Studies estimate that Product Managers spend 4% of their time researching competitor products. (Mc Kinsey & Company, The product management talent dilemma)
Indeed, between time spent with the developers, user interviews, and presentations to stakeholders, Product Managers have awfully little time to think about their competitors.
However, staying competitive isn’t just about responding to your users’ needs—it’s about having a solid strategy for success in the market. And that means paying attention to what your competitors are doing.
Your product doesn’t exist in isolation. Competitors are shaping the landscape around you; ignoring them can leave you vulnerable. Sometimes, you lose a customer not because your product isn’t good, but because a competitor offers something you overlooked.
Maybe they launched a feature that addresses a pain point you didn’t prioritize, or their pricing strategy hit the sweet spot for a segment of your audience.
When you are aware of your competitor's moves, you gain insights that help you stay agile, seize opportunities, and avoid costly mistakes. It’s not about copying features mindlessly —it’s about understanding trends, learning from their successes and failures, and using those insights to craft a stronger product strategy.
This guide will show you how to integrate competitor monitoring seamlessly into your already-packed schedule.
Yes, obsessing over your competition can lead to a cycle of feature-copying and reactionary moves that brings your product away from your own vision.
But completely ignoring competitors can be just as dangerous. In software, competition moves quickly and market shifts happen overnight (remember how fast you switched from Sketch to Figma ?). Competitor awareness is critical.
The real challenge is striking the right balance—focusing on your users while staying aware of what your competitors are doing.
Your product should be driven by solving real user problems, not by what your rivals are doing. But that small 10% still matters—it keeps you sharp, informed, and ready to spot opportunities or threats before they become a problem.
💡️ Pro Tip: Schedule a small chunk of time each week (even just 20 minutes) to quickly review competitor news or updates.
You don’t need to exhaust yourself tracking every move your competitors make. Automate it!
Set up Google Alerts, use RSS feeds, and subscribe to competitor newsletters so updates come to you.
💡️ Pro Tip: Set up a Google Alert for each of your main competitors, subscribe to their blogs, and add an RSS feed from industry news sites. That way, you’re getting all the important updates without spending extra time searching.
Just because a competitor makes a bold move doesn’t mean you need to follow. Before reacting, evaluate their decisions through a strategic lens. Does it align with your product vision? Will it add real value to your users?
Often, the best reaction is to stick to your plan.
Excellent advice - but it's not the whole story!
By cleverly keeping tabs on your rivals, you're not just playing defense – you're getting real insights to make smarter and more strategic decisions.
In extremely competitive markets, that's your ticket to leveling up from "pretty good PM" to "senior product expert".
As with everything in Product, we like to start small, see what works, and double down on that.
The same goes for competitor intelligence, so here are 3 progressive levels of benefits that you can unlock.
Of course, all your customers won’t leave you overnight for that competitor’s Shiny New Feature (as your salespeople might believe), but still, everything in SaaS moves fast, and market shifts can happen pretty easily: you don't want to be Sketch when Figma launched…
Don´t be careless about your competitors!
If your main competitor launches a market-shifting feature and you have no strategy, then you are failing as a Product Manager, and your boss, your CEO, and your investors will surely hold it against you.
This means that, you should be doing at least some form of basic competitor monitoring: don't let the market force you into a reactive stance.
Being the first to market isn't always a guaranteed path to success, and it's not always an option. In those cases, being the second-mover can be a more strategic approach, allowing you to learn from the successes and failures of others, build better features, and ultimately go to market faster.
One of the greatest benefits is the ability to observe and analyze what competitors are doing well—and where they are falling short. By closely following their product and new feature launches, you can identify what resonates most with users and why. But don’t just replicate — aim to improve on them. Identify pain points or missing elements that users are still vocal about and deliver a more complete and refined solution.
Conversely, another significant advantage of the second mover strategy is to avoid spending precious roadmap time on features that turned out to be failures. Essentially, it’s like having other product teams do your preliminary research and development for you, giving you the insights needed to fast-track your own product development while avoiding costly missteps.
On the core features of your product, you should be leading innovation. For everything else, having a competitor discover what works and what doesn´t, then copying the end result is a totally valid strategy!
All your competitors have different perspectives on the market, as they are serving different customers, or serving those customers slightly differently.
Each one has a different Product Vision that they are pursuing, and that is reflected in every new feature and every piece of thought leadership they publish. Studying those is a great opportunity to leverage insights from industry leaders and see the trends to get the bigger picture, and craft a great product vision.
