Competitor Analysis Template (Free B2B Framework for Marketing Teams)

Competitor analyses get built in week one of a marketing leader's tenure and read by nobody after week three. Most of them are 40-page decks crammed with screenshots, feature comparisons, and positioning maps that the team agrees on in the kickoff and forgets immediately.

The version that works is one page per competitor. Seven fields. Updated quarterly. Referenced when actual decisions need to be made about positioning, content, or channel investment.

Which competitors to analyze

Three categories.

Direct competitors. The companies prospects evaluate against you. Usually three to five. Anything more and the analysis dilutes.

Adjacent competitors. Companies that solve a related problem and could expand into your category. Usually two to three. Worth watching but not as deeply.

Substitutes. Things prospects do instead of buying anyone's product. Spreadsheets. Consultants. Doing nothing. The most overlooked competitor category for B2B marketing.

The seven fields per competitor

Field 1: Positioning

Their primary claim. In one sentence. Pulled directly from their homepage.

What is the one thing they say they are for? Not a list of features. The single statement they lead with.

Field 2: ICP

Who they target. Company size, industry, role. Inferred from their content, customer stories, and case studies.

Compare to your ICP and persona worksheet. The overlap and divergence determines whether you actually compete or just look like competitors.

Field 3: Pricing model

How they price. Per user, per seat, per usage, per contact, custom enterprise. Published prices where available.

Pricing reveals strategy more clearly than positioning does. A competitor with aggressive entry pricing is fighting for SMB share. A competitor with custom-only pricing is hunting enterprise.

Field 4: Channels they invest in

Where do they show up? Heavy on SEO content? Active on LinkedIn through the founder? Big webinar presence? Paid search in your category?

Use the content marketing post framework to identify their cadence and pillar topics. Use a tool like Similarweb or the best SEO tools to assess their organic and paid footprint.

Field 5: Strengths to respect

Two to three things they do genuinely well. Be honest. Marketing teams that refuse to acknowledge competitor strengths produce weak positioning.

The strengths are where you should not try to compete head-on. Acknowledge them, position around them.

Field 6: Weaknesses to exploit

Two to three things they do poorly. Pulled from customer reviews, sales conversations, and your own product or service comparison.

These are the angles your positioning should lean into. The categories where you can credibly claim to be different and better.

Field 7: Recent moves

What have they done in the last 90 days? Product launches, pricing changes, executive hires, content pivots, acquisitions.

Recent moves predict near-term positioning shifts. A competitor that just hired a senior content marketer is about to ramp content. A competitor with new pricing is signaling who they want to win.

How to actually gather the data

Most of this is public. The work is in the assembly, not the discovery.

• Read their homepage and main solution pages quarterly
• Subscribe to their newsletter from a separate email
• Follow their founder and senior leaders on LinkedIn
• Set up Google Alerts for their company name
• Read their G2 and Capterra reviews
• Talk to prospects who evaluated them
• Talk to customers who switched from them

The last two sources are the most valuable and the most often skipped. Real practitioners describing why they picked one over the other reveals more than any feature comparison.

How to use the template

Fill it out the first time as a team. Two hours. Include sales, marketing, and product. Different perspectives surface different observations.

Review every quarter. Update fields 4, 5, 6, and 7 (the situational fields). Fields 1, 2, and 3 change more slowly but should still be checked.

Reference the analysis in three specific decisions. New marketing brief for content (use it to find positioning angles). Sales objection-handling training (use field 6). Product roadmap discussions (use field 5).

What to leave out

Feature comparison matrices. They go out of date within weeks and rarely drive decisions. Keep them in a separate doc if your sales team needs them.

SWOT analyses. The acronym sounds rigorous. The output is rarely useful for marketing decisions. The seven fields above produce more actionable information.

Market sizing and growth projections. Useful in board decks. Not useful for the day-to-day positioning decisions the marketing team makes.

Common mistakes

Building the analysis once and never updating it. The competitor analysis is a living document. Quarterly updates take 30 minutes per competitor. The discipline matters more than the initial depth.

Including too many competitors. More than five direct competitors and the analysis becomes a survey. Pick the ones that actually show up in your sales process.

Letting the analysis sit in a marketing folder. The sales team needs access. The product team needs access. The marketing team uses it for decisions. The analysis is internal infrastructure, not a deck deliverable.

Connecting to the rest of the program

The competitor analysis informs the marketing brief template when the brief involves positioning.

It feeds the annual marketing plan competitive landscape section.

It surfaces the angles for content marketing pieces that occupy positioning whitespace.

Frequently asked questions

Should I include indirect competitors in this template?

Yes. Adjacent competitors and substitutes belong in the same template with the same seven fields. They are where market shifts come from. Direct competitors are visible. Substitutes are dangerous because they are easy to underestimate.

How does this fit with the marketing audit framework?

The audit reviews your program. The competitor analysis reviews the market context for the program. Run both quarterly. Reference one against the other.

Can AI do most of this work?

AI can scrape and summarize public information. It cannot interview your customers or sit on sales calls. Use AI to draft the analysis. Use humans for the parts that require judgment and access.

Which competitor's recent moves have you been meaning to assess and have not gotten to? Usually the one whose recent activity has been the most under-the-radar.