TikTok competitor analysis: Step-by-step guide for 2025

TikTok’s meteoric rise has reshaped the social media landscape, becoming an unmissable platform for brands aiming to capture attention and drive business results. With over 1 billion monthly active users the platform is a powerhouse for content creators and businesses alike. In fact, 49% of TikTok users report purchasing something after seeing it advertised, promoted, or reviewed on the app.

However, this vibrant ecosystem is also highly competitive. To truly succeed, brands must look beyond their own efforts and delve into a comprehensive TikTok competitor analysis. Competitor analysis is crucial for understanding the market, setting realistic benchmarks, identifying untapped opportunities and ultimately crafting a winning strategy that resonates with the target audience and drives growth.

What is a TikTok competitor analysis?

A TikTok competitor analysis is the systematic process of identifying your key competitors on TikTok and evaluating their strategies, content, performance and audience engagement. Successful competitor analysis requires diving deeper than just casually scrolling through their feeds. You’re looking to understand what your competitors are doing well, what their weaknesses are, and what opportunities exist for your brand to differentiate itself and capture a greater share of attention.

This analysis involves examining various facets of their TikTok presence, including:

• Content Strategy: The types of videos your competition post (e.g., tutorials, challenges, humor, behind-the-scenes), content themes, video styles, use of sounds, music and effects.
• Posting Cadence & Timing: How often your competitors post and at what times.
• Engagement Metrics: Likes, comments, shares, views and overall engagement rates on competitor videos.
• Audience Growth & Demographics: How quickly your competition’s audience is growing and the characteristics of their followers.
• Hashtag Usage: The types of hashtags your competitors use (branded, trending, niche) and their effectiveness.
• Use of TikTok Features: How competitors leverage features like Duets, Stitches, TikTok LIVE, polls, Q and As and TikTok Shop.

Why TikTok competitor analysis matters in 2025

Conducting a regular TikTok competitor analysis isn’t just a box-ticking exercise; it’s a strategic imperative for brands serious about succeeding on the platform. Here are some reasons why you should make it a priority this year.

Identify emerging content trends and untapped opportunities for your brand

TikTok trends move at lightning speed. A competitor analysis helps you spot what content formats, sounds, challenges, and topics are currently resonating within your specific niche. By seeing what’s working for others, you can identify popular styles to adapt for your own brand or, even better, find content gaps your competitors aren’t addressing, allowing you to be a first-mover. This understanding helps you focus your efforts on creating content that has a higher likelihood of engagement, enabling you to improve your social media ROI.

Understand your target audience more deeply

The audience your competitors are attracting likely shares significant overlap with your own target audience. By analyzing the content that generates the most engagement (comments, shares, saves) for them, you gain valuable insights into the preferences, pain points, and passions of your desired audience on TikTok. This understanding is crucial for tailoring your content to be more relevant and appealing to your audience.

Benchmark your performance and set realistic goals

Without understanding what your competitors are achieving, it’s difficult to gauge your own success or set informed performance goals. A competitor analysis provides crucial benchmarks. How does your follower growth rate compare? Are your engagement rates per video higher or lower? Sprout Social, for instance, empowers you to not only track your TikTok performance but also to see how those videos perform compared to your content on other social networks, providing a holistic view of your video strategy. This helps you understand where TikTok fits in your overall social media marketing strategy and what realistic success looks like.

Refine your TikTok strategy for tangible business impact

Ultimately, the goal of your TikTok presence is to contribute to broader business objectives. Insights from a competitor analysis are directly actionable. They can inform your content pillars, help you decide on the optimal mix of content types, guide your posting frequency and even help you identify the best times to post on TikTok for maximum engagement using tools like Sprout Social’s Optimal Send Times. By understanding the competitive landscape, you can make data-driven decisions to refine your strategy, improve your ROI and ultimately drive business results and grow your brand.

Stay agile and adapt to a rapidly evolving platform

TikTok is not a static platform; its features, algorithms and user behaviors are constantly evolving. Regularly analyzing your competitors helps you stay on top of these changes. Are they adopting new TikTok features quickly? Are their content styles shifting? This ongoing vigilance ensures your brand remains agile, relevant and doesn’t get left behind in the fast-paced world of TikTok.

5-step guide to performing a TikTok competitor analysis

Step 1. Identify your key TikTok competitors

Before you can analyze, you need to know who you’re up against.

• Direct Competitors: Brands offering similar products/services to the same target audience.
• Indirect Competitors: Brands that may not offer the same products/services but compete for your audience’s attention on TikTok with similar content themes or by targeting similar demographics.
• Aspirational Competitors: Brands outside your immediate niche that excel on TikTok and from whom you can draw inspiration for content formats and engagement strategies.

While you could spend hours performing manual searches on TikTok natively, you can leverage Sprout Social’s Listening tools to cast a wider net. With Sprout, you can set up Listening Topics around your industry, specific keywords relevant to your products/services or even track mentions of your brand alongside potential competitors. This can help you identify influential voices and active brands in your space that you may not have been aware of.

Step 2. Analyze competitor content strategy and performance

Once you have your list, it’s time to dissect their content. Look at:

• Content Themes & Pillars: What are the recurring topics or subjects they cover?
• Video Formats & Styles: Are they using trending audio, original audio, tutorials, humor, challenges, behind-the-scenes, user-generated content (UGC)? What’s the typical video length and production quality?
• Use of TikTok Features: How effectively are they using text overlays, AR filters, stickers, Duets, Stitches, etc.?
• Posting Frequency & Consistency: How often do they post? Is there a regular schedule?
• Engagement Metrics: For their recent posts, note the average views, likes, comments, and shares. Calculate an approximate engagement rate (e.g., (likes + comments + shares) / views * 100).

