In today’s competitive market, understanding your competitors is crucial for strategic decision-making. Conducting a competitive analysis allows organizations to evaluate competitors’ strengths, weaknesses and overall positioning.
A well-structured competitive analysis template can help standardize this process, providing a consistent approach to gathering and analyzing competitor data across departments and teams. This ensures all stakeholders can access the same insights and make data-driven decisions. Download this free competitor analysis template for Excel.
ProjectManager’s free competitive analysis template for Excel
Why You Need a Competitive Analysis Template
A competitive analysis template is vital for streamlining the analysis process. It provides a standardized structure to assess direct and indirect competitors, ensuring that key aspects such as product offerings, pricing strategies and market positioning are clearly understood. By organizing competitor information in one place, this tool helps identify gaps in the market and areas of opportunity.
This Excel-based template provides a structured approach to evaluating competitors. It allows organizations to identify direct and indirect competitors, helping to capture a complete view of the competitive landscape. With fields to describe competitors’ marketing mix—including product, price, place, promotion, people and process—this template facilitates a deeper understanding of how rivals operate.
Additionally, the SWOT analysis section provides valuable insights into each competitor’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, supporting informed business strategy development.
This free competitive analysis template for Excel provides valuable insights into industry trends, best practices and potential risks, which can directly influence the structure and scheduling of a Gantt chart in project management. By evaluating competitors’ strategies, project managers can refine timelines, allocate resources more effectively and anticipate challenges that may impact project success.
ProjectManager is award-winning project and portfolio management software with robust Gantt charts that help set realistic deadlines when using the competitive analysis template by analyzing how competitors manage similar projects. It also helps define crucial milestones and deliverables that align with industry standards.
Project managers can better schedule their tasks, human and nonhuman resources and costs on the Gantt chart when they understand how competitors allocate resources. The competitive analysis template can also reveal more efficient workflows that improve sequencing and reduce bottlenecks by optimizing task dependencies, which can be linked to the Gantt chart. Then set a baseline to track progress, costs and more in real time. Get started with ProjectManager today for free.
When to Use This Competitive Analysis Template
This template is ideal for organizations looking to assess their direct and indirect competitors. It provides a comprehensive overview of competitors’ business strategies, marketing efforts and market positions.
Businesses can use this template to better understand their competitive landscape, identify potential threats and discover opportunities for improvement. Whether during market research or when adjusting business strategies, this template is useful for staying ahead of the competition.
Who Should Use This Free Competitive Analysis Template?
This free competitive analysis template is ideal for business owners, marketing professionals and strategic planners looking to evaluate their competition. Organizations of all sizes—whether startups, mid-sized firms or large enterprises—can benefit from using this template to identify key competitors and assess their market strategies.
Product managers, sales teams and even consultants can leverage this tool to stay informed about the competitive landscape. By using this template, businesses can enhance their strategic decisions, improve their market positioning and refine their marketing and sales approaches to stay ahead of the competition.
How to Use This Competitive Analysis Template
This template allows businesses to assess competitors by analyzing their marketing mix and conducting a SWOT analysis. It covers key elements like product offerings, pricing strategies, distribution channels, promotional efforts, customer service, processes and physical evidence.
Incorporating these aspects provides a comprehensive view of how competitors operate in the market. The SWOT analysis section further helps identify each competitor’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, offering valuable insights that support informed decision-making and strategic planning.
1. Analyze the Marketing Mix of Competitors
The marketing mix refers to the actions a business uses to promote and sell its product or service. It includes seven components: product, price, place, promotion, people, process and physical evidence. In business strategy, the marketing mix is crucial for creating a balanced approach that addresses consumer needs and market demands. It provides businesses with a framework for evaluating how they deliver value to customers and differentiate themselves from competitors.
For competitive analysis, the marketing mix can help examine how competitors structure their offerings. By identifying key components such as their product range, pricing strategies, distribution channels and physical evidence (like packaging), businesses can understand competitor positioning. This comparison highlights competitive advantages and areas where improvement is needed to outperform rivals.
Product
A product refers to the goods or services a business offers to satisfy customer needs. In marketing, it encompasses everything from the design, features, quality and brand image to the packaging and after-sales support. A strong product strategy is essential for standing out in the market.
