Competitor Research: 17 Questions to Ask

I’m Runbo Li, Co-founder & CEO at Magic Hour.

The question I wish I’d asked earlier is dead simple: “Why are their churned users leaving?” Not why their current users stay. Why the people who tried it walked away.

When we first started building Magic Hour, I made the classic mistake of studying competitors by looking at their best foot forward. Their landing pages, their feature announcements, their case studies. I was reverse-engineering what they were proud of. That’s useful, but it’s maybe 20% of the picture. The real gold is in the frustration.

About six months in, I started obsessively reading one-star reviews, Reddit complaints, and cancellation survey data that users would sometimes post publicly. One pattern jumped out immediately. People weren’t leaving competing platforms because the AI output was bad. They were leaving because the workflow was too complicated. They’d sign up expecting to make a video in five minutes and instead hit a wall of prompt chains, settings panels, and export options that felt like operating a cockpit. The tech was impressive. The experience was alienating.

That single insight reshaped how we built Magic Hour. We went all-in on templates. Instead of asking users to become prompt engineers, we packaged the complexity behind simple, customizable starting points. Pick a template, drop in your content, hit go. That decision is a huge reason we scaled to millions of users as a two-person team. We weren’t competing on model quality alone. We were competing on accessibility.

If I’d asked that question from day one, we would have gotten to that product thesis three or four months faster. And in AI, three months is a lifetime.

The lesson is this: your competitors’ happiest customers can’t teach you much. Their angriest former customers will hand you your entire product roadmap if you listen.

The question I wish I had asked earlier was: what does our ideal client’s previous bad vendor experience look like?

We spent significant time early on researching what competitors offered. Pricing models, tech stacks, service lines, case studies. Standard competitive research. What we completely missed was studying why clients left those competitors.

That gap in our research meant we were positioning Tibicle against what other agencies claimed to offer rather than against the actual pain points clients carried into every new vendor conversation. Those are completely different problems to solve.

When we eventually started asking prospects directly about their previous development partner experiences, the patterns were consistent and had nothing to do with technical capability. Missed sprint commitments with no early warning. Developers who went silent during critical delivery windows. Agencies that oversold their team size and quietly used junior developers on senior priced engagements.

None of that showed up in competitor websites or case studies. It only existed in client frustration. Had we mapped those failure patterns from the start, our entire positioning would have led with process transparency and accountability guarantees rather than technology credentials.

The insight we missed was that clients shopping for a new development partner are not comparing feature lists. They are trying to avoid repeating a specific bad experience. The agency that speaks directly to that experience wins the conversation before it even becomes a price negotiation.

Competitor research that ignores client exit reasons is only half a picture. The other half is where the real positioning lives.

The question I wish I had asked much earlier is: where are my competitors invisible?

I spent the first stretch of my competitor research doing what everyone does. Analyzing their websites, studying their ad copy, tracking their keyword rankings, reverse-engineering their funnels. All of that is useful but it’s backward-looking. You’re studying where they’ve already planted their flag, which means you’re mapping a battlefield where they have the advantage.

The question I should have been asking from day one is where are they not showing up at all. What channels, platforms, and discovery environments have they completely ignored? That’s where the real opportunity lives because it’s uncontested territory.

For us, the answer turned out to be AI search. We were obsessing over what our competitors were doing on Google, on social media, on paid channels. Meanwhile, an entirely new discovery layer was emerging through platforms like ChatGPT and Perplexity where none of our competitors had any presence whatsoever. By the time we recognized that gap and started optimizing for AI search visibility, we had months of head start in a channel that’s now growing exponentially.

The insight I missed by not asking this question earlier was that competitor research shouldn’t just map where the competition is strong. It should map where they’re absent. Those gaps aren’t accidents. They usually represent either a channel that’s too new for incumbents to take seriously or one that doesn’t fit their existing playbook. Both scenarios are gifts for a company willing to move first.

My advice to marketers doing competitive analysis: spend less time studying what your competitors are doing well and more time cataloging what they’re not doing at all. The most valuable competitive insights aren’t found in their strategy. They’re found in their blind spots.

The question I wish I had asked earlier was: “What are our competitors doing organically that we are not?” Most competitor research focuses on features, pricing, and positioning. Nobody talks about the content distribution strategy. When we were building memelord.com, I spent too long looking at what other marketing tools offered and not nearly enough time studying how those brands were actually getting attention online. The insight I missed was that several competitors had quietly built massive organic audiences, and those audiences were doing their sales for them.

