Competitive analysis is a systematic examination of how other players operate in the market and where a company has room to manoeuvre. It looks at the offering and its structure, price level and how pricing is presented, messaging and arguments, targeted keywords and advertising formats, customer reviews and what people praise or find lacking in them. The most useful source tends to be reviews and discussions, because they reveal competitors' real weaknesses rather than their marketing claims. The output should not be a description but a decision – how the company will differentiate itself and which gaps it will exploit. It is worth repeating the analysis at least once a year and tracking changes, because a static picture of the market quickly goes out of date. Care must be taken to select actual competitors, not just perceived ones.
See also: Competitor research in a new market, Differentiation, Competitor Backlink Analysis.
