and case studies from your customers that will help you win sales

来源：blog.hubspot.com

竞争分析模板＃2

In this competitive analysis template from Column Five, you'll track:

• 竞争对手的名字
• Their purpose, mission, vision, and values
• 品牌的外观和感觉
• Their value proposition or unique selling proposition
• Tagline
• Core products or services
• The customers they serve
• How they talk about their customers
• How they acquire customers
• Marketing, advertising, and sales channels they use
• Revenue
• 长处和短处
• Similarities and differences

竞争分析模板＃3

在Shopify的这个简单竞争分析模板中，您将使用电子表格跟踪：

• The type of competitor (primary, secondary, tertiary)
• Their positioning
• 价格点
• Target audience
• Offer
• Key competitive advantages
• Sales channels
• Marketing strategy
• Support offering
• Shipping
• Number of products
• Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats

Once you've chosen a competitive analysis template, it's time to choose the competitors you're going to analyze. We recommend choosing seven–10 competitors so you have a broad range of businesses and data points. A really easy way to find your top competitors is through a simple Google search for the niche, product, or services you offer.

You might also use a consumer research platform to directly ask your ideal audience what brands come to mind when they think about your product or service, what brands they recognize (from a list you provide), brands they've bought your products and services from in the past, and more.

After you've put together your list of competitors it's time to learn more about them. This means diving into their unique selling proposition, the products they have to offer, their pricing, and theirbranding. You'll want to be honest about how your own branding, products, and pricing stack up as well as explore your competitors' business models. What you're looking for here is what it is that customers find appealing about your competitors.

The next step is to take a closer look at your competitors' finances. For companies that are publicly held, this information is usually available on the company's website or in trading reports. You can also search for them on sites like Crunchbase, ZoomInfo, or Owler, among others.

To calculate a company's market share, divide the company's total revenue by the industry's total revenue over a fiscal period. You can then determine whether the company is growing its market share on par with or faster than competitors by comparing calculations over time.

To get a comprehensive overview of a company's market share, revenue, and value, you'll want to find and track:

• Revenue/total sales
• Funding received
• Investments mad
• Expansion plans
• Current staff, vacancies, notable new hires
• Store closures or redundancies

Market reach is how many customers your competitor has access to and includes both they can reach and those that can reach them. For online brands, you'll want to note their shipping capabilities (local only or international), the price of shipping, how long it takes, how returns are handled, and whether or not they offer free delivery. For brick-and-mortar stores, you'll want to track how many locations they have and where.

Next, you're going to want to dig into reviews of your competitors to find out what they're doing right (and wrong) in the eyes of the most important people — customers. But don't just check out the reviews your competitors include on their own websites. Why would they want to highlight the bad ones? To get the full story, you'll want to check out Google reviews, Amazon reviews, Yelp reviews, or any review site that your competitor is likely to show up on.

In addition to checking out their reviews, you'll benefit greatly from checking on social media. There are several wonderful社交媒体听力工具that make it really easy to find out the sentiment towards your competitors' brands. Along with social listening, we recommend that you take the time to read some posts and comments from and about your competitors to get a full understanding of what customers love about the brand and what they wish were different.

You can also get into other types of market research likeNet Promoter Score (NPS). NPS is a market research metric that usually involves a single survey question, asking survey respondents to rate the likelihood that they'd recommend a brand, product, or service to a friend, family member, or colleague.

Now it's time to dig into what your competitor is doing surrounding marketing. There are several different marketing channels your competitors might be leveraging:

• 拥有的媒体：email newsletters, blogs, podcasts, downloadable content, etc.
• Paid social:ads on social media.
• Organic social content:anything posted on social media that isn't paid for. Make a note of the社交媒体平台188滚球地址他们使用。
• 付费搜索，显示和本地广告：请注意，竞争对手用Google Ads/PPC广告定位的关键字以及他们正在运行的横幅广告以及他们在第三方网站上显示的促销内容。
• Organic SEO:where are they showing up in organic search results and for which keywords?
• 会员营销，合作伙伴和赞助：他们运行吗从属营销计划or have a connection to other brands?
• Print or broadcast media:are they running ads in magazines or newspapers or using radio or TV spots?
• 活动营销：do they host or attend online or offline events?
• Marketing collateral:do they use direct mail, brochures, or other collateral?
• Out of home:do they advertise using billboards, buses, or other out-of-home channels?
• Influencer marketing:do they utilizebrand ambassadorsor influencers for marketing?

