Product Manager’s Power Move: Competitor Analysis

Every product has competition. Even if yours is the first of its kind, users are still comparing it to something — another tool, a manual process, or simply doing nothing at all.

That’s why competitive analysis isn’t optional. It’s how product managers understand the landscape, spot opportunities, and make better calls about what to build next.

This guide breaks down what competitive analysis actually means in a product context, how to do it well, and — most importantly — how to apply what you find.

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What Is Competitor Analysis and Why Does It Matter?

Product competitive analysis is the process of studying competing products to understand their strengths, weaknesses, positioning, and product experience. In other words, it’s how product teams figure out what else is out there, what’s working for others, and where the gaps are.

Done right, product competitor analysis helps you build better products — not by copying, but by learning. It’s not just about tracking features. It’s about understanding your customer’s alternatives and how they perceive value.

Think like your user

Imagine you’re building a new team messaging app. One of your early users says, “We were considering switching from Slack, but we also looked at Microsoft Teams. We went with you because your UI felt faster and less cluttered.”

That sentence alone is packed with competitive insight.

It tells you:

• Who your real competitors are (even if your marketing team thinks otherwise)

• What your users value most (speed and simplicity)

• What pain points they’re trying to avoid (cluttered interfaces)

This is competitor analysis in practice. 

You’re doing more than just comparing product specs. You’re learning what matters to your users when they choose between your product and the next best option.

The Cost of Ignoring Competitive Intelligence

Webinar: Competitive Intelligence by Google Global Product Lead, Maayan Rossmann 

Collecting competitive intelligence is standard practice for many organizations. Yet, a surprising number fail to act on the insights they gather. According to the HBR, only half of companies actually utilize the competitive intelligence they collect.

This disconnect often stems from within product leadership. 

While data collection is emphasized, integrating these insights into strategic decision-making is frequently overlooked. Product Managers and Product Leads may prioritize internal development goals or rely heavily on existing strategies, leading to a neglect of valuable market intelligence.​

The consequences of disregarding competitive analysis are significant:

• Missed Opportunities: Failing to recognize market gaps that competitors are exploiting can result in lost revenue and diminished market share.​

• Ineffective Product Positioning: Without understanding competitors' strategies, products may lack differentiation, making it challenging to articulate a compelling value proposition.​

• Resource Misallocation: Investing in features or services that don't address current market demands can lead to wasted resources and effort.​

Too often, product leaders are so focused on internal product goals, delivery timelines, or execution frameworks that they fail to connect the dots between what competitors are doing and what users actually expect. As a result, the team keeps building based on old assumptions, while the market quietly moves on.

Competitive analysis doesn’t just belong in kickoff decks or quarterly strategy docs. It should be a living part of product culture. When product leadership ignores it, the entire product team risks falling out of touch with the real-world context in which their product competes.

Why product management competitive analysis matters

Here’s what makes competitor product analysis a critical part of product strategy:

• It helps you identify real differentiators, not just nice-to-have features

• It keeps your product roadmap focused on user needs rather than internal assumptions

• It gives you insight into where your product fits in the market today

• It shows you what customers expect from the category you’re in

• It helps you spot threats early, before they become too big to ignore

When teams skip product management competitive analysis, they often build in a vacuum. That’s when features go unused, positioning falls flat, and customer growth stalls.

But with the right insights, your team can make sharper decisions—and build a product that stands out for the right reasons.

How to Conduct Competitive Analysis: A Step-by-Step Guide

Most product teams say they do competitive analysis. Fewer do it consistently. Even fewer turn that market research into insights that actually shape the product.

If you’re a product manager, this is part of your job. Knowing what your competitors are doing (and how users see them) helps you make smarter trade-offs, avoid blind spots, and build products that stand out in ways users care about.

Here’s how to do product competitive analysis the right way.

1. Define your goal and scope

Before you dive into product pages, feature grids, and G2 reviews, pause and ask: Why are we doing this right now?

Competitive analysis without a goal is like user research without a hypothesis. You might gather lots of information, but it won’t drive decisions.

