How to Conduct Competitive Analysis as a Product Manager

Competitive analysis is one of those things every PM says they do but few do well. Most teams have a dusty spreadsheet from two quarters ago comparing features with checkmarks. That is not competitive analysis. That is a feature checklist.

Real competitive analysis helps you make better product decisions: where to invest, where to differentiate, and where to concede. Here is how to do it properly.

Quick Answer

Competitive analysis for PMs is the ongoing practice of understanding your competitors' products, strategies, and positioning well enough to make informed decisions about your own product direction. It is not about copying competitors. It is about understanding the context you are building in.

Key Steps:

1. Identify and categorize competitors (direct, indirect, substitutes)
2. Build a living competitive matrix focused on capabilities that matter to buyers
3. Run systematic win/loss interviews with your sales team and customers

Time Required: 2-3 days for the initial analysis; 2-4 hours monthly to maintain

Best For: Product managers responsible for roadmap strategy and positioning

Identifying Your Competitors

Most PMs only track direct competitors. Companies that sell similar products to similar buyers at similar price points. That is necessary but insufficient. You need to track three categories.

Direct Competitors

These sell a similar product to the same buyer. If you are building a project management tool, that is Asana, Monday.com, ClickUp, and Linear. You probably already know who these are.

How to find them: Search your primary keyword on G2 or Capterra. Look at the "Alternatives" section of your own G2 page. Ask your sales team who comes up in deals.

Indirect Competitors

These solve the same problem differently. For a project management tool, that might be Notion (flexible workspace), Jira (engineering-specific), or even a well-organized Slack workflow. Indirect competitors are dangerous because they are easy to dismiss.

When Figma emerged, Adobe did not consider a browser-based design tool a real competitor. By the time they did, Figma had captured the collaborative design market. The indirect competitor became the category leader.

How to find them: Ask customers what they used before your product and what they would switch to if your product disappeared. The answers will surprise you.

Substitutes

These are non-software alternatives to the problem you solve. For a project management tool, that is spreadsheets, whiteboards, and "we just talk about it in our weekly meeting." Substitutes are your biggest competitor in terms of market share. They just don't show up on G2.

How to find them: During user research, ask "How did you handle this before you had a tool for it?" Listen carefully to the non-tool answers.

The Competitor Shortlist

You cannot deeply track more than 5-7 competitors. Prioritize based on:

1. How often they come up in deals (ask sales for win/loss data)
2. How frequently customers mention them (search your support tickets and NPS feedback)
3. Their growth trajectory (hiring pace, funding, traffic trends)

Create a Tier 1 list (3-4 competitors you deeply track) and a Tier 2 list (3-5 you scan monthly).

Data Collection Methods

Public Intelligence

Start with what is freely available:

• Product: Sign up for free trials. Use the product regularly. Screenshot the onboarding, pricing page, and key workflows. Follow their changelog.
• Marketing: Read their blog, case studies, and landing pages. Note their positioning, target audience, and claimed differentiators.
• Pricing: Document their pricing tiers, packaging, and any available discounts. Pricing changes signal strategic shifts.
• Hiring: Their job postings reveal technical bets (e.g., hiring ML engineers means an AI play) and expansion plans (e.g., opening a London office means European expansion).
• Reviews: Read their G2, Capterra, and TrustRadius reviews. Sort by most recent and lowest rating. Customer complaints are windows into their product's weaknesses.

Sales Intelligence

Your sales team is the most underused competitive intelligence source.

• Win/loss data: Every competitive deal should be tagged in your CRM with the competitor and outcome. If you win 80% against Competitor A but only 30% against Competitor B, that tells you exactly where to focus.
• Call recordings: If you use Gong, Chorus, or similar tools, search for competitor mentions. Listen to how prospects compare you.
• Prospect questions: The questions prospects ask about competitors reveal what they value. "Does your product integrate with Salesforce like Competitor X?" tells you integration is a buying criterion.

Customer Intelligence

• Churned customer interviews: When customers leave for a competitor, that is the most valuable data point you will get. Run a 15-minute exit interview focused on what the competitor offered that you did not.
• NPS verbatims: Search your NPS comments for competitor mentions. "I love your product but wish it had X like [Competitor]" is a prioritization signal.
• Advisory board feedback: If you have a customer advisory board, ask them who else they evaluated and what almost made them choose differently.

