How to Perform a Brand Analysis on Your Brand’s Competitors

Learning to perform a brand analysis on your brand’s competitors will keep you one step ahead of the competition.

So, how do you do it?

In this post, we’re going to give you an in-depth competitor analysis template which you can use to perform a solid brand analysis.

Thank us later.

By taking a deep dive into your competitive landscape, you can start painting a picture of where you sit vs where you want to be.

For B2B or B2C businesses, working with a branding agency experienced in your sector can make this process far more strategic and actionable.

This information is key so that you can grow your brand and exceed customer expectations.

By using a competitor analysis template, you can systematically break down your competition’s strategies and gain insights into:

• What your customers want
• Where the market is heading
• What areas your competitors are lazy in
• What areas they’re capitalising on
• Where all this leaves you

Brand Strategy Made Simple

Developing a brand strategy is no easy task. It's something we've seen people struggle with time and time again. Which...

Download now

Taking the time to perform a brand analysis using a structured competitor analysis template will give you a unique insight into your industry.

Essentially, it gives you the inside scoop on what your competitors are doing, so that you can do it even better.

Once you know their strengths and weaknesses, you can start to understand your competitor’s brand strategy which is golden. To effectively use this knowledge, running a branding workshop with your team could be invaluable. This will allow you to explore where you fit in, and most importantly, how you can stand out.

Brand Analysis vs. Brand Audit

Both brand analysis and brand audits offer valuable insights. But they serve distinct purposes and are conducted using different approaches.

A brand audit is a more thorough evaluation of your brand’s overall health. It involves a deep dive into your brand’s internal and external touchpoints.

This includes performance metrics, customer feedback, and marketing materials.

The goal of a brand audit is to assess how well your brand is aligned with its objectives and values. This exercise is great for consistency!

It also helps identify gaps in brand execution that may hinder your growth.

However, a brand analysis focuses on understanding your brand’s performance in comparison to competitors, customer perceptions, and market trends. It helps you find areas where you can enhance your competitive edge and is often used for strategic decision-making.

With that in mind, let’s begin by asking that all-important question…

Who Are Your Competitors?

We won’t insult your intelligence by suggesting Googling your own industry – we know that you know your main competitors in the marketplace!

In fact, you’re probably already keeping an eye on them to make sure you’re not missing out on anything major.

Understanding your competitors’ brand values is crucial in setting your own brand apart and ensuring you have a solid foundation for growth.

However, whilst you might think you know your competitors already, have you considered alternate angles?

Primary Competitors

First up are your primary competitors.

These are companies that offer the same service or products to the same target audience, in the same location, solving the same problem as you.

Basically, these businesses are your direct competition. They’re the people stealing your customers, and in turn, your profits …

Let’s take a look at some well-known examples:

• Coca-Cola vs Pepsi
• EE vs O2
• Morrison’s vs Tesco
• JD vs Sports Direct
• McDonald’s vs Burger King

And the list goes on…

Secondary Competitors

Now we come to your secondary competitors.

These are businesses offering the same or similar product or service to you in the same area, who are targeting a different audience, or serving a different purpose, but with a potential overlap.

For example, take Brewdog – a beer company with products stocked in supermarkets around the country.

A secondary competitor to Brewdog would be a wine company, like Blossom Hill.

Totally different products, stocked on the same shelves, with a very different target market.

Blossom Hill wouldn’t be a direct competitor. But they could still take some of Brewdog’s business if their marketing convinced someone to go for a glass of vino over a craft beer that evening.

So, whilst the product offering is ever-so different, they’re still ones to watch.

Tertiary Competitors

These are businesses that are providing products or services vaguely linked to your own, but they don’t really compete.

But if they don’t compete – why bother?

These are competitors that could become direct or indirect, if they ever decided to pivot.

This is essential to keep in the back of your mind (especially when you consider Covid 19), when many businesses are having to totally adapt their original business model to survive.

Don’t lose sleep over your tertiary competitors, but it’s worth keeping an eye out for any big changes or developments.