Reviewing competitors’ products allows businesses to understand what features, benefits and quality levels are offered. By comparing product offerings in competitive analysis, businesses can identify gaps in their product lines or discover areas where competitors might be excelling. This can lead to product improvements or adjustments to meet market demands.
Pricing
Pricing is the amount customers are required to pay for a product or service. This critical element of the marketing mix influences customer perceptions, demand and the brand’s overall positioning. Price strategies can range from premium to penetration pricing, depending on the target market and competition.
Evaluating competitors’ pricing in competitive analysis helps businesses understand where they stand concerning market expectations. By comparing pricing strategies, organizations can identify opportunities to adjust their pricing for more competitive positioning, such as offering discounts.
Place
Place, or distribution, refers to how and where a product or service is made available to consumers. It includes retail locations, online stores, logistics management, partnerships and distribution channels. Effective distribution ensures that products are easily accessible to the target audience, which is key for maximizing sales.
It’s important to understand competitors’ distribution channels in competitive analysis to identify opportunities to expand market reach or improve accessibility. Businesses can compare how competitors distribute their products—whether through online platforms, retail outlets or exclusive partnerships—to adjust their distribution strategies to ensure they reach customers efficiently and cost-effectively.
Promotion
Promotion refers to the activities a business uses to communicate and persuade potential customers to purchase its products or services. This includes advertising, sales promotions, public relations and personal selling. A strong promotional strategy is a critical part of the marketing plan of any organization as it increases visibility and drives customer engagement, ultimately boosting sales.
In competitive analysis, reviewing competitors’ promotional strategies helps businesses identify successful tactics that could be adopted or adapted. By understanding how competitors use digital marketing, traditional advertising, and other promotional channels, businesses can determine if they need to enhance their efforts or differentiate their promotional campaigns to stand out.
People
People in the marketing mix refer to anyone involved in delivering a product or service, such as employees, sales teams and customer service representatives. Their skills, attitudes and customer interactions can significantly impact a company’s success. A focus on the right people ensures high-quality customer experiences.
The people component in competitive analysis involves looking at competitors’ customer service teams, sales staff and other employee roles. Understanding how competitors train and deploy their people can highlight areas for improvement or differentiation. This can lead to better customer interactions, improving overall customer loyalty and satisfaction.
Process
Process refers to the systems, procedures, and workflows businesses use to deliver products and services to customers. This includes everything from order fulfillment and service delivery to customer support and returns. Streamlined processes lead to improved efficiency, cost savings and customer satisfaction.
Businesses can review competitors’ processes to assess their operational efficiency. When businesses understand how competitors handle order fulfillment, customer service and other key processes, they can identify areas for improvement or develop more efficient systems to enhance operational effectiveness.
Physical Evidence
Physical evidence refers to the tangible elements that support a customer’s experience with a product or service. This can include packaging, store design, website layout or even the physical environment where services are delivered. These elements help customers evaluate and form brand perceptions.
In competitive analysis, physical evidence offers insight into how competitors visually represent their brands and products. Businesses can evaluate competitors’ packaging, store designs and other tangible aspects to assess whether their physical evidence aligns with customer expectations and identify opportunities to enhance their branding or customer experience.
2. Conduct a SWOT Analysis for Each Competitor
SWOT is a strategic planning tool used to identify a company’s internal strengths and weaknesses, along with external opportunities and threats. It helps businesses assess their position in the market, recognize areas for improvement and develop strategies to leverage strengths, address weaknesses, capitalize on opportunities and mitigate potential risks.
Strengths
Strengths are the internal factors that give a company an advantage over its competitors. This includes aspects such as brand reputation, technological expertise, customer loyalty and unique product offerings. A company’s strengths are what differentiates it from others in the market.
Identifying competitors’ strengths in competitive analysis helps businesses recognize areas where competitors excel. Understanding these strengths allows companies to leverage similar strategies, improve their operations or find ways to outperform competitors in these key areas.
Weaknesses
Weaknesses are internal factors that hinder a company’s ability to compete effectively. This could involve issues like poor customer service, a limited product range or weak brand recognition. Recognizing weaknesses is essential for improving business strategies and addressing gaps.