Therefore, start by identifying the trigger. For example:

• Are you planning a major product launch?

• Is your product positioning starting to feel off?

• Are you seeing users churn for unclear reasons?

• Are you entering a new market or region?

Each of these goals changes what kind of product analysis you need and how deep to go. A full teardown makes sense if you’re rethinking your roadmap. But if you’re refining product messaging, you might only need to study positioning, product pricing, and tone of voice.

Next, define the scope. Try to answer:

• Which types of competitors matter most right now — direct, indirect, or both?

• Are we focused on one product area or the full product experience?

• How far back in time are we going (e.g., last 6 months of feature releases)?

• Who on the team will use this and for what decisions?

The tighter your focus, the more useful your insights will be. This step saves you from turning analysis into an endless research loop no one reads.

2. Identify your real competitors

A common mistake in product management competitive analysis is sticking to the obvious names. Sure, you know your biggest direct rival — but do you know what your users actually compare you to?

That’s where good competitor product analysis begins: understanding the user’s frame of reference, not just your own.

Let’s say you’re building a time-tracking tool for freelancers. Internally, you might list Harvest and Toggl as your competitors. But when you talk to users, you hear:

• “I was just using a spreadsheet before this.”

• “I used to set timers on my phone.”

• “I also tried Notion, but it felt too manual.”

That’s gold. You now have:

• Direct competitors (Harvest, Toggl)

• Indirect competitors (spreadsheets, Notion)

• Substitute behaviors (manual tracking, phone timers)

Each one gives you clues about what people value and what they’re trying to avoid.

To find these competitors:

• Dig into user interviews and support tickets — see what alternatives they mention

• Scan review sites like G2, Capterra, and Reddit — what products show up alongside yours?

• Ask your sales or customer success teams — what tools do prospects bring up most?

• Explore what your ICPs are searching for — keyword data often reveals less obvious players

Don’t worry about building an exhaustive list. 

Aim for 5–7 core competitors across categories that reflect what your users might realistically choose instead of you. The goal is to study what they’re choosing between, not just who you think you’re up against.

3. Choose a framework to structure your analysis

Once you’ve gathered your list of competitors, it’s time to bring some order to the chaos. Competitive analysis can get messy fast. You’re looking at different products, across different dimensions, with different user bases and monetization strategies.

That’s why using a clear framework matters. It gives your research structure and helps you focus on insights that actually support product decisions.

Which framework you choose depends on your goal (see Step 1). Here are a few common ones used in product management:

• Feature comparison matrix
  Great for identifying where competitors are ahead, behind, or the same in terms of capabilities. Especially useful when deciding what to prioritize next on your roadmap.

• SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats)
  Helps you zoom out and assess each competitor holistically, beyond just features. Useful when product positioning or market strategy is your focus.

• Positioning map
  Useful when you want to visualize where your product sits in the market — and whether there’s an open space you could claim. Often based on two user-relevant dimensions (e.g., price vs. ease of use).

• Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) comparisonFocuses on how each product solves a specific user need or job. Helps you avoid obsessing over feature parity and focus instead on the actual outcomes users care about.

If you want a quick, actionable way to get started, check out our Product Comparison Template. It’s built for product managers and helps you compare products across key dimensions like features, pricing, UX, integrations, and more — in a format your team can actually use.

Whatever structure you choose, keep it collaborative. Invite your team to poke holes in the analysis. Share early versions. The more eyes on it, the more useful (and less biased) your findings will be.

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4. Collect data from multiple sources

Now that you have a framework, it’s time to fill it with substance. This is where competitor analysis becomes more than guesswork — and where a lot of teams cut corners.

Don’t just rely on homepages and pricing pages. Great competitor product analysis pulls from a variety of sources so you can see the full picture: what competitors say, what users experience, and how the market responds.

Here’s where to look — and what to look for:

• Product websites and landing pages
  See how they talk about their product. What’s the main message? What use cases or personas do they target? How do they position themselves differently?

• Pricing and packaging
  Study their pricing model. Is it freemium, usage-based, seat-based? Where’s the paywall? What features are gated? This can reveal a lot about their revenue strategy and what they believe users value.

