How to Conduct a Competitive Analysis for Your Business (Plus a Free Template)

How to Conduct a Competitive Analysis for Your Business (Plus a Free Template)
Keeping an eye on your competitors helps you anticipate shifts in the market, spot new trends and successful tactics, and stay on the cutting edge of what’s working within your niche.

But it’s not enough to just spy on your competitors’ social media accounts and subscribe to their email lists. You need a strategy behind your efforts to ensure you’re effectively monitoring your competitors on an ongoing basis and updating your view of the competitive landscape as it changes.

Enter the competitive analysis: a document that gives you both a bird’s-eye view and an in-depth understanding of the key players in your market.

In this post, we’ll outline a method for conducting a competitive analysis of your own, geared towards ecommerce businesses.

Whether you’re a seasoned store owner re-evaluating your view of the current market, or you’re getting ready to bring your product to market for the very first time, here are the steps, tools, and even a template (skip to the template) to help you put together your own competitive analysis.

Free: Competitive Analysis Template
By evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of your competition, you can begin to formulate how to give your company an advantage. Download our free competitive analysis template and gain an edge over the competition.

What is a competitive analysis?
A competitive analysis is the analysis of your competitors and how your business compares. By evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of your competition, you can begin to formulate how to give your company an advantage.

Competitive analysis helps a business determine potential advantages and barriers within a target market around a product or service, and generally helps brands monitor how direct and indirect competitors are executing tactics like marketing, pricing, and distribution.