Market analysis · 14 min read · Updated 2 Aug 2026
Market Share Analysis Template (Free Calculation)
A blank market share analysis you can fill in today, plus the guidance for what belongs in each field. Most market share numbers are unusable because nobody defined the market, so this template starts with the denominator and records confidence on every figure rather than presenting estimates as facts.
Copy pastes straight into Google Sheets or Excel with the columns intact. Downloads are free with a work email.
The market share analysis template
This is exactly what you get when you copy or download. Blank fields are yours to fill in; each table ships with one example row to show the pattern, which you delete.
Analysis scope
Fill this in first, and treat the first field as the real work. Everything below inherits whatever you decide there.
- The market as we define itOne sentence, specific enough that a competitor could agree or disagree
- Period coveredA stated year or quarter, since share is meaningless without one
- Measured inRevenue, units, seats or customers. Pick one and say which
- The decision this informse.g. whether to defend a segment or expand into an adjacent one
- Owner and dateOne named owner, with the date
- Overall confidenceBe honest. Most B2B share figures are estimates, not measurements
1. Defining the market
First row is an example, delete it. Each boundary decision changes the answer. Record what you included, what you excluded, and how much it moved the number.
| Boundary decision | What we chose | Why | Effect on our share |
|---|---|---|---|
| ExampleDo spreadsheets count as a competitor? | Yes, as an unpriced alternative, tracked separately | They win more deals than any named vendor in our segment | Reduces our share substantially, and makes the number honest |
2. Sizing the denominator
First row is an example, delete it. Two methods minimum, ideally one bottom-up and one top-down, so they can disagree and you can say by how much.
| Method | Figure | How it was built | Source | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ExampleBottom-up from segment population | Stated figure | Target companies in segment, multiplied by observed average contract value | Company registry counts and our own closed-won data | Medium, the population count is the weak input |
3. Share by player
First row is an example, delete it. Add a final row for revenue you cannot attribute to any named player, and do not force the column to total 100%.
| Player | Revenue or units | Share | Relative share vs leader | Source and confidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ExampleUs | Our own figure | Stated percentage | Our share divided by the leader's | High for ours, estimated for theirs |
4. Share by segment
First row is an example, delete it. This is where the useful findings are. An aggregate share figure conceals both the segment you own and the one you are losing.
| Segment | Our share | Segment leader | Our relative share | Direction |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Example25 to 100 seats, no ops headcount | Stated percentage | A named competitor | Below 1, so we are a challenger here | Falling, roughly 3 points over 4 quarters |
5. Where share movement came from
First row is an example, delete it. Every row needs either an attribution with evidence, or the word unexplained. Both are acceptable entries.
| Change | Won from or lost to | Evidence | One-off or structural? |
|---|---|---|---|
| ExampleGained in the 100 plus seat segment | Won from a regional rival exiting the segment | Their announcement, plus 4 deals we won unopposed | One-off, and will not repeat |
6. Market concentration
First row is an example, delete it. Compute these from the share table above, and carry the same confidence caveats through.
| Measure | Value | What it implies | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|
| ExampleCombined share of the top three players | Stated percentage | Concentrated at the top, fragmented below, so gains come from the tail | Our share table, estimated for competitors |
7. What we actually know
First row is an example, delete it. One row per figure that carries weight. This table is what stops an estimate becoming a fact in the retelling.
| Figure | Confidence | Why | What would improve it |
|---|---|---|---|
| ExampleOur own revenue in the defined market | High | Measured from our own systems, though the market definition is a judgement | Nothing, this is as good as it gets |
8. Decisions, owners and dates
First row is an example, delete it. Three to five rows. Segment-level findings usually produce better decisions than the headline number.
| Finding | What we will do | Owner | By when | How we will know it worked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ExampleWe are losing relative share in our core segment while gaining overall | Treat the core segment as a defence problem, not a growth one | Elena V., CEO | 31 Oct | Segment share stops falling in the next two quarters |
How to fill in your market share analysis
How to scope a market share analysis
The hardest part of this artifact is the denominator, so decide what you are measuring share of before anything else. Most market share figures presented in board decks are unusable, not because the arithmetic is wrong but because the market was never defined, which means the number cannot be compared with last quarter's or with anyone else's. Defining it narrowly and honestly produces a smaller share and a far more useful document.
