How to do a competitor analysis

Other companies already sell what you sell, and your website sounds like theirs, so buyers have no reason to pick you. A competitor analysis fixes that when it ends in one clear difference you can put in your headline, not in a big spreadsheet nobody reads. Here is how to do a competitor analysis in 5 days with free tools, from the complaints of your rivals' own customers.

Do these three things

About 4 hours today, 30 minutes a day, and 45 minutes every Sunday. Pick your one difference after 100 complaints, about 5 days in.

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1. 1Today: list 10 things your buyers use instead of you, including doing it by hand. Keep the 5 that come up most, and write down each one's price, promise and where it finds buyers.
2. 2Every day: copy 20 complaints about those 5 into one sheet, in the buyers' own words, from 1- to 3-star reviews, forumssoon and your own chats with buyers.
3. 3Every Sunday: count which complaint comes up most, and put your answer to it in your homepage headlinesoon and your messagessoon. Then check the 5 rivals' ads, prices and AI answerssoon for changes.

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1. List 10 alternatives your buyers use instead of you#

Write down 10 things your buyers use today instead of your product, then keep the 5 that come up most. A competitor is anything a buyer picks instead of you: another company, a cheaper tool, a local shop, a spreadsheet, or doing nothing.

Look in three places, and write down every name in a Google Sheet with where you found it.

1. Google. Search the problem the way your buyer would say it, then "best [kind of product] for [your buyer]", then "[the biggest name] alternatives". Write down every company on the first page, and the ones named inside best-of listssoon.
2. AI answers. Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI Mode the same question: "What is the best [kind of product] for [your buyer]?" Write down every name they give. This matters more each year. In G2's March 2026 survey of 1,076 software buyers, 51% said they now start their research in an AI chatbot. A year earlier it was 29%.
3. Your buyers. Ask every buyer you talk to: "What do you use for this today?" Their answer is often a spreadsheet, an email thread or a local supplier. That is your real rival. Use the list of people from your ideal customer profile.

If you run a SaaS: also check the category pages on G2 and Capterra, where buyers compare tools side by side.

If you run a D2C store: also search Amazon and TikTok Shop for your product. Many shoppers compare there first, and the Amazon listingssoon show you prices and reviews in one place.

If you run an agency: your rivals include freelancers on Upworksoon, agencies on Clutch, and the client hiring someone in-house. Search for agencies that serve your kind of clientsoon, not every agency.

If you run a B2B company: your rival is usually the supplier your buyer already uses. Ask "Who do you buy this from today?" on every call.

Then keep 5. Pick the ones that came up in at least 2 of the 3 places. If "by hand" or "do nothing" came up twice, it stays in your 5.

• Tool: Google, ChatGPT or Perplexity, and a Google Sheet. All free.
• Time: 1 hour.
• You will have: a sheet with 10 alternatives, 5 of them marked.
• It worked if: at least 1 of the 10 is "by hand" or "do nothing", and each of your 5 came up in at least 2 places.
• Common mistake: listing only the famous company everyone knows, or saying "we have no competitors". If buyers have the problem, they are doing something about it today. If you find nobody at all, check the problem is real before you market it.

2. Write down each competitor's price, promise and who it is for#

For each of your 5, fill one row: the price, the promise in their headline, and who they say it is for. This takes 20 minutes a rival, and it shows you in one screen what buyers already hear from everyone else.

Open each rival's homepage and pricing page, and fill in:

Rival | Price (cheapest option, and what it includes) | Their promise (homepage headline, word for word) | Who they say it is for | Where they find buyers (step 3) | Top complaint (step 4)

Copy the headline exactly. When you put 5 headlines side by side, you will usually see they all promise the same thing. That tells you what not to say.

For price history, paste the rival's pricing page link into the free Wayback Machine and press "Browse History". A rival that raised its price twice this year leaves room under it. If you can, try the product: sign up for the free trial with your own name and email. Do not pretend to be someone else.

If you run a D2C store: write the price with shipping, and per unit (per ounce, per item), so you compare like with like. The pricing guide for products shows how.

If you run a B2B company: most rivals do not show prices. Ask your buyers what they paid last time, and use the 20 real prices method.

If you run an agency: Clutch listings show each agency's minimum project size and hourly rate range. Write both down, next to the packagessoon on their own site, and compare them with your own prices.

• Tool: your Google Sheet and the Wayback Machine. Both free.
• Time: 20 minutes a rival, 1 hour 40 minutes for all 5.
• You will have: 5 full rows.
• It worked if: every cell has an answer, and you can say each rival's promise in one short line.
• Common mistake: building a 40-column feature list. In April 2026, one founder called the feature spreadsheet "a trap": "Focusing on features just turns you into a cheap clone." Buyers rarely choose on feature 37. They choose on the promise, the price and what annoys them.