As an example, in 2016, when launching Google Home, a smart speaker powered by Google Assistant, Google combined the user-friendly interface of Siri and the productivity features of Microsoft Cortana.
Leveraging Google's own strengths in AI, search, and smart home integration, they created a visionary product that shaped the future of smart home technology. The success was quickly replicated by Apple Homepod, Amazon Alexa, Sonos…
Picasso had a saying - 'good artists copy; great artists steal' - and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.
Steve Jobs
Getting started with competitor monitoring doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Here are a few quick wins that will help you gather meaningful insights right away.
Create a central place for your team to store competitor insights. A shared and regularly-updated dashboard makes it easy to track features, pricing, and updates, ensuring everyone has access to the latest intel and can collaborate effectively.
💡️Pro Tip: Keep it simple at first—start with a few key competitors and gradually expand.
Check out our Ultimate Guide to Competitor Dashboards to get started!
One of the simplest yet most effective ways to keep tabs on your competitors is by subscribing to their emails and newsletters. This allows you to see product updates, promotions, and new features firsthand—often before they’re even publicly announced.
💡️ Pro Tip: Use a dedicated email address to keep competitor emails organized and separate from your regular inbox. This helps you manage the flow of information without cluttering your main inbox.
Check out our Guide to Competitor Email Monitoring to get started!
Get notified whenever your competitors make news. Google Alerts is a free and easy way to stay on top of any changes or announcements, without having to manually check each site. Set it and forget it !
💡️Pro Tip: Set up alerts for competitor names, key product terms, and industry news to stay ahead of the game.
Bookmark key competitor websites, pricing pages, and review listings (like G2 or the App Store) so you can easily check in on updates. Make it part of your routine to review these every month.
💡️Pro Tip: Use folders in your browser to keep everything organized by competitor or category for quick reference.
Follow your competitors on platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Social media is often where companies drop quick updates, new feature announcements. The big plus is that you will see firsthand the customer reactions to those posts.
If you’re serious about competitor monitoring and want a structured approach, it’s worth setting up a dedicated platform.
PeerPanda is designed specifically for product managers and marketers who need a streamlined, all-in-one solution to track competitors effectively.
With everything in one place—competitor emails, websites and AI insights—it saves you time and keeps your insights organized.
Plus, it’s free to get started, so you can dive in right away.
A very important part of growing from Junior PM to Senior PM, or getting into a leadership role is becoming really good at product strategy.
Product Strategy is all about setting a longer-term Product Vision and Goals, then laying out the smaller milestones and achievements you’ll follow to reach them. In a red-ocean market, this means crafting a product that brings much more value to your customers than your competitors.
By looking at what they are doing, you can uncover the patterns and their longer-term trajectory. It makes you think about the Big Strategic Questions such as "What customer segments are worth pursuing ?” and “How can I differentiate and beat my competitors there ?”.
As a result, competitive research is a great way to get started on asking yourself and answering those questions. It will make tactical decisions ("What feature to build next”) much easier for your team.
CPOs and Heads of Product: Competitive research is a great way to onboard new team members and train junior staff.
Yes, having the intern do competitor research is too much of a cliché, but that's because everyone has been doing it wrong. Indeed, exhaustively listing the competitors and burying the work deep in an obsolete Confluence page serves no one.
Instead, take some time to review the findings with them. Ask them:
Competitor intelligence can be your secret weapon, providing a wealth of insights for your product strategy, informing your marketing efforts, and driving your sales team's success.
At the end of the day, the best ideas often come from a mix of user research and competitor intelligence. By keeping a close eye on what’s happening in your industry and continuously feeding those insights into your strategy, you’re not just keeping up – you’re leading the way.
Businesses stay competitive by focusing on their customers' needs while remaining aware of their competitors' moves. This balance ensures that they can innovate and respond to threats or opportunities in the market.
Monitoring competitors helps you stay informed about market changes, new product features, and strategies that could impact your business. It allows you to respond proactively, rather than reactively, to industry shifts.
In fast-moving industries like SaaS, it’s essential to monitor competitors regularly—weekly or monthly. Setting up automated tools like PeerPanda helps you track changes without the need for manual research, ensuring you’re always up-to-date.
You can keep track of competitors by setting up Google Alerts, subscribing to their newsletters, monitoring their social media, and using automated tools like PeerPanda to centralize insights on their activities, such as product launches and pricing changes.
Monitor your Competitors with PeerPanda and stay one step ahead !
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