Once I started asking “where is this brand showing up in people’s feeds without paying for it,” everything changed. You find out which platforms they are dominant on, what topics they own, who their audience actually is, and where the white space is. For us, the white space was meme-native content at the speed brands actually needed. None of our competitors had figured that out yet. The most underrated move in competitive research is just spending an hour a week inside the comment sections and replies of competitor content. Real customers will tell you exactly what the product is missing. That intelligence is free and almost nobody is collecting it.

The question I wish I had asked much earlier was: what are our competitors’ customers complaining about publicly?

Most competitor research focuses on positioning, pricing, and marketing messaging. We were doing exactly that, reading websites, reviewing case studies, noting the claims and angles competitors were using. What we were missing was the gap between what those competitors promised and what their customers actually experienced.

Once I started systematically reading G2 reviews, Trustpilot listings, Reddit threads, and social media conversations about our competitors, I got a completely different picture of the market. There were consistent frustrations that were not being addressed anywhere. Clients frustrated by slow project delivery. Clients who felt their optimization provider spoke in jargon they could not understand. Smaller e-commerce operators who felt deprioritized compared to enterprise accounts.

That intelligence shaped how we built PageSpeed Matters in a direct way. Fast turnaround and plain-language reporting became core elements of our offer because we knew from real customer feedback that those were genuine, unmet needs in the market.

The lesson for any marketing team: your competitors’ negative reviews are some of the most actionable research available, and almost nobody is mining them systematically. Review platforms, Reddit, and niche industry forums are goldmines for identifying exactly where the gap between market promise and market delivery exists.

One question I wish I had asked much earlier is: “Why do customers choose a competitor, and why do they stay?”

Early on, I focused too much on what competitors were offering, features, pricing, and positioning – rather than the reasons clients committed to them long-term. When we started exploring this through client conversations and lost-deal reviews, the insights were far more revealing. In many cases, the deciding factor wasn’t capability, but perceived reliability or how clearly expectations were set during onboarding, things you won’t find on a competitor’s website. That shift fundamentally changed how I approach research. Instead of benchmarking surface-level differences, we began mapping the full client experience, from first interaction to delivery consistency.

At Tinkogroup, this helped us refine not just how we present our services, but how we structure communication and onboarding.

The key lesson: competitor research isn’t about studying companies—it’s about understanding customer decisions in context.

One question I wish I had asked myself much earlier in my competitor research journey:

“Are these accounts actually talking to their audience… or are they just broadcasting?”

For years I was doing competitor audits the “normal” way: looking at visuals, hooks, posting frequency, formats, etc. I was so focused on what they post that I completely missed how they interact.

Only this time, when I audited 12 accounts across all platforms, I finally asked that question.

The answer shocked me.

Almost none of them reply to comments.

The comment sections are either dead or filled with generic “Thank you” from the brand.

Real conversations? Almost non-existent.

That one missing question completely changed how I look at competitor research now.

I used to think: “They have big numbers, so they must be doing something right.”

Now I see: many of them are just posting into the void. The algorithm gives them reach, but they’re not building real connection.

The biggest insight I missed for so long?

Engagement isn’t just likes and comments under the post — it’s the quality of the conversation you create.

Once I started treating comments as the most important part of the strategy (instead of an afterthought), everything shifted.

I began replying to almost every comment with real thoughts and questions. People felt seen, the conversations exploded. It taught me that real connection beats perfect content every single time.

The question I wish I had asked earlier is this: “What is my competitor actually optimizing for, and is it the same thing I think they are optimizing for?”

For years, competitor research meant pulling their top keywords, checking their backlink profile, and mapping their content. Standard stuff. And I was decent at it. What I missed entirely was the strategic intent behind the pattern.

There was a client in the home services space we took on about two years into running SEOSkit. Their main competitor had been dominating local search for three years straight. We did the usual analysis. Similar domain authority, similar content volume. On paper there was no obvious moat.

What we kept missing was that the competitor was not trying to rank for service keywords. They were building location-entity authority. Every piece of content they published was strengthening their association with specific neighborhoods, not service types. They had figured out that in local SEO, geographic entity depth beats service keyword breadth almost every time. We were analyzing the output and completely misreading the strategy.

We lost about eight months chasing the wrong signals because we never asked “why is this content structured this way?” and only asked “what is this content ranking for?” One question is about outputs. The other is about intent.

The insight we missed was not hidden. It was visible in their site architecture the whole time. We just were not asking the right question to see it.

Competitor research that only tells you what someone is doing gives you tactics to copy. Competitor research that tells you why they are doing it gives you a strategy to beat.

