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Phase 1
Competitive Analysis & Benchmarking
Winning markets isn’t about guessing; it’s about knowing. Competitive analysis tells you who you’re up against and how they win. Benchmarking tells you where you stand and how to improve. Together they form a rigorous operating system for strategy: identify competitors, map the landscape, compare what matters, and translate insights into positioning, roadmaps, and go-to-market plays. This module gives you the end-to-end workflow, metrics, templates, and cadences to build a living competitive program—from battlecards to benchmarking scoreboards—so your product can differentiate, defend, and grow.
Learning Outcomes
Distinguish competitive analysis vs benchmarking and when to use each.
Build a market landscape and competitor taxonomy.
Run a repeatable 12-step analysis workflow.
Define a benchmarking scoreboard with formulas.
Produce actionable deliverables like 2x2 maps, feature matrices, and battlecards.
Concepts & Definitions
Competitive analysis (CA): A structured investigation of competitors’ strategy, offerings, pricing, GTM, strengths/weaknesses, and customer perception to uncover differentiation and threats. Output: insights that shape positioning, roadmap, and sales enablement.
Benchmarking (BM): A recurring, metric-driven comparison of performance—often across the best in any sector, not just rivals—to identify gaps and best practices. Output: targets and improvements (e.g., time-to-first-response, SEO rank share, conversion rates).
Think of benchmarking as the ruler and competitive analysis as the map.
Scope the Field: Build Your Competitor Set
Create a balanced set (5–10 total to start):
- Direct: same job, same audience.
- Indirect: different solution to the same job.
- Legacy: entrenched incumbents customers still trust.
- Emerging/disruptors: new models with high agency and velocity.
- Content competitors: properties that capture your audience’s attention and queries (rank on your keywords, own the conversation) even if they don’t sell your product.
Sources to discover: internal sales notes; win/loss interviews; SERP leaders on target keywords; review sites; social chatter; “people also considered” on marketplaces; category reports.
CA vs BM—What’s the Difference in Practice?
| Dimension | Competitive Analysis | Benchmarking |
|---|---|---|
| Focus | Strategies & capabilities | Performance on KPIs |
| Breadth | Mainly category peers | Best practices across/ outside category |
| Cadence | Deep dives; quarterly/biannual | Recurring; monthly/quarterly |
| Output | Insights, positioning, battlecards | Targets, gaps, action plans |
| Example | “Competitor X’s onboarding beats us on time-to-value.” | “Median TTFV is 12 min; we’re at 26 min; target 15 min.” |
The 12-Step Competitive Analysis Workflow
Set Objectives & Hypotheses
Examples: “Identify 3 defensible differentiators”, “Reduce head-to-head losses vs X by 20%”, “Find one under-served segment.”
Identify & Categorize Competitors
Direct / indirect / legacy / emerging / content (see §2).
Company & Offering Overview
Create a 1-pager for each competitor covering mission, ICPs, geos, go-to-market model, and core SKUs/tiers.
Product Teardown
Analyze feature parity (must-have vs differentiators), UX flows (signup→activation), performance, mobile/web parity, and integrations.
Pricing & Packaging
Document public price points, discount patterns, usage/seat metrics, limits, add-ons, free tier gates, and contract norms.
GTM & Marketing
Analyze channel mix (organic, paid, social), content strategy, thought leadership, PR, and positioning narrative.
Sales Motions
Become a lead. Track touchpoint sequence, demo/trial flow, offers, guarantees, and procurement handling.
Customer Feedback Mining
Analyze review themes, ratings, support quality, community signals, and social sentiment.
Tech Stack & Ops
Investigate public stack clues (site tech, analytics, CRM), app store kits, job postings, and support SLAs.
Market Landscape Mapping
Place each brand on 2x2s to visualize where the gaps are.
SWOTs & Battlecards
Distill strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats into sales-ready competitive materials.
Synthesis to Strategy
Define three strategic bets with owners, metrics, and timelines.