Building Your Competitive Feature Matrix

The feature matrix is the core artifact of competitive analysis. But most feature matrices are useless because they track the wrong things.

What Not to Do

Do not create a 100-row spreadsheet comparing every feature. This is overwhelming, quickly outdated, and does not help with decisions. A row that says "Has a calendar view: Yes/Yes/Yes/No" tells you nothing about whether that calendar view is any good or whether customers care about it.

What to Do Instead

Build a matrix focused on capabilities buyers evaluate during purchasing decisions. These are typically 15-25 items grouped into 4-6 categories.

For a project management tool, the categories might be:

Rating System

Avoid binary "has it / does not have it." Use a 4-point scale:

• Leading: Best-in-class implementation; a buying reason
• Competitive: Meets buyer expectations; not a differentiator
• Behind: Feature exists but has notable gaps
• Missing: Not available

This forces nuance. Jira "has" project views, but their board view is designed for sprints, not cross-functional projects. That is "Leading" for engineering teams and "Behind" for marketing teams.

Maintaining the Matrix

Assign a primary owner (usually the PM or a product marketing manager) and review it quarterly. Between reviews, update it when:

• A competitor ships a significant new feature
• You ship something that changes your competitive position
• Win/loss data reveals a new buying criterion

Positioning Analysis

Feature comparison tells you what competitors do. Positioning analysis tells you what they want to be known for. And where that creates an opening for you.

Analyzing Competitor Positioning

For each Tier 1 competitor, document:

1. Their headline: The first thing on their homepage. This is their bet on what resonates with buyers.
2. Their target persona: Who are they speaking to? Enterprise IT? Startup founders? Individual contributors?
3. Their claimed differentiator: What do they say makes them different?
4. Their pricing anchor: Are they positioning as premium, mid-market, or budget?

Example: In the design tool space in 2020:

• Figma: "Where teams design together". Positioning on collaboration
• Sketch: "The best products start with Sketch". Positioning on design quality
• Adobe XD: "Design, prototype, and share". Positioning on the Adobe ecosystem

Figma won because "collaboration" turned out to be the capability that mattered most to design teams transitioning to remote work. Their positioning was not just marketing. It was a product bet that paid off.

Finding Your Positioning Gap

Plot your competitors on a 2x2 matrix using the two dimensions that matter most to your buyers. Common axes:

• Simple vs. Powerful
• Individual vs. Team
• Horizontal vs. Vertical
• Self-serve vs. Enterprise

Look for the empty quadrant or the underserved position. That is your opportunity.

Win/Loss Interviews

Win/loss interviews are the highest-signal competitive intelligence practice. Nothing else gives you the same clarity on why buyers choose you or a competitor.

How to Run Them

When: Within 2 weeks of a deal closing (won or lost). Memory fades fast.

Who interviews: Ideally, someone other than the salesperson who ran the deal. The buyer will be more candid with a PM or product marketing manager.

Duration: 20-30 minutes.

Questions:

1. What triggered the search for a product like ours?
2. Who else did you evaluate? (Do not suggest names. Let them volunteer.)
3. What were the top 3 criteria in your decision?
4. How did we compare to [competitor] on each of those criteria?
5. Was there a specific moment or demo where you felt confident in your choice?
6. What almost made you choose differently?
7. Was price a factor? How did our pricing compare?

Sample Sizes

You need 10-15 interviews to see reliable patterns. Run them continuously. Aim for 3-5 per month if your deal volume supports it.

Turning Interviews into Action

After every 10 interviews, synthesize the findings into a one-page competitive brief:

• Top 3 reasons we win: The capabilities or attributes that consistently tip decisions in our favor.
• Top 3 reasons we lose: The gaps or weaknesses that cost us deals.
• Emerging buying criteria: New evaluation criteria that were not on the buyer's radar 6 months ago.

Share this brief with your entire product team, not just leadership. Engineers who understand why customers choose competitors build better products.

Staying Current Without Drowning

Competitive analysis is useless if it goes stale. But it is also a time sink that can distract you from building your own product.

