How to Do a Competitive Landscape Analysis: Guide + Frameworks (2026)

IIf you’re reading this, chances are you’ve been tasked with creating a competitive landscape analysis for your organization.

First off, congrats – you’ve landed what I think is one of the most interesting projects in competitive intelligence.

But tell me if this sounds familiar.

In an effort to get educated, you’ve turned to Google, only to find yourself inundated with lengthy blog posts and oversimplified templates, none of which provide the clear, practical steps you need to succeed.

To cut through the noise, I sat down with Hunter Sones, Klue’s Competitive Enablement Manager, to discuss how he approaches competitive landscape analysis.

Hunter pressure-tested every part of this guide — from the core concepts to the practical frameworks — to ensure you’re getting advice that works in the real world.

But before we dive into his unique process, let’s get clear on the fundamentals.

What Is Competitive Landscape Analysis?

Competitive landscape analysis is the process of identifying who you compete with and comparing how each player wins—so you can spot threats, gaps, and differentiation.

• Who: Your direct, indirect, and emerging competitors
• Where they play: Segments, use cases, and target customers
• How they win: Positioning, strengths, weaknesses, and go-to-market strategy

Competitive Landscape Analysis vs. Competitive Intelligence

Competitive landscape analysis is a point-in-time snapshot of your market. Competitive intelligence is the ongoing practice of collecting, analyzing, and distributing competitor information.

Competitive Landscape Analysis Example

Say you’re a project management software company. Your landscape might include Asana, Monday.com, Notion, and ClickUp—and the goal is to quickly see who owns which lane.

• Customer: SMB vs. mid-market vs. enterprise
• Core use case: Task tracking vs. work management vs. docs + wiki
• Pricing: Freemium vs. per-seat vs. enterprise contracts
• Positioning: “All-in-one workspace” vs. “simple project execution”

Once you map these dimensions, patterns show up fast: saturated segments, whitespace opportunities, and the competitors you’re most likely to see in deals.

Is competitive analysis a one-time deliverable or an ongoing process?

Short answer: it’s both.

You’ll likely produce deliverables—spreadsheets, frameworks, and maybe a matrix or two. But those outputs are temporary snapshots that need refreshes as the market changes.

Why Competitive Landscape Analysis Matters

Competition is intensifying across every industry—especially in SaaS, a sector with over 16,000 startups, where new entrants can show up fast. A competitive landscape analysis helps you make decisions based on reality, not assumptions.

• Clarity: Know who you’re actually up against (and who’s coming next)
• Focus: Find the few battlefields that matter most to your team
• Direction: Turn market signals into strategy, positioning, and sales enablement

A comprehensive competitive landscape analysis will help your company with:

Threat Monitoring

• Identifying emerging competitors before they impact your business
• Understanding where you’re vulnerable in the market

Market Opportunities

• Spotting untapped market potential
• Discovering underserved customer needs

Strategic Differentiation

• Pinpointing and articulating your unique value propositions
• Positioning against competitors

Strategic Planning

• Supporting leadership’s decision-making
• Ensuring you have a well-defined niche and problem set

Sales Enablement

• Converting these competitive insights into actionable sales material
• Improving competitive positioning in deals

Now, it’s worth mentioning that the real value of a competitive landscape analysis goes well beyond these bullet points.

“The big purpose behind doing one of these is supporting our SLT’s decision-making. This isn’t just about understanding strengths and weaknesses – it’s about charting our course, making sure we’ve got a well-defined niche, and ensuring we’re not going to be overtaken by some adjacent threat we didn’t see coming.”

7 Steps to Create a Competitive Landscape Analysis

Okay, time to get tactical.

Our Competitive Enablement Manager Hunter Sones recently completed a competitive review for Klue’s leadership team, and he’s shared with us the exact steps he took to create a competitive landscape analysis.

Feel free to steal his playbook.

Step 1. Do an Internal Company Assessment

If you’re new to your company or role, start here. Before diving into competitor research, ensure you have a solid understanding of your own product, its capabilities, and the use cases you solve for.

Key areas to understand:

• Your ICP’s problems and pain points
• Your value proposition (i.e. how you solve these problems)
• Your product features and capabilities (in-depth)
• What channels your customers use to discover your solution
• The typical buying journey for your solution

As Hunter notes: “Before you even begin, you have to really understand your product, its features, and its use cases – this is a must.”

Step 2. Identify Your Direct Competitors

Next, figure out who you’re actually competing against in live deals. Start in your CRM and focus on early-stage (pre-sales) opportunities.

• CRM fields: Competitor mentions, deal notes, loss reasons
• Pipeline signals: Who shows up most in open opportunities
• Call data: Discovery calls where competitors are named directly

Hunter tackled this using Klue’s Competitive Revenue Analytics, which pulls competitor signals from CRM data to show who’s appearing in pipeline—and where revenue is leaking to competitors.

Key actions in this step:

• Review your CRM data to identify competitors appearing in early-stage deals
• Look at competitive revenue data to understand who you’re competing against most frequently
• Track who regularly shows up in pre-sales conversations and discovery calls with a tool like Gong
• If you’re a Klue user, head to the Competitive Revenue Analytics feature to get an instant view of who’s showing up in your sales cycles.