The market as we define it
One sentence, specific enough that a competitor could read it and agree or disagree: "CRM for sales teams of 25 to 100 seats in Europe, excluding enterprise suites". Vague definitions such as the sales software market are how a company convinces itself it has 2% of something rather than 20% of the thing it actually competes in.
Period covered
A stated year or quarter. Share without a period is meaningless, and comparing a trailing-twelve-month figure against a quarterly one is a common and invisible error.
Measured in
Revenue, units, seats or customers, and say which. These give genuinely different answers: a company with many small customers can lead on customer count and trail badly on revenue, and quoting whichever is more flattering without labelling it is the most common form of misrepresentation here.
The decision this informs
Usually whether to defend a segment, enter an adjacent one, or reprice. Share analysis run without a decision tends to end as a slide showing a pie chart, which is the least useful possible output of the exercise.
Overall confidence
Be honest at the top. In most B2B software markets, private competitors do not publish revenue, so share is an estimate built on estimates. Saying so up front is what allows the segment-level findings underneath to be trusted.
How to define the market in a market share analysis
Each boundary decision changes the answer, so record what you included, what you excluded, and roughly how much it moved the number. This table is the honest version of an exercise that is usually done silently and in a direction that flatters. Writing the decisions down makes them arguable, which is the point: a colleague who disagrees with a boundary can say so, rather than quietly distrusting the conclusion.
Boundary decision
The genuine judgement calls: geography, company size, adjacent categories, whether the incumbent spreadsheet counts, whether free tiers count as customers. Each has a defensible answer and none has an obvious one.
Do unpriced alternatives count?
The most consequential decision in most B2B markets and the one most often skipped. In many categories, spreadsheets and internal builds win more deals than any named vendor, and a market definition excluding them describes a competition the buyer is not having.
Why
One line per decision, tied to how buyers actually behave rather than to how analysts categorise. If buyers in your segment routinely compare you against a category you excluded, the exclusion is wrong however tidy it is.
Effect on our share
Roughly, and honestly, including when a boundary makes your share look worse. A definition chosen because it produces a better number is the single fastest way to make this document useless, and everyone senior enough to matter has seen it done.
Use the same definition next time
Or state clearly that it changed and why. Share is only meaningful as a trend, and a redefined market resets the series. Teams that quietly adjust boundaries each year produce a share number that only ever goes up.
How to size the denominator
Use two methods, ideally one bottom-up and one top-down, so they can disagree and you can say by how much. A single method gives you a number with no error bar and no way to sanity-check it. Two methods that land within a reasonable range of each other give genuine confidence; two that diverge wildly tell you something is wrong with an assumption, which is more useful than a confident single figure that happens to be incorrect.
Bottom-up
Count the addressable companies in your defined segment and multiply by a realistic contract value drawn from your own closed-won data. This is the more defensible method because every input is inspectable, and it is the one to lead with.
Top-down
Start from a published category figure and narrow it by geography and segment. Treat published market-research totals with real caution: their methodologies are frequently undisclosed, their category definitions rarely match yours, and they are often the source of the number everyone repeats without checking.
How it was built
Show the working, including the multiplication. A denominator nobody can reconstruct is one nobody can challenge or improve, and it will be quoted for years after its inputs stopped being true.
Source
Company registries, industry associations, your own data, published filings. Name them, because the credibility of the whole analysis rests on the weakest input in this table.
Confidence
Per method, with the weak input named: "medium, the population count is the weak input". This is what tells a reader which number to attack first, and inviting that is how the estimate improves.
How to fill in share by player
Include an unattributed row for everything you cannot account for, and expect it to be larger than the team assumes. In most B2B markets the long tail plus unpriced alternatives dwarf the named vendors everyone argues about. A share table where the listed players sum to 100% has almost certainly been forced, and the forcing usually happens by quietly shrinking the denominator until the numbers behave.
Player
Named competitors, then a tail row, then an unattributed remainder. Listing eight competitors individually when six of them are rounding errors adds precision that does not exist.
Revenue or units
Your own figure is measured; theirs is estimated. Mark which is which in the source column rather than presenting a row of equally confident numbers, since that single formatting choice is what turns an estimate into a fact in the retelling.
Share
Percentage of the defined denominator. Round sensibly: quoting a share to one decimal place when the denominator is a medium-confidence estimate implies a precision the underlying data cannot support.
Relative share vs leader
Your share divided by the largest competitor's. This is the measure the Boston Consulting Group built its growth-share matrix around, and it carries information the absolute figure does not: holding 25% against a 50% leader is a fundamentally different position from holding 25% against a 15% runner-up.
