Like any competitive endeavor, operating a business requires a deep understanding of your competition and how you stack up against them. Most business owners and marketers are familiar with the process of conducting\u00a0market research<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0competitive analysis<\/a>. These deep diving processes can generate a tremendous amount of data about the competitive landscape.<\/p>\n But once you have this data on hand, what do you do with it? Ultimately, you\u2019ll need to derive insights, but this work can be difficult with a mess of raw data before you. So, your first step is to organize the data and make it understandable to yourself or to a wider audience.<\/p>\n In this article, we\u2019ll look at the competitive matrix as a tool for organizing, understanding, and generating insights from data about your competitors. We\u2019ll define what a competitive matrix is, offer a few examples of different competitive matrices, and show you how to gather your own data to better understand your target market.<\/p>\n The term \u201ccompetitive matrix\u201d generally refers to tools that help organize and visualize data about your market competitors. We use the term \u201cgenerally\u201d because there are many types of competitive matrices that depict a variety of data in various ways.<\/p>\n Some examples of data you can bring to a competitive matrix include:<\/p>\n Your competitive matrix will change depending on what data you\u2019re considering, even while looking at the same competitors. For example, a business that takes the lead for web traffic on one matrix may take a vastly different position on a matrix measuring foot traffic for a physical location. And it may take a completely different position when considering social media traffic.<\/p>\n Competitive matrices also come in a variety of shapes and sizes depending on how you want to organize and analyze the data. You might use a\u00a0SWOT analysis<\/a>\u00a0in one case, and a\u00a0Porter’s 5 Forces<\/a>\u00a0model in another. For some datasets, a spreadsheet will make the most sense. For another, you might use a competitive positioning matrix or\u00a0competitor analysis<\/a>\u00a0axis, such as the example from G2 in the section titled \u201cThe Competitive Analysis Matrix\u201d in the next section.<\/p>\n Generally, a competitive matrix can help you:<\/p>\n Regardless of the insights you seek, a clear understanding of your position is the first step to staying competitive. If you don\u2019t know where you stand, what your strengths and weaknesses are, where your threats lie, and how to find opportunity, you\u2019ll never get where you want to go.<\/p>\n AI Powered Competitive Tracking<\/p>\n with Kompyte by Semrush<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Competitor matrices come in a variety of shapes and sizes. The form a matrix takes typically depends on the information you\u2019re attempting to derive from the data.<\/p>\n Below, we offer two kinds of competitive matrices that provide different ways to organize your data once you\u2019ve gathered your competitive intelligence.<\/p>\n The competitive analysis matrix, also called a \u201ccompetition matrix,\u201d are examples of matrices that depict competitors from within a market along an X\/Y axis. They provide a clear picture of where businesses exist in the competitive landscape with regard to one another.<\/p>\n Gartner\u2019s \u201cMagic Quadrant\u201d matrix<\/a>\u00a0places businesses on their matrix based on metrics they\u2019ve developed called \u201cAbility to execute\u201d and \u201cCompleteness of vision.\u201d Companies are placed depending on how they score in these two categories.<\/p>\n For example, Microsoft scores high in their ability to execute and the completeness of their vision, which places them in the \u201cMarket Leader\u201d quadrant. Salesforce, on the other hand, has a high completeness of vision score, but is not able to fully execute, placing them in the \u201cvisionary\u201d category.<\/p>\n G2 Crowd uses customer feedback<\/a>\u00a0to place businesses on their matrix. Their metrics are \u201cMarket Presence\u201d on the X axis and \u201cSatisfaction\u201d on the Y axis. These metrics allow them to define business as Contenders, Leaders, Niche, or High Performers.<\/p>\n Semrush offers a similar competitive analysis matrix in their\u00a0Market Explorer tool<\/a>, but it includes the added benefit of allowing you to see the way businesses\u2019 positions change over time.<\/p>\n For example, businesses with high traffic growth but lower traffic are considered \u201cgame changers.\u201d If that same company begins getting an influx of regular traffic but sees less growth, they will become an \u201cestablished player.\u201d<\/p>\n As you can see with all of these competitive matrices, the criteria by which businesses are placed on the graph change, but with each one, you gain an understanding of the lay of the business landscape.<\/p>\n Compare Competitors with Ease<\/p>\n Kompyte by Semrush<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Sometimes, it makes the most sense to view competitor data side by side, as opposed to visually across a matrix. A simple comparison chart allows you to arrange data to easily compare features and benefits while developing competitor profiles.<\/p>\n For example, this comparison chart clearly depicts the distinctions between Semrush and Similarweb software in terms of what features they offer.<\/p>\n You can add any number of competitors to the chart to create a wider pool of software for comparison. As you can see, comparison charts make it easy to see differences and similarities between two or more competitors.