The one question that I missed at the start is, “Does my competitor’s page match search intent better than mine?” I thought rankings all came down to backlinks and domain authority. I was ignoring what the content of the page should actually look like compared to others. My gut instinct was that if I had a strong domain authority, my site would rank. This was not true.

Search intent refers to the understanding of the intention of a user when they enter a search query in Google. If they type in “best running shoes,” they are looking for a list, not for a specific product page. If they type in “buy Nike Air Max,” they want to make a purchase, not want to read a blog about it. Google rewards pages that give users exactly what they were searching for.

And it is because of this that I wish I had asked that question earlier.

I had a client who provided local services and had a stronger domain authority than any of their competition. However, for their main keyword, they ranked on page two. I compared their landing page to the top three competitors and immediately found the problem. The three competitors had detailed descriptions of their services with price estimates and customer reviews, while the client’s landing page contained only generic sales information. We recreated the client’s landing page to match the intent of the user, and five weeks later the client ranked second.

The question I wish I had asked sooner was, what makes a competitor believable the moment a visitor lands there? Early on, competitor research gave too much attention to traffic estimates, content volume, and ranking overlap. The missing insight was credibility architecture, which includes proof sequence, language rhythm, and how quickly confidence is established without sounding staged.

That lesson changed how competitive analysis is approached. As SEO Manager, I now examine the order in which trust cues appear, how certainty is balanced with humility, and whether the narrative feels earned. Search visibility may open the door, but believability moves the decision forward. Missing that distinction kept competitor research informative, but not truly decisive.

I should have asked “who are my competitors actually trying to reach, and what are those people not getting?” When I started building my site, I spent weeks comparing features and prices across CPA review courses, but I was looking at the products instead of the people buying them.

Once I started reading what candidates were actually saying on Reddit and in study groups, I was able to better understand the audience that I wanted to be reaching. What CPA candidates really need is a platform that is right for them and their study habits and lifestyle. If they need a platform that allows them to study on the go, they should be able to find it easily. If they need a platform that excels in providing expedited study strategies for quick test prep, they should know where to look. The comparison sites that already existed were ranking courses by the same five criteria and pulling from the same marketing pages. Nobody was asking candidates what they actually needed and matching from there.

I think if I had started with that question sooner I could have built something useful about three months faster than I did. The competitor research that ended up mattering most wasn’t about what other sites were doing, it was about what candidates really needed in their everyday lives in order to succeed.

Early on, it is easy to focus on feature comparisons, pricing models, or even messaging language. But in enterprise IT, especially in areas like data lifecycle management and cyber resilience, the real battle is shaping how the buyer defines the problem in the first place.

What I initially missed was how effectively some competitors were framing the narrative around urgency and risk. They were not just talking about storage or infrastructure. They were influencing how CIOs and IT leaders think about data growth, ransomware recovery, and AI readiness. By the time a buyer entered an evaluation cycle, that framing had already shaped their priorities.

The insight there is that competitor research should go deeper than “what are they selling.” It should focus on “how are they influencing the buying criteria before we are even in the conversation.”

Once we adjusted our approach at Jeskell, it changed how we build campaigns and messaging. We became much more intentional about leading with the problem, whether that is fragmented data environments slowing AI initiatives or the growing complexity of cyber recovery, and then aligning our solutions and partner ecosystem to that narrative.

The advice I would give is to study not just your competitors’ content, but the patterns. Look at the themes they repeat, the risks they emphasize, and the audience they are trying to shape. That is where the real competitive insight lives, and it is what allows you to position earlier and more effectively in the buying journey.

The question I wish I had asked years earlier is “where are my competitors not competing right now?” It may seem obvious, but during the initial few years of conducting SEO campaigns, I used up the majority of competitor research time studying what the leading sites were doing well and trying to do the same or better at their own game. However, following what your competitors are doing well, you will be continually playing catch-up in the areas where they have established dominance.

This is what changed when I started asking the right question.

This was one of our healthcare clients, a physical therapy company in Ohio. We pulled up the entire keyword gap report against the top three competitors in Ahrefs and identified 340 keywords with a solid search volume monthly and none of the competitors were targeting those keywords. A majority of them were condition-related queries such as ‘how long does it take to recover with a torn rotator cuff’ and ‘physical therapy exercises to treat sciatica at home’, the type of questions that patients will look up before even making an appointment. All their competitors were targeting the services-based keywords such as ‘physical therapy near me’ and completely neglecting the informational layer on top of it.

So we created 40 pieces of content to address those uncontested queries in three months, and the client began ranking on the first page for over 60 of them by month four, which resulted in a 52 percent increase in organic appointment requests.

