One of my first jobs out of college involved carrying a clipboard into a competitor’s retail store and writing down prices. It felt awkward then, and if I’m honest, it probably looked a little suspicious. But back then, that was competitive research. If you wanted to know how someone else was positioning themselves, you had to go see it for yourself.
Fortunately, marketers have better tools today. We can analyze websites, advertising, messaging, social media, search visibility, analyst reports, even hiring trends without ever leaving our desks. Yet despite having access to more competitive intelligence than ever before, I think many marketing teams still miss one of the most important questions: What is it actually like to experience our competitors as a customer?
We spend so much time refining our own messaging that we forget our audience is comparing us against every other voice in the market.
That’s why I believe competitive research belongs inside the marketing department just as much as it belongs with product or strategy teams. Product teams will tell you where your features win. Analysts will explain market trends. But marketers have to understand something different.
What promises are competitors making?
What pain points are they leading with?
What tone do they use?
And after seeing five or six competitors side by side, would a customer actually remember your brand?
We recently walked a client through that exact exercise, and the realization was immediate. Everyone looked polished. Everyone looked credible. Everyone also looked remarkably similar.
That’s not a problem. That’s an opening.
The best marketing doesn’t happen by reacting to competitors or borrowing their ideas. It happens by identifying the gaps they’ve left behind and confidently owning them.
That’s why competitive analysis shouldn’t be an annual workshop or something you dust off before a campaign launch. It should be part of your operating rhythm.
Review it quarterly. Share it across teams. Let it challenge your assumptions.
Because the goal isn’t to know what your competitors are doing.
The goal is to make sure your customers instantly understand why you’re different.
Tune in to the full podcast episode for a deeper conversation on why competitive research matters, how to uncover gaps in your market, and how to make sure your brand stands out for the right reasons.
