Looking back at 2018 provides a fascinating perspective, as it was a foundational year that shaped much of the modern digital business landscape. For an entrepreneur conducting a competitive analysis at that time, the playbook was rapidly shifting away from traditional metrics and heavily toward digital agility, subscription models, and mobile dominance.

If you were building a business and analyzing the competition in 2018, here are the core areas that demanded your focus:

1. The Mobile-First Digital Audit

In March 2018, Google officially began rolling out mobile-first indexing. This fundamentally changed how entrepreneurs evaluated their competitors’ digital footprints. It was no longer enough to just have a website; competitive analysis required auditing how fast a rival’s site loaded on a smartphone and how seamless their mobile user experience (UX) was. If a competitor’s platform was clunky on mobile, it presented a massive vulnerability that a new entrant could exploit for better search rankings and customer retention.

2. Subscription Architecture and Value Ladders

The “subscription economy” was booming across both B2C and B2B sectors in 2018. A critical piece of competitive analysis involved deconstructing a rival’s pricing strategy to spot gaps in their value ladders. For entrepreneurs building scalable platforms, this meant studying exactly what features competitors included in their entry-level packages versus what they gated behind paywalls. Identifying these gaps allowed a new business to strategically position a mid-level Partner or Advance tier to capture users who felt underserved, before eventually upselling them to a premium Platinum experience.

3. Supply Chain Agility and Global Reach

For businesses dealing in physical commodities or platforms designed to connect international buyers and suppliers, 2018 was a volatile year marked by the onset of major global trade tariffs. Competitive analysis expanded beyond marketing and deep into the supply chain. Entrepreneurs had to investigate where competitors were sourcing their goods, how reliant they were on a single country’s manufacturing, and how they were adjusting their shipping terms (like FOB or CIF) to protect their margins. A diversified, global supplier network became a major competitive advantage.

4. The Shift to “Pay-to-Play” Social Media

Early 2018 saw major algorithm changes across platforms like Facebook, drastically reducing organic reach for business pages. An effective competitive analysis required looking at how rivals were adapting to this “pay-to-play” environment. Entrepreneurs had to analyze competitors’ paid ad libraries to understand their messaging, the types of video content they were investing in, and how they were leveraging the rising popularity of formats like Instagram Stories to build brand authority.