I wish I had asked: what are they ranking for that they probably should not be ranking for?

Early in my competitor research journey, I focused too much on obvious wins – shared keywords, backlink gaps, content length, title tags, the usual checklist. That helped, but it missed a more useful question: where are competitors getting traffic from content that is loosely relevant, outdated, or structurally weak?

That question matters because it shows you where search demand is forgiving and where Google is still accepting mediocre answers. Those are often the easiest opportunities to win.

For example, in SEO work around content-heavy websites, I’ve seen competitors rank with thin pages simply because they published early or covered a niche before others took it seriously. At first, I treated those rankings as earned authority and moved on. That was the mistake. In reality, some of those pages were vulnerable. Weak internal linking, outdated statistics, poor search intent match, or no clear conversion path.

The insight I missed was that competitor research is not just about studying strengths. It is also about spotting undeserved positions.

Once I started looking at it that way, the quality of decisions improved. Instead of asking, How do we beat their best page? I started asking, Which of their rankings are only surviving because nobody has challenged them properly yet?

That changed how we prioritized content:

1) We stopped chasing only head terms

2) We targeted weak-but-ranking pages with better intent match

3) We looked for the traffic they had, but did not deserve to keep

The result was better ROI from content because we were no longer competing only in crowded areas. We were identifying soft spots.

The lesson is simple. Competitor research gets much better when you stop assuming every ranking is a sign of quality. Sometimes it is just a sign of low competition or old momentum. That is where the real opportunity usually sits.

The question I wish I had asked earlier: how is this competitor actually doing right now?

It is easy to spend months studying a market leader, treating them as the benchmark for how things should be done, and miss the fact that they have been losing customers for three years straight, dealing with high churn, and struggling with product issues nobody talks about publicly.

The second question I should have asked sooner: who is their actual customer? A competitor focused on enterprise and a company focused on SMB are not really competing at all. I wasted significant time analyzing companies that were either past their peak or simply serving a completely different audience.

The “best case studies in the market” I was studying were the best five years ago. The “most dangerous competitors” were not even targeting my customers. Ask both questions before you invest any serious time in competitor research.

One question I wish I’d asked earlier in my competitor research journey: what specific problem does this rival truly solve for a real person, not just a business metric? I’ll explain why it matters and what I missed:

If you map a competitor’s product to a single pain point they claim to fix, you often miss the messy details of who actually feels that pain, when they feel it, and how they talk about it in their own words. Asking the deeper question forces you to step into the user’s shoes—what job are they hiring the product to do for them in their daily workflow? What trade-offs are they willing to accept? What “minor annoyances” were actually dealbreakers?

From that reframing, the insights you unlock tend to be more actionable:

– Real user personas: you start to see who benefits most, who barely notices, and who actively resists. This guides both product focus and go-to-market messaging.

– Context of use: you uncover when and where the product fits best—and when it feels like a friction, helping you craft onboarding, pricing, and support accordingly.

– Journeys and unspoken needs: you notice the steps users take that aren’t in any playbook—workarounds, hacks, or backstage steps. These become feature ideas or optimizations that competitors overlook.

– Value signals, not vanity metrics: you distinguish features that move a sale from features that merely look impressive. That helps you prioritize what to build next.

– Competitive gaps you can own: you identify where rivals misread a niche—often in onboarding, integrations, or reliability—and you craft positioning around those gaps.

– Language that resonates: you learn the exact terms real users use to describe their problem, which makes messaging sharper and more trustworthy.

In hindsight, the missed thread was the human story behind the numbers—the day-to-day friction, the little workarounds, the phrases that trigger a “yes, this helps” moment. Without digging into that, you can end up duplicating someone else’s strengths while leaving the real pain point under-addressed. If I could rewind, I’d start every competitive scan with: “For one line of users, what would it mean if this product disappeared tomorrow?” The answer reveals the true value—and where you can stand apart.

A question I wish I had asked early on in our competitor research journey is: “At which point of the sales process are our real estate competitors losing buyers?”

At the start, our focus was more on the competition’s pricing strategies, marketing campaigns, advertising creatives, property features, etc. It was a mistake, because these weren’t the only factors impacting the success of the business. The real things that mattered were the response time, site visit experience, and post-visit follow-ups. Any gaps in these aspects led real estate developers to lose clients.

Since we didn’t ask this question earlier, we missed out on valuable insights about what was discouraging our potential buyers from choosing us. Delayed callbacks, inadequately trained sales staff, impersonal communication, etc., were a few reasons. But once we identified these gaps, our lead response speed improved. Our follow-ups also became more structured. This considerably increased the conversions!