Estimate competitors from observable signals
Headcount and hiring, published customer counts, funding disclosures, review volume and pricing multiplied by a plausible customer base. Each is weak alone and they triangulate reasonably well together. Record which signals you used so the estimate can be revisited rather than re-invented.
How to analyse share by segment
This is where the useful findings are, and it is the section that justifies the whole exercise. An aggregate share figure conceals both the segment you quietly own and the one you are steadily losing, and it is entirely possible to gain share overall while losing it in the segment that determines your future. Companies that only look at the headline number discover the latter roughly two years late.
Segment
Cut by whatever actually changes the competitive set: company size, geography, industry, use case. The right cut is the one where different competitors win, not the one your reporting already produces.
Our share and the segment leader
Per segment, with the leader named. The leader frequently differs by segment, which is itself a finding and one that aggregate analysis makes invisible.
Our relative share
Above or below 1. Below 1 means you are a challenger in that segment whatever the absolute number says, and challenger positions need different strategy from leader positions.
Direction
Over four quarters where you have the data, with rough magnitude. Direction is more decision-useful than level: a small share growing steadily and a larger one eroding call for opposite responses.
Expect the segments to disagree
The most common valuable finding in this template is that overall share is flat while one segment is growing and another is eroding underneath it. Two offsetting movements read as stability in the aggregate and are anything but.
How to attribute share movement
Share that moved without a traceable cause is measurement noise, and treating it as signal is how strategy gets built on rounding errors. Attribute each change to something observable, or mark it unexplained, which is a legitimate and common entry. The one-off versus structural column matters most: gains from a competitor exiting a segment will not repeat, and planning as though they will is a predictable error.
Change
Directional with rough magnitude and the segment it occurred in. Aggregate movements are almost never explainable, which is itself a reason to work at segment level.
Won from or lost to
Named where possible, from win/loss data rather than impression. This is the column that connects share analysis to something you can act on, since losing to one named competitor and losing to the status quo require completely different responses.
Evidence
Deal-level data, a competitor announcement, a pricing change with a date. Movements with no evidence should be marked unexplained rather than given a plausible story, since plausible stories about share movement are extremely easy to construct and almost impossible to falsify later.
One-off or structural?
The column that prevents the most expensive mistake in this artifact. A competitor exiting a segment, a large one-time deal, or a pricing promotion all move share without indicating anything about underlying position.
Unexplained movement is a finding
If a meaningful share change cannot be attributed, either the estimate is too noisy to support conclusions at that resolution, or something is happening you have not detected. Both are worth knowing and both are hidden by inventing an explanation.
How to assess market concentration
Concentration tells you whether share gains are available at all, which the share figure alone does not. A 5% share in a market where the top three hold 85% is a very different strategic position from 5% in a market where the largest player holds 9%. The first means growth has to come from displacing entrenched incumbents; the second means it can come from consolidating a fragmented tail, which is a far cheaper motion.
Concentration ratio
The combined share of the top three or top four players, which is the simplest usable measure and the one most readily estimated from partial data. Report it with the same confidence caveats as the underlying shares.
Herfindahl-Hirschman Index
The sum of every player's squared market share, used by competition authorities to assess concentration. For a market of four firms at 30, 30, 20 and 20 percent, the index is 2,600. Historically, regulators have treated 1,000 to 1,800 as moderately concentrated and above 1,800 as highly concentrated, and the 2023 United States merger guidelines from the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission apply a structural presumption at a post-merger index above 1,800 or a combined share above 30%.
Why a regulator's measure is useful here
Not because you are filing anything, but because it gives a defensible vocabulary for a claim teams usually make loosely. Saying a market is fragmented is an impression; computing the index makes it a statement, and it also flags when consolidation would attract scrutiny.
What it implies
One line translating the number into strategy: whether gains come from displacement or from consolidating a tail, and whether the market is likely to consolidate around you or without you.
Estimated inputs produce an estimated index
The index inherits every weakness of the share estimates behind it. Report it as an order of magnitude rather than a figure, and do not let the precision of the arithmetic imply precision in the data.
How to record what you actually know
One row per figure that carries weight, because this table is what stops an estimate becoming a fact in the retelling. Share numbers travel further than almost any other competitive output: they end up in board decks, investor updates and eventually in press, usually stripped of every caveat attached to them. The confidence table is the only defence, and it works best when it is part of the same document rather than an appendix.
