Five mistakes teams make with competitor analysis

Most teams know this matters. Fewer have decided who owns it. These are the ones we run into repeatedly when we audit competitor analysis.

Strategy work is mostly deciding what not to do, and writing it down so it stays decided. The practical test is whether someone new to the project could tell, in a minute, that it had been handled.

Common failure modes

• Treating it as a launch task rather than an ongoing one
• Assuming someone else already owns it
• Look for the gaps, not just for what to copy
• Their weaknesses are your positioning
• Never checking whether the fix actually worked

Check what they rank for that you do not. Small and consistent beats large and occasional here. The teams that stay on top of it are the ones who put it on a calendar rather than a wish list.

Where to go from here

What this looks like day to day

The projects that go badly are rarely the ones with the hardest technical problems. Three things worth confirming about competitor analysis before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Check what they rank for that you do not — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

The point is not perfection, it is knowing which of these you have consciously chosen to skip.