Automated Monitoring

Set up these alerts on day one:

• Google Alerts: Competitor name, competitor + "launch," competitor + "pricing"
• G2/Capterra alerts: New reviews for top competitors
• LinkedIn: Follow competitor company pages and key product leaders
• Changelog tracking: Bookmark competitor changelogs and check them weekly
• Job boards: Set alerts for competitor PM and engineering roles

Monthly Scan (2 hours)

Once a month, spend 2 hours on a structured scan:

1. Review competitor changelogs and blog posts from the past month
2. Skim new G2 reviews for each Tier 1 competitor
3. Check if any competitors changed their pricing or packaging
4. Note any new hires, departures, or organizational changes
5. Update your competitive matrix if anything changed

Quarterly Deep Dive (1-2 days)

Every quarter, do a thorough review:

1. Use each Tier 1 competitor's product for 30-60 minutes. Note what has changed.
2. Refresh your positioning analysis. Has their messaging shifted?
3. Aggregate win/loss data from the past quarter. Any new patterns?
4. Update your competitive matrix and share it with stakeholders.
5. Identify 1-2 competitive insights that should influence your roadmap.

Common Competitive Analysis Mistakes

Mistake 1: Copying Competitors

The purpose of competitive analysis is to inform your product strategy, not to copy someone else's. If you see a competitor launch a feature and immediately add it to your roadmap, you are playing their game. Ask "Why did they build this?" and "Does this matter to our users?" before reacting.

Mistake 2: Ignoring Substitutes

The spreadsheet is your biggest competitor. The meeting where people talk through issues without a tool is your biggest competitor. Track them.

Mistake 3: Overweighting Features, Underweighting Experience

Two products can have identical feature lists and completely different user experiences. A feature matrix that says "both have automation" misses the fact that one requires a CS degree to configure and the other takes 30 seconds. Always evaluate the quality of implementation, not just presence.

Mistake 4: Keeping Insights in Your Head

Competitive intelligence is only valuable if the people making decisions have access to it. Document your findings, share them regularly, and make them searchable. A competitive Slack channel where anyone can post sightings is better than a perfect document no one reads.

Mistake 5: Analysis Paralysis

Some PMs spend so much time analyzing competitors that they never ship anything. Competitive analysis should take 5-10% of your time, not 50%. If you are spending more than a day per month on it (outside of quarterly deep dives), you are overdoing it.

Turning Analysis into Product Decisions

Competitive analysis is an input to strategy, not a strategy itself.

Three Strategic Responses

When competitive analysis reveals something meaningful, you have three options:

1. Differentiate: Double down on what you do better than competitors. If you win on ease of use, invest more in UX rather than chasing enterprise features.
2. Match: Close critical gaps that are costing you deals. If you consistently lose because you lack SSO, that is a table-stakes investment.
3. Concede: Accept that a competitor owns a segment or capability and do not compete there. This is the hardest but often the smartest decision.

HubSpot made this calculation deliberately. They conceded the enterprise marketing automation market to Salesforce and focused on mid-market companies. They did not try to build Salesforce features. They built a better product for a different customer.

The Competitive Roadmap Input

Your competitive analysis should feed into roadmap prioritization as one signal among many. Use a framework like RICE or weighted scoring to evaluate competitive investments alongside customer feedback, strategic bets, and technical debt. The Competitive Analysis Template provides a structured format for documenting your findings in a way that feeds directly into these prioritization discussions.

A useful rule of thumb: no more than 20% of your roadmap should be driven by competitive response. If more than that is reactive, you have lost strategic control.

Key Takeaways

1. Track three types of competitors. Direct, indirect, and substitutes. The threats you do not see are the most dangerous.
2. Build a capability matrix, not a feature checklist. Rate quality of implementation, not just presence.
3. Win/loss interviews are your highest-signal source. Nothing else tells you why buyers actually choose.
4. Stay current efficiently. Automated alerts and a monthly 2-hour scan prevent your analysis from going stale.
5. Do not copy competitors. Use competitive intelligence to inform your own strategy, not to play someone else's game.
6. Limit reactive roadmap work to 20%. Competitive response is an input to prioritization, not a strategy.