Figure
Each number that would change a decision. Your own revenue is measured; competitor revenue is inferred; the denominator is a construction. These deserve visibly different treatment.
Confidence
High, medium or low, with the reason. Low confidence is not a failure of the analysis, it is an accurate description of what is knowable about private companies that do not publish revenue.
What would improve it
Concretely: a customer count disclosure, a funding round with revenue multiples, better win/loss coverage. This turns the confidence table into a research plan rather than a disclaimer.
State plainly what cannot be known
In most B2B software markets you cannot know your exact share, because the denominator is a judgement and competitor revenue is private. Saying so directly is more credible than a confident figure, and it protects the segment-level findings that genuinely are actionable.
Prefer direction to level
When confidence is low, share movement over time from a consistent method is far more reliable than the absolute level, because the errors are correlated and largely cancel. Lead with the trend and treat the level as context.
How to fill in the decisions section of your market share analysis
Three to five rows, and expect the segment-level findings to produce better decisions than the headline number. Overall share rarely suggests an action on its own: it is a scoreboard rather than a diagnosis. What changes behaviour is discovering that relative share is falling in the segment that matters while the aggregate holds steady, which is a defence problem wearing the appearance of stability.
Finding
Drawn from the segment and movement tables rather than the aggregate: "we are losing relative share in our core segment while gaining overall". Findings phrased at the aggregate level rarely survive the question of what to do about it.
What we will do
Defend, expand, reprice, or explicitly accept a position. Accepting a low share in a segment you have chosen not to serve is a legitimate decision and worth recording so it stops being reopened.
Owner
Named. Share findings are unusually prone to being interesting to everyone and owned by nobody, because the response usually spans product, pricing and sales.
By when
Real dates, and note that share responds slowly. A decision taken now shows up in share data two to four quarters later, so the success measure needs a longer horizon than most.
How we will know it worked
Segment share stabilising or a specific loss reason declining. Prefer measures that move faster than share itself, since waiting a year to learn whether a decision worked is not a feedback loop.
Sourcing and upkeep: keeping a market share analysis honest
These rules apply to every section above. This artifact has a specific failure mode: the denominator gets chosen, consciously or not, to produce a satisfying number, and everything downstream inherits the flattery. The habits below are defences against that, and the single most important one is that the market definition is written down, argued about, and kept constant between periods.
Define the market first and keep the definition
Share is only meaningful as a trend against a constant denominator. Redefining the market between periods resets the series, and teams that adjust boundaries annually produce a number that only ever improves.
Two sizing methods, and report the gap
Bottom-up and top-down. Where they diverge, say by how much rather than picking one. A stated range is more credible and more useful than a false point estimate.
Include the unattributed remainder
Named vendors rarely sum to the market. A table forced to 100% has usually had its denominator shrunk until it behaved, and the tail plus unpriced alternatives are frequently the largest single block.
Work at segment level
The aggregate conceals the two findings worth having: the segment you own and the one eroding. Offsetting movements read as stability and are the opposite.
Mark measured against estimated, on every row
Your revenue is measured; competitors' is inferred from signals. Presenting them in identical formatting is how an estimate becomes a fact by the time it reaches a board deck.
Prefer direction over level when confidence is low
Movement from a consistent method is far more reliable than the absolute figure, because the errors are correlated and largely cancel out.
Say plainly what cannot be known
In most B2B markets, exact share is unknowable because competitor revenue is private and the denominator is a judgement. Stating that is more credible than precision, and it is what makes the segment findings believable.
A market share analysis example
You lead strategy at Pipedrive. The board wants a market share number, and the honest answer requires defining the market first. This is that analysis, filled in, with figures marked as measured or estimated throughout.
Published pricing and packaging verified 2 August 2026, from the companies’ own pages rather than third-party round-ups, which frequently conflate annual and monthly prices. Pricing changes without notice, so re-check before quoting any of it.
Sections marked illustrative are invented for this example. Win rates, deal counts, discounting behaviour, customer quotes, owners and internal dates are not published by HubSpot, Pipedrive or anyone else, so those rows are a plausible fictional scenario rather than reported fact, and should not be read as claims about how either company performs or negotiates. Everything else comes from the two pricing pages linked below, read on the date shown.
