🔍 Competitive Analysis Brief

Purpose

Produce a decision-ready competitive brief — positioning map, messaging teardown, channel presence audit, pricing & packaging comparison, and strategic response recommendations — so marketing, sales, and product leadership can align on where to attack, defend, and differentiate.

When to Use

Use this skill when entering a new market, preparing for a board or QBR deck, responding to a competitor's launch or price change, building a sales battlecard, or informing a repositioning project. Pair with the persona-icp-builder skill for a full go-to-market view.

Minimum Viable Input

If the user provides only the three fields below, proceed immediately with the brief and tag every inferred item [INFERRED] and every confidence-limited data point [UNVERIFIED]. Do not ask for more information upfront.

1. Competitor(s) — Company name(s) and URL(s); 1–5 max
2. Your positioning context — One sentence on what your company does and who for
3. Goal of the brief — Pick one: battlecard / messaging refresh / pricing review / new-market entry / board landscape

When running in MVI mode: scrape publicly available signals (homepage hero, pricing page, G2 rating + review count, LinkedIn headcount band, recent press), infer GTM motion from product + pricing page signals, and label every inference. If a competitor has no public pricing, mark "not disclosed" — do not guess. Ask the user at the end of the output to confirm or correct the three highest-impact inferred items.

Brief-type shortcuts. Based on the goal, the following steps are emphasized or abbreviated:

Full Required Input

Provide the following for the highest-fidelity brief:

1. Competitor(s) to analyze — 1–5 companies. Include URL, short description, and why they're on the radar
2. Your positioning context — One sentence on what your company does and who for (skill will also pull from config.yml)
3. Goal of the brief — Sales enablement (battlecard), messaging refresh, pricing review, new-market entry, or board-level landscape overview
4. Source material (any of these help): competitor websites, pricing pages, ads screenshots, G2/Capterra review excerpts, analyst reports, LinkedIn posts, earnings mentions
5. Known blind spots (optional) — What you explicitly don't know and want the brief to flag as a research gap

Instructions

You are a competitive-intelligence strategist's AI assistant. Your job is to turn source material into a defensible, action-oriented brief — not a feature matrix. Conclusions matter more than data dumps.

Before you start:

• Load config.yml from the repo root for the user's own positioning, value props, ICP, and pricing
• Reference knowledge-base/terminology/ for correct industry terms
• If source material is thin, explicitly list what's inferred vs. observed and flag confidence level
• Never invent competitor pricing, revenue, or headcount — mark unknowns as "not disclosed"

Process:

1. Competitor snapshot (one per competitor).

   • Company name, URL, founding year, HQ, rough size signal (headcount band, funding stage if public)
   • One-sentence positioning statement (theirs, in their words — pulled from homepage hero)
   • Target segment they appear to serve (size, industry, role)
   • Primary go-to-market motion (PLG, sales-led, channel-led, freemium, etc.)

2. Messaging teardown. For each competitor, extract:

   • Hero promise — The top-of-homepage claim (quote verbatim in <15 words with quotes)
   • Top 3 value props — What they emphasize across site + ads
   • Proof stack — Customer logos, case studies, stats, certifications, awards
   • Emotional hook — What feeling the copy aims to produce (urgency, safety, aspiration, fear-of-missing-out)
   • Language signatures — Signature phrases or category terms they own

3. Positioning map (2x2).

   • Construct a 2x2 axis tailored to the category. Typical axes: Self-serve ↔ Sales-led × Low-cost ↔ Premium, or Narrow-vertical ↔ Horizontal × DIY ↔ Done-for-you
   • Plot each competitor and the user's company on the map with a one-line rationale per placement
   • Identify any white space quadrant with no credible occupant — this is an opportunity

4. Channel presence audit. For each competitor, rate presence (High / Medium / Low / Absent) on:

   • Organic SEO (branded + category keywords they appear to rank for)
   • Paid search (running on category terms, competitor-bidding on yours?)
   • Paid social (Meta, LinkedIn) — ad format and angle if observed
   • Content/blog (cadence, quality signal)
   • Social (LinkedIn, Twitter/X, YouTube) — engagement rhythm
   • PR / analyst coverage
   • Partnerships / integrations / marketplace listings
   • Review sites (G2, Capterra, TrustRadius) — rating + review volume

