You know your competitors exist. You see their ads, their reviews, their customers. But you've never sat down and systematically figured out what they're doing, what they're charging, and where their weak spots are. AI makes that research fast and actually useful.
| Tool | What It Does | Cost | Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| Claude or ChatGPT | Analyzes competitors and identifies gaps and opportunities | Free | Sign up → |
| Finding competitor websites, reviews, and pricing | Free | Sign up → | |
| Google Sheets | Organizing your competitive analysis into a comparison matrix | Free | Sign up → |
What to do: Google what your customers would search for: “[your service] in [your city]” or “[your product type].” Write down every competitor on the first 2 pages of results. Also check Google Maps, Yelp, and any industry-specific directories.
Why you’re doing it: You can’t analyze competitors you haven’t identified. Cast a wide net — include direct competitors (same service, same area) and indirect competitors (different approach to the same problem).
What to expect: 20 minutes of research. You’ll find 5–10 competitors worth analyzing.
What to do: For each competitor, find and record: their website URL, services/products offered, pricing (if public), Google review rating and count, social media presence, unique selling proposition (what they emphasize), and anything they do that you don’t.
Why you’re doing it: Raw data is the foundation of useful analysis. You need facts, not impressions.
What to expect: 30–45 minutes of browsing competitor websites and profiles. Organize everything in Google Sheets with one row per competitor.
What to do: Paste your competitive data into Claude and prompt: “Analyze these competitors. Identify: common patterns across all of them, gaps that none of them are filling, their strongest selling points, their weakest areas based on reviews, and opportunities for a new competitor to differentiate.”
Why you’re doing it: AI spots patterns across large datasets faster than you can. It’ll identify opportunities you’d miss reading through data one competitor at a time.
What to expect: A structured analysis with specific, actionable insights. The “gaps” section is gold — it tells you where the market is underserved.
What to do: Read the 1-star and 2-star reviews of each competitor on Google and Yelp. Copy the most common complaints into your spreadsheet. Then prompt AI: “Based on these customer complaints about my competitors, what are the biggest unmet needs in this market? How could I position my business to address these pain points?”
Why you’re doing it: Negative reviews are a roadmap of what customers want but aren’t getting. Every complaint is an opportunity for you.
What to expect: Clear themes will emerge — slow response times, poor communication, hidden fees, low quality. These become your competitive advantages if you solve them.
What to do: Based on everything you’ve learned, prompt AI: “Based on this competitive analysis, write a positioning statement for my business. What should we emphasize that competitors don’t? What gap can we fill? Write it as a one-paragraph elevator pitch.”
Why you’re doing it: All this research is useless unless it changes how you present your business. The positioning statement is the actionable output.
What to expect: A clear, differentiated pitch that you can use on your website, in marketing, and in sales conversations.
This workflow is Beta — Based on Best Available Knowledge. Competitive analysis is a research and strategy workflow. AI accelerates the analysis phase but the data collection requires your manual effort browsing real competitor websites and reviews.