Top 12 Competitor Analysis Tools: KFC, McDonald’s, Burger King Case Study

KFC, McDonald’s, or Burger King – which of these fast-food giants is the strongest? While I don’t have the answer yet, there is a smart way to find out. Competitor analysis tools are the answer. So, which fast food chain comes out on top? Let’s find out together.

Competitor analysis tools help gather and analyze information about your industry rivals. These tools can track multiple business areas, such as your competitor domains, marketing strategies, product developments, and pricing updates. Such software helps identify industry trends, benchmark your performance, and position yourself in the market.

The wisdom of keep your friends close and your enemies closer goes beyond Sun Tzu’s war strategies. It’s also crucial for business and marketing strategies.

Some may wonder: is keeping an eye on your competitors a bad thing?

Absolutely not!

Competitor analysis has nothing to do with spying! 

It’s a strategic necessity for any business. It’s 100% legal and relies on publicly available data.

In fact, most major corporations do it.

Companies like H&M, Carlsberg, Uber, Ikea, and Vichy use Brand24 for competitive analysis.

If you want to keep up with the top brands, a competitive analysis tool is essential.

There are numerous areas to analyze: social media presence, marketing campaigns, brand awareness, sentiment, SEO performance, paid ads, backlinks, and PR activities.

With the right tools, competitive analysis can be a breeze.

Effortlessly go from indolent ignorance to competitive clout in less than 10 minutes.

Let’s get started!

• The 12 best competitor analysis tools
  • Brand24 for media monitoring
  • Semrush for SEO analysis
  • Similar Web for website traffic analysis
  • Buzzsumo for content analytics
  • Sprout Social for online performance analysis
  • Ahrefs for SEO analysis
  • Kompyte for competitive intelligence
  • Hootsuite for social media competitive analysis
  • Spyfu for paid traffic insights
  • SE Ranking for SEO analysis
  • Rank Signals for SEO analysis
  • Owletter for email monitoring
• Competitor analysis benefits
• How to track your competitors?
• What competitor analysis tools should you choose?

The 12 best competitor analysis tools

Do you ever feel overwhelmed trying to keep an eye on your competitors? Does monitoring all their marketing channels drive you to despair?

I totally get it! Competitive analysis is an all-encompassing project. 

Picture this: you walk into the office in the morning, only to find your boss boiling with anger.

A shiver runs down your spine—you missed a competitor’s strategic move, and now your company’s stock prices are falling.

Worried investors are blowing up the company’s phone.

You don’t know what to do, you don’t know what to say, you don’t know how this could have happened.

Without a dedicated competitive intelligence tool, you’re always playing catch-up.

There are countless KPIs to track: social media presence, brand awareness, SEO metrics like domain score and keyword rankings… The list goes on.

Remember, competition can make or break your brand. 

The more you know about your industry, the better decisions you can make. 

That’s why you need to conduct thorough competitor research before engaging in marketing activities or product development.

I’m here to help. Check out my ranking of the 12 best competitor analysis tools, and never struggle with competitive analysis again.

01 Brand24 for media monitoring

Try a 14-day free trial and change your competitive intelligence for good.

There’s one crucial, highly competitive marketing area we all are in. Let me tell you a riddle:

In the arena of screens, where brands collide,
We vie for views in a digital tide.
A battleground where stories unfold,
For the eyes of clients, we craft and mold.
What am I? 
Online media, where strategies are bold.

Definitely all content creators and social media marketers will agree. Digital media is a difficult competitive area. 

There, we need to fight not only against competitor strategies but also users’ short attention spans and many other adversities.

Fortunately, social media monitoring is there to save the day. Thanks to a social media tracker tool, you’ll have all your and your ‘competitors’ mentions in one place.

Plus, the tool closely analyzes the collected data, recognizing patterns and calculating useful metrics.

Brand24 is the best competitive analysis tool for this job.

Let’s say you are a marketer working for Burger King. You should definitely be interested in your competitors’ strategies: McDonald’s and KFC. 

How do you use Brand24 to your advantage?

