A competitor analysis is the structured comparison of what the brands in a market say, where they appear and what they leave untouched. Its purpose is not to imitate a competitor but to find the space nobody owns and place the brand there.
What does a competitor analysis look at?
Its depth varies by project; six headings are examined every time:
- Positioning sentence. How the competitor defines itself and which word it is trying to own.
- Audience. Who it speaks to — the customer profile readable from its language and its reference list.
- Promise and evidence. Which benefit it puts forward and what it uses to back that promise up.
- Channel spread. Where it appears regularly, and where it is absent altogether.
- Visual language. How closely it sits to the category clichés — colour, typography and photography choices.
- How it talks about price. Openly, through packages, or not at all.
Placed side by side, these six headings produce a map of the market: which areas are crowded and which are empty becomes visible.
Direct competitors versus perceived competitors
A direct competitor does the same work you do. A perceived competitor is the option the customer weighs alongside you — often from another category entirely: somewhere else the budget could go, or the decision to do nothing. Most brands look only at the first; a significant share of lost business goes to the second.
How is the empty space found?
- Mark the places where every competitor uses the same word — that is the crowded ground
- Look for the customer question no competitor answers
- Where everyone addresses the same audience, identify the neglected segment
- Extract the category's visual cliché and work out the cost of stepping outside it
- Check whether the empty space is genuinely open or simply has no demand
The last item must not be skipped: not every gap is an opportunity. Some areas are empty because nobody wants them.
How the process works at Circle
- Building the competitor list. Listing separately the competitors the brand names and the options the customer actually compares.
- Field scan. Recording websites, social channels, advertising, press visibility and search results against the same headings.
- Drawing the map. Putting the six headings into a table and marking the crowded and the empty ground.
- Decision proposal. Which space the brand can own, and what communication change that requires.
Frequently asked questions
How many competitors should be examined?
Variety matters more than number. One example each from the market leader, the brand closest in scale and a recent entrant tells you more than a long list.
How often is a competitor analysis repeated?
Once a year is enough. An interim study is done when a new player enters the market or a competitor changes its positioning.
Where does the data come from?
The whole analysis is done with public sources: websites, ad libraries, social archives, press coverage and search results. No confidential information is needed.
Next step
To see which space is open in your market, get in touch; to measure where your brand stands today, take the Brand Test on our site. At Circle this work runs under Market Analysis.