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How to Do a Competitive Analysis With a competitive analysis, , where you need to improve, and which trends you need to get ahead of. Complete a competitive analysis when your company isn’t moving forward as fast as you want or when competitors are securing orders from your ideal customers. A competitive analysis should examine your competitors’ features, market share, pricing, marketing, differentiators, strengths, weaknesses, geography, culture and customer reviews. This article is for new and established small business owners who want to analyze their competition to improve their products or services. Your company chases roughly the same customers as its competitors. You offer comparable products or services to each other. But you’re not entirely sure why you win some orders but lose others. A competitive analysis can provide you with the road map needed to capture a greater share of the market and better understand the future trends that will affect your sector. 1. Identify the products or services you want to evaluate. For most analyses, they will be the products or services that generate the highest revenues or demonstrate the most significant potential for growth. 2. Seek direct competitors. These companies compete for roughly the same market with comparable products or services. For example, accountants competing against other accountants. 3. Pinpoint indirect competitors. These companies target the same market but with different products or services. For example, accountants competing against bookkeepers. 4. Examine replacement competitors. These companies offer a different product or service, but address the same issue as your products or services (for example, apps that assist entrepreneurs). 5. Determine which parts of your competitors’ businesses are worth investigating. These aspects could be pricing, distribution and delivery strategies, market share, new products or services coming to market, who their long-standing, highest-spending customers are, the quality of after-sales support, and which sales and marketing channels they use.