Introduction

If the SaaS world feels like a blur these days, it’s not just you. SaaS
products and services have proliferated. Product categories have
gotten more crowded. A lot of their features and functionality have
started to overlap. The subscription economy has made it easier to
switch to competing products. The marketplace has turned into a
competitive high-stakes, “winner-takes-all” environment.
New product categories are popping up every day and the lines
between traditional categories and labels are starting to matter less
and less to customers who just have a problem to solve. Now that
customers can choose from more options than ever, it’s become
much more difficult to eke out a sustainable competitive advantage.

As of 2017, there are over 5,000 products in the martech sphere alone

competing for business in complex and overlapping ways. Some
companies leverage their expertise and resources to enter new
markets. Salesforce is a great example; look at the number of
martech categories it’s listed in. With so much competition, SaaS
companies can't win on features alone; they must win on brand and
customer experience.
It has also become remarkably difficult to distinguish direct
competitors from indirect threats - and when you do, you find
competition often comes from surprising places. In fact,
competition in the SaaS and tech industries is increasingly coming
from indirect competitors, whose core technology enables them to
invade adjacent verticals and industries.

Between 2016 and 2017, Amazon was mentioned almost 3 times more

frequently by senior executives on earning calls than any other
company. It’s no wonder executives at public companies are
obsessed with the retail giant. Even the threat of an Amazon
entrance could result in a seismic shift in the market and put them
out of business overnight. In other words, the SaaS world moves
fast —  and the only way to keep up is to be one step ahead.
In this guide, you will learn how to conduct a competitive analysis:
understand market trends, identify your competitors, evaluate
opportunities, analyze threats to your organization, and adjust your
go-to-market and positioning strategy accordingly.
Here’s how this intelligence contributes to a winning go-to-market
strategy:
 Research can help orient your business in the marketplace

 Research can help you identify the quickest path forward

 Research can help you unearth overlooked gaps and opportunities

Part 1: The Basics of Competitive

Analysis
1. What is a Competitive Analysis?
A competitive analysis is the process of identifying your competitors
and evaluating their strategies to determine their strengths and
weaknesses relative to your own business, product, and service. The
goal of the competitive analysis is to gather the intelligence
necessary to find a line of attack and develop your go-to-market
strategy.

2. Why You Should Conduct a Competitive Analysis

You’ve likely heard the saying “Keep your friends close, but keep
your enemies even closer.” When it comes to conducting a SaaS
competitive analysis, that’s not the whole story.

In the SaaS industry, keeping your enemy close won’t prevent you
from getting ambushed. Sometimes you don’t even know who your
enemies are. The “enemy,” after all, could be acquired by Amazon
and put you out of business overnight. Or Google could build a
competing product in your market.

Here’s why you should conduct a SaaS competitive analysis, or

“study the enemy.” Studying the ‘enemy’ can help you understand
the battlefield. It can help you identify where the “enemies” are and
how they’re approaching the business. It can help you discover
strategic areas where you can position yourself for a win.

A competitive analysis won’t help you with pressing business

decisions, such as what product feature to build next. Never copy
your competitors for the sake of it; they could be 100% winging
it! Moreover, if you’re the industry leader, the value of analyzing
competitors is limited because you’re the one leading the pack
through uncharted territory.

It will, however, help you develop a high-impact go-to-market

(GTM) strategy.

Understand Market Conditions

A company rarely competes against just one competitor. In fact, in
many cases, the biggest competition in the SaaS and tech industries
is coming from indirect competitors. These competitors hold a
commanding position in their core market, allowing them to expand
into different industries and verticals. Who would have thought that
Uber and Google would become die-hard competitors in the
autonomous car market? As I wrote previously in my analysis
of sales enablement and acceleration industry, it is almost impossible to
distinguish direct and indirect competitors. In many SaaS verticals
everyone competes with everyone.
Identify Strengths and Weaknesses
A good competitive analysis helps identify the strengths and
weaknesses of your company in relation to the alternatives.
You need a keen understanding of your ideal customer and the
market so that when you launch, your product is positioned
correctly in the ecosystem of all products and services. Since
competition can come from anywhere, you need to catalog your
strengths and weaknesses relative to both direct and indirect
category leaders (i.e., those adjacent to your core business).
Design / Adjust Go-to-Market (GTM) Strategy
An effective GTM strategy requires a deep understanding of your
ideal customer, market and competition, product offering and
pricing, and channels necessary to reach your customers.
Competitive analysis helps you understand market dynamics so you
can find an optimal way to reach your target customers. Analyzing
your market and competition also helps you determine how your
company and your product fits in the current environment.