Want to see our Competitive Revenue Analytics dashboard in action? Watch this video 👇

Step 3. Identify Your Indirect Competitors (Review Your Win-Loss and Churn Interviews)

Once you’ve mapped your direct competitors, it’s time to find the indirect ones. These are alternative players that might not be showing up in your CRM but still compete for your business.

While there are many ways to approach this, Hunter recommends two key analysis methods:

1. Win-loss analysis: Analyzing the reasons you’ve won or lost deals
2. Churn analysis: Analyzing why customers leave and who they switch to

Note* both of these methods rely on direct feedback from buyers through interviews and surveys. Win-loss interviews happen after deals close (whether won or lost), while churn analysis interviews take place when customers decide to leave.

Key actions in this step:

• Review win-loss interviews to see what competitors get mentioned most often
• Analyze churn interviews to understand what alternatives your customers are leaving to explore
• Document every competitor that comes up
• If you’re a Klue Win-Loss user, dive into the platform’s Win-Loss and Churn Analysis tabs to see exactly which competitors keep appearing in buyer feedback.

“Churn analysis is unbelievably helpful when it comes understanding your adjacent competitors because people who leave your product know it intimately –– they understand your value prop and limitations, so their next choice tells you a lot,” says Hunter.

Step 4. Check Your Competitive Intel Channel and Do a Web Search for New and Emerging Competitors

With your direct and indirect competitors mapped out, it’s time to look for a third type of competitor – emerging threats. For Hunter, this meant leveraging Klue’s competitive intelligence Alerts alongside Klue’s internal competitive intelligence Slack channel to spot potential “ankle-biters.”

Key actions in this step:

• Get your team involved – set up a competitive intelligence Slack channel and keep an eye on recent insights
• Do a web search using keywords related to your business, or try experimenting with AI research tools like Perplexity
• Check your sales call recordings for any new names that keep popping up
• If you’re a Klue user, set up competitor Alerts and keep your eyes peeled on your competitive intel news feed

Step 5: Categorize Your Competitors By Use Case

By now, you should have uncovered quite a few competitors. The next step is to organize them in a way that makes sense. Hunter’s approach? Group them based on which parts of your product they compete with.

Let’s use Klue Compete as an example. While Klue is a competitive intelligence platform overall, we have several core product capabilities, including:

• Market monitoring
• Battlecard creation
• Sales enablement
• Intel distribution

Some competitors might only compete with us in one area (like market monitoring), while others might overlap with multiple capabilities. Creating these groups helps you understand exactly where each competitor poses a threat.

Key actions in this step:

• List out your main product capabilities in a spreadsheet
• Map each competitor to the specific capabilities they compete with
• Use your win-loss data to verify where customers see overlap

Step 6. Create a Micro-Analysis for Each Product Category

Now that you’ve mapped which competitors operate in which areas, it’s time to dig into the details. Take each product category and analyze how competitors perform in that specific space.

Let’s stick with our battlecard example from the previous step. For each competitor in this category, you would try to answer questions like:

• How are my competitors positioning their battlecard solution?
• What new features are they building in this area?
• What do customers say about their battlecard capabilities?

Key actions in this step:

• Analyze your competitors by product category
• Track what they’re building and investing in (analyze their recent press releases and SEC filings)
• Look at your win-loss interviews and take note of how buyers describe these competitors
• Read review sites and dive into LinkedIn/Reddit discussions
• See what industry analysts are saying about each player
• If you’re a Klue user, let AI do the work –– our Review Insights feature automatically analyzes thousands of G2 and Capterra reviews for key themes.

“Don’t just rely on CRM data.You need to look at qualitative feedback from win-loss interviews, review sites, and social media to really understand how each competitor plays in these spaces,” explains Hunter.

Step 7. Visualize Your Competitive Landscape Research (SWOT Analysis)

Finally, it’s time to visualize all this research and turn it into something actionable.

If this is your first time, Hunter recommends a straightforward method –– create a SWOT analysis, and focus heavily on opportunities and threats in each competitive category.

Key actions in this step:

• Pull key findings from your category analysis
• Build your SWOT framework
• Pay extra attention to opportunities and threats

Competitive Landscape Analysis Frameworks and Examples

Whether you’ve followed Hunter’s process or taken your own approach, you’ll need a framework to present your findings. Here are the most effective ones we’ve seen teams use.

SWOT Analysis

A SWOT analysis is a simple way to assess your competitive position by separating internal factors (strengths, weaknesses) from external factors (opportunities, threats).

Strengths: Internal advantages that give you an edge over competitors

Weaknesses: Internal limitations that put you at a disadvantage

Opportunities: External chances to improve your market position

Threats: External factors that could hurt your business

The key to an effective SWOT analysis is being specific and backing each point with data:

Strengths: Don’t just list features –– focus on your known advantages backed by win-loss data, customer feedback, and reviews.