Analysis scopeIllustrative
| Field | Example entry |
|---|---|
| The market as we define it | Sales CRM for teams of 25 to 100 seats in Europe, excluding full marketing suites |
| Period covered | Trailing twelve months to 30 Jun 2026 |
| Measured in | Annual recurring revenue. Seat counts reported separately where known |
| The decision this informs | Whether the core mid-market segment is a growth problem or a defence problem |
| Owner and date | Tom A., Competitive Intelligence, 2 Aug 2026 |
| Overall confidence | Low to medium. Our own figure is measured; every competitor figure is estimated |
1. Defining the marketIllustrative
| Boundary decision | What we chose | Why | Effect on our share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Do spreadsheets and internal builds count? | Yes, as an unpriced alternative, tracked as a separate row | They won 9 of the deals we lost last quarter, more than any named vendor | Reduces our share materially, and is the single most honest choice here |
| Do full marketing and service suites count? | Excluded, except the sales module where sold standalone | Buyers in our segment compare sales tools, not suites, at the point of decision | Raises our share, and is the boundary most open to challenge |
| Geography | Europe only | Our go-to-market and pricing differ elsewhere, so a global figure would blend two businesses | Raises our share against a global denominator |
| Do free-tier users count as customers? | No, revenue basis only | A free user is not revenue and counting them would flatter every vendor unevenly | Reduces the apparent share of vendors with large free tiers |
2. Sizing the denominatorIllustrative
| Method | Figure | How it was built | Source | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bottom-up from segment population | Our primary figure | European companies with 25 to 100 sales seats, multiplied by observed average contract value from our own closed-won data | Company registry counts and our CRM | Medium. The population count is the weak input |
| Top-down from a published category total | Roughly 30% above the bottom-up figure | Published European CRM total, narrowed by segment share assumptions | A published market research total | Low. The category definition does not match ours and the methodology is undisclosed |
| Reconciliation | We report the bottom-up figure and state the 30% gap | The two methods disagree by roughly 30%, which we disclose rather than average | Both of the above | Reporting a range is more honest than a point estimate |
3. Share by playerIllustrative
| Player | Revenue or units | Share | Relative share vs leader | Source and confidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Us | Our own ARR in the defined market | Our measured share | Reference point | High. Measured from our systems, though the denominator is a judgement |
| HubSpot Sales Hub | Estimated from published pricing, disclosed customer counts and hiring signals | Estimated, larger than ours | Our share divided by theirs, below 1 | Low to medium. Sales Hub revenue is not separately disclosed for this segment |
| Two regional rivals combined | Estimated from funding disclosures and headcount | Estimated, smaller than ours | Above 1 in our favour | Low. Both are private and disclose little |
| Spreadsheets and internal builds | Not revenue, so no monetary figure | Counted by deals rather than revenue, and it is the largest single block | Not applicable | Medium. Derived from our own loss data, so it is biased toward deals we entered |
| Unattributed remainder | The residual after the rows above | Substantial, and larger than we expected | Not applicable | This row exists because the named vendors do not sum to the market |
4. Share by segmentIllustrative
| Segment | Our share | Segment leader | Our relative share | Direction |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25 to 50 seats | Our strongest position | Us | Above 1, we lead here | Stable over four quarters |
| 50 to 100 seats | Weaker than our average | HubSpot Sales Hub | Below 1, we are a challenger | Falling, roughly 3 points over four quarters |
| Acquisition-driven consolidations | Weakest | HubSpot Sales Hub | Well below 1 | Falling, and this is where the read-only seat objection concentrates |
| Teams replacing a spreadsheet for the first time | Our fastest-growing position | Spreadsheets, still | Not meaningful against an unpriced alternative | Rising |
5. Where share movement came fromIllustrative
| Change | Won from or lost to | Evidence | One-off or structural? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gained overall, roughly 2 points | Won from first-time buyers leaving spreadsheets | Closed-won data, 14 deals where no vendor competed | Structural, this segment is genuinely expanding |
| Lost roughly 3 points in the 50 to 100 seat segment | Lost to HubSpot Sales Hub | Win/loss interviews, with read-only seat cost named in 4 of 5 losses | Structural, it is a packaging gap rather than an event |
| Gained in the 100 plus seat edge of our range | Won from a regional rival that exited the segment | Their public announcement, plus 4 deals won unopposed | One-off. This will not repeat and should not be projected |
| Roughly 1 point of movement unaccounted for | Unknown | None | Unexplained. Our estimate is too noisy to support conclusions at this resolution |
6. Market concentrationIllustrative
| Measure | Value | What it implies | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|