3. How Not to Use a Competitive Analysis

You’ll never be able to fully understand or duplicate a competitor’s
strategy. A competitive analysis is just one input in your growth
strategy —  and a limited one at that. You don’t want to look to your
competitors for marketing tactics. They might be spending
thousands on Facebook ads, but that doesn’t mean it’s working.

You also don’t want to launch a new feature just to keep up with a
competitor. For all the talk of the data-driven workplace, you’d be
surprised how many product decisions are driven by petty internal
politics or a micromanaging HiPPO (Highest Paid Person’s
Opinion).

Don’t use competitive analysis to make decisions on what to build

next. Your next idea isn’t going to come from your competitors. It
should come from customer feedback, talking to prospects, and ideas
your colleagues are sharing internally across your company.
Avoid industry research. Industry analysts aren’t good at predicting
disruptive companies and cutting-edge trends because such changes
occur at the bottom of the market, which is generally not on their
radar. Research giants like Forrester and Gartner provide industry
consensus after major shifts have already occurred. Plus, they
derive their research by analyzing large organizations, so startups
won’t find what they’re looking for here.
Don’t spend too much time on it. Treat your competitive analysis as
an ancillary activity. It shouldn’t consume too much of your time
and resources. Focus on what your customers are telling you,
whether through feedback, interviews or their in-app behavior.
They will always be your strongest source of data and insights.

Part 2: How to Select Competitors for

Analysis
4. How to select competitors for analysis
Competitive analysis is an exercise of comparing your business,
product, and service to companies and finding similarities and
differences. The most critical part of kicking off a competitive
analysis is choosing the right competitors to analyze. Otherwise, you
will spend tons of time on competitive research with very limited
insight to show for it. In other words, the competitors you select
determines how you will perceive your company and the final
analysis.

Remember that martech landscape map with over 5,000

companies? Almost every product category is made up of over a
dozen different players. You can’t reasonably expect to analyze all of
them. You don’t need to either. An ideal competitor analysis
includes three to five companies that represent the biggest threat to
your business. (Go with five if you’re operating in a crowded
market.)

But how can you develop a list that accurately reflects your real
competitors? Here’s what you need your organization to align on
first:

1. Customer (WHO)
Who are your target customers (and companies)?
2. Problem (WHAT)
What core problem does your product solve for your target
customers?
3. Product Category (HOW)
How do you solve this problem? Are you solving this problem with a
unique technology or process?
Direct competitors are companies that sell to the same customers
and solve the same problem using the same or similar solution
(technology). The diagram below shows how Customer, Problem
and Solution overlap into direct competition.

Direct competitors solve the same problem for the same customer
using the same solution. By solution, I mean a similar technology or
approach to the problem —  one that seems indistinguishable to the
customer. For example, Uber and Lyft are direct competitors.

Direct Competition = same customer + same problem + same/similar

solution
Some competitors sell to the same customer using the same (or
similar) solution but solve a different problem. For example,
UberEats sells to the same customers but solves a different
problem: food delivery instead of transportation. For UberEats,
DoorDash and GrubHub are good examples of direct competitors.

Different Problem = same customer + different problem +

same/similar solution
Some competitors solve the same problem with the same
technology but focus on a different customer. For example, Zum
provides schoolchildren with rides to school, solving a
transportation problem for kids and parents. Zum solves a slightly
different problem too: safety. Safety is the primary concern for
parents when it comes to kids riding back from school. However, it’s
ultimately grounded in the same tech as Uber.