3. Find where your competitors get their customers: ads, Google and AI answers#

Check three things for each rival: which ads it pays for, which Google searches bring it visits, and whether AI tools name it. Write the biggest one in the "Where they find buyers" column.

Do these checks, all free:

1. 1

   Look up their ads

   Search each rival's name in the Meta Ad Library, which shows ads currently running on Facebook and Instagram. Then search their name or website in Google's Ads Transparency Center, which covers Search, YouTube and Gmail and filters by date and place. For B2B and agency rivals, also search LinkedIn's Ad Library, which keeps ads for a year after they last ran. An ad that has run for months is one they keep paying for. Write down what it offers, not how it looks. This helps later if you run Meta adssoon or LinkedIn adssoon.

2. 2

   Look up their Google searches

   Put each rival's website into the free Ahrefs Website Traffic Checker. It estimates their search traffic and shows their top pages and the keywordssoon that send the most visits. These are estimates, so use them to compare rivals, not as real numbers. Note any "[rival] alternatives" or "vs" pages they rank for.

3. 3

   Look up AI answers

   Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI Mode 5 questions your buyer would ask, such as "best [kind of product] for [your buyer]" and "cheaper alternative to [the biggest rival]". Write down who is named, and which pages the answer links to as sources. In G2's survey, 45% of software buyers said links to review sites inside AI answers gave them the most confidence. Those pages are where you want to be mentionedsoon too.

Then use this rule. If a rival leads a place with many ads or many ranking pages, do not fight it there with your small budget. Go where none of your 5 is strong: a community they ignore, a question no AI answer covers well, or direct messages to buyers they never talk to. Write down 3 places like that. They feed your choice of marketing channels.

If you run a D2C store: ask the AI tools for "best [product] for [shopper]" and note which stores and products they name. The guide on getting your products recommended by ChatGPTsoon shows what they read.

If you run a B2B company: ask "who makes [product] for [kind of company] in [your area]". AI tools often name suppliers from directories and reviews. Here is how to get named as a suppliersoon.

• Tool: Meta Ad Library, Google Ads Transparency Center, LinkedIn Ad Library, Ahrefs Website Traffic Checker, and ChatGPT or Perplexity. All free.
• Time: 1 hour for all 5.
• You will have: a "Where they find buyers" entry for each rival, and a list of 3 places none of them covers well.
• It worked if: you can point to proof for each rival's main place (an ad, a top page, an AI answer), and you have 3 open places written down.
• Common mistake: copying a rival's ads or pages, or trying to outspend them. You learn what they offer and where they are. You win by saying something different in a place they have left open.

4. Collect 20 complaints a day about your competitors, in buyers' own words#

Every day, copy 20 complaints about your 5 rivals into one sheet, word for word, with a link to where each one came from. After 5 days you have 100, and the most common complaint is usually the gap you can win on.

Read the 1-, 2- and 3-star reviews first. That is where paying customers say what annoys them. Three-star reviews are the most useful: the person likes the product enough to stay, and still says what is wrong.

Where to read, by reader:

• SaaS: G2 and Capterra reviews, and threads in the subredditssoon where your buyers talk.
• D2C: Amazon reviews, Trustpilot, TikTok comments on the rival's videos, and Shopify and Reddit threads.
• B2B: Google reviews on the rival's business profilesoon, trade forums, and LinkedIn comments.
• Agency: Clutch reviews, and posts where business owners say what went wrong with their last agency.

Then add your own source. In every sales callsoon and every chat you already have, ask two questions: "What do you use for this today?" and "What would you change about it?" Write the answer down in their words. These count toward your 20.

Use AI for the sorting, not the finding. Once a day, paste the day's complaints into ChatGPT or Claudesoon and ask it to group them into themes, such as price, speed, support or setup. Copy every quote yourself, from the real page, so every line is true and has a link.

• Tool: your Google Sheet, the review sites above, and ChatGPT or Claude to group them.
• Time: about 30 minutes a day, 1 to 2 minutes a complaint.
• You will have: 100 complaints after 5 days, each with the rival, the words, a link and a date.
• It worked if: you have 100 complaints from at least 3 kinds of source, all less than 12 months old.
• Common mistake: reading only 5-star reviews, or counting complaints from people who are not your buyer. A big company's complaint about missing admin features does not matter if you sell to 3-person teams. The other mistake is stopping at 15. With 15 complaints, one angry person can look like a pattern.

5. Pick the gap you will win on and put it in your headline#

After 100 complaints, pick one theme and write one sentence about how you fix it. Then put that sentence in your homepage headline, the first line of your messages, and an alternatives page.

Pick the theme with this rule. Take the complaint with the highest count that you can fix today, for your kind of buyer. If the top theme is price, skip it unless you can be cheaper and still pay yourself. A price gap is easy for a bigger rival to close. The second theme is often better.

Write the sentence. This is the core of your positioning, and it goes into your value proposition:

Unlike [the alternative your buyers use most], [your product] [fixes the top complaint, in the buyers' words] for [your buyer].

