The most common mistake I see with competitive research is the fantasy of having a nice table comparing all your features to your competitors’. But that’s what it is — a fantasy. Not only it’s not realistic, it’s not as helpful as you’d think it is. Here are a few reasons from the top of my head:

• It changes quarterly, probably monthly

• It’s directionally inaccurate. There is more than one way to achieve something—not having feature X doesn’t mean customers can’t do Y

• Features usually aren’t why you win or lose deals.

Instead, here are a few places to get some great intel, and what I look for in each to gather insight on competitors’ focus and strategy:

1. Website

   Don’t rush to find the integrations page and call it a day. Here are some signals to look at:

   • Who they say their ICP is: logos they select to put out there, quotes, case studies, persona or industry specific pages

   • How they articulate value: ROI, stats, pricing levers (usage vs. users, functionality)

   • GTM focus: use cases they highlight, offered services (implementation or migration)

   • Positioning: competitive pages, messaging

2. Rating and review sites

   There you can see who the actual ICP is. Review sites allow you to filter and see information by tier, vertical, role, and geography. Take advantage of it and see where most reviews come from and if that changed over the years.

3. LinkedIn and other relevant media platforms

   While content could certainly live outside of LinkedIn (depends on your audience), chances are your competitors’ employees are using LinkedIn. From that aspect alone, company pages are a great source to learn about their focus and growth. A few examples:

   • What % of their company is marketing vs. sales vs. engineering?

   • Where are teams located?

   • Where is their customer support (and is it in-house)?

   • Are they hiring and for what functions?

   • What’s the average tenure?

   When it comes to content, there’s a lot you can learn about their strategy:

   • Company page vs. execs vs. employees vs. affiliates

   • Tone: entertaining or educational?

   • Owned or borrowed? Who are they collaborating with?

4. Online customer communities and help documentation

   These can include owned customer communities, or external where buyers spend time in. And of course we can’t not mention Reddit. Make sure you get on those channels where their users spend time in.

   This is where you learn about the real use cases. The sentiment and activity level will teach you how wide-spread and loved they really are.

5. News

   This is a bit of a grab-bag of different sources: employee review sites (Repvue, Glassdoor), industry publications, analyst firms, industry conferences and events, and news sites.

   Pick up on culture, sales attainment, collaborations, and even marketing spend.

   Curious to see a real example? Here’s one I used in the past 👉