Marketing competitor analysis templates
How do marketing teams maintain dominance? Analyzing market competition is a vital component of your marketing strategy. You need to closely monitor the other companies that are trying to attract your target buyers — so you can determine how to engage and convert those potential customers more effectively than they can.
Your research should consider all of the alternatives available to your prospective customers (including direct and indirect competitors), the marketing tactics your competitors use, and how they communicate the benefits of their offering. This research helps you define superior go-to-market strategies that can create competitive advantages.
The free competitor analysis templates provided here are purpose-built for marketing teams. Each one includes a wide range of examples to capture important research about who your competitors are, what products and services they offer, and their strengths and weaknesses. These templates are also useful for analyzing the messages and channels other companies in your market use, so you can better understand their market presence and determine how to establish a competitive advantage.
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What is a competitive marketing strategy?
A competitive marketing strategy is critical to ensure that your campaigns and programs capture more customers than your competitor. Running creative marketing campaigns that resonate with customers, more effectively targeting customers with digital advertisements, and establishing a lower price point are all examples of ways marketing teams create a competitive advantage over other products.
Consider these questions when assessing your competitive marketing strategy:
Who are the other companies competing in your space?
What products or services do they offer?
What is each competitor’s market share?
What are their strengths and weaknesses?
What channels do they use?
How can your messaging differentiate your products and services?
Competitive analysis is one tool marketers use to better understand how to formulate the right strategy. It is important to perform competitive analyses on a regular basis because the market landscape can shift quickly as competitors raise funding, shift priorities, or develop new features. You will want to know when these changes happen so you can adjust your marketing tactics accordingly.
What are the types of marketing competitor analysis?
There are many types of competitor analysis. Choosing the right type depends on the information you want to capture and how you will use your findings. Teams typically start with a high-level analysis and then move into more detailed views of specific channels.
Listed below are the prebuilt examples included in this guide:
Competitive landscape | Visualize where your offering fits in the overall marketing landscape and position competitors based on their strengths and weaknesses. |
Competitor profile | Capture an in-depth view of each competitor, including key details about the company, product, and features. |
Competitor overview | Identify the strengths and weaknesses of competitors by comparing them based on the information you gather. |
Go-to-market competitive analysis | Gain insights into the marketing strategies that each competitor uses to target buyers — such as social media, keyword targeting, content, events, and more. |
Messaging competitive analysis | Document the basic, expected, augmented, and potential benefits of your product so you can define a strategy that sets you apart from the competition. |
Value proposition analysis | Evaluate the key messages your competitors use to communicate the benefits of their product. |
Search engine competitive analysis | Understand the search engine landscape around your offering and develop content that will help you rank better. |
Social media overview | Expand understanding into what is resonating with social media audiences so you know how to better engage with them. |
Sales battlecard | Enable your sales teams to close deals by giving them the information they will need to beat our competitors. |
Competitor analysis templates
Spreadsheets and static presentations are easily available to marketing teams. Mature marketing organizations use a collaborative web-based tool to capture competitive research. Try Aha! free for 30 days. It is perfect for marketing teams that want to set strategy, build plans, and mange programs and campaigns — all in one place.
Not ready for purpose-built software? You can download our competitor analysis templates below for free and tailor each one to your specific needs.
Competitive landscape
Visualize all of your competitors in a single view using this template. See how the position of your company compares to other competitors in the market. This type of high-level analysis is helpful when you want to present a summary view to marketing and product leadership teams. You can easily change the quadrant titles and the x and y axis labels to reflect your assessment of the market.
Competitor profile
Create a detailed profile for each of your key competitors using this customizable template. Capture essential information about their organization, customers, products, as well as strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities. This helps your marketing team form a clear understanding of who they are competing against. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of each competitor helps the team acquire, keep, and grow customers more effectively.
Competitor overview
This template is a useful way to organize competitive research about all of your rivals in a single location. It includes two sections — company and marketing. Use the company section to summarize details about each company and their products and services. Capture what keywords they rank well for, what collateral they produce, or what events they hold in the marketing section. Gathering information about your competition using a consistent format helps you collect and analyze key data.
Market and positioning analysis
This matrix is perfect for capturing the marketing strategies that each competitor uses to target buyers. What media channels do they use to promote new offerings? How much are they spending on ads? These are key questions that help you understand the marketing strategies your competitors use. It also allows you to identify potential weaknesses in their plans so you can increase your own competitive advantage.
Messaging analysis
This template helps you distill the key messages other companies in your market use to attract and engage potential customers. Use it to understand how other companies communicate with target buyers — including their tagline, what problems they address, and the promise of how their offering will address those problems. You can then strengthen your core message by adjusting your go-to-market strategy and positioning according to what you find.
Value proposition analysis
Use this template to evaluate your competitors' value propositions. This is a great way to compare the key messages your competitors use to communicate the benefits of their product. It allows you to rate the core messages that address your customers' needs so you can see how your position in the market compares. This gives you important insights into how competitors are targeting potential customers and the messaging they use, so you can identify ways to strengthen your communication plan.
Search engine competitive analysis
This template is ideal for analyzing your competitors' search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. With the help of your SEO tool, you can capture details about keyword rankings and website traffic volume by source. Understanding the domain authority of each competitor helps you identify where you need to boost your own SEO performance. Many marketing teams use this information to optimize content creation around target keywords to help bring in more organic traffic.
Sales battlecard
Battlecards are a useful tool for helping sales teams respond to competitor claims. This template helps you summarize the unique differentiators that set your offering apart and the strengths and weaknesses of each competitor. This better equips your sales team to respond to competitors' claims and address any questions or objections prospective customers might raise during the buying process.
Plan, collaborate, and launch — all in one tool. Try Aha! free for 30 days.