Different Customer = different customer + same/similar problem +

same/similar solution
Some companies solve the same problem for the same customer but
using a different solution. It can be different in terms of technology
or process. For example, Chariot provides group transportation
services for commuters and employees, using a completely different
approach to solving the same problem for the same customers of
taxis.

Different Solution = same customer + same problem + different

solution
The table below summarizes how to evaluate companies for
competitive analysis selection. This approach is not ideal and might
not work for every company since each one operates in its own
complicated ecosystem. But it provides a basic framework for
selecting competitors.

Limiting your organization to direct competitors only might lead

you to a very narrow view of the market. This framework allows you
to evaluate companies that aren’t just your direct competitors but
companies that could easily move into your turf. You want to
consider companies that aren’t currently in your category but could
potentially leverage their product or technology in your space.

Outside of direct competition, the most dangerous competitors are

those that sell to the same target customer. These companies
already have access to customers so it’s much easier for them to
provide products or services that solve another problem for the
same customers.

Alternatives
Alternatives can satisfy similar or related customer needs with
completely different functionality. It’s essential to understand these
so you know what you’re up against and can position accordingly.
For example, an alternative to Uber is a taking a walk or taking a
taxi or riding a bike. Read more about alternatives.
Company Size
It’s a mistake to think you should only analyze competitors of a
similar size to your company.The image below was used by Dan
Ariely in his book Predictably Irrational to demonstrate the concept
of relativity.

Notice that the red circle on the left looks larger than the red circle
on the right. Contrary to our gut feeling, both red circles are the
same size. The one on the left seems large when compared to the
surrounding smaller circles. And the red circle on the right seems
smaller next to larger circles.

This illusion helps illustrate how important it is to consider your

relative position against your competitors. Your company can look
bigger and further ahead compared to smaller competitors and can
look unreasonably smaller and behind when compared to larger
competitors.

You can set up a much more balanced view if you look at both
market leaders (often larger companies), as well as smaller, often
more agile and younger companies.

This allows you to calibrate where you fall along the spectrum. Are
you growing faster than a company of your size and age? Are you
doing about as well as a current market leader back when it was a
smaller business too?

That context becomes helpful as you are deciding which companies

to include in your competitive analysis. The more comprehensive
your view of the competitive landscape, the more effectively you can
identify potential opportunities for your company.

Part 3: How to Conduct a Competitive

Analysis
Now that you’ve finalized a short list of competitors, you’re ready to
begin the real work. To kick off a competitor analysis, start by
collecting the basics and drilling down from there.

5. Company Overview
Why is it important to track your competitors’ founding date,
fundraising rounds and employee count? So you can use it as a
benchmark against your own growth. If your company is a year old,
how fast did your competitor grow when it was at your stage? How
much revenue was it generating? How many customers did it have?

If you’re a startup facing off against the dominant market leader,

you could use this data to set yearly goals and projections for your
business. You can easily find a company’s “biographical”
information on sites like Crunchbase, LinkedIn, Owler, and
AngelList.

Employee Count
If you can’t find a company’s revenues online, Jason Lemkin of
SaaStr offers a simple formula you can use to calculate a ballpark
revenue estimate, simply based on the number of employees at the
business (read more). Linkedin is usually the best source to find an
active employee count.
Founding Year
Knowing a company’s founding year helps you put things in context
in your overall analysis. You’ll find it useful as you chart their past
growth over the years —  a helpful comparison as you establish your
own business goals.

Investors
Typically, VCs make just one bet in a product category to avoid
cannibalizing their investments. You are either an Uber or Lyft
investor. This is a commonly accepted view in the Valley. If you see
a VC’s name missing from the category you’re competing in, they
might be a good candidate to approach for fundraising. They missed
the chance to invest in your competitor, but now they have the
opportunity to work with you.

Number of Customers
It’s unlikely that you will find an exact customer count for your
competition. But a good guess is all you need —  as long as you have
a relative sense of where each competitor stands in the hierarchy.

You can often find some clues by researching press releases.

Companies often brag about reaching certain milestones in revenue
or number of customers. Technology tools such as Datanyze can tell
you how many websites include your competitor’s product tag.
Product review platforms such as G2Crowd can be helpful too.

