Competitive Customer Research
Learn how to study your competitors' audience to find market gaps, refine your positioning, and build a better product.
This form of secondary research is a powerful part of a complete customer research strategy.
Your competitors' customers are one of the most valuable, underutilized sources of market intelligence.
By ethically studying their public feedback, you can uncover their pain points, unmet needs, and desired features.
This guide provides a framework for turning their customers' complaints into your product's competitive advantage.
Sources of Competitor Customer Data
You can learn a surprising amount from publicly available data sources.
G2, Capterra, Trustpilot, and the App Stores are goldmines of detailed user feedback, both positive and negative.
Reddit, Quora, and niche forums are where users ask for help and complain about product shortcomings.
Search for competitor names on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook to find unfiltered customer opinions and support requests.
Analyze the topics your competitors are writing about and the comments on their posts to see what resonates with their audience.
Tools for Competitive Research
Analyze competitor website traffic, referral sources, and top keywords to understand their customer acquisition strategy.
Social media listening tools that track brand mentions, sentiment, and key conversation themes across the web.
A free and simple tool to get email notifications when your competitors are mentioned online in news articles or blogs.
How to Analyze the Data
Keyword Trend Analysis
Look for recurring keywords and phrases in reviews and forum posts. These often point to key features or pain points. (e.g., 'integration', 'customer support', 'slow loading').
Feature Request Mining
Scour reviews and forums for mentions of missing features. Look for phrases like 'I wish it could...' or 'It would be great if...'
Sentiment Analysis
Categorize feedback as positive, negative, or neutral to gauge overall sentiment. You can do this manually for small datasets or use AI tools for larger ones.
Turning Research into Actionable Insights
Identify common pain points your product can solve better.
Discover missing features to add to your product roadmap.
Understand the language customers use to inform your marketing copy.
Find an underserved niche or segment of the market.
Benchmark your product against customer expectations in the market.
Ethical Considerations
Only analyze data that is publicly available. Never attempt to access private customer data.
When reporting findings, aggregate the data and anonymize any user-specific information. Focus on themes, not individuals.
If you engage with people in public forums, be transparent about who you are and why you're asking questions.
Discovering a New Niche
Process:
- The founder spends a week reading reviews for Asana on G2 and Capterra.
- They search Reddit for "Asana alternatives for [specific industry]" and find multiple threads from small marketing agencies.
- They notice a recurring complaint: "Asana is too complex for our small agency's workflow."
Insight & Action:
The startup realizes there's an underserved niche: a simple project management tool specifically for small marketing agencies. They pivot their product and marketing to target this niche, successfully differentiating themselves from the larger competitors.
Competitive Research FAQs
Start Your Competitive Research
Download our free Competitive Research Template to systematically track and analyze your competitors' customer feedback.