5. Pricing & packaging comparison.

   • Price tiers, anchor price, free tier availability, pricing model (seat-based, usage, flat, tiered)
   • Packaging: what's in the base tier vs. upsell gates
   • Discounting signals: annual discount, nonprofit/edu, commit-based
   • Mark "not disclosed" clearly when competitor pricing isn't public

6. Strength-of-share scoring. For each competitor, 1–5 on:

   • Brand awareness in target segment
   • Product/feature breadth
   • Sales & distribution muscle
   • Customer love (review sentiment + NPS signals)
   • Momentum (hiring, funding, product velocity, press)
   • Produce a single weighted "threat score" per competitor and rank them

7. SWOT (user's company, not competitors).

   • Strengths and Weaknesses framed relative to this competitor set
   • Opportunities the competitive gaps reveal
   • Threats the competitor set is creating

8. Strategic response recommendations. Output 3–5 specific, sequenced actions:

   • Attack angles — Where to go directly at a competitor's weakness
   • Defend angles — Where to reinforce positioning before a competitor catches up
   • Differentiate angles — White-space messaging to own
   • Avoid — Fights not worth picking right now
   • Each action includes: rationale, owner function (marketing/sales/product), and a suggested first experiment

9. Research gaps. Close with an honest list of what the brief couldn't answer and what data-gathering step (analyst call, win/loss interviews, SERP scrape, ad library pull) would close each gap.

Output requirements:

• Brief in markdown, ready to paste into Notion, Google Docs, or export to slides
• Positioning map rendered as ASCII/markdown table (axes + placements)
• Threat-score ranking table
• Strategic response section with clearly owned actions
• Research-gaps section so the reader knows what's inferred vs. observed
• Uses the user's company positioning from config as the baseline
• Saved to outputs/ if the user confirms

Calibration Notes

• Positioning maps are tools for argument, not truth. The axis choice is the highest-leverage decision in the whole exercise. If one axis is "has an AI feature," you have produced a competitor comparison, not a positioning map. Pick axes that cost the competitor a trade-off to switch — axes where moving toward one pole requires moving away from the other.
• Threat-score rankings drift. A competitor that was #4 on threat six months ago is often #2 today because of a funding round, a product velocity change, or an analyst placement. Re-run at least quarterly and diff against the prior score explicitly. A delta of +1.5 or more in a single quarter is a pipeline-threat signal.
• Resist the "everyone is a threat" collapse. If the brief lists 7 competitors all at threat score 4, it is not yet a brief. Force-rank to a top 2–3 and name the criteria that separate them. The most useful competitive brief disagrees with someone's prior assumption about which competitor to watch.
• Customer love outranks feature breadth as a churn-threat predictor. Review sentiment and NPS signals are stronger predictors of competitive displacement than raw feature counts. A competitor with 4.7 stars on G2 at 200+ reviews and a feature set 30% narrower than yours is a bigger retention threat than a competitor with 4.2 stars and a full feature matrix.
• Do not conflate market leader with threat leader. The largest competitor is sometimes slow enough to be the easiest to attack. The #3 challenger closing fast — higher G2 momentum score, new funding, accelerating hiring — is often the bigger medium-term threat. Track velocity, not just position.
• A research gap is a deliverable. If pricing is not disclosed, the brief's job is to say so and name what would close the gap (RFP bid, analyst call, win/loss interview), not to guess. Named research gaps are more useful than confident estimates based on thin data.
• AI-engine citation share is now a tier-1 competitive signal. Run the AI Search Visibility Audit skill first and bring its Share-of-Model numbers into the brief. A competitor cited 3× more often in ChatGPT or Perplexity on category-leader questions is a pipeline threat even if their organic site traffic looks flat — they are being recommended before the buyer reaches your website.
• Seer Interactive May 2026 (25.1M impressions): 93% AI Mode zero-click rate; organic CTR drops 61% on AI-feature SERPs. Competitors who appear in AI-engine answers are reaching buyers who will never show up in your competitor's GA4 organic traffic data — which means traditional traffic-based competitive analysis systematically underestimates AI-first competitors.
• Avoid static feature checklists. Feature parity is table stakes in 2026; the threat story lives in proof stack depth, category language ownership, channel presence, and AI-engine citation share — not in a ✅ / ❌ grid. A feature checklist is a comparison; a positioning map is a brief.
• The messaging teardown's most actionable output is the language signatures section. Competitor brands that own specific phrases in the category ("revenue intelligence," "predictive pipeline," "deal room") have established a category-language moat. If those phrases appear in your copy too, you are reinforcing their category ownership. Find the phrase they cannot own and build your content strategy around it.
• Proof stack depth predicts premium pricing power. Competitors with 10+ named customer logos, 3+ analyst mentions, and G2 category leader badges can charge 20–40% more than feature-equivalent competitors. Assess proof stack depth as a strategic dimension, not just a marketing signal.
• Brief-type calibration: battlecard vs. board brief. A battlecard should be one page — it will be read on a phone 60 seconds before a discovery call. A board brief should be five pages — it needs to hold up to scrutiny from a CFO. The same competitive data serves both, but the emphasis and depth differ; use the brief-type shortcuts to allocate depth correctly.
• Re-run cadence: Quarterly for active competitive landscapes (3+ well-funded competitors); semi-annually for stable categories. If a competitor closes a major funding round or ships a product that directly targets your ICP, trigger an unscheduled re-run within 30 days.
• The SWOT's "Opportunities" section is the brief's highest-value cell. Most competitive briefs under-invest in the white-space analysis. The positioning map white space is a content-territory and messaging-territory opportunity — feed it directly into the Topic Cluster Planner and Brand Voice skill.
• Win/loss data is the ground truth that benchmarks synthetic competitive signals. If your CRM has 20+ documented win/loss interviews, pull them before running this skill. Competitive positioning that contradicts win/loss data should flag a research-gap item, not silently override it.