The goal is to understand where your competitors are spending their marketing dollars so you can identify the channels that are over or under-utilized.

除了了解竞争对手的营销策略外，您还需要更多地了解他们的内容和社交媒体。跟踪他们在每个社交媒体平台上都有多少关注者，并注意到engagementthey get (likes, comments, and shares) as well as how often they post.

密切关注其追随者喜欢并与大多数人互动的内容类型。请记住，这些是您的竞争对手，因此，他们的客户应该与您的目标市场几乎相同。如果他们看到特定平台或内容类型的良好结果，您将需要接管该平台并胜过它们。

You'll also want to check out the blog on their website as well as the other types of content they create. What's their blog posting schedule? Do they publish other content like infographics, whitepapers, eBooks, or guides? What lead magnets do they offer?

内容

Take a look at a sample of the content on your competitors' websites and evaluate them based on:

• The accuracy of their content
• 如果内容写得很好，为在线读者进行了格式，并在语法上正确
• The type of content they're creating (advanced ideas or basics)
• 他们在写作中使用的语气
• Whether their content is freely available or gated
• 谁在写内容
• The quality of visuals they're using

社交媒体

对于每一个竞争对手,注意社交媒体platforms they're on and evaluate them based on:

• 发布频率和一致性
• 参与和病毒
• The type of original content they're posting and its purpose (engagement, brand awareness, lead generation)
• 他们与他人共享的内容类型（以及他们共享内容的内容）
• If/how they interact with their followers

Promotion

How are your competitors promoting their marketing content? Pay attention to keywords used, keyword density, alt-text tags on images, and internal linking. You'll also want to note keyword opportunities, the backlinks they're getting (and which content is getting those backlinks).

订婚

To check engagement on your competitors' content you'll be looking at comments, likes, and shares. Pay particular attention to the types of content that tend to get more engagement and dig a little deeper to see whether that engagement is positive or negative.

We're going to shift our attention from your competitors' content and social media to the technology that they use. While it might not seem readily apparent, the tech your company uses can have an enormous impact on how your company performs. To find out what tech your competitors are using, you can use a tool like Built With (just enter the URL). You can also go full-on detective mode and explore job listings from your competitors to see which tools they want applicants to be familiar with.

The last piece of your competitive analysis is a SWOT analysis. SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. It's an incredibly common and long-beloved way businesses have used to analyze both competitors and their own businesses. Here are the questions to ask for each section of the SWOT analysis:

Strengths

• What are their assets?
• What is their strongest asset?
• How is their business different from mine?
• 他们可以使用什么独特的资188金宝慱网站源？
• Do they have a sustainable competitive advantage?
• 他们独特的销售主张是什么？
• Does their business have any exclusive relationships with suppliers or distributors?
• Where do their sales and marketing teams excel?
• What skills do their employees have that our employees don’t have?
• 他们有强大的客户群吗？
• 他们的客户说什么真的做得很好？

Weaknesses

• In what areas do they need to improve?
• 他们缺乏什么专业知识？
• In what areas are we better than our competitors?
• Is there one customer carrying their entire company?
• How much debt do they have?
• 他们定期听到客户的投诉？
• What objections do they most often hear from potential customers?
• Do they have any technology or equipment that needs to be updated?
• 他们人手不足吗？
• Do they have any cash flow problems?
• Are their profit margins lower than ours?

机会

• What trends might positively affect the industry?
• 他们可以雇用人才吗？
• Is there a need in the industry that they're not meeting, but could?
• 他们可以以不同的方式打包产品/服务并设定更高的价格吗？
• 我们是否有竞争对手可以利用的弱点？
• Is our target market changing in a way that could help them?
• Is there a niche market that they're not currently targeting?
• 他们的客户曾经要求提供他们不提供但可以提供的东西吗？
• Could they steal our customers by offering something we don’t?

威胁

• Is there anyone who’s not currently a direct competitor, but could become one soon?
• Are their employees happy and supported, or could they easily be poached?
• What happens if a manufacturer or supplier runs out of materials they need?
• 如果自然灾害袭击该怎么办？
• Are they planning on expanding or offering new products soon?
• Is their target marketing shrinking?