• Free trials or demos
  Get hands-on if you can. Go through onboarding. Pay attention to how quickly you reach value. Note any friction or moments of delight. This is what your users are comparing you to.

• Customer reviews (G2, Capterra, App Store, Reddit)
  This is where the real talk happens. Look for patterns in praise and complaints. What do people love? What do they wish was better? Bonus: pay attention to the language users use — it tells you how they interpret value.

• Social media and communities
  Product-led companies often engage with their users on Twitter, LinkedIn, Discord, or Slack groups. These channels can surface early feedback, roadmap discussions, or community sentiment.

• Job boards and hiring pages
  This one’s underrated. If a competitor is hiring for a bunch of roles in AI or enterprise sales, that tells you where they’re headed. It’s a good way to spot strategic shifts early.

• Support docs and knowledge bases
  This shows how transparent they are, how they handle complex features, and how much they invest in user enablement.

Be methodical, but don’t aim for perfection. You’re not writing an academic paper. You’re gathering just enough context to support clear decisions. 

Keep notes in your chosen framework, and highlight areas where you’d want follow-up from sales, support, or customers.

5. Analyze user perception and emotional drivers

Once you’ve gathered the facts, zoom out. Competitive analysis isn’t just about who has the most checkmarks on a feature grid — it’s about how users feel when they compare your product to others.

This is often the part that gets skipped. But emotional drivers matter more than we admit, especially in crowded markets where feature sets are similar.

Here’s what to look for:

• Language that users repeat
  When you read reviews or conduct interviews, what words keep popping up? Are they calling a competitor "clunky" or "refreshing"? These labels are shortcuts for deeper sentiment and can signal what people value (or avoid).

• Why users switch (or stay)
  Focus on switching behavior. Why did someone leave that competitor? Why did they stick with it despite the flaws? Ask your customer success team for examples — real quotes are better than assumptions.

• Tone and brand perception
  Is your competitor seen as modern and innovative, or bloated and outdated? Sometimes brand personality plays a bigger role than any feature. The way a product feels can tip the scale.

• What frustrates them
  Look for recurring pain points, not just bugs. Is the setup overwhelming? Is customer support slow? Is the pricing confusing? Frustration often signals opportunity.

• What delights them
  Don’t just focus on flaws. What are they loving about the competition? Speed? Clean design? Predictable product pricing? That’s the bar you have to meet — or beat.

By studying perception, you move from surface-level comparison to something far more valuable: understanding how your product is positioned in the minds of users.

Because in the end, it’s not just about building the best product. It’s about building the product your users believe is best.

6. Use AI to accelerate and enrich your analysis

“AI can disrupt you, but you can use AI to disrupt your competitors as well. Go into accounts. Normally what would take you six months to understand change management, you can use AI to automatically generate a lot of bits and pieces. We can automatically use AI to reconfigure competitors’ connections to send data to us.”

— Karandeep Anand, President & CPO at Brex, on The Product Podcast

AI isn’t just for building features — it’s also a powerful research assistant. And for product managers conducting competitive analysis, it can save hours of manual work while uncovering insights you might otherwise miss.

Whether you’re deep in competitor websites, reading reviews, or benchmarking positioning, AI tools can help you work faster and think more strategically.

Here’s how AI can support product management competitive analysis:

• Automating repetitive research
  You can use AI tools to summarize long articles, pull key messages from product pages, or generate snapshots of each competitor’s value proposition. Instead of manually parsing five G2 pages, you can get a clear overview in minutes — freeing you up to focus on interpretation, not copy-paste.

• Extracting trends from customer feedback
  AI is great at identifying patterns across large datasets. Feeding in user reviews or support transcripts from competitor tools can help you quickly surface pain points, praise, and feature mentions. That gives you a shortcut to the “voice of the customer” at scale.

• Generating first-pass comparisons
  Want to compare pricing models or onboarding flows? AI can help generate draft comparison tables, pull out key differences, and even suggest areas to explore further. It won’t replace your judgment — but it can cut the grunt work in half.