It’s good to keep in mind that in this digital age, companies can comfortably provide the exact service that you do, even if they’re 4000 miles away. So even if you don’t have global clients yet, you most definitely have global competitors.

How Do You Identify Your Competition?

Google is the obvious starting point.

Try searching your own brand in a couple of different search engines and see what other companies come up in the ‘People also search for…’ section.

Utilise your industry knowledge and contacts, connect with your competitors, and see who they connect with also.

Make an effort to stay active on platforms such as LinkedIn to connect and network with industry experts across the globe.

Searching hashtags that relate to your industry; see what is being posted, liked, commented on and discussed. Join in the conversation to stay relevant and up to date on current industry affairs.

On a more technical, slightly less stalk-y level, performing a keyword-based brand analysis will show you which competitors are driving the most traffic for the keywords that you also target, or the top keywords in the industry.

There are loads out there to choose from, including Similar Web.

Naming Your Business: A Key Step Before Analysing Competitors

Before you dive deep into analysing your competitors, it’s essential to ensure that your brand’s foundation is solid.

While your business name might not directly guide a competitor analysis, it’s crucial to pay attention to the names of competitors in your industry.

For example:

If you’re in a field like law, where most firms have names like “AJS Solicitors” or “HJQ Lawyers,” calling your firm “Big Fluffy Sheep Law” is unlikely to convey the right message. Aligning your name with industry norms or strategically disrupting them can influence how your brand is perceived in a competitive landscape.

Naming a brand is something people often invest a lot of thought into, and rightly so. While your name alone doesn’t define your brand, it’s the brand strategy, marketing, story, and narrative you build around it that truly matter.

Whether you choose to align with the competition or disrupt the industry with a unique name, your choice should be intentional.

Analysing your Competitors’ Brand Strategy

Without donning Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak and hiding in their boardroom, it can be notoriously difficult to analyse a competitor’s brand strategy without any insider knowledge.

Keeping tabs on both their on and offline activity is pretty much the only way to show you what moves they’re making.

• Who they are
• What they’re offering
• What makes them different
• What’s the price point
• Do they offer anything additional that you don’t?

Other brands aren’t able to access copies of your own brand strategy, so unfortunately, you’re not going to magically come across one of theirs.

Compare your competitors’ current offering to what they’ve done in the past. Does it align, or have they taken things in a new direction? Has this prompted a good response from consumers or the press?

Understanding how your competitors have scaled up and implemented growth strategies can reveal opportunities for your own brand. By studying their approach, you can identify which tactics have been successful and how they might be applied or adapted to your business.

Examine everything you can, from their pricing strategy to their social media campaigns to the types of blogs they post.

To make sure your brand stays competitive and relevant, it’s important to have a strong development plan in place. Get insights on creating a brand development strategy for today’s market, making sure your brand remains top of mind.

What services and products do they offer? Is it something new to the market, or have they stripped things back? Have they left any clues to where the market is heading that you hadn’t noticed before?

It can be easy to take a dim view of your competitors, but this doesn’t have to be Gryffindor Vs. Slytherin people!

Be honest with yourself about brand competitors’ strengths as well as their weaknesses.

Are they smashing you out of the park on Instagram at the moment? Check out what works for them, and take inspiration.

Knowing what areas your competitors are excelling in is a good thing, as it means you can take this knowledge and make it work for your own brand.

To truly make your brand stand out, it’s crucial to focus on your own unique qualities and abilities.

Your competition dominating one area of the market doesn’t mean that you should necessarily copy to try and overtake.

Consider if there’s a more creative way you can top what they’re doing, or focus and capitalise on an area that they have missed?

Developing Your Brand Concept

Before diving too deep into your competitor’s strategies, it’s essential to have a solid foundation for your own brand. Developing a clear and compelling brand concept is crucial to differentiating yourself in the marketplace.

A well-defined brand concept not only gives your brand a unique identity but also guides your marketing efforts, ensuring brand consistency across all channels.

Without this, you’re done before you even get started.

