1. Who are your competitors?
While you probably already have a good idea of your direct competitors, you may also want to identify indirect competitors. These are companies that may not offer identical products or services but compete for the same audience.
If your purpose for conducting a competitor analysis is to gain insights on product differentiation or to benchmark specific service offerings, you can most likely stick to direct competitors. On the other hand, if you’re looking to boost/broaden your market position, indirect competitors can be just as important.
However, you’ll gain the most holistic view of your competition and market by analyzing both direct and indirect.
2. What are they doing?
I know; this is a broad question. In this step, you’re looking to gain a high-level understanding of your competitors’ activities.
Ask yourself:
- Where are they investing their time and resources?
- How do they engage with their audience across different channels?
- Are they active on social media?
- Do they attend events and tradeshows?
- Are they running LinkedIn Ads? Google Ads?
- Do they have a main SME they heavily feature on their social media/website?
Answering these questions can help you map out a competitor’s focus areas, primary channels for engagement, and strategic priorities before getting into the nitty-gritty.
3. What does their messaging and positioning look like?
Next, it’s time to dive deep into their websites.
Look for their tone and style and how they present their products and services. Analyze their taglines, mission statements, and product descriptions. This will likely be one of the most time-consuming portions of your analysis.
Ask yourself:
- What value propositions are they highlighting?
- Are they appealing to specific personas?
- Are they using any statistics?
- How are they backing up their claims?
- Do they have any client testimonials?
The goal here is to find areas where your brand can stand out. Look for gaps—such as missing customer-centric messaging, lack of ROI proof points, or limited testimonials—that could be potential opportunities for you to differentiate.
4. How strong is their content strategy and SEO?
Getting a good idea of a competitor’s content strategy (or lack thereof) is especially important in knowledge-intensive fields like healthcare, biotech, and pharma.
Look at your competitors’ blogs, articles, white papers, and case studies (if there are any).
Ask yourself:
- What types of content are they producing?
- Which formats resonate most with your shared target audience?
- Are their content efforts mainly evergreen or driven by recent news?
- Is it reinforcing their search engine optimization (SEO) efforts?
To get a good understanding of their SEO standings and practices, you can first do a more high-level examination of their websites for any obvious key phrases in their H1 and H2 headings. For a more detailed view, tools like SEMrush or Moz will show you their top-ranking keywords, domain authority, backlink strategies, and overall SEO performance.
5. Are they in the media?
Lastly, see if your competitors have a strong media presence. Consistent media appearances often indicate a strategic PR focus and show how they position themselves around current industry trends.
Ask yourself:
- Are they quoted in industry publications, contributing thought leadership articles, or regularly providing expert insights?
- What types of publications and topics are they associated with?
Determining these topics and outlets can reveal opportunities for your brand to enter the conversation with fresh angles or underrepresented topics.
What now?
Use the information you’ve gleaned from your B2B competitive marketing analysis to refine your messaging, adjust your strategy, and identify areas where you can lead rather than follow. Remember, a competitive analysis isn’t a one-and-done project—it’s a tool for ongoing refinement and growth.
