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Free Notion template · Step 2
Competitor Analysis Template
A structured way to study the channels competing for your audience, so you find content gaps, packaging ideas and growth tactics instead of reinventing the wheel. Built for YouTube, and it works for any content channel.
Before you start: there are factors to consider before starting a competitor analysis, and they decide which information you collect. This is the template I used with smaller YouTubers in competitive niches, and the information it gathers fed directly into their content production guidelines.
What is competitor analysis?
Knowing what others in your niche are doing reveals content gaps, thumbnail hooks and growth strategies you can adapt, so you don’t reinvent the wheel or miss obvious opportunities.
Competitor analysis means studying other channels like yours to learn what works and what doesn’t. It helps you make better videos and grow faster by showing you their:
- Content strategy: topics, formats and upload cadence
- Engagement benchmarks: views, watch time and comments
- Audience overlap: shared subscribers and demographics
- Monetisation tactics: sponsorships, merch and memberships
How to run a competitor analysis for YouTube
When I started out, this question went mostly unanswered: where do I even start? Here’s the process, step by step.
1. List 5–10 competitors
There are two kinds of competitor to look for:
- Direct: channels serving the same audience.
- Indirect: channels adjacent to your niche, covering complementary topics.
2. Gather channel-level metrics
You can use free or paid tools. If cost is an issue, the free ones work just as well. It’s a creative process, so don’t stress too much over the tooling.
- Free tools: Social Blade, YouTube Studio analytics, Google Trends
- Paid or freemium: VidIQ, TubeBuddy, Social Blade Pro
- What to track: subscriber growth, average views per video and upload frequency
3. Analyse their top videos
Export each competitor’s top 10 videos by views or watch time. Note the titles (keywords, power words), thumbnails (colour, text), length and publish date.
4. Find keyword and topic gaps
Think of keywords as power-ups for new and smaller channels. Established YouTubers are searched for by their names, not by keywords, so ranking for keywords is your chance to appear in YouTube and Google search and build organic traffic for the long run.
- Free tools: YouTube autocomplete, Keyword Tool (free tier), Google Trends
- Paid tools: Semrush, Ahrefs, VidIQ Pro
Identify high-volume keywords your competitors rank for that you haven’t covered yet.
5. Gather engagement and community insights
Scan comments for recurring questions and pain points, and note which videos get shared on Reddit and in Facebook Groups.
6. Benchmark and prioritise
Create a simple scorecard, for example scoring each competitor 1–5 on views, engagement rate and topic relevance. Then highlight two or three quick-win gaps: a thumbnail style you can adopt, or a topic angle they missed.
7. Turn it into an action plan
- Draft three to five video ideas based on the gaps you found.
- Set deadlines for A/B testing titles or thumbnails.
- Schedule a review every two months to update the sheet and track your progress.
Tip: keep your template evergreen by adding a “Last reviewed” date and a “New finds” tab, so you capture emerging competitors and tactics.
Keep going
The rest of the toolkit.
Want a full competitor teardown?
I’ll benchmark your competitors across search, YouTube and short-form, and turn the gaps into a 90-day content plan.