| Combined share of the top three named vendors | Under half the defined market | Fragmented, so gains are available from the tail rather than only by displacement | Our share table, competitor figures estimated |
| Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, estimated | Well below 1,000 on our estimates | Unconcentrated by the thresholds competition authorities use, which matches how the market feels in deals | Sum of squared shares, inheriting every weakness of the estimates |
| Share held by unpriced alternatives | The largest single block by deal count | The real competitor is inertia, not a vendor, which should shape messaging more than it does | Our own loss data, biased toward deals we entered |
7. What we actually knowIllustrative
| Figure | Confidence | Why | What would improve it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Our own revenue in the defined market | High | Measured from our systems, though the market definition is a judgement | Nothing. This is as good as it gets |
| HubSpot Sales Hub revenue in this segment | Low to medium | Not separately disclosed. Estimated from published pricing, customer counts and hiring signals | A segment-level disclosure, or a credible third-party estimate with a stated method |
| The denominator | Medium | Bottom-up is inspectable; the top-down cross-check disagrees by roughly 30% | A better count of European companies at 25 to 100 sales seats |
| Share held by spreadsheets | Medium | Derived from our own loss data, so it only sees deals we entered | Discovery data on what prospects use today, being added this quarter |
| Direction of segment share over four quarters | Higher than any level figure | The method has been constant, so the errors are correlated and largely cancel | Nothing. This is the number to lead with |
8. Decisions, owners and datesIllustrative
| Finding | What we will do | Owner | By when | How we will know it worked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall share is up while our core segment share is falling | Treat 50 to 100 seats as a defence problem and stop reporting the aggregate to the board alone | Elena V., CEO | 31 Oct 2026 | Board pack shows segment share alongside the aggregate from Q4 |
| The largest single competitor is a spreadsheet, not a vendor | Shift a share of messaging from vendor comparison to the cost of staying on spreadsheets | Maya R., Product Marketing | 30 Nov 2026 | First-time-buyer segment keeps growing without extra spend |
| Our gain in the 100 plus range was a competitor exiting, not our performance | Exclude it from the growth plan and label it one-off in reporting | Tom A., Competitive Intelligence | 31 Oct 2026 | Next year's plan does not assume it repeats |
| Two sizing methods disagree by roughly 30% | Report a range rather than a point estimate, and improve the population count | Tom A., Competitive Intelligence | 1 Feb 2027 | The gap narrows, or the range is stated openly in board material |
How to roll out your market share analysis
- 1Copy or download the blank analysis. Use Copy to paste it straight into Google Sheets or Excel with the columns intact, or download the CSV, Notion or PDF version.
- 2Define the market before calculating anything. One sentence a competitor could agree or disagree with. Record each boundary decision and roughly how much it moved your share.
- 3Delete the example rows. Each table ships with one example row so the pattern is obvious. Remove it before you circulate the analysis.
- 4Size the denominator two ways and report the gap. One bottom-up from segment population, one top-down from published figures. Where they diverge, state by how much rather than picking one.
- 5Include an unattributed remainder row. Named vendors rarely sum to the market. The tail plus unpriced alternatives are usually larger than the team assumes.
- 6Compute relative share, not just absolute. Your share divided by the leader's. Holding 25% against a 50% leader is a different position from 25% against a 15% runner-up.
- 7Cut it by segment, where the real findings are. The aggregate conceals both the segment you own and the one you are losing. Offsetting movements read as stability.
- 8Mark every figure measured or estimated, then decide. Your revenue is measured, competitors' is inferred. Prefer direction over level when confidence is low, and act on the segment findings.
Market share analysis FAQ
What is a market share analysis?
A market share analysis works out what proportion of a defined market you and each competitor hold, how that has moved, and what it implies. The word doing the work is defined: share is a fraction, and the denominator is a judgement rather than a fact. A useful analysis therefore spends most of its effort on defining the market honestly, sizing it two ways, and recording confidence on every figure, rather than on the arithmetic, which is trivial.
How do you calculate market share?
Your revenue, units or customers in a defined market, divided by the total for that market in the same period, expressed as a percentage. The arithmetic is the easy part. The difficulty is that the denominator is rarely knowable directly, so it has to be constructed, ideally bottom-up by counting addressable companies in your segment and multiplying by a realistic contract value from your own closed-won data. Say which basis you used, since revenue share and customer share can point in opposite directions.