You set up 3 media monitoring projects, one per company. To do this, you need to choose the keyword(s) to track competitors. Definitely include the company name, but you can also add:

• Their product and service name (e.g., McMuffin, Crispy strips bucket)
• Hashtags they use (e.g., #imlovinit, #burgerking)
• The name of the marketing campaign (e.g., Raise Your Arches, You Rule)
• Their CEO’s name 
• Any competitors’ keywords relevant to your industry (e.g., burger, fries, fast food)

As you see, Brand24’s mentions graph includes some mysterious exclamation marks. They are fruits of the AI Anomaly Detector. 

Why is it useful?

Imagine this: You enter your media monitoring tool. WHAT?

Your sentiment online dropped drastically. Now, you need to find the reason behind it before your boss discovers this fuc*up.

But how do you find the answer among hundreds of mentions and unrelated comments? It’s basically impossible to do this manually.

And then you see your boss approaching you with a fast pace and angry face. It’s too late.

And you know what? 

You could easily avoid this unpleasant situation. 

How?

By using Brand24 – a competitive analysis tool.

We are the only company with this kind of sentiment and reach AI Anomaly Detector feature.

Implementing this feature took 12 years of our own algorithm training and specialized guidance and insights from our computer science doctor, who specializes in Artificial Intelligence. 

It is a feature that acts like a brand guard.

The AI Anomaly Detector identifies unusual patterns in your tracked project, like sudden spikes in negative mentions volume.

Then, it researches the internet to find the most probable causes of that behavior.

Later, it presents its conclusions in the form of interactive exclamation marks. Click on one for the short note summarizing the anomaly and its cause.

This way, you can track both your and your competitors’ anomalies in performance.

It gives you the power to make data-driven decisions and swiftly navigate the realm of competitors’ strategies.

Another key feature for competitive analysis is Project Comparison. 

Especially with the recently refreshed and updated comparison tab, you can create beautiful reports on your direct competitors and perform data-driven benchmarking.

It allows you to compare crucial performance metrics.

These valuable insights give you a comprehensive overview of your market positioning in relation to your competitors.

As you can see, Mcdonalds’ leaves its competitors far behind. 

It has the most online mentions, the best sentiment, the broadest reach, the best presence score, the highest AVE, and a tremendous amount of user-generated content. 

While KFC and Burger King have metrics on a similar level, there’s one exception to the rule.

KFC has significantly fewer negative mentions than Burger King, a 10% difference that gives KFC a visible advantage in customer sentiments.

Now, you need to learn why Burger King struggles with its sentiment.

There are two ways of doing this. You can either browse through their mentions and set the filter to negative or save time by using Topic Analysis. 

Let’s see what it looks like for the Burger King project.

On the top of the page, there’s a list of the most common topics.

Some of them are clearly negative, like workplace discussions revolving around Burger King’s working conditions or boycott campaigns criticizing Burger King for its alleged relations with Israel. 

This detailed analysis shows you specific areas for improvement. It empowers you to speak up on topics that ruin your online reputation.

Now, let’s look at the big picture. The Metrics Analysis offers a comprehensive overview of your project. 

This tab has a concise summary of your performance metrics. It provides further insight into the negative Burger King sentiment. 

Now we know that:

1. Disgust is the primary negative emotion of the Burger King mentions.
2. Most disgusted comments come from Twitter.

With these actionable insights, Burger King could start developing a complex strategy. 

Or simply ask our AI Brand Assistant!

Let’s see what it says.

And how is it better than Chat GPT, you may ask. 

It bases all its answers on the actual collected data, which strongly supports your marketing efforts.

Here are some other examples of how you can use the Brand24 for competitor insights:

• By monitoring influential sources that mention your competitors, you discover authors, blogs, and websites likely to be interested in your business.
• You see that the customers of your competitor complain online about something. It so happens that your business is way better at it. In such a case, you need to reach out to the disappointed customers of your competitor and show what you have to offer.
• Your competitor launched a hashtag marketing campaign to promote something new. You monitor its engagement metrics to see how it spreads and what the response of its audience is.