Then use it in three places, today:

1. Your homepage headline. Say the fix, in the buyers' words, without the rival's name. Here is how to write homepage copysoon.
2. The first line of your messages. If you send 100 personal messages a daysoon, open with the problem: "Most [buyers] tell me [the complaint]."
3. An alternatives page for your biggest rival. Buyers search "[rival] alternatives" when the complaint hits. The guide to comparison and alternative pagessoon shows how to write one that is fair and still wins.

If you run a SaaS: also add the fix to your pricing pagesoon, next to the plan most buyers pick.

If you run a D2C store: put the fix in the first two lines of your product descriptionsoon, where shoppers look before they scroll.

• Tool: your sheet and your site editor.
• Time: 1 hour.
• You will have: one sentence, live in your headline, your message template and one alternatives page.
• It worked if: you show your homepage to 10 people who fit your buyer for 5 seconds, and at least 8 can say how you are different. Then, over your next 300 messages, replies per 100 stay the same or go up. If they go down, try the second theme.
• Common mistake: writing "better, faster, cheaper". Every rival says that. The other mistake is attacking a rival by name with claims you cannot show. Only write what a buyer could check.

6. Check your competitors every Sunday, and react only to what lasts#

Set up free alerts once, then spend 45 minutes every Sunday checking what your 5 rivals changed. Most changes need no answer. Change your own message only when the complaint count changes.

Set up once, in 30 minutes:

• Page alerts. Add each rival's pricing page to Visualping. The free plan watches 5 pages and gives 150 checks a month, which is about one check a day for each page. It emails you when a page changes.
• News alerts. In Google Alerts, type each rival's name in quotes, click "Show options", set how often to once a week, and click "Create Alert".

Then, every Sunday:

1. Read the week's page alerts and news alerts. Write each change in a new tab of your sheet, with the date.
2. Search the 5 names in the ad libraries from step 3. Note any new offer.
3. Ask the AI tools your same 5 questions, and note who they name now. Use the same questions every week so you can compare. The guide on tracking ChatGPT mentionssoon shows how to keep this in one table.
4. Recount your complaint themes with the week's 140 new complaints. If a new theme has taken the top spot, go back to step 5 and rewrite the sentence.

Use this rule for price cuts. If a rival cuts its price, wait. If the lower price is still there two Sundays later, decide. Before you lower your own, set your floor: the lowest price that still pays you. In a Shopify Community thread in August 2026, store owners said the same: "The competitor being cheaper for a day doesn't mean you have a pricing problem." Often the better answer is to raise what you givesoon, not cut the price.

Once a month, bring the sheet to your monthly marketing reviewsoon.

• Tool: Visualping free plan and Google Alerts. Both free.
• Time: 30 minutes to set up, then 45 minutes every Sunday.
• You will have: one dated row of changes each Sunday, with each change marked "act" or "ignore".
• It worked if: after 4 Sundays you have 4 rows, and you changed your message only when the top complaint changed.
• Common mistake: checking rivals every day and copying each move. You end up saying what they say, one week late. The other mistake is not checking at all until sales drop.

Where Scout7 helps#

Scout7 speeds up steps 1, 3 and 4. The guide works the same without it.

Steps 1 and 3. Scout7 builds a competitor set for your business and shows which rivals are winning the Google searches and AI answers you want, and by how much. You check that the set is your real set of rivals, not only the famous names. Its keyword intelligence shows who leads on Google and in AI answers for each term, and AI question coverage collects the questions buyers ask AI assistants in your category and shows who answers them.

Step 4. Scout7's audience research reads public social conversations in your category and builds audience segments with pain points and quotes in buyers' own words. It does not read review sites or run interviews, so you still collect reviews and ask your buyers yourself.

Your competitor analysis checklist for the next 5 days

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Step 1 · List 10 alternatives your buyers use instead of you

• List 10 alternatives from Google, AI answers and your buyers, including doing it by hand.
• Keep the 5 that came up most.

Step 2 · Write down each competitor's price, promise and who it is for

• Fill one row for each rival: price, promise and who it is for.

Step 3 · Find where your competitors get their customers

• Check each rival's ads, Google searches and AI answers, and write down where it finds buyers.
• Write down 3 places none of your rivals covers well.

Step 4 · Collect 20 complaints a day in buyers' own words

• Every dayCopy 20 complaints about your 5 rivals from reviews, forums and your chats.

Step 5 · Pick the gap you will win on and put it in your headline

• After 100 complaintsPick the top complaint you can fix today, and write your one-difference sentence.
• Put the sentence in your homepage headline, your messages and an alternatives page.

Step 6 · Check your competitors every Sunday

• Set up Visualping on 5 pricing pages and a Google Alert for each rival.
• Every SundayCheck prices, ads and AI answers, recount complaints, and mark each change act or ignore.

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