What a competitor analysis should tell you
A good competitor analysis answers a practical question: what is this company doing, and what should you do about it? To answer it, you need facts from a lot of places. The company's own website tells you what it sells and how it describes itself. Funding databases and LinkedIn tell you how big it is and who runs it. Job boards and news coverage show where it's investing next. Search rankings, AI answers, and community threads show how buyers actually find it and what they think of it.
A complete report usually covers:
- what the company sells, to whom, and at what price
- how its brand and website have changed over time
- its size, growth, funding, and leadership
- recent news and hiring, which show where it's heading
- who it competes with and how it ranks in search and AI answers
- what customers and the wider community say about it
- the specific openings that creates for your business
Collecting all of that by hand takes days of tab-switching, and the result goes stale quickly. It's also easy to end up with a pile of observations and no clear next step. That's work an AI agent does well, because it can query many sources at once, keep track of where every fact came from, and turn the evidence into a short list of moves.
Kite is an AI marketer in your Slack. It researches your business, builds a growth strategy, and ships the work that brings you new customers. Here's how it runs an in-depth competitor analysis.
How Kite runs an in-depth competitor analysis
You give Kite a company name or website and tell it why you want the analysis. Kite first confirms exactly which company it's researching. If it had to work out the website from a name, it tells you which company and domain it chose, and it asks you to confirm when the match looks doubtful.
Then Kite queries its built-in sources at the same time, so the slowest source sets the pace rather than the sum of all of them. It opens the company's live website in a browser and works through the report in a fixed order, from identity and positioning through to ranked opportunities.
Every fact in the report carries the link and date of the source it came from. Kite labels its own conclusions as inferences, so you can tell what a source said from what Kite concluded. When a source returns nothing, the report names that gap instead of filling it from general knowledge. Kite also saves the findings to that company's pages in your team's knowledge base, so later work starts from what it already learned.
Because Kite has already researched your own company, it reads every finding against your positioning, customers, and goals. That's what turns a profile of someone else into advice for you.
- What does the company sell, and how does it position itself?
- How has the company's website changed over time?
- How do I find a competitor's funding, headcount, and leadership team?
- Where is the company putting its money and people?
- Who does the company compete with, and how does it show up in search and AI answers?
- What do customers and the community say about the company?
- Where are the openings for you?
- Keep the analysis current
What does the company sell, and how does it position itself?
Kite starts with the company's own description of itself, then checks it against the evidence. It pulls the company's product catalog and site structure from its domain and reads the pricing page directly, since pricing is the detail catalog data most often misses. It then runs a focused research pass on what the company sells, to whom, at what price, and how it positions itself in its category, including any recent product or strategy changes.
Kite also captures the company's brand: its logo, colors, and fonts, plus the images it actually uses on its site. The report notes two useful gaps. One is the difference between how the company describes itself and how its website actually reads. The other is the difference between its official brand and what its site ships.
Related How-to pages
- How to research a company from its domain or email with Context.dev Coming soon Turn a single domain or email address into a profile of what the company sells, how its site is organized, and how its brand looks.
How has the company's website changed over time?
A company's website history shows how its strategy has changed. Kite pulls archived versions of the site, from the earliest usable capture to the current one, and picks four to six snapshots spread across the company's life. It screenshots each one and sums up what changed in a couple of sentences, such as a repositioning, a redesign, or a pivot to a new market.
For example, a homepage that sold "analytics for developers" three years ago and sells "a revenue platform for sales teams" today tells you the company changed its buyer. That changes who you're really competing with. The screenshots stay in the report, so you can see the shift for yourself.
How do I find a competitor's funding, headcount, and leadership team?
Kite looks up the company's founding year, headcount and its growth trend, funding history, and categories from its built-in company data. Headcount growth is often the single most telling number in the report, because it shows whether a company is expanding fast, holding steady, or cutting back. Kite checks these figures against a second source. When the sources disagree, the report shows both values rather than quietly picking one.
When you ask for the leadership team, Kite adds a leadership section. It names the chief executive or founders and the heads of the functions your purpose cares about, such as marketing, sales, or product. Each leader gets a row with their current title, LinkedIn link, and the source that confirms it. If you also ask for contact details, Kite looks up a professional email for each leader and notes any it couldn't find.
If your team has a Crunchbase account, connect it, and Kite can also pull the company's Crunchbase profile into the analysis.
Where is the company putting its money and people?
Recent news and hiring show where a company is heading over the next year. Kite pulls the company's events from roughly the last twelve months, such as funding rounds, expansions, product launches, partnerships, and leadership changes. It also pulls the company's open roles, grouped by function. Funding and expansion show the company's trajectory, and open roles show its near-term roadmap.
For example, a competitor that just posted six sales roles in Germany is probably about to push into Europe. A cluster of new partner-marketing roles suggests it's building a channel program. Kite reports each event with its date and a link to the original announcement or job post, so you can read the source yourself.
When you're preparing for a meeting, this section supplies the reason the timing matters, and Kite carries its strongest item into the opportunities at the end of the report.
Who does the company compete with, and how does it show up in search and AI answers?
A useful competitor analysis maps the company's own competitive landscape, not just its relationship to you. Kite looks for direct competitors with the same offering and buyer. It also looks for indirect competitors that solve the same problem a different way, and for adjacent products that buyers sometimes mistake for this one. It always names the main substitute too, even when that's a spreadsheet, an agency, or doing nothing at all. Every company on the list needs two independent sources and a working website, and Kite ranks each one by how often buyers actually compare it with the company.
Kite then checks how the company performs in search. It compares the company's organic rankings and keywords with its closest competitors' rankings. It also runs AI-answer questions through ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude to see which brands those answer engines recommend, where the company ranks, its share of voice, and which pages the answers cite. A sentence on the company's site speed scores for mobile and desktop rounds out the section, since a slow site can be part of why a company is hard to find.