How do you make a market share analysis?
Define the market in one sentence a competitor could agree or disagree with, recording each boundary decision and how much it moved your number. Size the denominator two ways and report the gap. Estimate each player's share from observable signals, including an unattributed remainder row. Compute relative share against the leader. Then cut it by segment, which is where the findings are. Attribute any movement to something observable or mark it unexplained. Finish by recording confidence on every figure that carries weight.
What is relative market share?
Your market share divided by the largest competitor's. It is the horizontal axis of the Boston Consulting Group's growth-share matrix and it carries information the absolute figure does not. Holding 25% where the leader holds 50% gives a relative share of 0.5, which is a challenger position. Holding the same 25% where the nearest rival holds 15% gives 1.67, which is leadership. The absolute number is identical and the strategic situations are opposite, which is why relative share belongs in any serious analysis.
What is the KPI to measure market share?
There are three, and they answer different questions. Absolute share is your fraction of the defined market, useful as a scoreboard. Relative share against the leader tells you whether you are a leader or a challenger, which absolute share cannot. Share of segment reveals the position that aggregate figures conceal. If you can only track one in a B2B market where competitor revenue is private, track direction of segment share using a constant method, since trend is far more reliable than level when the level rests on estimates.
Can you actually know your market share in B2B software?
Usually not exactly, and it is worth saying so plainly rather than presenting a confident figure. Private competitors do not disclose revenue, category definitions rarely match how buyers actually shop, and the largest competitor in many segments is a spreadsheet, which has no revenue to count. What you can know reliably is the direction of your share within defined segments using a constant method, because the errors in the estimate are correlated between periods and largely cancel. Lead with the trend and treat the level as context.
How do you estimate a competitor's revenue?
By triangulating observable signals, each weak alone. Published pricing multiplied by any disclosed customer count. Headcount and hiring patterns, since sales headcount correlates loosely with revenue in software. Funding disclosures and any stated multiples. Review volume as a rough proxy for customer base. Filings where the company is public or files accounts in its jurisdiction. Record which signals you used and what you assumed, so the estimate can be revisited when new information appears rather than re-invented from scratch each time.
What is the McKinsey market analysis framework?
There is no McKinsey market analysis framework, and this query usually reaches for one of two real things that are not market analysis. The McKinsey 7-S framework is about organisational effectiveness: strategy, structure, systems, shared values, style, staff and skills. It was developed in the late 1970s by Tom Peters, Robert Waterman and Julien Phillips, with Richard Pascale and Anthony Athos, first published in Business Horizons in 1980 and popularised by In Search of Excellence. The GE-McKinsey nine-box matrix is a corporate portfolio tool for allocating investment across business units. Neither sizes a market or measures share.
What is McKinsey's 7 model?
The 7-S framework, covering strategy, structure, systems, shared values, style, staff and skills. Its argument is that organisational effectiveness requires these seven to be aligned and mutually reinforcing, and that the soft elements matter as much as the hard ones. It was formally published in a 1980 Business Horizons article by Waterman, Peters and Phillips titled Structure Is Not Organization. It is a genuinely canonical framework and it has nothing to do with market share or market sizing, which is worth knowing before applying it to a question it was not built for.
What is the 80/20 rule at McKinsey?
It is the Pareto principle, which McKinsey did not invent and does not own: roughly 80% of effects come from 20% of causes, named after Vilfredo Pareto's observation about land ownership. In consulting practice it is shorthand for finding the small number of drivers that explain most of an outcome before doing exhaustive analysis. Applied to market share it is genuinely useful: a small number of segments usually explain most of your position, which is the argument for cutting share by segment rather than agonising over the aggregate.
What is market concentration and how do you measure it?
Concentration describes how much of a market sits with its largest players, and it determines whether share gains are available at all. The simplest measure is the concentration ratio: the combined share of the top three or four. The more rigorous one is the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, the sum of every player's squared share, so four firms at 30, 30, 20 and 20 percent give 2,600. Competition authorities have historically treated 1,000 to 1,800 as moderately concentrated and above 1,800 as highly concentrated, and the 2023 US merger guidelines apply a structural presumption above 1,800 or a 30% combined share.
What are the 5 steps of a market analysis?
