Originally published in 2008. Updated in 2025 as part of the Personal Branding Blog relaunch under Brown Brothers Media.
Your Personal Marketing Plan Post Series
Section 1: Situational Analysis – A detailed description of exactly where you are in your life, as well as your mission, vision and life cycle.
Section 2: Audience Analysis – Researching what the market is for your brand, with both primary and secondary research and quantitative and qualitative measurements.
Section 3 is focused on your competition. After recognizing who your audience is, their needs and what you can deliver, you need to assess who else is there to provide a similar or relevant service.
For instance, when it comes to technology, you have creators, tech analysts, and influencers like Marques Brownlee (MKBHD), Kara Swisher, and Ben Thompson attracting overlapping segments of the technology audience.
If you’re a doctor, lawyer or dentist, you will most likely be competing based on location, reputation and word-of-mouth referrals. If you’re a high school student, you will be competing for college placement and if you’re in college, you will be competing for entry-level positions.
Competition is a group of people who are looking for the exactly same thing you are and are going through a similar process to gain an opportunity and strip you of one (rarely intentionally). Organizations and colleges are competitive boot camps, as they prepare you for your next opportunity, while the path to entry can be ruthless.
There is a major difference between a competitive analysis businesses use versus individuals. When performing a competitive analysis for a business, you would examine the top 5–10 competitors in your niche and write down their product names, prices, differentiation and features.
When combating individuals, things are quite different. You can’t run a quick search on LinkedIn or Google and expect to see everyone you’re up against before a job interview or while you go through the college admissions process.
It’s nearly impossible to know exactly who you’re competing with for a job or when applying for colleges. Before applying to colleges, high school advisers or career centers will share with you average SAT scores, as well as the average GPA and student profile data of the previous freshman class per each college you’re interested in. It’s a way to prepare you and narrow down your search.
Instead of applying to 20 schools, you’re applying to a safety, reach and a few ones in your ballpark. There is no guarantee of acceptance, but if you have a 1100 on your SAT and a 3.2 GPA, you probably won’t get into Harvard (unless you buy a building or your dad is on the board of directors).
Some corporations have high expectations for candidates and lay down the law. They may expect 3.0 GPA’s, but tend to be more focused on the quality of a person from a best-fit standpoint. When interviewing, you are never revealed your competition. It’s like a game of Poker, where the employer isn’t showing you his hand.
Personal branding is important when applying for a job because you don’t know exactly who you’re up against and if you’re differentiated and networked from the start, it won’t matter!
Competition becomes more tangible when you’re building a digital presence. Today, that means your website, social media, content strategy, and digital footprint as a whole.
There are numerous tools that monitor and rank visibility — for example, Google Analytics, Ahrefs, Substack rankings, or social media metrics such as engagement rates and follower growth. When you see professionals or creators whose platforms perform better than yours, you may analyze their strategy to see why they are so successful and either evolve your branding strategy or take notes on best practices that you can implement.
When you’re an entrepreneur or working for a business, it’s far easier to grasp who your competition is, and when you do, you can pull that information and view the similarities and differences between them and your operation.
The Perceptual Map
When I do marketing plans, I like to arrange my client’s business, as well as the top competitors on a perceptual map.
The map works like a graph, with a Y and X axis. You pick two attributes, such as price and features and put them at opposite ends, such that you’re using “high” and “low” price, as well as “many” and “few” features.
Now you want to position where you are relative to competitors in your space along these attributes. For instance, if your personal brand has great communication skills but poor analytical skills, your competition might have either the reverse, neither or both great skills. You can even visualize this using free digital tools such as Canva, Miro, or Notion templates to make your analysis more tangible.
Conclusion
In today’s hyper-connected, data-driven world, competition is both more visible and more complex. You may never meet the people you’re competing against, yet their digital presence competes with yours every day in searches, feeds, and professional networks.
By clearly defining your niche, refining your message, and showing consistent value, you effectively make the competition irrelevant.
The best way to “win” is to stand out authentically — not by copying others, but by continually investing in your growth and credibility.
This article is part of Personal Branding Blog’s Legacy Series — highlighting timeless insights from our archive. Learn more about our story here.
