Competitor analysis is the "Market analysis" part of a business plan: the US Small Business Administration's guide describes it as reviewing competitors to see what they do well and where you could do better. This template is that review made systematic for B2B marketing, with the evidence written down so the conclusions can be checked.
It is part of our strategy guides. Its output feeds the positioning section of the B2B marketing plan template and the work described in what brand strategy is.
Who counts as a competitor
Before filling any row, decide who goes in the columns. The obvious answer is the companies that bid against you, but Michael Porter's five forces (Harvard Business Review, January 2008) describe competition more widely: besides established industry rivals, it includes customers, suppliers, potential entrants and substitute products. For a B2B marketer two of those matter most. Substitutes: the buyer doing nothing, doing it in-house or buying a different category of solution; in many B2B deals this is the real rival. Potential entrants: the adjacent company or the platform that could add your service next year.
A practical set is three to five columns: the two or three rivals that appear most often in your lost deals and your search results, one substitute (named as what the buyer does instead), and one potential entrant. More than five and the template becomes a spreadsheet nobody reads.
The template
The table below is the template: nine rows, one column per competitor plus a column for you, and for every cell the public evidence it should cite. Copy the rows into a spreadsheet or a document, one competitor per column. The notes that follow say what to look for in each row and where to find it.
Rows 1 to 3: targets, offer and pricing, positioning
Targets. Who the rival says it serves: sectors, company sizes, regions, roles. Read the home page, the industry pages and the case studies; the clients they show are the clients they want more of. Offer and pricing. What they sell, how it is packaged, and whatever pricing is public: plans, ranges, "from" prices, or the fact that none is published, which is itself information. Positioning. The one sentence they lead with and the proof they attach to it. Write it down verbatim, then ask whether any rival could claim the same sentence; if so, the market has an open position.
For listed rivals, the SEC's EDGAR search finds registration statements and periodic reports by company name or ticker; the annual report's business description and risk factors are the most honest account of a company's targets and worries you will find. Canadian listed companies file on SEDAR+.
Rows 4 to 6: proof, search presence, paid and social
Proof. Named clients, case studies with stated scope, certifications, awards, team pages with real people. Count what is checkable and note what is adjectives. Search presence. Which of your buyers' search terms they appear for, with which pages, and what their site answers that yours does not. Search the terms yourself from the buyer's country; Search Console shows your side, and the results page shows theirs. Our guide to SEO for small business owners explains how to read what you see.
Paid and social. The major ad platforms publish libraries of the ads currently running, which show the offers and messages a rival is paying to promote; their LinkedIn page and the posts of their named people show what they talk about and who responds. Note frequency and who engages, not follower counts.
Rows 7 to 9: sales motion, customer voice, conclusions
Sales motion. How a buyer gets from their site to a conversation: form, demo booking, free trial, phone, partner. Job postings tell you the rest: a company hiring account executives sells differently from one hiring channel managers. Customer voice. Review sites, public forums, trade press and, most useful of all, your own won and lost deal notes: what buyers said when they chose them or you. Record quotations with their source.
Conclusions. The row the whole template exists for: where they are stronger, where they are weaker, what they are about to do (from filings, hiring and ads), and what that means for your positioning and channels. Write it last, and only from the evidence in the rows above.
Where the evidence lives, and the rules
Every cell cites its evidence. The sources, in the order to use them:
- Their own site and documents: pages, case studies, pricing, careers, press releases, annual reports and filings for listed companies.
- Search results in your buyers' countries, for your buyers' terms, read as a buyer would.
- Ad libraries and social pages: what they pay to say and what their people post.
- Review sites, forums and trade press: what customers and journalists say, quoted with the source.
- Your own records: won and lost deal notes, sales call notes, inquiries that mention a rival.
- The rules: public sources only; never pose as a buyer or misrepresent yourself to obtain information; never copy their text; never publish the analysis or name rivals in your marketing. Our own analyzes follow the same rules.
Scoring the template
Once the rows are filled, score rows 1 to 8 from 1 to 5 for each rival and for yourself, with a one-line reason for each score that points at the evidence. The scores are not the analysis; the differences are. A row where a rival scores 5 and you score 2 is a threat to answer or a battle to avoid; a row where you score 4 and every rival scores 2 is an open position to claim. Sum nothing: a total score hides exactly the differences you are looking for.
A worked example
A made-up market, not a client's: a B2B software company sells scheduling tools to mid-sized logistics firms in the US and Canada. Columns: Rival A (a larger, listed company), Rival B (a similar-sized specialist), the substitute (spreadsheets and the dispatcher's memory), and the company itself.
Filling the rows shows Rival A targets enterprises and publishes no pricing; its annual report lists a move into smaller customers as a priority, so it is also the potential entrant. Rival B positions on ease of use with twenty named clients and publishes plan prices. The substitute costs nothing and is what most lost deals went to. In search, Rival B owns the "how to" terms dispatchers use; Rival A owns the enterprise terms; nobody answers the terms about switching from spreadsheets. Conclusions: position against the substitute, not against Rival B ("the first step up from the spreadsheet, running in a week"), publish prices because Rival A does not, and build the search content for the switching terms nobody owns. Those three lines go straight into the marketing plan.
From analysis to action
Each conclusion in row 9 becomes one of four kinds of decision:
- Positioning. Rewrite your sentence to claim the open position the differences show, with proof you have. Our brand strategy work starts from exactly this.
- Channels. Go where buyers look and rivals are absent or weak: the unanswered search terms, the roles nobody targets on LinkedIn.
- Offer. Fix the row where every rival beats you if buyers care about it; otherwise leave it and say so.
- Watch list. Two or three signals to check quarterly: a rival's hiring, filings, new pages, new ads.
Common mistakes
The faults that make a competitor analysis useless:
- Impressions instead of evidence. "Their site looks better" is not a cell. Cite the page, the filing, the review.
- Only the obvious rivals. The substitute and the potential entrant are often the ones that decide the market.
- Describing without concluding. A filled template with an empty row 9 changed nothing.
- Totalling the scores. A sum hides the differences that matter.
- Copying what they do. The analysis finds the gaps they leave, not the features to imitate.
- Doing it once. Refresh twice a year; a trusted stale analysis is worse than none.
Conclusion
A competitor analysis template earns its place when every cell cites public evidence and the last row turns into decisions. Nine rows, three to five columns including a substitute and a potential entrant, scores side by side with the differences read rather than the totals, and four kinds of action: positioning, channels, offer and a watch list. Done twice a year, it keeps the marketing plan honest.
PromotEdge International is an international strategy, technology, marketing and design company, and our delivery team is in India. Our marketing strategy consulting fills this template from desk research and customer interviews and turns the result into positioning, a channel plan and the measures to track it.
Facts we rely on: see our company facts for what we state about ourselves and where each fact comes from.