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Know Thy Enemy: 7 Competitor Analysis Frameworks To Give You an

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Research Intelligence

Know Thy Enemy: 7

Competitor Analysis
Frameworks To Give You
an Edge
by Molly Winik, Senior Digital Research &
eCommerce Specialist 9 Min.
November 16, 2021 | Updated July 13, 2022

DIY competitive analysis

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you

need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”
Although this ancient philosophy is most
commonly associated with The Art of War, it
applies to modern day business too. 

Competitive analysis is a must for anyone looking

to survive and conquer their industry.

With a deeper understanding of your top

competitors across different metrics, you’ll be
armed with the strategic insights needed to
develop a much more impactful digital research
strategy, whether it aims to grow your audience,
launch into a new market, or increase market
share. 

But before you find your footing, you have to find

your framework – arguably the most important
tool in your market research toolbox. Let’s dive
into the seven types of competitor analysis
frameworks for industry analysis, what they are,
and how to use them successfully. 

What is a competitor analysis

framework?
A competitor analysis framework—also called a
market analysis framework or competitor analysis
model—is generally defined as a structure that
business professionals can use to research and
evaluate their competitors. In other words, the art
of knowing your enemy.

Competitive frameworks gather vital information,

such as a competitor’s business strategies,
products, offerings, marketing efforts, sales, and
the like, into an organized visual model that’s easy
to digest at a glance.

And though competitive analysis might seem like

a daunting task, with the right frameworks, you’ll
know exactly what information you need to gather
— with zero guesswork necessary. 

Why use a competitor analysis

framework?
Plugging your competitive analysis into a good
framework can do wonders in strengthening your
business’ research strategy. If you’ve had trouble
achieving any of these, competitor analysis
models could be the answer: 

Identify market shifts: Frameworks can make it

easy to discover market shifts that you might’ve
missed if your competitor analysis wasn’t
previously visually organized well.

Locate gaps you didn’t even know you had:

Examining businesses within a specific industry
can reveal gaps in your own strategy compared
to your industry at large, which may spark
inspiration for a new business idea, product, or
offering.

Target the most effective marketing strategies:

By pinpointing the marketing channels that
worked well for your competitors, you can
create a data-backed roadmap to march
confidently forward with your own marketing
plans.

Avoid mistakes: In the same vein, by looking at

what didn’t work for your competitors, you can
avoid costly mistakes.

Create measurable (and achievable) goals: A

good competitive analysis framework helps
businesses build specific performance goals
based on their competitors’ data. 

Make data more digestible: Frameworks help

display dull or confusing information in a
visually appealing and organized manner,
making it that much easier to share your
findings with the rest of the team, as well as
with investors or C-level executives.  

The seven most useful

competitive analysis
frameworks

1. SWOT Analysis

Talk about an old faithful. The SWOT analysis has

been around for decades, and for good reason. It
organizes a company’s information into the
following categories:

Strengths: internal factors that provide benefits,

like a highly trained staff.

Weaknesses: internal factors that cause

disadvantages, like a small marketing budget.

Opportunities: external factors that pose

opportunities, like high demand for a product
offering.

Threats: external factors that pose challenges,

like an increase in the cost of supplies.

We recommend using SWOT analysis best

practices to hone in on the strengths or
weaknesses of your competitors. This is
especially helpful for identifying potential
competitive advantages your business may have
over others, as well as finding areas for
improvement.

SWOT Analysis
Templates
Visualize how you stack up against
the competition.

Download now

2. Porter’s Five Forces

Porter’s Five Forces is a formidable framework

created by Michael Porter, a professor at Harvard
Business School. This competitive framework
examines the five key market forces in any given
industry, including: 

1. Intensity of competitive rivalry

2. Threat of new entrants

3. Bargaining power of new buyers

4. Bargaining power of suppliers

5. Threat of substitutes

Porter’s Five Forces is especially useful for

analyzing the competitive structure of an entire
industry. This information will be helpful when
shaping business strategies and creating targeted
goals amid the expansive competitive landscape.
However, you can also apply this framework to
niche industries or specific market segments. 

3. Strategic group analysis

Strategic group analysis does exactly what it says

—it organizes competitors into groups based on
similarity of strategy. 

There’s a wide range of ways you can group

companies. Perhaps you’d like to group
competitors by their marketing tactics, pricing
strategies, or range of offerings. Don’t forget to
place your own company into the analysis to get a
better sense of who you’re most closely
competing with and gain a better understanding of
the impact different strategies provide.

For instance, if you discover that the top three

most successful companies in your niche are all
grouped into the same pricing strategy, it may be
time to see if doing the same will benefit your own
business.

4. Growth-share matrix

The growth-share matrix classifies your

company’s products against the competitive
landscape. This is an example of a competitor
analysis that’s especially useful for big
organizations with a large portfolio of products or
offerings. 

A growth-share matrix is a chart divided up into

four quadrants to classify products or business
units into:

Stars: products with high growth and high

market share. Invest more in these.

Question marks: products (usually new ones)

with high growth, but low market share. Decide
whether to invest more (if convinced it will
become a star) or give up on it. 

Cash cows: products with low growth but high

market share that are usually used to fund
investment in stars.

Pets: products with low growth and low market

share. Decide whether to reposition or give up
on it.

Using this market analysis framework can help

determine what’s worth giving priority to, what to
reposition, and what to ditch. 