No canonical five-step model exists, and the five-step and seven-step versions in circulation disagree with one another and trace to no founding source. What genuinely matters in a market share analysis is not the step count but three things: whether the market was defined explicitly and kept constant between periods, whether the denominator was built two ways so the methods can disagree, and whether confidence was recorded on figures that are estimates. Those three determine whether the output is decision-useful, and no numbered sequence substitutes for them.
What are the 5 C's of marketing analysis?
Company, customers, competitors, collaborators and climate. Unlike most alliterative business lists this one is genuinely established as a situation-analysis framework, though it has no single attributable originator and evolved through practice and teaching. It is a checklist for what to examine before setting strategy rather than a method for calculating anything, so it complements a market share analysis rather than replacing it. The climate element, covering regulatory and economic conditions, is the one most often skipped and the one that most often explains share movement nobody could otherwise attribute.
What are the four parts of a market analysis?
Versions vary and none is canonical, but the four that recur and are worth covering are market definition and size, customer segments and their needs, the competitive landscape including unpriced alternatives, and the trends shaping the market's direction. Share analysis sits inside the first and third. The part most often done badly is the first: an analysis that opens with a large market size drawn from a published report, without stating how the category was defined, has usually skipped the only step that would have made the rest meaningful.
What is a good sample size for market analysis?
It depends entirely on what you are measuring and how precise an answer you need, so any universal number is wrong. For survey-based research, precision improves with the square root of sample size, so going from 100 to 400 responses halves the margin of error and the next halving costs 1,600. For win/loss analysis feeding a share estimate, the more common problem is not sample size but selection: interviewing only the losses your reps volunteer produces a biased picture regardless of how many you gather.
Can ChatGPT do market research?
It can help with parts of it and cannot do the part that matters most here. Useful for structuring an analysis, drafting the market definition, summarising documents you supply, and sanity-checking arithmetic. Not reliable for the figures themselves: market sizes and competitor revenues are exactly the kind of specific, verifiable claim where a fabricated number is both plausible-looking and damaging, and a share analysis built on one is worse than none. Use it on the reasoning and the writing, and source every number yourself from something you can cite.
Should unpriced alternatives count in market share?
Usually yes, tracked separately, and this is the most consequential boundary decision in most B2B markets. In many categories the incumbent spreadsheet or internal build wins more deals than any named vendor, so a market definition that counts only vendors describes a competition your buyers are not having. Counting them lowers your share and improves every conclusion, because it reveals that the real competitor is often inertia. Track them by deal count rather than revenue, since they have no revenue to attribute.
What is the difference between market share analysis and TAM SAM SOM?
Direction and purpose. Market share analysis looks backward at a market that exists, asking what proportion each player currently holds and how it moved. TAM SAM SOM looks forward, estimating the size of an opportunity and what portion you might realistically capture. They share the hardest problem, which is defining the market honestly, and they are frequently confused in board material. A useful discipline: if you are reporting on performance use share, and if you are justifying an investment use sizing, but never present one as evidence for the other.
What is an example of a market share analysis?
Market defined as sales CRM for teams of 25 to 100 seats in Europe, excluding full marketing suites, measured in annual recurring revenue for the trailing twelve months. Boundary decisions recorded: spreadsheets and internal builds counted as an unpriced alternative because they won nine of last quarter's lost deals, more than any named vendor, which materially reduces our share and is the most honest choice available. Denominator sized two ways, bottom-up from segment population against a top-down published total, which disagree by roughly 30%, so a range is reported rather than a point estimate. Share table includes an unattributed remainder, which turns out to be substantial. The finding that changed a decision came from the segment cut rather than the aggregate: overall share rose about two points while the 50 to 100 seat segment fell about three, two movements that offset into apparent stability, with read-only seat cost named in four of five losses there. One gain was traced to a regional rival exiting the segment and labelled one-off so it is not projected. Roughly one point of movement stayed unexplained and was recorded as such rather than given a plausible story.
What are the most common mistakes in market share analysis?
Six recur. Never defining the market, so the number cannot be compared with anything. Redefining it between periods, usually in a flattering direction, which resets the trend. Excluding unpriced alternatives, which describes a competition buyers are not having. Forcing the shares to sum to 100% by shrinking the denominator until it behaves. Presenting estimated competitor revenue in the same formatting as your own measured figure, so an estimate becomes a fact by the time it reaches a board deck. And reporting only the aggregate, which conceals both the segment you own and the one eroding underneath it.
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