Key competitor analysis features:

• Mentions monitoring
• AI Anomaly Detector
• Sentiment analysis
• Presence Score
• Reputation Score
• Project comparison 
• AI Insights
• Topic Analysis
• Emotion Analysis
• AI Brand Assistant
• Metrics Analysis

02 SEMrush for SEO analysis

You say SEO competitor research. You think SEMrush.

SEMrush is a great keyword research tool for competitor analysis, particularly if you want to compete for users in the Google search engine. 

Search engine optimization is a fundamental part of marketing efforts.

The quality of your website’s content and technical performance determine how visible your website is in search engines for potential customers. 

It’s an arms race to win organic users and organically promote your brand.

SEMrush is the right tool to screen your competitor’s website’s SEO performance. Similarly, it’s a perfect tool to look after your search engine performance, too.

Top organic keywords are among the most valuable pieces of data about your competitor you can get from SEMrush.

Here, you can see the keywords your competitor ranks for particular URLs.

In backlinks, you can see all sites that link to your competitors’ websites:

How you can use this knowledge?

For example, you can contact sites linking to your competitor websites with a message asking them to mention your site.

Backlinks give a massive boost to SEO and increase online visibility.

Moreover, the data can inform your SEO strategy.

Based on insights and recommendations from SEMrush, you can conduct a content analysis and develop a keyword planner for your content distribution.

You can build a robust domain that ranks high in any browser. That’s a competitive advantage you can’t pass on.

Key features:

• Traffic
• Organic keywords they rank for
• Backlinks they acquire
• New and lost keywords
• External links to their website
• Increases and decreases in rankings
• Best performing sites 
• Paid keywords
• Keyword trends
• Sources of traffic 
• And much more!

03 SimilarWeb for website traffic analysis

One of the best competitor analysis tools out there is SimilarWeb.

Similar Web is a go-to tool for search traffic analysis and more in the paid version. With its help, you can gain the following competitive intelligence:

• Volume of traffic: estimation of how much traffic your competitors get

• Sources of website traffic: where your competitors traffic comes from – paid acquisition, referral, or organic traffic. 
• Ad display: what ads and where they display

To compare the performance of your website to your competitor’s, enter your site address first:

Next, provide your competitor’s web address:

In the free version of the tool, you can see global, country, and category rank:

Also, the free version of Similar Web offers a traffic overview:

And site traffic sources:

These are features you can investigate using the free version of Similar Web.

You can see the differences between you and your competitors based on traffic sources.

For example, if your competitor performs well in organic traffic, you can concentrate your marketing efforts on social traffic.

How?

By addressing your audience’s needs and creating highly shareable content.

At the same time, it will boost your referral traffic, grow brand awareness, and build your expert authority.

In the long run, it will also improve your SEO reputation, as Google bots like content that engages readers.

Key metrics & features:

• Referrals
• Volume of traffic
• Sources of traffic
• Ad display

04 Buzzsumo for content analytics

Regarding competitor analysis in social media and content shares, Buzzsumo is your go-to tool.

It’s one of the social media analytics tools that handle influencer marketing, content marketing, and PR.

With its help, you can discover your competitors’ social shares insights, including which networks share their content and how your content compares against theirs.

Highly shareable content in social media has a few advantages:

• It increases brand awareness
• It’s a signal for Google that the content is valuable as it sparks interest among readers and encourages them to share the value with others

Buzzsumo is also a sort of media monitoring tool because you can receive alerts whenever your competitor is mentioned online.

Key features:

• Social media analytics 
• Influencer marketing
• Competitors content analysis
• Media monitoring

05 Sprout Social for online performance analysis

It is one of the competitive analysis tools that collect marketing data about your competitors online. 

It’s a bit similar to Brand24 because it tracks online conversations and sentiment metrics.

However, it falls behind because of a limited number of metrics and an absence of AI-powered insights.

Because of this, it may lack depth of understanding as it works on raw data without calculating complicated correlations and finding patterns.

