The Complete Guide to Competitor Analysis for Small Businesses

Knowing what your competitors are doing as a small and medium-sized business (SMB) owner helps you make smarter decisions. It shows you where your competitors are strong, where they fall short, and how they position themselves in the market. This is the intel needed for a strong competitor analysis. 

In this article, you’ll learn what competitor analysis is, why it’s important, and how to run one step-by-step. You’ll also see how Salesforce can support this process with a customer relationship management (CRM) system that tracks and organizes it for your entire team.

What is competitor analysis?

Competitor analysis is the process of understanding what similar businesses offer, how they price and market their products, and what their strengths and weaknesses are. This gives you a clear view of where you could stand out, or expand your offerings.

Businesses often focus on a few core areas in their competitor analysis, including:

• Product features: What overall features they offer, as well as additional add-ons, and how they are received by customers
• Pricing models: What pricing tiers they offer, discounts, free trials, bundles, and add-ons
• Marketing and sales: What promotional channels they use, what messages they share on social, and any deals or email campaigns 
• Customer experience: What the onboarding experience looks like, 24/7 customer support, self-service knowledge, and customer reviews
• Brand positioning: How they present themselves and who they target, the voice they use and the pain points they talk about

What are the benefits of doing a competitor analysis?

When you know what similar brands are offering, it becomes easier to sharpen your messaging, and even your product. It also uncovers areas where you can stand out, which is a winning advantage in our now-overcrowded markets. 

Here are some of the benefits you can expect from running a competitor analysis.

• Identify market gaps: Shows where customer needs aren’t being met
• Reveal opportunities and threats: Shows areas to grow and issues to resolve
• Inform strategy: Helps you prioritize the best products and business decisions
• Improve brand positioning: Clarifies how you’re unique and why customers should choose you
• Stay agile: Helps you respond to industry changes before they impact you

What areas should you cover during competitor research?

Competitor research shows you how different companies operate, what their customers respond to, and what approaches they take.

Below are the main areas to review during the competitive research phase of your analysis, along with questions that help you assess each one.

1. Product

First, look at a competitor’s products, core features, the quality, and the experience they offer their customers. For each of these, we’ve compiled relevant questions to ask, feel free to tweak as needed: 

• What features do their products have that yours don’t?
• What features do you have that no one else does?
• How do their customers rate the quality of their products?
• What is the buyer experience like?

2. Cost

Next, take some time to review how your competitors structure their pricing, and how they justify it to customers. You can choose small, medium and large businesses of all types to review the different ways they offer pricing tiers, subscriptions, or perhaps one off packages. 

• How much is their product?
• What’s included in the base cost?
• Do they offer package deals, discounts, or a free trial?
• How does the pricing compare to the other options on the market?

3. Place

Location always plays a role in your business, as well as offering online and a hybrid approach. Whether your global or local, it all plays a role. Examine where and how competitors sell.

• Do they reach a segment of customers you don’t?
• Do they sell in the same regions as you?
• What channels do they use? Online, in-store, partner networks?

4. Promotion

Next up is to do a deep dive into their marketing and sales activity. Finding out the cadence, style, and brand choices they choose to share with the world can tell you a lot about you competitors: 

• What channels are they active on (social media, email, out-of-home)?
• How do they launch new products or campaigns?
• What messages seem to work well with their audience?
• What’s their top-visited page on Google?

5. Brand

Consider how competitors position themselves and connect emotionally with customers. Brand identity is important for scaling and staying consistent for growth: 

• What tone or personality do they use?
• What value or feeling do they promise?
• Who do they target in their advertising?

If you can answer these questions, it will give you a better view of why competitors succeed — and where their gaps are.

How to conduct a competitor analysis

A competitor analysis can be done in one big chunk, or as a side project alongside your other tasks. The goal is to develop a report that turns your suspicions into facts, that you can then use to inform your strategy.

At a high level, the steps are:

1. Identify your key competitors
2. Gather the right information
3. Analyze and organize your findings
4. Turn insights into actions
5. Continuously measure results

1. Identify your competitors

Start by listing all the companies a customer might choose instead of you. You can get a baseline understanding by researching products online or by asking artificial intelligence (AI) tools, and going from there.

In your list, include direct competitors offering similar products, and indirect competitors solving the same problem in a different way. 

At this stage, you want to have a database with the competitors listed, links to their websites, and the ways you’re going to measure them. See the section above for the key things you might want to note down.

2. Gather information

Look for details that show how each competitor operates. Check their website, pricing page, product demos, customer reviews, social media activity, and any case studies they publish. 

Note down facts like what they sell, how they sell it, and how customers respond. Once you’ve done this, you should have a spreadsheet full of data.

Pro Tip: You can use a CRM for small business to monitor how competitors show up across email, social, and advertising channels.

3. Analyze and organize

Sort your findings into areas of your business you want to improve. Sales? Marketing? If it’s very area, move forward with a holistic approach.  

If you want more structure, a framework option to try is the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats (SWOT) method, by putting together a feature comparison table that can help you spot opportunities quickly.

4. Apply what you’ve learned

This is the stage where you turn your insights into actions. This might mean refining your product roadmap, adjusting your pricing, strengthening your messaging, or building new campaigns that highlight your advantages.

Pro Tip: Use a CRM to feed these insights directly into sales playbooks or customer journeys.

5. Continuously measure results

Check in regularly to see what’s changed in your performance and in theirs. Competitors shift quickly (even based on the work you’re doing), so treat this as an ongoing process, not a one-off project. Try to have quarterly or monthly reviews with updated competitor insights.

Tools to help you gather competitive intelligence

The right tools make competitor analysis faster, more objective, and easier to repeat. You can think about tools in a few core buckets:

• Business intelligence (BI) tools: Bring all your data together for deeper insights with a CRM (Salesforce CRM, Tableau)
• Social listening tools: Monitor brand mentions and campaign activity (Brandwatch, Sprout Social).
• Web analytics tools: Review website traffic, content engagement, and onsite behavior (Similarweb, Semrush).
• Integration and monitoring tools: Analyze customer feedback across (Google, AppExchange).

Master competitor analysis with Salesforce

Salesforce makes competitor analysis easier by pulling all your data into one place. You can centralize competitors’ products, pricing, and performance, and use reports to spot patterns and opportunities quickly.

Ready to start analyzing? Start your journey with the Free or Starter Suite today. Looking for more customization? Explore Pro Suite. Already a Salesforce customer? Activate Foundations to try out Agentforce 360 today.

AI supported the writers and editors who created this article.