<\/p>\n You can also use a comparison chart to organize information beyond product features. For example, you might want to compare statistics for competitors side by side. In this chart, you could enter organic, paid, and local search statistics for five competitors and compare them side-by-side.<\/p>\n Get your free competitor analysis template as a\u00a0PDF<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0.xlsx<\/a><\/p>\n For creative thinking, it can help to visualize data in various ways to find less obvious connections. For this kind of creative organization and brainstorming, there are a variety of tools online that offer matrix templates you can plug data into.<\/p>\n Creately<\/a>\u00a0allows you to create charts, flows, diagrams, and mind maps like the one below. This tool allows you to move information around easily, draw lines and arrows to connect ideas, and branch off from data in interesting directions.<\/p>\n Miro<\/a>\u00a0also offers a suite of tools that allow for creative organization of data. For example, we created this SWOT analysis example using their software.<\/p>\n If you find yourself stuck trying to uncover insights from the data, try organizing it in different ways to spark inspiration.<\/p>\n Now that we\u2019ve covered a few different kinds of competitive grids, let\u2019s take a look at how to gather some data. We\u2019ll use\u00a0Semrush\u2019s .Trends tools<\/a>\u00a0to uncover data we might plug into a competitive matrix to reveal insights about our markets.<\/p>\n For this overview, we\u2019ll look at:<\/p>\n As we examine different tools, keep an eye out for the \u201cexport\u201d button in the upper right hand corner of some widgets. This butting allows you to export raw data that you can use to plug into your own competitive matrix if you\u2019re looking to depict data differently than it\u2019s presented in the Semrush tools.<\/p>\n Before you can begin gathering competitive data, you need to identify your competitors.\u00a0Semrush\u2019s Market Explorer<\/a>\u00a0offers an easy way to automatically identify competitors surrounding a chosen domain.<\/p>\n If you already have a good idea of who your competitors are, select the \u201cCreate List\u201d tab. But if you\u2019re unsure, you can select the \u201cFind Competitors\u201d tab. When you enter a domain in the search bar, the tool will automatically uncover the websites you compete with in terms of organic search.<\/p>\n As an example, we entered Discover.com to look at the financial services market. The tool then gathers high level information based on Discover.com\u2019s top competitors.<\/p>\n The overview provides high-level information about the target domain\u2019s market share, the market\u2019s total traffic, the level of competition, and the size of the market.<\/p>\n The market share data is particularly useful for comparisons on a competitive matrix. Placing this number alongside market share data for competitors could reveal a lot about a business\u2019 position among competitors.<\/p>\n The overview report also includes Semrush\u2019s Growth Quadrant. As mentioned above, this classic competitive matrix places competitors within one of four categories based on their website traffic and their traffic growth percentage.<\/p>\n From this starting place, we can begin to dig deeper into our market and gather additional information about top market competitors.<\/p>\n Semrush\u2019s Traffic Analytics tool<\/a>\u00a0includes a variety of useful metrics for competitor websites based on petabytes of\u00a0clickstream data<\/a>. You can enter up to 5 domains and compare traffic statistics for visits, unique visitors, pages viewed per visit, visit duration, and bounce rate. You can also view historical data, view by location, or device type.<\/p>\n You can also view trends across time using the Trends by Competitors chart. This chart allows you to filter by category such as visits, unique visitors, or bounce rate. It also allows you to select various time frames. The image below shows monthly visits over the past year among 5 competitors.<\/p>\n With Traffic Analytics you can also view a breakdown of traffic sources bringing people to your selected domains. Again, you can adjust the graph to show different time periods, locations, and device types. This graph shows a breakdown of traffic sources from all device types during October 2021.<\/p>\n Between these three reports, you\u2019ll uncover a wide variety of website traffic data that could be visualized and analyzed using your competitive matrix.<\/p>\n For collecting social media strategy data about competitors, Semrush\u2019s Market Explorer tool offers a few important kinds of data.<\/p>\n Beginning broadly, you could look at the\u00a0Social Media Distribution Strategy<\/a>\u00a0graph in the Market Explorer tool\u2019s Benchmarking report. The graph shows the breakdown of social media channels competitors used during the selected month compared to the total market.<\/p>\n This graph can help you understand your competitors’ social strategy, and benchmark your own strategy against it.<\/p>\n For more social media data, we can jump to the\u00a0Demographics report<\/a>. Here, you can use the Social Media Preferences graph to understand what networks customers in your market use most often.<\/p>\n Comparing this graph across time periods or comparing this data with competitor social strategy data can reveal important information that can inform your own strategy.<\/p>\n Automated Competitive Tracking<\/p>\n with Kompyte by Semrush<\/p>\n<\/div>\nWorking Toward a Competitive Matrix Definition<\/h2>\n
\n
\n
Visual Competitor Matrix Examples<\/h2>\n
The Competitive Analysis Matrix<\/h3>\n
The Competitor Comparison Chart<\/h3>\n
Other Possible Matrix Styles<\/h3>\n
Gather Data for Your Competitive Grid Using Semrush Tools<\/h2>\n
\n
Identifying your competitors<\/h3>\n
Website Traffic Data<\/h3>\n
Social Media Strategy Data<\/h3>\n