Mergers and Acquisitions

Mergers or acquisition is one of the easiest ways for companies to
enter a new market or get rid of a competitor. When a web analytics
company acquires a mobile application monitoring company, the
writing is on the wall. It’s about to enter a new market. Research
your competitor’s M&A history to get a sense of the direction it’s
moving in.
Market Share
It’s not easy to find information on market share. Large companies
invest millions of dollars to investigate market share but most SaaS
companies don’t have such resources. The best shortcut is to
conduct a survey with a sample size of 200-300 respondents, asking
them what tools and solutions they are using. That’s usually just
enough to get a ballpark estimate of market share in the SaaS
industry.

Organizational Strength and Weakness

Before we look at product strengths and weaknesses (which we’ll do
in a bit), it’s worth understanding what makes your competitor
unique from an organizational perspective.

For example, is the CEO considered an industry influencer? Does he

or she have a significant social media following? That’s important to
make note of, as this is a unique strength that can’t be easily
replicated.

You should also consider how company culture and internal

processes impact the business and its bottom line. Netflix is widely
admired for its “no brilliant jerks” policy at the company. This is one
of many factors that helps it recruit and retain top talent year after
year.

This goes back to the DNA of the business —  it’s a strength you can’t
just copy.

I can’t resist mentioning Travis Kalanick, who, in my opinion, was

always the strength and weakness of Uber. You can hardly imagine
a person with any other personality creating a once-in-a-generation
company in the transportation industry, with its complex
ecosystem. Think otherwise? Brad Stone covers the rise of Uber in
his book Upstarts.

Surprisingly, you can mine a lot of useful intelligence from

employee reviews on Glassdoor. Because employees leave
anonymous feedback, they don’t hold back on what they love (and
don’t love) about their employer. You can often uncover cultural
aspects of the organization by reading how employees perceive
senior leadership and whether or not they enjoy working there.

Summary of questions:

 What is the total number of employees your competitors have?

 Are your competitors expanding or scaling down?
 How old is your competitor?
 In what geographical market do they operate?
 How much have your competitors raised thus far?
 Who are your competitor’s investors?
 What is your competitor’s customer count?
 Can you estimate your competitor’s growth rate or revenue?
 Have your competitors acquired companies? If so, in what
industries?
 What is your competitor’s market share?
 What are your competitor’s top organizational strengths and
weaknesses?
6. Go-to-Market Analysis (Customer Acquisition
Analysis)
Now that you’re done collecting company information about your
competitors, it’s time to dive deep into their go-to-market and
customer acquisition strategy.
Remember: An effective GTM strategy requires an understanding of
these five elements:

1. Target customer & strategic messaging

2. Market
3. Product offering and pricing
4. Channel
5. Customer acquisition strategy
These are a sampling of the questions you’ll need to answer as you
do your research:

 What are the characteristics and needs of each competitor’s ideal

customers?
 How does each competitor acquire new customers?
 What type of content do they publish and what topics do they cover?
 What is their sales process - what channels does it involve, how long
does it take, how involved is the sales team?
 How easy is it for customers to switch away from your competitors?
 What are the barriers to entry in the industry and in relation to each
competitor?
6.1 Target customer
In B2B, the term target customer (or ideal customer profile) refers to
both the company and decision maker profiles. We can’t fully grasp
the pains and challenges of a decision maker without looking into
his/her organization —  and their stakeholders. Larger organizations
can throw more money at problems than a smaller, more agile
company. Even decision makers with the same title, same goals, and
same challenges might have different priorities and stakeholders to
convince depending on the size of their organization.
Put yourself in the shoes of your competitors and understand their
customers:

 What kind of companies do your competitors sell to (size, revenue,

vertical)?
  Who is the primary decision maker and economic buyer?
 What are the primary goals for your competitor’s customer?
 For your competitor’s customer, what are their daily activities,
success metrics, and challenges?
 What organizational functions are involved in the buying decision?
Here are a few places to look for this information.