• Example: “Only vendor offering [specific capability] according to G2 reviews”

Weaknesses: Be honest about gaps that actually impact deals

• Example: “We lose 40% of mid-market deals due to lack of [specific feature]”

Opportunities: Identify specific market gaps and emerging needs

• Example: “Win-loss interview data shows growing demand for [specific capability]”

Threats: Focus on concrete risks backed by market evidence

• Example: “Competitor X is launching a competing product in Q4”

BCG Growth-Share Matrix

Developed by Michael Porter of Harvard Business School, this framework zooms out beyond competitors to analyze five key forces that shape your entire competitive environment.

Below are the five forces, and questions you should be asking to identify each:

Competitive Rivalry:

• How intense is competition in your current market? Consider the number of competitors in your space and how mature the market is. In SaaS—a $408 billion market—this often means evaluating if you’re in a red ocean of similar products or in an immature market where your competitors are not necessarily vendors but alternative workflows and approaches.

Threat of New Entrants:

• How easily can new competitors enter your space? With no-code tools and cloud infrastructure, barriers to entry are lower than ever. Consider what’s stopping the next startup from copying your solution.

Bargaining Power of Suppliers:

• How much leverage do your vendors have? Think about your dependence on cloud providers, API services, or data sources. Could they squeeze your margins or impact your service by changing their terms?

Bargaining Power of Buyers:

• How much leverage do your customers have? Consider how easily they can switch products, whether they’re demanding custom features, and if a few large customers hold too much power over your decisions.

Threat of Substitutes:

• What alternatives could make your solution irrelevant? Look for cheaper alternatives customers might stitch together, emerging AI tools that could replace parts of your solution, or simpler ways to solve the problem.

Feature Comparison Tables

These competitive analysis charts provide detailed comparisons of specific features and caThese competitive analysis charts provide detailed comparisons of specific features and capabilities across competitors. Here are the basic steps you need to take to build one:

• List features/capabilities down the left
• Place competitors across the top
• Use consistent rating systems
• Include notes for nuanced differences
• Update regularly as competitors evolve

Pro tip: Feature comparison tables double as top-notch sales battlecards for your reps.

How to Create a Visually Appealing Competitive Matrix

Visualizing your competitive landscape research is crucial for making your insights actionable. TheVisualizing your competitive landscape research is crucial for making your insights actionable. The goal here is NOT to create elaborate charts and matrices — it’s to help your team quickly understand what’s happening in your market so they can make smart moves.

With this in mind, here are the essential elements every competitive visualization needs:

• Clear headlines that get straight to the point
• Brief annotations explaining standout findings
• Updated dates showing data freshness
• Consistent visual style across all charts

And remember: keep the design simple. Stick to 3-4 colors max, use consistent symbols, and label things directly instead of using complex legends.

Best Tools for Competitive Landscape Analysis

Frameworks give you structure. Tools give you scale—because manually tracking every competitor doesn’t hold up for long.

How to Choose the Right Competitive Intelligence Tool

• Data sources: Can it pull from internal + external sources you actually trust?
• Integrations: Does it plug into Salesforce, Slack, Gong, and your workflow?
• Ease of use: Will sales and product teams use it without training?
• Reporting & distribution: Can you ship intel as battlecards, alerts, and exec-ready summaries?

Using AI for Competitive Landscape Analysis

AI isn’t a nice-to-have anymore—it’s how modern teams keep up. With 88% of organizations using AI in at least one function, LLM-powered analysis and automated monitoring are table stakes.

• Summarization: Turn messy inputs (calls, interviews, reviews) into clear themes
• Monitoring: Catch product launches, messaging shifts, and pricing changes faster
• Pattern detection: Spot what’s trending across deals and buyer feedback

For example, Klue’s Insights analyzes competitor reviews, win-loss interviews, and call recordings to surface patterns like sentiment shifts and recurring objections. It’s a strong complement to manual research—and it speeds up refresh cycles dramatically.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the 4 P’s of competitor analysis?

The 4 P’s are Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. Use them to quickly compare how competitors package, price, sell, and market their offering.

What is an example of a competitive landscape?

A CRM competitive landscape might map Salesforce, HubSpot, and Pipedrive by pricing tier, target customer size, and key differentiators. The output makes it obvious who dominates each segment—and where gaps exist.

How often should you update a competitive landscape analysis?

Quarterly is a solid default. In fast-moving SaaS categories, monthly updates are often the difference between “informed” and “late.”

What’s the difference between competitive analysis and competitive intelligence?

Competitive landscape analysis is a snapshot. Competitive intelligence is the ongoing system that keeps that snapshot accurate over time.

Good Luck!

Your competitors aren’t sitting still. Right now, they’re launching products, adjusting pricing, and potentially eating into your market share. That’s why competitive landscape analysis is a crucial part of any modern business strategy.

When done right, it’ll help you identify threats and opportunities so you can chart your future path and better differentiate your product or service from the competition. But remember – analyzing your competitors isn’t a one-off exercise. Markets evolve, competitors innovate, and customer needs shift.

To gain a true competitive advantage you need to make creating competitive landscape analyses an ongoing part of your strategic process.

Best of luck!