While you can manually review competitor profiles on TikTok itself, Sprout Social provides critical data for your own performance, which serves as your benchmark.

The TikTok Profiles Report in Sprout gives you a comprehensive view of your TikTok-specific metrics. You can use this detailed understanding of your own performance as a baseline when evaluating the publicly available data points of your competitors.

Sprout’s Post Performance Report allows you to analyze your TikTok posts and see how they stack up against your content on other networks. This cross-network insight helps you understand what content truly resonates with your audience on TikTok, providing a valuable lens through which to assess competitor strategies.

Step 3. Examine competitor audience and engagement tactics

Understanding who your competitors are engaging and how they do it is crucial.

• Audience Demographics (Inferred): Based on their content and the comments, can you infer the age range, interests, and location of their engaged audience?
• Comment Sentiment: What is the general tone of comments on their posts? Positive, negative, neutral? Are there recurring questions or feedback points?
• Engagement Strategy: How do they respond to comments? Do they engage with other users’ content? Do they foster a sense of community?

Sprout’s Listening tools are invaluable here. You can analyze public conversations and sentiment around your competitors, their branded hashtags or industry keywords. Features like Listening Sentiment, Message Explorer, and Themes can reveal how audiences perceive your competitors and what they’re talking about in relation to them.

While you manage your own TikTok comments and engagement through Sprout’s Smart Inbox, observing how this centralized system helps you stay organized and responsive can inform what you look for in competitor engagement. Are they as organized and timely as a brand using Sprout would be?

Step 4. Benchmark performance and identify gaps with social media analytics

This is where you consolidate your data and compare.

• Key Metrics for Comparison: Follower count, follower growth rate over a period, average views per video, average engagement rate, video views to follower ratio.
• Identify Gaps: Where are competitors outperforming you? Where are they underperforming, creating an opportunity for you? Are there content types or audience segments they are neglecting?

Sprout Social excels at providing data to benchmark and make informed decisions.

Leverage Sprout’s Competitive Reports and Competitive Widgets available in Premium Analytics to track and compare your TikTok performance against competitors if competitor profile tracking is enabled, or to compare your performance across networks to set internal benchmarks.

The Profile Performance Report within Sprout can show your TikTok profile’s growth trajectory, which you can then compare against the observed growth of competitors.
A significant advantage is Sprout’s ability to help you see an overall view of my social metrics. This integrated perspective is vital for understanding the true impact and potential of your TikTok efforts relative to your entire social strategy.

Step 5. Leverage insights to make strategic adjustments

The final, and most crucial, step is to turn your analysis into action.

• Emulate Success: What are high-performing competitors doing that you could adapt (not copy) for your brand voice and audience?
• Exploit Weaknesses: Where are competitors falling short? This is your opportunity to shine.
• Test & Iterate: Use your findings to brainstorm new content ideas, experiment with different formats or posting times.

Once you have your insights, Sprout makes it easy to implement and manage your refined strategy.

Use Sprout’s planning and social media publishing features, like the Shared Content Calendar and Optimal Send Times, to efficiently plan and publish your TikTok content. Sprout allows scheduling posts over a year in advance, far exceeding TikTok’s native 10-day limit, enabling better long-term planning.

Organize larger initiatives with Sprout Campaigns to manage and measure the effectiveness of specific TikTok strategies. Use Message Tagging to categorize your TikTok content and analyze its performance with the Tag Report.

Continuously monitor your performance using Sprout’s analytics to see what’s working, make further adjustments, and ensure your TikTok strategy is always improving.

Are you ready to stay ahead in the competitive TikTok arena?

In the dynamic and often crowded landscape of TikTok, a thorough competitor analysis is no longer a luxury—it’s a necessity for brands aiming to achieve sustainable growth and meaningful engagement. By systematically understanding your competitors’ strategies, content performance and audience interactions, you can uncover invaluable insights to inform and elevate your own TikTok presence.

And with a powerful platform like Sprout Social by your side, you gain the capabilities to efficiently gather data, analyze performance across networks, and manage your entire TikTok workflow from planning to reporting. This allows you to save time, build a cohesive content plan, and confidently navigate the world of TikTok to truly connect with your audience and grow your brand.

If you’re ready to take your brand to the next level on TikTok, start a free 30-day trial of Sprout today.

 

TikTok competitor analysis FAQs

What is the main goal of a TikTok competitor analysis?

The main goal of a TikTok competitor analysis is to understand your competitors’ strategies, content performance, and audience engagement on TikTok. This helps you identify opportunities, benchmark your own efforts, refine your strategy, and ultimately drive better business results.

What are some key metrics to focus on when analyzing TikTok competitors?

Key metrics include their follower growth rate, average video views, engagement rates (likes, comments, shares per view), content themes, posting frequency and the types of TikTok features (e.g., sounds, effects, Duets, Stitches) they use effectively.

Can I track competitor TikTok data directly in Sprout Social?

Sprout Social offers robust analytics for your own connected TikTok profiles. For competitors, you can use Sprout’s Listening tools to monitor their public activity, mentions and sentiment. Sprout’s general Competitive Reports and Premium Analytics Competitive Widgets are designed to provide comparative insights, which can include TikTok data alongside other networks