Competitor’s website
Most companies display customer logos and case studies on their
website. Look for patterns in the types of customers they’re
featuring, including characteristics like size, location, industry, and
revenue. Those will give you some pretty strong clues into the kind
of customers they’re targeting.
Data analytics and enrichment product
Want to know what tech stack your competitors are using?
Datanyze is a great tool for finding out. It analyzes millions of
websites and finds snippets of code that tell you what integrations,
platforms and plugins are behind a company’s product.
Product reviews
Of course, your goal isn’t to compile a list of your competitor’s
customers. You should be on the hunt for patterns that help you
identify why your customers are choosing your competitors.
Mining product reviews helps you get valuable voice-of-customer
data —  including pains and problems that you can use to develop
your own strategy.

Customer reviews are also a great place to find so-called “trigger

events” that lead customers to look for a new product or service
solution.

For example, if a company opens a new office, it needs services that

will help find a new office, set it up, and move furniture to a new
location. Therefore, opening a new office can be a trigger for
searching for a solution that helps companies assist in this process.

This is an important part of the buying process and customers are

usually happy to share this information in their reviews.
6.2 Strategic messaging
Strategic messaging is the most visible part of your marketing,
including your copy and brand. Companies often go into full
messaging wars against each other because it gets so easily noticed.
You change a headline message on your homepage, then your
competitor retaliates with a new message of their own.
Strategic messaging isn’t a brand exercise nor is it a copywriting
project —  it goes beyond conveying feelings and emotions.

Strategic messaging is a value-based communication framework

that companies employ in all interactions with stakeholders — 
employees, prospects, customers, partners and investors.

Strategic messaging communicates product value in a way that

resonates with each stakeholder involved in the buying journey.

Read your competitor’s press releases, analyze their website

(including their About Us page), and read their content to
understand:

 What story are your competitors communicating to customers?

 How does your competitor position its product?
 How does your competitor describe its value proposition and
benefits?
 What words and phrases does your competitor use to describe their
company, product, and value?
 What is your competitor’s one-sentence company description?
Product positioning
Software products often include many features and solve multiple
problems. But what problems does your competitor's product focus
on most?
Look for patterns that highlight your competitor’s product focus.

Content Strategy
 What does your competitor write about?

 What topics are covered on the company blog, and in their

whitepapers, research, videos, podcasts and other resources?
  How do prospects/customers respond to your competitors’ content -
do they share it, comment on it, like it?

7. Product Offering and Pricing

After you understand your competitor’s customers and messaging,
you can move to analyzing its product offering. First, outline what
your competitor’s product can and can’t do.

Product Feature Analysis

List all the features that your competitor offers and outline the value
that each feature brings to customers. Create a map of your own
features and values that overlap with your competitors.
 What are your competitor’s core product features?

 What product features are unique to your competitors?

 How do your product features compare to the same features of your
competitor?
 Does your competitor support multiple environments (e.g., web,
iOS, Android)?
Pricing and Average Selling Price (ASP)
 What is the minimum price your competitor charges?

 What is the ASP?

  What are the main factors that impact price (number of seats,
volume etc.)?
Product strength / weaknesses
 What are the strengths of your competitor’s product?

 What are the weaknesses of your competitor’s product?

 How do customers perceive your competitor’s product design,
quality, and price?
7.1 Customer Acquisition Model (Freemium vs Free Trial)
A customer acquisition strategy explains how companies attract and
convert prospects into customers.
 How does your competitor market its product?

 Does your competitor offer a free trial or freemium?

 How difficult is it to switch away from your competitor?
Switching costs
The SaaS revolution drastically reduced switching costs across the
board. On-premise solutions required expensive servers and
software and an often onerous onboarding process. Today, it is
much easier to swap one SaaS product for another.
But switching costs, or the cost that a customer incurs as a result of
switching products, still exist. Technology can be a driver of higher
switching costs. When a product is integrated with multiple systems
and APIs, switching to another product becomes increasingly
difficult. Such a switch usually results in business interruption and
the need to retrain staff, among other unwelcome effects.

Switching costs are a significant barrier to switching to a new

product, which makes it a key part of your competitive analysis.

