How to do competitive intelligence research

Why do some companies consistently outmaneuver their competition?

The secret lies in decoding their competitors’ every move, from marketing tactics to customer retention strategies.

Competitive intelligence research empowers businesses to systematically track, analyze, and interpret competitor behavior to gain a strategic edge.

In this guide, you’ll learn how to conduct competitive intelligence research. You’ll also learn how to use competitive intelligence to anticipate shifts, leverage opportunities, and better position yourself, whether you’re battling for market share or launching a new product.

Competitive intelligence, or CI research, describes any purposeful research activity in which you gather, analyze, and apply business information about your competitors. It is a subset of market intelligence research used specifically to enhance your core competencies and inform smarter business decisions, thereby providing a strategic advantage.

Businesses do not operate in a vacuum, and so the success of your market strategies and how your customers perceive you is informed not only by what you do, but also by what your competitors do.

Let's break down how to conduct competitive intelligence research.

Before sending out a survey or gathering a focus group, you should pinpoint your competitors. Your competitors will lead your research alongside your goals.

Of course, if you are a new business, you may want to conduct intelligence research to identify your competitors.

First, clearly defining your market, target audience, and the problems your product or service solves.

This foundation helps distinguish between direct competitors and indirect competitors, who fulfill the same customer need through different means.

You should also watch for emerging competitors, such as startups or disruptive technologies, that may not yet have significant market share but could pose a future threat.

Research methods, such as customer surveys, keyword searches, and monitoring online reviews or forums, can reveal which companies are being compared or considered alongside yours.

Next, define your goals. Alongside your competitor list, you will have a clear idea of what feedback to gather from customers.

The key to competitive intelligence is gathering enough information to help you understand their current strategies and predict their future moves. Therefore, competitive intelligence research goals you should consider include:

While setting goals like this will be vital in guiding you through the research process, it's also important to be alert to any unexpected information. Good competitive intelligence research often throws up new and unanticipated insights that will be vital for you when developing future research goals. 

Market research surveys are an excellent way to gather competitive intelligence data. Here are some tips on how to use SurveyMonkey tools to conduct your competitive intelligence research.

To get the most comprehensive understanding of industry trends, we recommend supplementing survey-based research with other market research tools.

For example, techniques you might use include analyzing online review sites to see what customers are saying about your competitors and you, reading your competitors’ annual reports (where available), and staying up to date with publicly available industry reports. You should also gather data on your competitors directly from your customers.

Competitive intelligence research is not a one-and-done activity. Your competitive research benchmarks are just that, a benchmark. Markets are constantly changing, as are consumer demands and needs; therefore, your competitors, like you, are constantly developing and redeveloping their business strategies.

Existing competitors might, for instance, bring a new product or service to the marketplace, diversify or divest, or enter a new market altogether. And, there’s always the threat of new competitors entering the industry.

Competitive intelligence research should be conducted as a continuous cycle and core activity, positioning you to anticipate your competitors’ moves and respond to them effectively. 

Different types of competitive intelligence yield distinct insights, so aligning your research approach with your specific business objectives is essential to gathering the most relevant and actionable information.

Valuable competitive intelligence is impossible until you know who your competitors are. The good news is, you can use competitive intelligence research to compile that all-important list.

Perhaps the most straightforward approach is simply to ask your customers, using a survey. For example, if you sell appliances, you might use an open-ended question type to ask customers to list the names of stores they would visit if they wanted to buy a new microwave.

Or, using Google, you could compile a long list of potential competitors, and then ask your survey respondents to indicate whether they have ever heard of or used each competitor.

That way, you can narrow your focus to a shortlist of true, direct rivals, and analogous, or indirect rivals, who offer dissimilar products and services to the same set of customers. 

A successful business strategy is not just about identifying gaps in the marketplace and trying to fill those gaps.

It's also crucial to pay attention to what is driving your competitors’ successes. This can help you understand what your customers value—actionable insight that should inform your own strategies.

So, whether you find out that your competitors are delivering enviable customer service, sustainably made products, or incredible value for money, the relevance for your own decision-making and processes should be clear.

Well-designed competitive intelligence research should give you insight into your competitors' weaknesses and opportunities they’re failing to capitalize on. This can give you a significant advantage in both marketing existing products and services to current customers and in capturing new markets.

For instance, if your survey tells you that your competitors accept only traditional credit card payments, but that customers are increasingly looking to use alternative digital payments like Apple Pay and AliPay, you’ll have an excellent data point to help you design your own payment features. 