Related How-to pages
- How to find out why competitors get cited in AI answers with Semrush: Compare the pages and search rankings behind a competitor's appearances in AI answers.
What do customers and the community say about the company?
What people say in public often reveals more than a company's own marketing does. Kite searches Hacker News along with community and review-site threads, and it quotes two or three opinions from the threads with the most engagement. When both kinds exist, the report includes at least one positive view and one critical one, each with a link.
If nobody is talking about the company, the report says so. That silence is useful to know too, because it means the company hasn't built much word of mouth yet.
Where are the openings for you?
The report closes with three to five moves, ranked by how much each could do for your goals. Each move points back to specific evidence earlier in the report, such as "two competitors own the comparison pages buyers find for this category, and you don't appear on either." Kite also labels how confident it is in each one.
Kite ranks evidence above ambition. A smaller move it can back up beats a bigger claim it can't, so unsupported ideas stay off the list. A short, justified list is more useful than a long list of observations.
From there, Kite can do the work. If the best opening is a comparison page, it can write and build it. If it's a gap in AI answers, it can start improving your visibility there. Kite proposes the work in Slack, and it asks before publishing anything until you choose to give it more room.
Keep the analysis current
A competitor analysis is a snapshot, so Kite can keep it up to date on a schedule. Ask for a recurring competitor check, and Kite compares each company with the last state it recorded and reports only the changes that matter. Those include new prices or packaging, launches, repositioned messaging, a big content or campaign push in your category, funding, leadership changes, and meaningful hiring. When paid offers matter, Kite can include the competitor's current ads in the check.
Cosmetic redesigns and routine blog posts update Kite's records without cluttering your report. When nothing material has changed, Kite says exactly that. You can also ask Kite to watch for competitor launches and tell you in Slack when one happens.
What you get
A cited deep-dive report
One report covering identity and positioning, brand, website history, size and funding, recent news and hiring, the competitive landscape, search and AI-answer standing, and community opinion, with a source beside every fact.
A leadership table, when you ask for it
The chief executive or founders and the relevant function heads, each with title, LinkedIn link, and source, plus professional emails if you request them.
A map of the company's competitors
Direct and indirect competitors, adjacent products, and the main substitute, each with the evidence that puts it on the list.
Ranked opportunities for your business
Three to five moves, each tied to evidence in the report and labeled with Kite's confidence.
A record that builds over time
The findings are saved to the company's pages in your team's knowledge base, so later campaigns, comparison pages, and competitor checks start from them.
How to get started
Mention Kite in Slack and name the company. You might write, "Run a deep dive on northwindcrm.com. They keep showing up in our deals," or "Research Fieldstone before our partnership call on Thursday, and include their leadership team."
Tell Kite why you want the analysis, because the purpose shapes the report. A competitor study puts more weight on the openings for you. A prospect or partner study puts more weight on recent news that explains why the timing matters. Kite asks for the company's website if it can't confirm the right one from the name.
You don't need to connect anything for the first report, because the data sources come built into Kite. Connect Semrush or Crunchbase if you want Kite to add your own accounts' data. Kite delivers the report in Slack. If you want to share it more widely, Kite can publish it as a report page with a link you can send to your team.
Integrations used for competitor analysis
Most of the research runs on data sources built into Kite, so you can start without any accounts of your own. You can connect your own Semrush or Crunchbase account when you want Kite to include that data too.
Find a company's size, funding, and leadership
Built into Kite. It supplies a company's funding, headcount growth, technology use, and leadership, along with the LinkedIn company and people data behind them.
Built into Kite. It looks up public LinkedIn profiles and company pages, searches people and jobs, and reads recent posts, which Kite uses to confirm leaders and their current titles.
Connect your Crunchbase account, and Kite can look up the company's Crunchbase profile and search for related organizations.
Follow the company's news and hiring
Research the public web
Common questions
What is the difference between a SWOT analysis and a competitive analysis?
A SWOT analysis looks at one business and lists its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. A competitive analysis looks outward at the companies you compete with and what they're doing. The two work well together. Kite's competitor report supplies much of the outside view a SWOT needs, and its ranked opportunities fit directly into the opportunities part of one.
Can Kite analyze several competitors at once?
Yes. Ask Kite to compare a set of companies, and it researches each one against the same set of questions. Those include what they sell and charge, how they position themselves, how they show up in search and AI answers, what reviewers say, and what's changed recently. It then brings the results into one comparison, which makes the differences easy to see. You can also ask it to compare their content and advertising.
How do I research a company before a meeting or partnership?
Tell Kite who you're meeting and why. For a meeting, the most useful parts of the report are the company's recent news and hiring, which show what it's focused on right now, and the leadership table, which tells you who's who. Kite carries the strongest recent event into the opportunities, so you go in with a timely reason for the conversation. Ask for contact details too if you plan to follow up with specific leaders.
How do I write the competitive analysis section of a business plan?
A business plan needs to show who else serves your customers, how big and well funded they are, and why buyers would choose you instead. Kite's landscape covers the first part, including the substitutes that business plans often leave out. Its size and funding research covers the second. Its ranked opportunities give you evidence for the third, because each one points to a specific gap a competitor leaves open.
What tools do I need for a competitive analysis?
Doing it by hand usually takes several tools. You'd use a funding database such as Crunchbase, LinkedIn for headcount and leadership, an SEO tool such as Semrush for rankings, and a web archive for website history. You'd also check review sites and community forums to hear from customers. Kite has these kinds of data built in and combines them into one cited report, so you don't have to stitch the results together yourself.