Unique Barriers to Entry

Barriers to entry are high costs or other obstacles that prevent new
competitors from easily entering an industry or area of business.
Tom Tunguz highlighted the three barriers that prevent competitive
entrance: data network effect, network effects, and ecosystem
creation (read more). Do your competitors have any of these core
barriers to entry?
Protecting your company with one of the core barriers is smart.
Nailing down two barriers is even better. Slack is a great example of
a company that has a network effect, having successfully created
widespread demand through word-of-mouth referrals and a highly
engaging product. It has also invested in building strong
relationships with developers. Slack’s developer platform roadmap and
its commitment to transparency for developers has helped the
company build a strong ecosystem around its product.
Today, Slack’s rich ecosystem is one of the many competitive
advantages the company has strategically cultivated over time.

Business Models
When you conduct your competitive analysis, it's worth analyzing
the sales models of your competitors. In his article Three SaaS Sales
Models, Joel York describes the three most common SaaS sales
models based on the relationship between price and product
complexity. Companies with low priced and low-complexity
products must focus on developing a self-service option so they can
maintain a healthy relationship between customer acquisition cost
(CAC) and customer lifetime value (CLV). Slack, Trello, Dropbox,
GitHub are all low-price, low-complexity products.
A transactional sales approach to customer acquisition is best for
products with a higher average selling price (ASP) then self-service
solutions. Customers expect to see a demo, or even try the product.
In fact, when customers are paying more, they expect more hand-
holding throughout the process. While this can drive up
organizational costs and complexity for a SaaS vendor, it can yield
significant revenues and long-term customer loyalty. For this
approach, companies need to optimize their sales, marketing, and
support in a way that allows them to build a relationship with the
customer over the customer lifetime. Most SaaS companies fall
under this category.

The enterprise sales process is reserved for highly complex products

sold at a high price. Because enterprise products provide so much
value and prospects take longer to evaluate the product, companies
must adopt a complex selling process and longer sales cycles.
Selling to large enterprises with a high ASP means competing
against rivals with high-touch sales models.
If your competitor is focused on a self-service model, you need to
position your product and sales process to be more focused on the
customer relationship. If you also rely on a self-service model, you
need to compete on brand or some other factor. In other words, you
won’t be able to compete on product since switching will be fairly
easy.

If you are selling a high-priced, complex product then you should

focus on competitors pursuing similar enterprise clients. However,
remember that self-service competitors are always a threat so you
need to continually monitor their feature releases.

8. Channel
You and your competitors are competing for the attention of
potential customers. That’s why it's useful to know how your
competitors use social media channels and paid acquisition
channels to reach their target audience. While digital channels are
key in today’s marketplace, you also need to pay attention to offline
channels like events, meetups, conferences, and direct mail. This is
where the face-to-face interactions occur that are often the key to
establishing connections and sealing deals. You can usually find out
information about offline events by visiting the “Events” section of
your competitors’ websites and also searching for their names in
relation to conferences and events on the wider web.

 Where do your competitors advertise?

 What keywords do they buy on Adwords?
 Do they advertise on Youtube, Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter or other
social media platforms?
 Do your competitors focus on selling in specific verticals?
This article features 13 tools you can use to analyze your competitors’
marketing channels.

9. Customer Experience and Customer Success

It pays to understand how satisfied are customers with a competitor
product. In the end, nothing matters more than the customer
experience in determining a company’s success. The best way to get
this information is from review platforms
 How do customers like your competitor’s product?

 What do they like the most about your competitor?

 What do the like the least about your competitor (top complaints)?
 What’s the Net Promoter Score (NPS) of your competitors?
 How loyal are customers to your competitor’s product?
 What is the one thing that’s most highlighted in customer case
studies?
 Do customers complain about support or product failures?
 How quickly do your competitors respond to customer service
questions on social media?
A few great places to find customer reviews: G2 Crowd, Trust
Radius, Capterra, Software Advice, GetApp, Founderkit, and
Appbot, among others. Another option is to interview your
customers and prospects to learn how they view your product and
competitor's product.
10. Tools and Resources and Techniques
As you conduct your competitive analysis, you can call upon many
tools and techniques to get the job done effectively. I’ve mentioned a
few throughout this guide, but here’s an at-a-glance list with
additional resources.

