Stay ahead of the competition: how to use customer insights to outsmart your rivals

Ready to move beyond guesswork when it comes to your competitors?

Competitive intelligence helps teams uncover how their products, messaging, and experiences stack up in the real world—so they can identify opportunities to differentiate, sharpen strategy, and win more often. Instead of relying on assumptions or outdated battle cards, competitive intelligence gives you direct access to how customers perceive the competition—and why they choose them (or don’t).

So, what can you learn? A lot. From competitor messaging and value props to product usability, onboarding experiences, website flows, customer pain points, and even emotional drivers behind purchasing decisions. Whether you’re refining your own positioning or planning a major go-to-market move, competitive intelligence puts powerful, real-world insight at your fingertips.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to gather meaningful feedback on your competitors, turn it into actionable strategy, and keep your team one step ahead. Let’s go!

Why competitive intelligence matters

In fast-moving markets where customer expectations and competitor strategies constantly shift, competitive intelligence ensures you’re not making decisions in a vacuum. By uncovering what competitors are doing—and why it’s working—teams can identify gaps, refine their positioning, and build more effective strategies. Competitive intelligence empowers organizations to stay one step ahead, confidently differentiate their offerings, and make informed decisions that drive growth.

Why it pays to pay attention

• Identify opportunities for differentiation: Uncover competitor gaps and position your brand where it matters most.
• Validate strategic decisions: Back up product, marketing, and GTM plans with real-world market context.
• Anticipate market shifts: Stay ahead of emerging trends and changing customer expectations.
• Improve win rates: Equip teams with insight into competitor strengths and weaknesses to win more deals.
• Align messaging with customer needs: Learn what resonates with your competitors’ customers and where they fall short.
• Monitor evolving threats: Continuously track competitor moves to avoid being caught off guard.
• Sharpen positioning: Ensure your value proposition clearly stands apart in a crowded market.

Common challenges teams face

Competitive intelligence is essential for staying ahead, but it comes with its own set of challenges. Teams often face pressure to deliver fast insights with limited resources, all while trying to piece together an accurate picture from fragmented data. Without the right tools or access to competitor customers, competitive intelligence efforts can become surface-level, slow, or too reliant on assumptions, undermining their strategic impact.

Key challenges to competitive intelligence

• Limited time and resources: Competitive intelligence is often one of many responsibilities, making it hard to collect and analyze insights consistently.
• Fragmented or outdated data: Insights from third-party reports, sales anecdotes, or market news can be incomplete or stale.
• Lack of direct customer input: It’s difficult to hear from actual users of competitor products to understand their experiences and preferences.
• Difficulty finding relevant signals: Sifting through large volumes of data to uncover meaningful patterns is time-consuming and often inconclusive.
• Misalignment across teams: Competitive intelligence insights may not be presented in a way that drives action or resonates with stakeholders.
• Hard to keep pace with competitors: In dynamic markets, insights can become outdated quickly, making it hard to maintain a strategic edge.

What happens without this approach?

When teams don’t invest in proper competitive intelligence, they often fall back on assumptions, outdated materials, or internal opinions. These stopgap approaches might seem easier or faster, but they rarely provide the depth or accuracy needed to make confident decisions. Without real insights into competitor strategies or customer perceptions, teams risk missing critical shifts in the market—and losing their competitive edge.

Common workarounds and why they don’t work:

• Relying on internal opinions: Decisions are shaped by gut feel or internal bias, rather than validated by external data.
• Using outdated battle cards: Sales teams rely on old competitive assets that no longer reflect current market dynamics.
• Pulling surface-level data from analyst reports: These reports may offer general trends but lack customer-specific insights or competitor nuance.
• Listening only to sales anecdotes: Front-line feedback can be valuable, but it’s often inconsistent, second-hand, and lacking context.
• Assuming past positioning still works: Relying on legacy messaging can lead to missed shifts in customer needs or competitive threats.
• Scraping competitor websites or reviews: This provides some signals, but often lacks the context behind why customers choose one product over another.
• Ignoring competitive intelligence entirely: In fast-moving markets, teams that don’t monitor competitors risk being blindsided by new entrants or changing expectations.

The impact of not doing competitive intelligence

When teams fail to invest in competitive intelligence, they lose the visibility needed to stay ahead. Strategies become reactive, decisions are made in the dark, and valuable opportunities slip through the cracks. Without a clear picture of the competitive landscape, organizations risk falling behind, both in perception and performance.

What happens when you wing it

• Weak differentiation that causes your brand and messaging to blend into the competition
• Wasted resources on strategies and initiatives that don’t align with real market conditions or customer needs
• Increased vulnerability to competitor moves that catch your team off guard and force reactive decisions
• Missed market opportunities that competitors seize before your team can respond
• Inconsistent sales performance due to outdated or ineffective battle cards and positioning
• Slower strategic alignment across teams, leading to delays in adapting to changing market dynamics

Solution

Leading teams don’t leave their competitive strategy to chance—they ground it in real customer insight. By tapping into direct feedback from competitor customers, they move beyond surface-level analysis and uncover what truly drives market decisions. This lets them refine messaging, improve positioning, and make smarter product and go-to-market moves that keep them one step ahead.

Here’s how you can apply the same approach:

Step 1: Define testing objectives and key questions

Before starting a competitive intelligence initiative, clarify what you’re trying to learn, why it matters, and how the insights will be used. This sets the stage for a focused, actionable research plan.

• Identify the core purpose: Are you tracking competitor messaging, evaluating a product experience, or analyzing a go-to-market move?
• Define key questions: What don’t you know that could impact your positioning, product roadmap, or sales strategy?
• Align on scope: Determine how broad or narrow the effort should be based on timelines and stakeholder needs.

Step 2: Identify competitor(s) and key customer segments to study

Choose the right competitors and audiences based on your objectives—this could include direct competitors, new entrants, or emerging substitutes.

• Select priority competitors: Focus on those winning deals or gaining visibility in your space.
• Define target user profiles: Look at actual users of those competitor products or brands.
• Consider market segments: Evaluate different buyer types, industries, or geos for a full picture.