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Competitor audience analysis compares supplied aggregate audience research with your own customer segment results. This workflow shows the spreadsheet calculations, denominator checks, and limits on the conclusions you can draw.
Competitor audience analysis compares supplied evidence about another company's audience with the customer segments your business serves. Calculate each population's composition separately, then use your own sales and contribution records to decide what deserves further investigation. The strength of the conclusion depends on what the research actually observed.
A useful question is: which industries feature in the supplied audience research, and how do those industries perform among our customers? That produces a reviewable comparison without assuming the research describes the competitor's customer list.
Start with the research already available to your team. Ask its owner for the population definition, field dates, geography, segment definitions, recruitment method, respondent count, and weighting notes. Record who supplied it and whether the figures have been revised.
The Census Bureau's survey methodology distinguishes sampling error from nonsampling problems such as nonresponse and coding errors. Apply that caution when reviewing supplied research: an accurately calculated percentage can still describe a selective or poorly classified group.
For evidence about why your own opportunities closed, use the win-loss analysis template. Audience composition and documented deal outcomes answer different business questions.
Export account ID, industry, period, net revenue, and the costs used to calculate contribution. Count each customer organization once within its assigned industry. Document how you handle subsidiaries so that a large corporate group does not become several accounts in one file and a single account in another.
Choose a completed period and a consistent definition of active customer, such as an organization with positive net sales during that period. Resolve credits and industry blanks before producing the comparison. Keep the underlying customer records separate from the research summary.
Contribution here means net revenue less the variable product, delivery, and service costs included in the company's stated cost policy. It is a management measure, so finance should approve which costs belong in it. Apply that policy across segments before comparing their margins.
An illustrative US business supplier has its own 2025 sales summary and a supplied research report from the same year. The report covers 800 US business respondents who named Supplier A as their primary supplier content source. It permits one respondent per organization, assigns one industry to each, and reports unweighted counts.
These respondents are a researched content audience. Their purchasing from Supplier A has not been established. The company's own export covers 200 active customer organizations using the same industry labels.
Put the following headers in A1:E1 and the three segment rows in rows 2:4. Keep totals outside those input ranges.
| A: Industry | B: Own customers | C: Own revenue (USD) | D: Own contribution (USD) | E: Supplied research count |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Manufacturing | 120 | 240,000 | 72,000 | 240 |
| Services | 60 | 180,000 | 72,000 | 360 |
| Wholesale | 20 | 80,000 | 16,000 | 200 |
| Total | 200 | 500,000 | 160,000 | 800 |
Add F1:I1: Own customer share, Supplied audience share, Audience gap, and Own contribution margin. In F2:I2 enter these Excel formulas, respectively, then fill through row 4:
=B2/SUM($B$2:$B$4)
=E2/SUM($E$2:$E$4)
=(G2-F2)*100
=D2/C2
Format F, G, and I as percentages. H is a number in percentage points. Microsoft's percentage instructions explain the part-divided-by-total calculation and percentage formatting. Covirage is not affiliated with Microsoft.
The resulting shares and margins are exact at the precision shown:
| Industry | Own customer share | Supplied audience share | Audience gap (percentage points) | Own contribution margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Manufacturing | 60% | 30% | -30 | 30% |
| Services | 30% | 45% | 15 | 40% |
| Wholesale | 10% | 25% | 15 | 20% |
| Total | 100% | 100% | 0 | 32% |
The total margin is $160,000 divided by $500,000, or 32%. It divides total contribution by total revenue; averaging the segment margins would give each industry equal weight regardless of its revenue.
Services represent 45% of the researched audience and 30% of this company's customers, a 15 percentage point difference. Services also produce a 40% contribution margin in the company's own records. Those observations make services a reasonable candidate for a message or offer test.
Wholesale has the same 15 percentage point audience gap, but its observed contribution margin is 20%. The gap alone therefore does not choose the commercial priority. Review service requirements, capacity, and the costs of acquiring new business before expanding either segment.
Write the conclusion precisely: services are more prominent in this supplied content-audience research than among our current customers. Do not turn that into a claim that Supplier A sells more to services, or that the company can capture a particular amount of competitor revenue.
Define the next test with an owner, an offer, a completed observation period, and an outcome your own files can verify. The target market analysis workflow adds retention and market research to that broader selection decision.
Check both distributions in Excel:
=SUM(F2:F4)
=SUM(G2:G4)
=SUM(H2:H4)
The results must be 100%, 100%, and zero percentage points. Reconcile B, C, and D to the selected customer export; reconcile E to the research report's stated base. Keep unclassified organizations as an explicit category if they exist rather than silently changing the denominator.
Aggregate industry counts cannot establish which organizations belong to both populations. Audience overlap analysis requires suitable evidence for that separate question. For your own site's visitor composition, use website audience analysis and keep visitor counts distinct from buying organizations.
Upload your aggregate audience research and customer segment workbook; Covirage maps the columns, and its tools compute and check the figures. The external AI model explains the comparison with every figure traced to its rows. Create a free Covirage account and bring a sample of your own data.
See sales intelligence with Covirage for the supporting business context.
You can compare aggregate research that has already been supplied, provided its methods and coverage are documented. The conclusion must stay within that evidence. A survey of content followers does not reveal private account activity, buying behavior, or the competitor's revenue.
No. Audience members may read content or recognize a supplier without buying from it. Keep the research population's exact label in every table. Use your own sales records to identify your customers, and do not relabel researched audience members as competitor buyers.
Check geography, industry definitions, observation dates, organization or person counts, recruitment method, and any weighting. Keep those details beside each summary. If the definitions cannot be aligned, present separate views and describe the limitation instead of calculating a misleading gap.