Read More – How To Make The Most Of A

Competitive Matrix

5. Perceptual mapping

Perceptual mapping, also known as positioning

mapping, visualizes the perception of a company
and its competitors on a plot graph. 

To use this competitive analysis framework,

choose two factors to use as the basis for
comparison, like perceived quality and price. Then,
plot where your business and your competitors fall
on the spectrum of those two factors. 

Perceptual mapping is great for obtaining a birds’

eye view of how customers perceive your
company in relation to your competitors. Armed
with that knowledge, your company can identify
market trends and gaps, as well as make
adjustments to improve its existing positioning
strategy. Smart and strong.

6. Business model canvas

This framework strips a business model down to

its bare bones, improving clarity and focus on the
most important factors.

A business model canvas is a single analysis

that’s divided up into nine elements:

Customer segments: Who are the customers?

Value propositions: Why do customers buy/use

the proposition?

Channels: How are propositions promoted, sold,

and delivered?

Customer relationships: How is the customer

treated throughout their buyer journey?

Revenue streams: How is revenue earned?

Key activities: What unique strategies does the

business use to deliver its propositions?

Key resources: What unique strategic assets are

required to compete?

Key partnerships: What can the business

outsource so it can focus on its key activities?

Cost structure: What are the major cost drivers

and how are they linked to revenue?

7. Customer journey map

A customer journey map, also known as a user

journey map, is a visual story of customers’
interactions with a brand. 

First, all customer channels are mapped out—i.e.,

a company’s website, social channels, paid media,
newsletters, email support, phone services, and
face-to-face services (if the brand has brick-and-
mortar locations).

Customer journeys can then be mapped across

these channels for each buyer persona. The
customer experience at each touchpoint should
be tacked on to the map, including key
engagement metrics the customer hits. Below
that, add how the brand responds to address the
customers’ concerns. Finally, jot down what
opportunities exist to improve the experience at
each channel.

Utilizing customer journey maps can help gain

insights into common customer pain points and
how to improve them—not only within your own
company, but for your competitors’ customers as
well. 

Pro Tip: Use Similarweb Consumer Journey

Analytics to uncover competitor strategies and
performance metrics through all stages of the
conversion funnel. 

How can you create a

competitive analysis in five
steps?
Now let’s see this all in action. Below is a case
study of a digital analysis using competitive
insights to make faster and better business
decisions. All of the data collected can be used to
plug into any of the various competitive analysis
framework templates we covered so far. 

Overview: Steve is a Category Analyst at a market-

leading homeware and furniture retailer in the U.S.
His company has several business-lines across
categories such as sofas, bedding, kitchenware,
and outdoor furniture. 

Steve’s company has one to two competitors that

are particularly strong in the sofa category. An
email comes in from senior management saying
that sofa sales at the company have been on a
downward trend, and now Steve has to pinpoint
why this is the case and present a recovery plan.
No pressure, right?

Step 1: Analyze competitor’s digital

footprint 

In order for Steve to truly understand his

competitors, he needs to build a digital view of
each company and break down assets such as
subdomains to spotlight any trends that indicate a
competitor’s digital performance. For example, he
can identify the unique number of visitors the
competitor generates over time to compare online
reach relative to his own company’s performance. 

Steve can then use this data to see where the

company is growing or losing traction. In the
example below, the percent change column
indicates one of the domains has a 42%
downward growth in the last 12 months. 

Having this information gives Steve a quick and

easy snapshot of his competitor’s online
performance and where its strengths and
weaknesses lie. 

Step 2: Map out your market

landscape 

Once Steve has built a company view of his direct

competitors, he can also analyze their websites to
benchmark traffic and engagement data against
his company’s overall performance. This will
enable him to instantly identify who the market
leader is and where he needs to be to improve his
digital strategy. 

Try plotting out graph-specific metrics such as

monthly visits vs. percent month-over-month
change to know exactly how he’s performing. 

Step 3: Analyze search interest  

Next, Steve can assess the market demand for the

sofa category and use search interests as a way
to identify any emerging competitors that are
gaining traffic share for related search terms
within the United States. In this example, he can
measure the search volume of traffic, see the
overall search trend over time, and analyze which
competitor is winning digital market share. 

With these insights, Steve understands the overall

trend for the market and can spot any specific
competitors that he may not have considered
before during his competitive analysis. 

Step 4: Understand traffic and

engagement metrics 

To learn how your competitor’s traffic and

engagement metrics have grown or declined over
time, benchmark your growth to your competitors’
to reveal if they’re growing at a faster rate and
that’s why they’re potentially winning market
share. 

In this example, Steve can see the year-over-year

traffic growth for his competitive set and can see
that one of his competitors grew its traffic by 80%,
which is 5% more than his company’s website.
Aha! At this point, Steve can use Similarweb to
deep dive into the digital marketing strategy of his
competitors to understand what’s causing that
spike. He could discover that his competitor has
an optimized paid search strategy, a marketing
channel he previously overlooked.  

Step 5: Continuously track the

competitive landscape 

The last step for Steve is to continuously track

and monitor the competitive landscape to identify
potential threats and emerging players. This way,
he can quickly react to any changes in his
competitive landscape and investigate the root
cause using smart insights.

Start crafting your competitor

analysis framework 
Now that you know how to use the seven most
powerful competitor analysis frameworks, it’s time