I’m deep into a market intelligence report for a client this week, so analysis is very much on my mind. I’ve gotten a lot of questions about market research recently and I know that it’s the most daunting part of ​marketing strategy​ for most of you.

So let’s demystify and simplify it. How do you keep an eye on your competitors and get solid insights?

We’ll be answering these questions today and, next week, I’ll show you how to analyze your target audience so you speak their language.

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What the heck is a competitor?

I know, this one sounds like a no-brainer but I’ve seen way too many people focus excessively on direct competitors and ignore indirect ones and vice versa.

Whether indirect or indirect, a competitor is a competitor. At the end of the day, they’re an alternative to what you’re selling, someone who can take business away from you.

Let’s say you run a yoga studio. A direct competitor is another yoga studio (if it’s close to you geographically, it’s even “more direct”). An indirect competitor is an online yoga teacher.

Your neighboring yoga studio is more likely to take business away from you.

But you shouldn’t ignore online yoga teachers either because your customers may switch to them for a variety of reasons:

  • It’s too hard to get to your studio
  • Your classes are too expensive
  • They prefer the comfort of their own home
  • They can’t leave the house (remember lockdowns? Online yoga courses thrived back then, while yoga studios…not so much.)

There is even more nuance to competitor “proximity”:

  • A direct competitor is someone who has very similar products to yours and caters to the exact same audience.
  • An indirect competitor can be someone with a similar product that caters to a different audience. For instance, a “regular” yoga studio vs a luxury one that offers complete wellness packages.
  • You can also differentiate based on size: a yoga studio franchise vs your friendly neighborhood boutique studio.

The options and variables are endless; frankly, it makes no sense to obsess over them. The only criterion another business has to meet to be considered a competitor is can they take business away from you? If so, how likely are they to do it and how easy is it for them?

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Now that we know the what, let’s move on to the who.

How do I find my competitors?

This one’s easy: Google and social media.

A few queries that you can try to narrow down the results:

  • [Your title/business] e.g. life coaches. Too broad? Try this: “life coaches for career women”
  • [Your business] + [location] for local businesses e.g. “yoga studio in downtown Austin”
  • [Your ​content pillars​] — this will tell you who else writes about your topic e.g. “top challenges for career women”

Pro tip: the first results are typically from huge websites, like Wikipedia, Forbes, and so on. Go beyond the first 10-20 results to identify your direct competitors.

On social media:

  • On LinkedIn, you can search by job title, so it’s the easiest platform to find competitors.
  • On other platforms, look for the hashtags you use. Odds are your competitors are using them too.
  • Some social networks, like X or Instagram, have a “Trending” tab. Assuming that you’ve already seen content that’s relevant to your industry, that tab will help you discover new competitors.

Ideally, list between 5-10 competitors. Any more than that and you will have a hard time spotting patterns, at least in the beginning. You can keep adding to this list with time, but 5-10 is enough for the first “round”.

Let’s see how you can use the information.

What problem are you trying to solve through competitor analysis?

You can, of course, keep tabs on competition just because it’s a good idea to do so. But you’ll get better results if you focus your efforts. Plus, you avoid rabbit holes — trust me, these are a real problem in competitor analysis. You’ll end up reading their entire website and realizing you found nothing useful.

So, start with the big question. Why are you doing competitor research?

Some of the most common reasons:

  • You’re trying to fill a gap in the market → look at their products
  • You want to diversify your income streams → look at their products
  • You want to ​expand to more channels​ → look at the channels they’re active on
  • You have trouble pricing your offers → look at their pricing
  • You want to tap into their audience → look at their channels and how they use them

Two distinct phases: collect & connect

In the first phase of your research, your job is to collect data. Don’t worry about shape or format. Just dump every nugget of information into your favorite app.

I use Google Docs. My docs look horrendous: a collection of copy-pasted paragraphs, links, my own notes, comments, and more — all with zero formatting, in dozens of fonts and sizes.

That’s OK, no one will ever see those.

The second phase is where we make sense of the chaos: we connect the dots.

For this phase, we’re looking for patterns, repeating ideas, themes, anything that can give us an edge. So we need to systematize and format properly.

I put together a quick spreadsheet to help you do just that. It’s not picture-perfect because you’ll need to edit it anyway and add your own information.

​You can access it here​. Click on File → Make a Copy to make it your own.

Note: The examples in the spreadsheet are placeholders, including the websites and the opportunities.

The key columns are Notes and Opportunities. Use them to make sure that you put all your hard work to good use.

Once again, 5-10 competitors should be enough to get you started and to spot some patterns. However, don’t forsake this spreadsheet in a dusty folder somewhere. Add to it regularly — once every 6 months to a year.

You can delete, ignore, or add columns as you see fit. For instance, if you’re looking for pricing information, the “channels” column is irrelevant for now. You can fill it in later when you’re ready to diversify.

A word of caution

Your competitors are neither evil nor morons. A healthy competition is a sign of a strong market, so it makes no sense to hate them or to underestimate them. Start with respecting them and you’ll get much farther.

Use the tactics above to learn from them — they surely do something better than you do. At the same time, there are things that they do worse than you — can you fill those gaps and serve a new audience or serve an existing audience better?

Lastly, resist the urge to copy what they do. No matter how much market intelligence you gather, you won’t know exactly what works for them and what doesn’t.

For instance, they may be on YouTube and you’re not. That doesn’t mean YouTube is making them money, directly or indirectly. Plus, it may not be the right choice FOR YOU.

If you become a carbon copy of your competitors, the only thing you can compete on is price. And that’s always a race to the bottom.

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