• Exploring AI resources for Product Managers
  There’s a growing number of AI resources tailored to product managers — from templates and tools to newsletters and communities. Many of these offer pre-built prompts or research workflows you can adapt for your own analysis process.

• Observing your competitors’ AI product strategyDon’t just use AI — watch how your competitors are using it, too. Are they launching AI-powered features? Are they leaning into it in their messaging? How are their users responding?

AI is changing the competitive landscape itself. Tracking how competitors are adopting (or avoiding) AI can tell you a lot about their priorities, technical capabilities, and target segments.

In short: AI won’t replace your competitive instincts — but it’s an amplifier. When used right, it can help you dig deeper, move faster, and find edges that are easy to overlook.

7. Summarize insights your team can actually use

You’ve collected the data. You’ve dug into the emotional drivers. Now comes the part most product teams rush — but it’s arguably the most important: making your findings useful.

The goal here isn’t to impress people with how much market research you did. It’s to make decisions easier, faster, and better.

Think about the people who’ll use this: product managers, product designers, marketers, sales leads. They don’t want a 40-slide deck with walls of text. They want insights that are sharp, visual, and easy to digest at a glance.

Here are a few ways to package your findings:

1. One-page competitor snapshots

Create a short summary for each competitor that includes:

• Target users

• Monetization strategy

• Top features and differentiators

• Strengths and weaknesses (from your perspective and users’)

• Product positioning or messaging highlights

2. A visual feature comparison

Use a matrix to compare must-have, nice-to-have, and differentiating features across products. This works especially well when shared with sales and marketing to sharpen product messaging.

3. A positioning or perception map

Plot key players on axes like “Ease of Use” vs. “Feature Depth” or “Price” vs. “Flexibility.” This helps you visualize where your product lives — and where opportunities might exist.

4. Executive summary of opportunities and threats

Boil it down. What did you learn that should impact your product roadmap, your UX priorities, or your go-to-market plan? Don’t just present — recommend.

If you’re using our Product Comparison Template, you already have a place to plug in many of these pieces. It’s built to keep your analysis lean, clear, and actionable.

And one more tip: Present your findings live. 

Share the summary in a session with the team, talk through the highlights, and give space for discussion. You’ll spark better ideas — and make sure the insights don’t get buried in Google Drive.

8. Translate findings into product decisions

This is where product competitor analysis really pays off — when it shapes what you build, how you talk about it, and where you focus your time.

Too many teams stop at the report. But insights mean nothing unless they lead to decisions. Your job as a PM is to turn those insights into action.

Start by connecting your findings to specific product questions:

• Are there feature gaps we need to close to stay competitive?

• Are there overbuilt areas where we’ve gone too far?

• Can we differentiate more clearly in onboarding, UX, or performance?

• Are we priced appropriately for the value we provide?

• Do we need to reposition in response to a new competitor or a shifting market?

Use what you’ve learned to shape:

• The feature roadmap — Prioritize features that solve real user pains your competitors miss.

• Design decisions — Improve the UX in areas where competitors frustrate users.

• Messaging — Double down on differentiators that your users actually care about.

• Go-to-market plays — Build campaigns that clearly communicate why you win.

And don’t treat this as a one-time effort. Product management competitive analysis should be a loop — not a one-off. Keep your research fresh. Revisit it quarterly. And tie it back to customer interviews, churn insights, and Agile retros.

Because the best product teams don’t just react to the competition — they learn from them, get sharper, and stay ahead.

Make Competitive Analysis Part of Your Product Process

Performing competitive analysis isn’t a task you check off once a year. It’s an ongoing habit — one that sharpens your team’s focus, strengthens your product decisions, and keeps your roadmap grounded in reality.

The best product teams learn from their competitors. They use competitor product analysis not to imitate, but to differentiate. They listen to how users talk about alternatives. They spot what’s missing in the market. And they act on those insights with confidence.

If you're leading a product team or managing a feature, make this part of your workflow. Block time for research. Revisit your frameworks quarterly. Build a culture where sharing intel is just as common as sharing sprint updates.

Because in a world where your users always have other options, understanding those options is power.

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