Cheatsheet: Competitor Research

We’ve summed up the most important insights about competitor research into a concise cheat sheet. Consider this a checklist for choosing which competitors to study and while doing research.

Step 1: Identify competitors to study

• Ask leads and customers what other companies/products they’ve considered.
• Look through Crunchbase, Product Hunt, and G2.
• Break down your users’ workflow to see what products match each task’s needs.
• See what companies rank highly in Google for your target keywords.

Step 2: Grade competitors

Judge which competitors are worth researching based on their quality, rigor, and relevance. Here’s how to judge them.

Quality: High-quality companies generally:

1. Generate lots of revenue (or have raised a lot of money).
2. Have teams that have evolved beyond their founders.
3. Have a consistent history of growth.

Rigor: Filter out competitors that do not meet at least two of these criteria.

1. Publicly share their growth experimentation efforts.
2. Hire dedicated growth marketers and data scientists.
3. Use experimentation software (find this out using BuiltWith).

Relevance: The best competitors to study, in order of relevance to your company:

1. Direct competitors (same problem, customer, and solution)
2. Indirect competitors with a different solution (same problem and customer)
3. Indirect competitors with a different problem (same solution and customer)
4. Indirect competitors with a different customer (same problem and solution)

Step 3: Collect growth insights

Research competitors’ landing pages, ad channels, and content marketing for growth insights.

Landing pages

• Study your competitors’ sites for their brand messaging and to see if any A/B tests are being run.

Ad channels

• Use Ahrefs to find out their paid search keywords and ad landing pages.
• Use BuzzSumo to see which pages have the most social engagement.
• Look at competitors’ Facebook and Instagram ads using Facebook Ads Library.
• View their ads on LinkedIn.

Content marketing

• Use Ahrefs to find out their organic keywords and the pages with the most backlinks.
• Look up competitors in Google Trends to gauge their brand awareness.
• Look through your competitors’ active social media channels and see how often users post authentic comments.