Competitive intelligence helps organizations identify threats early by monitoring competitors’ actions, market trends, and customer behavior.

It enables businesses to spot warning signs before they impact performance, such as new product launches, pricing shifts, or changes in customer preferences.

By turning external data into actionable insights, companies can respond proactively rather than reactively. This early detection allows for faster strategic adjustments, reducing risk, and preserving competitive advantage.

Competitive intelligence reduces risks associated with uncertainty by providing clear, data-driven insights into market dynamics, competitor strategies, and industry trends.

It helps businesses make informed decisions rather than relying on assumptions, minimizing the likelihood of strategic missteps.

By identifying potential threats and opportunities early, competitive intelligence enables proactive planning and faster adaptation to change. This reduces ambiguity and builds confidence in decision-making, even in rapidly evolving markets.

Create desirable, valued products and services that are key to customer success. But to really get ahead in the industry, you’ll need to stand out from the rest.

If you’re in a saturated market, it's especially important to position yourself in a way that leverages and effectively communicates your unique values.

Competitive intelligence research can help you evaluate comparable options on the market, gleaning crucial insight that can help you differentiate yourself.

Competitive intelligence research can be immensely powerful when done right. The major benefits are the following.

The industry knowledge you capture through competitive analysis helps you identify emerging trends and patterns, which you can use to make predictions about the way the industry is going. Carrying out in-depth competitive intelligence research, therefore, gives you critical foresight into the operational, strategic, and tactical changes you can make today, ahead of expected developments in your industry.

When you gather competitive intelligence data, you see yourself from the position of your market. This will help bring clarity to your strategies and help you to better understand what you’re doing well and what’s keeping you lagging behind industry rivals.

Once you’ve conducted competitive intelligence research, you’ll be armed with key insights into what your customers want (and don’t want), whether their needs are being met by your rivals, and how well your competitors are performing, relative to you. This is vital information in developing your competitive strategy, marketing materials, messaging, and more, increasing the chances that your strategies will resonate and drive success.

All business initiatives, whether cost-cutting exercises or new product developments, represent investment that comes with some degree of risk. Armed with the right data about your strengths and capabilities relative to your rivals, however, you’ll be better placed to direct investments into initiatives that have the best potential for success. When risk is reduced and indecision removed, you’ll soon see greater returns on your investments.

Don’t be confused about the differences between market research and competitive intelligence. They may sound the same, but they have different goals.

Market research involves gathering data on individual customer preferences. Competitive intelligence, on the other hand, is about learning about your rivals’ moves, strategies, and performance.

Market research can also be part of your competitive intelligence research activities. Done well, you’ll identify who your competitors are, which have the biggest market share, and where brand loyalties lie. This information is critical to gaining a deep understanding of the markets in which you operate.

Let’s take a look at some examples of where competitive intelligence can really make a difference.

Imagine your major competitor has just launched a brand new, multimillion-dollar advertising campaign. Of course, with an investment like this, the company is bound to be doing its own research on aspects like campaign resonance, awareness, and recall. But that doesn’t mean you can’t do your own intelligence gathering, too!

Asking customers about their reactions to the campaign using a message testing survey and whether it boosted brand awareness or purchase intentions will provide powerful data to support your marketing campaigns and broader competitive strategies.

Market share is an excellent barometer of your performance relative to that of your competitors. Moreover, suppose you regularly capture market share data. In that case, you’ll be able to track changes over time, and determine whether your strategies—and those of your competitors—are causing you to gain or lose market share.

Market share data can be captured through a survey method, where you ask a target audience to indicate how much they’ve spent with a range of competitors in the last six or twelve months. With the SurveyMonkey industry tracker, surveys like this can be automated to be sent out on your preferred cycle, and machine learning models can give you instantaneous insight into market shifts.

Another key use of competitive intelligence research is in assessing perceptions of price points to better optimize your pricing strategy. Imagine you’re launching your new premium luggage brand. Should you aim for a price that aligns with those of most premium brands, or should you go for the highest price in the market as a way of communicating prestige?

Price testing surveys can help solve this problem by asking customers about their perceptions of competitors’ prices, the impact on their willingness to buy, and their views of what higher prices convey.

Competitive intelligence supports businesses by providing critical insights into market trends, competitor strategies, customer preferences, and emerging threats. 

SurveyMonkey can help you conduct competitive intelligence research, making it easy to collect and analyze targeted feedback from customers.

SurveyMonkey empowers businesses with market research solutions to gather the insights they need to stay competitive, agile, and customer-focused with customizable, expert-written survey templates, real-time analytics, and benchmarking.