However, it also has some additional features like traffic analysis (paid vs organic) or team collaboration functions like case assignment.

Key features:

• Engagement metrics
• Competitor’s clients’ demographic data
• Conversations monitoring
• Sentiment analysis

06 Ahrefs for SEO analysis

Ahrefs is one of the competitive analysis tools for SEO strategy analysis. 

You can use it to compare your positioning with your competitors. There are many metrics to compare: volume, keyword difficulty, CPC, position, and traffic.

So, how do you identify SEO competitors?

1. Go to Site Explorer
2. Paste your domain URL
3. Enter the Organic Competitors tab

It is a partially free competitive analysis tool that shares some of its features free of charge.

Key metrics & features:

• Traffic share by domains
• Keyword research
• Search volume
• Keyword difficulty

07 Kompyte for competitive intelligence

Kompyte offers real-time competitive intelligence at scale. 

It’s one of the competitor analysis tools you can use to track your competitors’:

• Websites
• Reviews
• Content
• Social
• Ads
• Job postings

Their unique feature is battle cards. These are competitive analysis dashboards that facilitate comparison. They can include pricing, strengths, kill points, and other valuable insights.

This competitor research tool ensures an all-encompassing approach to your analysis. 

While it’s a dedicated competitor analysis tool with AI-powered features, it has one shortcoming. It doesn’t collect mentions.

Because of this, it misses out on first-hand insights from your customers and your competitors’ customers. 

Key features:

• Complex competitor analysis and comparison
• AI-powered features
• SWOT analysis support
• Win/loss analysis

08 Hootsuite for social media competitive analysis

It’s one of the most respected and recognized social media analytics tools in the game. 

It can help you track the performance of business profiles on 35 social media platforms.

Using Hootsuite, you can precisely track your competitors’ social media activities.

This is how you can see how your competitors engage their communities, what content they post, if they run any contests, and how their marketing campaigns resonate with their audience.

Also, you can keep track of their keywords and hashtags to be even better informed.

It’s a partially free competitive analysis tool. You can test Hootsuite premium features for 30 days for free. 

Key features:

• Stats & engagement of your competitors’ posts
• Demographic data 
• Insights into their best posts and hashtag use

09 Spyfu for paid traffic insights

Competition expands beyond organic traffic and online presence.

One of the ways to acquire search engine traffic is to use Google Ads and buy yourself exposure. 

Similarly to organic traffic, competition here is based on keywords. In this case, however, you pay to display your advertising in the top search results or in other places on Google. 

Spyfu is one of the competitor analysis tools that can help you gain insight into your competitors’ paid traffic.

The tool lets you see what paid keywords your competitors currently rank for and ranked in the past. 

Key features:

• Recognizing threats 
• Tracking your competitors’ changes in ad spending
• Keywords you buy and your competitors don’t 
• Suggestions for keyword groups
• Sorting keywords by cost per click to discover quick wins

10 SE Ranking for SEO analysis

Over 500,000 users chose the SE Ranking platform to get comprehensive SEO tools to audit and improve their websites’ performance.

Whether you want to start a new business or gain an advantage in your industry, competitor and keyword research is your starting point.

You can use SE Ranking’s competitor analysis tool to reveal your rivals’ organic and paid strategies. 

For example, you can find competitors’ keywords that drive traffic, conduct recently added backlinks monitoring, and spy on Google Ads marketing campaigns.

For those needing a more profound competitor analysis, SE Ranking released a historical data update that allows users to analyze domains and keywords from previous months starting from February 2020.

You can check changes in website traffic, keywords, and backlinks by selecting a month. 

How could you get an advantage using this feature? 

By analyzing competitor performance in dynamics, you’ll get valuable insights about:

• changes in the niche landscape
• traffic drops and the reasons behind them
• effective practices of competitor’s promotion strategies
• PPC competitor research of best-performing keywords

Based on the most comprehensive SEO competitor analysis with SE Ranking, you will be ready to make more thoughtful SEO decisions, save the A/B testing budget, and promptly respond to market changes.

