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7 Competitor Analysis Frameworks To

Give You an Edge
by Molly Winik, Senior Digital Research & Ecommerce Specialist 9 Min.
November 16, 2021 | Updated September 20, 2023

DIY competitive analysis

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A competitor analysis framework is a must for anyone looking to survive and conquer their
industry. Blog
Competitive analysis frameworks differ from other types of market analysis in that they
focus on understanding a company’s competitors in order to gain a better understanding of
the competitive landscape. 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.

So, without further ado, let’s dive into the seven types of competitor analysis frameworks for
industry analysis. Including what they are, and how to use them to survive and thrive in your
market.

What is a competitor analysis framework?

A competitor analysis framework, market analysis framework or competitor analysis model,
as they’re sometimes known, is a structure that business professionals use to research and
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words, the art of knowing your enemy. Competitive
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frameworks
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competitive analysis might seem daunting, with the right frameworks, you’ll know exactly
what information you need to gather — with zero guesswork.
 Blog

Benefits of using a competitor analysis framework

Plugging your competitive analysis into a good framework can strengthen 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 offerings.

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

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Create measurable (and achievable) goals: A good competitive analysis framework helps
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visually appealing and organized manner, making it much easier to share your findings
with the rest of the team and investors or C-level executives.
Seven types of Blog
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.
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SWOT Analysis Templates
Visualize how you stack up against the competition.
 Blog 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.

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3. Strategic group analysis
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A strategic group analysis does exactly what it says—it organizes competitors into groups
based on the 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 better understand 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 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.

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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 competitors fall on those two factors’ spectrum.

It’s great for obtaining a bird’s 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 and make adjustments to improve its existing positioning strategy. Smart and
strong.

6. Business model canvas

This framework strips a business model to its bare bones, improving clarity and focusing on
the
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Value propositions: Why do customers buy/use the proposition?

 Channels: How are propositions promoted, sold, and delivered?
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Customer relationships: How is the customer treated throughout their buyer journey?

Revenue streams: How is revenue earned?

Activities: What unique strategies does the business use to deliver its propositions?

Resources: What unique strategic assets are required to compete?

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 to create a competitive analysis in five steps

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so far.
Overview: Steve is a Category Analyst at a market-leading homeware and furniture retailer in
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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 from senior management says 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?

Analyze the competitor’s digital footprint

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 had a 42%
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its strengths and weaknesses.
 Blog

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Start crafting your competitor analysis framework
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Now that you know how to use all seven competitor analysis frameworks, it’s time to decide
which ones work best for you, and then get to it!

Try Similarweb for free and find out for yourself how our research tools can strengthen
your competitive analysis.

Similarweb Competitor Analysis Frameworks

Whether your B2B or B2C, get started with our free and easy to use template

Download now

FAQ
What is a competitor analysis framework?
A competitive analysis framework is a model or tool marketing professionals can use to
compare their business plan or marketing strategy with their competitors’.

How do competitive analysis frameworks differ from other types of market analysis?

Competitive analysis frameworks differ from other types of market analysis in that they
focus on understanding a company’s competitors in order to gain a better understanding of
the competitive landscape.

Which tools are used in competitor analysis?

Some of the tools used in competitor analysis include a customer journey map, growth-share
matrix, and SWOT analysis.

What are the main components of a competitive analysis framework?

The main components of a competitive analysis framework include researching competitors’
product offerings,
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The benefits of using a competitive analysis framework include gaining insight into
competitor strengths and weaknesses, understanding the potential impact of new entrants
to the market, and developing an effective strategy to differentiate your own product or
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service. It can also provide a more holistic view of the market by uncovering emerging
trends, changes in customer preferences, and opportunities to explore opportunities.

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