Key Metrics for Brand Analysis

To effectively analyse your competitors, focus on these key metrics:

• Website Traffic: Track the volume and sources of traffic to understand your competitors’ online presence and potential lead generation strategies.
• Social Media Engagement: Measure likes, shares, and comments to assess how well competitors engage with their audience and build brand loyalty.
• Brand Sentiment: Use sentiment analysis tools to gauge public perception of your competitors and identify areas where you can improve.
• Customer Feedback: Monitor reviews and ratings to uncover strengths and weaknesses in customer satisfaction, providing insight into opportunities for your own brand.

Understanding Your Competitors’ Strengths and Weaknesses

Understanding your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses is key, but building a loyal customer base is what will keep your brand thriving.

If your competitors offer the same service as you, and their brand messaging tells customers what they do, why not tell your customers why and how you do it, and see if you can provoke a better response?

Understanding and refining your brand’s tone of voice can help you communicate more effectively and stand out from the competition.

“I’m a divorce lawyer” tells people what you do.

“Making divorce as pain-free as possible” sells the benefit of what you do, and is way more emotive.

Emotions, stories, and sex sell. Selling sex as a divorce lawyer probably isn’t going to cut it – but you get my point! It’s all in the brand story and brand narrative.

Emote, emote, emote.

Customer Journey Analysis

If you want to truly outsmart your competitors, don’t just look at what they’re doing. Look at how their customers are experiencing it. That’s where customer journey analysis comes in.

Think of it as stepping into the shoes of their customers and asking:

“What’s it like to discover, consider, and buy from this brand?”
Spoiler alert: It’s rarely as smooth as brands hope.

Why Does This Matter?

Every touchpoint in a customer’s journey is a chance to either win them over or lose their interest.

Analysing this journey helps you:

• Find any areas of friction in their funnel, and put measures in place to avoid them
• Identify clever nudges or persuasive tactics they’re using and see how you can take inspiration from them
• Pinpoint where they lose potential customers; this is where you could swoop in

How to Map a Competitor’s Customer Journey

1. Awareness

• Where are people first seeing the brand? Paid social? Billboards? Word-of-mouth?
• Use tools like Meta Ad Library or TikTok’s Top Ads to spot trends
• Google their brand and see where they show up organically vs. paid

2. Consideration

• How easy is it to explore what they offer?
• Is the website intuitive or a hot mess with too much going on?
• Do they offer helpful content? Do they showcase reviews? Comparison tools?
• Is the tone trustworthy or try-hard?
• Test their process like a real customer, immerse yourself in the experience. Sign up for the newsletter. Add something to the basket. Abandon cart and see what happens.

3. Purchase

• How smooth and fast is checkout? Are there any areas where they fall short during this process?
• What payment options are there?
• Any psychological nudges (urgency, social proof, discounts)?

4. Post-Purchase

This is the part everyone forgets, but it’s where loyalty is built.

• What’s the unboxing like?
• Do they send follow-ups? Or does the journey end abruptly?
• Are customers incentivised to refer friends or leave reviews?
• Try and gauge how each stage feels. Is it confident and premium, or chaotic and cheap? Emotional tone matters, and mimicking the wrong one could push your own customers away.

Identifying Their Brand Archetype

One thing that you should be able to tell from their marketing efforts, though, is which brand archetype they are most closely aligned to.
For example:

If their marketing is a little bit cheeky and full of fun, then it’d be safe to assume that they’re working with “The Jester” archetype as part of their strategy. Think Nickelodeon or Surreal (they’re an awesome cereal company from the UK with hilarious marketing!)

However, if it’s all a little bit softer, a bit fancy, velvety, and luxurious, a bit “ooh la la”, then they’re probably positioning themselves as “The Lover.” Think Tiffany & Co., Victoria’s Secret, or Chanel.

Identifying this will give you a good idea of their brand strategy, and can help you decide whether you’re going to align with them or put a different spin on things.

Profiling Your Competitors’ Brand Identity

First things first, have you seen their products or experienced their service first-hand? Can you get hold of any physical assets to have a closer look at what they’re doing?

From here, you can decide how you fit in. Or more importantly, how you stand out.

So, let’s start with the basics, but first, it’s helpful to understand how your competitors structure their brands overall.