Technology and techstack:

 Datanyze - As mentioned earlier, this tool analyzes millions of
websites and finds snippets of code that tell you what integrations,
platforms and plugins are behind a company’s product.
 Similartech - Similar to Datanyze.
 Builtwith - Find out what technologies are being used on specific
websites.
Company Profiles:
  Crunchbase - Discover industry trends, investments, and news about
your competitors.
 LinkedIn - Where you can find out a competitor’s “biographical”
info. Usually the best source to find an active employee count.
 Angel.co - See which startups are hiring and for what positions.
 Owler - Similar to Crunchbase.
 DataFox - Its database shows which companies use more than
14,000 technology solutions, which you can search through using
the Similar Company Algorithm.
 Mattermark - See company profiles, key personnel, and growth
signals related to your competitors.
 Slideshare - Find competitor product or funding slide decks here.
Product reviews:
 G2Crowd - The best resource to learn what customers think about
your products and competitors.
 GetApp - Similar to G2Crowd.
 TrustRadius - Similar to G2Crowd.
 Quora - See questions or discussions about certain products or topics
that might be helpful in your competitive analysis.
 YouTube - Find product demos and presentations.
Website traffic:
 SimilarWeb - Provides website traffic comparison.
SEO & SEM:
 SEMrush - Helps you understand your competitors’ focus in search
engine marketing, including best-performing keywords, along with
their spend.
It's quite likely that no prospect or customer reads your press
releases as carefully as your competitors do. Press releases are
helpful in understanding a company’s strategic focus. Sometimes
PRs show your competitors’ customer count. The About section in a
press release shows your competitor's strategic messaging. These
two to five sentences are how your competitor wants their
customers and prospects to perceive the company and its products.

Part 4: The Next Steps

The primary goal of a competitive analysis is to understand the
marketplace and how you can differentiate from other players. At
the end of a competitive analysis, you should create a battlecard for
each competitor. A competitive battlecard is essentially a quick
visual reference for your sales and marketing team, guiding them as
they position your organization against competitors.

Sample Battlecard: PublishNOW vs WordPress

Here’s a fictitious battlecard using two real companies, describing
how a new PublishNOW product will be positioned against
WordPress. PublishNOW is a content publishing platform for
marketers and writers to improve content engagement, content
stickiness, and reach. WordPress is a blogging platform.
The battlecard helps sales understand the strengths and weaknesses
of WordPress and how to win customers when going up against
them.
Summary
By following the steps outlined in this guide, you can effectively
conduct a competitive analysis:

1. Select competitors for analysis, including both direct and indirect

competition
2. Gain an overview understanding of each competitor
3. Figure out how each competitor goes to market and acquires
customers
4. Analyze the product offering, including features, price, strengths,
weaknesses, whether it’s offered as a freemium or free trial, and the
competitor’s overall business model
5. Identify the channels competitors use to advertise and deliver their
products
6. Analyze the satisfaction level of your competitors’ customers
7. Use all this information to populate your competitive analysis
framework and competitor battlecards
Remember: The idea of a competitive analysis isn't to overly focus
on the competition but to understand where your company stands
in the marketplace and identify opportunities to further
differentiate. At the end of the day, a focus on the customer will
serve your company far more than a focus on the competition. Done
well, a competitive analysis can help you find ways to outplay the
competition by better serving customers —  theirs and yours.

Resources:
 SaaS Startup Strategy | Three SaaS Sales Models by Joel York
 The 3 Competitive Defenses of Enduring SaaS Companies by
Tomasz Tungus
 A Step-by-Step Guide to Conducting Competitive Analysis by
Svitlana Graves
 Stop Ignoring Your Competitors And Learn How To Do Competitor
Analysis Instead by Product Habits
 How to Write a Great Business Plan: Competitive Analysis by Jeff
Haden
 Why Competition Is So Bitter in SaaS: Oligopolies and Dominant
Strategy Equilibriums by Jason Lemkin
 How do B2B SaaS markets evolve with 10+ competitors? by Jason
Lemkin