6 Competitive Research Plays

During a qualifying run at the 2023 Monaco Grand Prix, Sergio Perez crashed his car. Bad. A crane lifted his wrecked Red Bull high into the air.

That’s when rival teams raised their cameras and started snapping rapid-fire shots of the car’s underfloor.

While large, exposed tires are perhaps the easiest way to identify an F1 racecar, it’s floor holds the real performance secrets. It’s almost never visible—but at that moment, every team got a clear view of Red Bull’s most closely guarded design.

Back at headquarters, engineers used the photos to model airflow, run CFD comparisons, and tweak their own builds. Turning a single moment into a windfall of competitive intel.

In marketing, competitive research can have the same effect.

But, thankfully, you don’t have to wait for your competitor to crash. With the right tools and smart tactics, you can study your competitors any day of the week.

Here are six plays you can run right now to strengthen the foundation of your own performance—the marketing equivalent of optimizing your car’s floor.

1. Find out who your competitors are

Before you do anything else, make sure you have a complete understanding of who you’re up against.

What you do → try Semrush’s Competition Finder. All you have to do it enter your domain.

2. See what people are saying

Look for you competitors’ customer reviews, or blog posts that talk about them.

What do people like about them?

What don’t they like?

Your move → Use this information to adopt your competitors’ best practices and identify where you’re better — then hammer down on that in your positioning.

3. Figure out your market share

Knowing what % of the market you currently own can massively enhance your decision-making.

For instance: if you figure out:

• The total size of your market, and

• The % you think you can capture,

• Then multiply that by your pricing…

You’ll get the max revenue ceiling your company can achieve. If you don’t like the answer, it’s time to rethink your pricing, cost structure or market.

How to calculate market share → competition data is private, so you have to use proxies. We recommend:

• Traffic tools (e.g. try the Semrush Traffic and Market toolkit)

• Ad spend visibility (Meta Ads Library, Sensor Tower)

• Review count trends (G2, App Store)

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4. Monitor pricing or copy changes

With Visualping, you can track specific URLs for real-time changes, like pricing, landing pages, or feature positioning.

The play → Set alerts for your competitors’ pricing or plan pages. 

If they bump prices or remove a feature, it’s your moment to act—highlight a price advantage, launch a feature comparison, or run a time-sensitive promo.

5. Spot content ideas that work

With Semrush’s Organic Research report, you can see which keywords and pages are getting competitors the most traffic right now.

Your marketing play with this intel → Create fresher, better content targeting those keywords. Think “useful to whoever is searching this”.

6. Map their funnel manually (and make yours better)

No fancy tool is needed here for this old-school tactic that still works. Simply sign up for your competitor’s product, download their lead magnet, or start a trial.

The play → Document every step of their journey and take notes: 

• What do they promise? 

• How do they follow up?

• Are their emails engaging or generic? 

Use this information to refine your own onboarding or sales journey.

In both F1 and marketing, the trophy goes to the teams that keep a close eye on their competitors and seize every opportunity to improve.

Written by Ashley Cummings, edited by Owen Mulhern.