Exploring their brand architecture can give you a clear picture of how they position different products or services and might inspire your own brand strategy.

• Do they have multiple brands in their family?
• Do they look the same or different? And why might that be?
• What colours are they using?
• What does their logo and branded material look like?
• Is it impressive? Or does it fail to capture the imagination?

Consider the answers to all of these points about your competitors and your own business, you’ll be able to define how your competitors position themselves in the market.

Start with: what message are they trying to send?

If they’ve gone down the eco-friendly route, this is a chance for your brand to shout about how super speedy and efficiently you get things done.

Eco-friendly branding can have connotations of not being as fast and on the button as the industry standard, as people naturally assume that something has been substituted, or the price point is higher.

If you’re refining your brand’s message, it’s also important to consider how your brand’s mission statement aligns with your overall strategy.

If their identity means they target part of the market that you miss out on, and you want to do something about it, you’ve got 2 options:

1. Define your target market so intensely that you become the go-to option
2. Widen your approach and offer something to grab the attention of their audience as well

Your brand identity is everything when it comes to making a good first impression. Remember, you only get one chance!

If your main competitor has super slick branding with a strong identity and they’re scooping up new business that could be yours, consider pushing a new ad campaign, or even going for a brand refresh.

Sometimes giving your branding a little TLC is all it needs!

Why not consider auditing your brand to decide on the right route forward? This allows you to take stock of everything to identify what works against what doesn’t.

In turn, this will generate fresh interest and get you back up where you belong in the marketplace: ahead of your competitors.

Analysing Your Competitors’ Website

When conducting brand competitor analysis, your first port of call should always be their website.

Use their site as if you’re a consumer, let them take you on their customer journey through the site. How does it compare to yours?

Are they offering a B2B service? Don’t be afraid to go all mystery shopper on them!

If they sell physical products online, order one (or ask a friend to…they might be researching you too!)

This will let you compare:

• Dispatch time
• Packaging
• Notification emails
• Web customer service
• Product quality

Also, how are they ranking on search engines?

Obviously, Google is king, but it’s worth searching for them in various search engines to see where they land in each.

Just as your own customer profiles are super important, it’s also worth getting an idea of your competitors’ customer behaviour.

You can do this by checking out the keywords they’re targeting to gain that competitive edge. Tools like Ahrefs and SEMRush and Moz are a great place to start.

We’ve already mentioned Similar Web, and their tool will tell you the global rank, country rank and a graph with weekly visitors of a site just from putting in your brand competitors’ URL. Simples!

Flip things around and see if your brand competitors are checking you out, too, by using a tracking assistant such as Who Is.

Should I be Looking at my Competitors’ Paid Digital?

Definitely!

If you’re going to be using paid traffic, keeping an eye on your brand competitors should be a fundamental part of your brand analysis strategy.

Online tools like WhatRunsWhere will help you find out what other brands similar to your own are doing with their online advertising, what their user engagement is like, what kind of ads they’re creating and where they’re running them.

Here’s a tip:

Searching your own brand name in Google can show you which of your competitors are paying for which ads.

Focus on what messaging they’re using in their paid digital. Do their most popular ads all start with a question that they then solve in the body of the text, or do they just put themselves straight out there?

Take notice of the language they’re using in Google and Facebook Ads. Who are they writing for, what are they trying to achieve with their ads?

This can help you get a judge of what already works, and what doesn’t.

If you notice an advert has been running for a while, the chances are it works well. Can you create your own version?

All of this information will tell you who they’re trying to target.

Looking Into Your Competitors’ Organic Digital

Keeping an eye on the opposition’s social media is a given! We know this ain’t your first rodeo.

As well as signing up to their email alerts and newsletters, you can utilise tools like Hootsuite or Buffer to notify you of all relevant posts from their social platforms, saving you the hassle of trawling through their posts on your Insta account.

You need to look at what they are posting on social media, and what you can tell about their strategy from this.

For example, do they mix up self-promotion with informal posts to build a relationship with the people consuming their content?

Are they posting a lot of infographics, text, or videos?