When conducting competitive analysis, identifying competitors’ weaknesses provides valuable insights into areas where the business can outperform them. As a result, businesses can exploit these weaknesses and position themselves as a stronger alternative.
Opportunities
Opportunities refer to external factors a business can capitalize on to achieve growth. This could include market trends, technological advancements or shifts in customer behavior. Identifying opportunities is key to gaining a competitive edge.
In competitive analysis, recognizing opportunities helps businesses spot market gaps or emerging trends that competitors may be overlooking. By capitalizing on these opportunities, businesses can innovate, expand their product offerings or enter new markets and gain an advantage over competitors.
Threats
Threats are external challenges that could negatively affect a company’s performance. These could include new competitors entering the market, regulation changes, economic downturns or shifts in customer preferences. Identifying threats helps businesses prepare for potential risks.
When analyzing competitors, recognizing threats helps businesses understand external factors that could impact their position in the market. By monitoring competitors’ responses to these threats, companies can develop proactive strategies to mitigate risks and maintain their competitive edge.
Related Marketing Templates
The competitive analysis template is one of over 100 free project management templates for Excel and Word that cover all aspects of managing a project across multiple industries. We’ve selected a few that can help when involved in a marketing project.
Marketing Budget Template
Download this free marketing budget template for Excel to plan, track and manage marketing expenses. It helps businesses allocate resources efficiently across various marketing activities while ensuring they stay within budget.
Marketing Calendar Template
Use this free marketing budget template for Excel to help businesses organize, track and manage marketing expenses. It provides a structured framework for allocating funds across different marketing activities.
Marketing Plan Template
A marketing plan outlines a company’s marketing strategy, goals and key activities. Download this free marketing plan template for Word and use it as a roadmap to help businesses plan, execute and track their marketing efforts effectively.
How to Manage Marketing Projects With ProjectManager
Marketing projects can be managed with templates, but it’s not an efficient way to do so. Templates are static documents and marketing projects are dynamic. To avoid that handicap, use project management software, which is more effective in managing all phases of a marketing project. ProjectManager is award-winning project and portfolio management software that has powerful task and workflow management tools that allow teams to work on multiple project views, such as kanban boards, task lists and calendar views. There is also workflow automation to streamline processes and task approval settings to ensure quality deliverables.
Manage Resources to Keep Teams Productive
To keep a marketing project, or any project, on schedule requires managing resources. While human and nonhuman resources are scheduled on Gantt charts, after, project tasks must be assigned to teams. To ensure the right person gets the right job at the right time, project managers can set their availability, pay rate and skill sets when onboarding teams.
Then, check the resource allocation across all projects on the color-coded workload chart. This makes it easy to see who’s overallocated or underutilized. The team’s workload can be balanced to keep everyone working at capacity without threatening burnout. There’s also a team page that shows daily or weekly activity, which can be filtered by progress or priority. Tasks can even be updated without leaving that page.
Monitor Progress, Cost and More With Real-Time Dashboards
Keeping projects on track means monitoring and controlling them. For a high-level overview of progress, costs, resources and more, toggle to our real-time project and portfolio dashboards. They automatically collect live data and display it on easy-to-read graphs that give an instant status report to compare the actual effort against the planned effort.
For more details, use our reporting tools. Generate reports on status, variance, workload, timesheets and more in seconds. Filter reports to highlight key metrics or provide a general summary that can be shared with stakeholders to keep them updated. Even our secure timesheets help by monitoring labor costs to stay on budget.
Related Marketing Content
For those looking for more marketing copy that goes beyond discussing a competitive analysis template, check out the links below. There are recently published articles on creating a marketing budget, how to implement a marketing plan and more.
- How to Create a Marketing Budget: A Quick Guide
- What Is Marketing Management? An Essential Introduction
- Marketing Project Management Software
- How to Implement Your Marketing Plan
- What Is a Marketing Plan & How Do I Make One?
ProjectManager is online project and portfolio management software that connects teams whether they’re in the office or out in the field. They can share files, comment at the task level and stay updated with email and in-app notifications. Join teams at Avis, Nestle and Siemens who use our software to deliver successful projects. Get started with ProjectManager today for free.