Key features:

• Search results overview by country
• Domain and page trust
• Traffic cost and estimate
• Backlinks
• Referring domains
• Number of key phrases
• Keyword rankings
• Distribution of organic and paid competitors
• CPC and number of advertisers
• SERP features

11 Rank Signals for SEO analysis 

It’s another SEO software that helps you analyze your competitors’ content marketing strategy. 

With Rank Signals, you get actionable insights for your marketing strategy. With this competitive edge, you can easily get ahead of your competitors.

Rank Signals offers competitors’ backlinks monitoring. This will give you an idea of sources that link to them and boost their Google ranking.

Rank Signals shows you the website title and URL, link anchor text, and the URL of the backlink provider.

Backlinks add up to your website’s reputation in Google’s eyes. 

Also, the sites linking to your site must be of good quality. This is a quality-over-quantity scenario.

Key features:

• Competitor’s content strategy analysis
• Backlinks analysis

12 Owletter for email monitoring

Owletter is a competitor analysis tool that helps you discover and understand your competitors’ email marketing activities.

Owletter gets insights from email messages your competitors send. Here’s what you can learn about email marketing of your competitors:

• SPAM reputation
• Do they follow a specific schedule
• Changes in frequency
• Trends developing over time
• Topics they contain

This knowledge will help you develop your own email marketing plan.

You can either compete by providing better insights and more useful examples or take a completely different approach to stand out.

Key features:

• Competitors’ email marketing strategies analysis
• Email marketing schedule analysis
• Email content analysis

Competitor analysis benefits

Here’s a complete list of the benefits of competitive analysis tools.

Just show it to your boss or other decision maker – they cannot say no to so many crucial benefits:

• Understand how to differentiate your product and stand out in the market
• Win over your competitors’ customers
• Discover your audience’s interests
• Spot link-building opportunities
• Improve your content strategy
• Track ad campaigns of your competitors
• Discover keyword opportunities
• Predict your competitors’ moves
• Spot emerging threats
• Identify gaps
• Assess the performance of your business
• Identify market opportunities

How to track your competitors online?

Finding a suitable software set is not sufficient to succeed. You need a robust competitor analysis plan to implement the insights into your company.

Use Brand24 to track your competitors!

That’s why it is so important to take a few steps back and focus on what you want to achieve first.

Why are you conducting competitors research in the first place?

Competitor research will give you data on positioning, marketing, and product development if you are entering the market and looking for your place in the competitive landscape.

You will have a clear overview of what you must do to become an industry leader within your market.

You may already have an established position in the market. If so, monitoring your competitors will help you spot emerging threats and inform you about what is going on within your business niche.

If you entered the market some time ago, conducting a SWOT analysis is always a good option. Brand24 can definitely help you with that.

Social media competitor analysis

Social media is a goldmine of data about your industry and other brands. Social media competitor analysis tools should be part of your marketing tool stack.

Today, social media is such an essential part of every business that missing out is like deliberately ignoring your customers, market trends, and competitors. 

These days, all business happens online. What’s best about this is that you can track every action in your industry, and professional tools are ready to assist you. 

Once again, ignoring the online voices talking about you and your competitors is like shooting yourself in the foot.

It’s tempting to focus on keyword data and build your SEO rankings, but if your competitors are social media savvy, your clients will expect the same from you.

Thus, it’s vital to track your competitors’ social media profiles regularly.

The best example is the Halloween Twitter exchange between Ryanair and Eurowings.

What competitor analysis tool should you choose?

There is no one-size-fits-all solution. 

Competitive analysis will bring you marketing data about your rivals. It will help your business become an industry leader in many different fields, including:search rankings and keyword rankings

• social media
• advertising
• market trends
• overall business strategy
• market share
• and much more.

Competitive analysis is a must-have these days. 

Whether you want to become an industry leader, increase market share, or just check your competitive landscape, I strongly suggest using one of the tools to make the process easier and more effective! 

Monitor marketing, measure metrics, and make magic with Brand24!