Pay close attention to these things, and it could highlight opportunities for you to utilise on your own social channels.

Alternatively, it could also highlight some types of content to steer away from. For instance, if text-heavy posts are falling flat, this indicates the audience doesn’t enjoy consuming this particular type of content.

So, either way, looking at your competitor’s social media is a useful exercise.

When analysing how your competitors use their social media, look out for:

• Self-promotion?
• Customer service?
• Strengthening their brand personality?
• Competitions?
• Paid ads?

From just a quick flick through their social media, you can see:

• Their levels of engagement
• What content goes down well, and what bombed
• Customer reactions

As well as watching how they run their social campaigns, keep an eye on how they interact with their customers online.

If you do a quick search on X, do you find people complaining that your brand competitors are difficult to get in touch with? Or do they utilise this platform for an easy way to manage their customer service?

If you do, then maybe it’s worth building an easy-to-use contact page on your website. Take the popular complaints and flip them to your advantage.

Get inspired by something you could work into your own online strategy, or find out where they’re falling short. Is there a point where you can step in?

Are Your Competitors Still Using Traditional Offline Marketing?

It’s easy to get consumed in all things digital, but it’s important to check out if your competition are also using more traditional marketing methods as well.

Is it enhancing their brand or service, or keeping them stuck in the past?

Are they using offline marketing to promote the same message, or is this how they target a separate audience with a different message? For example, maybe their running billboard advertising.

It’s not the rule, but traditional marketing methods are often implemented when aiming a message to older audiences.

Could you use offline marketing to go one step further with part of your target audience, advertise in your local paper for a same day collection service for certain areas?

Think outside the box – this isn’t just about leaflets through letterboxes.

Holding and attending networking events is a great way to not only keep an eye on your competition, but also to get to know them, too. If you see they’re taking part in industry events – show your face too!

Have your brand competitors pulled any PR stunts to get in the press, or an offline marketing campaign with the aim of it getting shared on social media by their customers?

Starbucks is a great example of this.

By implementing a process as simple as staff writing the customer’s name on their cup, it added a personal brand touch point to the customer experience of buying their daily coffee.

But it’s not just that.

Starbucks knew that when they started this campaign, everybody would be snapping and posting photos of their cup, and even better if their name had a hilarious misspelling. Their logo would be all over everyone’s social media feeds.

It suddenly gave all those millennials who could never find their name on stuff in gift shops what they had been waiting for their whole lives.

A genius social media campaign and brand marketing campaign run by their customers.

How Not to Use Competitor Analysis

Remember, running a competitor analysis isn’t an exercise to duplicate another brand’s entire marketing strategy.

Keep in mind that without having a mole inside their company, it’s impossible to know exactly what your brand competitors are trying to achieve and how.

The saying goes Comparison is the thief of joy, but let’s switch this up.

Your brand competitors’ wins aren’t your losses. What they succeed at just gives you more insight into what consumers want.

They might be totally smashing one area, but does this show that they’ve been neglecting another?

Always review your findings with your own goals and strategies in mind.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but take things with a pinch of salt, and be ready to excel in only ways you can.

Brand Analysis FAQs

Now that we’ve explored what a brand analysis is and why you should be conducting one when it comes to your competitors, it’s time to look at some FAQ’s.

How to Perform a Brand Analysis on Your Brand’s Competitors

Hey, it’s always good to know who you’re up against!

Now that we’ve shown you how to do a competitor analysis, this research process will help you:

• Become aware of your own strengths and weaknesses
• Find new opportunities
• Create a more informed and effective marketing plan
• Strengthen your place in the marketplace
• Tackle threats
• Improve your brand strategy
• Stay current

Remember, a lot of the information you collect will be based on investigation and guesswork. The only other option you have is investing in a research firm.

Don’t be afraid to put your brand analysis and competitor analysis template to good use. But don’t copy. Be authentic, original, and wholly you. All of the research in the world shouldn’t stop you from being yourself.

Found areas in your competitor’s marketing or branding that you’d like to take advantage of but need help? Get in touch with us here at Canny.