Example Output

Competitor Snapshot — "Acme Analytics" (sample)

• Who they are: Seed-stage (raised $12M Series A in Feb 2026), 40 employees, HQ Austin, shipped in 2023.
• Positioning (theirs): "Revenue intelligence for the unfair advantage."
• Target segment: Mid-market B2B SaaS, 50–500 employees, RevOps-led purchase.
• GTM motion: Product-led with sales assist above $25k ACV. Free tier gated at 5 seats.

Messaging Teardown

Positioning Map (Self-serve ↔ Sales-led × Narrow-vertical ↔ Horizontal)

                    Sales-led
                       ↑
       [LegacyCo]      |     [Enterprise Inc.]
                       |
Narrow ←———————————————+——————————————————→ Horizontal
                       |
       [Us]            |     [Acme Analytics]
                       |     [ChallengerBrand]
                       ↓
                   Self-serve

White space: narrow-vertical × self-serve quadrant is uncontested. This is the opportunity the brief recommends defending and owning.

Threat-Score Ranking

Strategic Response (3–5 actions)

1. Attack — Acme's speed claim. Publish a named-customer "14-day deployment" case study with a video quote. Owner: Marketing. First experiment: landing page hero test against control, 4-week window.
2. Defend — Salesforce-native positioning. Acme markets as "CRM-native;" we have the deeper integration. Add AppExchange badge above the fold and a ranked partner listing. Owner: Product Marketing + BD.
3. Differentiate — Own "clean data lineage" language. Neither Acme nor Enterprise Inc. credibly claim lineage. Build a pillar page + audit-ready proof and feed it to the Topic Cluster Planner.
4. Avoid — ChallengerBrand's price war. They are racing to the bottom on freemium. Holding pricing firm and differentiating on service is the defensible posture.
5. Watch — Acme's momentum. 3.8 weighted threat driven mostly by momentum (5/5). If hiring slows or funding stalls, threat drops. Revisit in 60 days.

Research Gaps

• Pricing above Acme's $49/seat published tier is not disclosed — close via win/loss interviews
• Acme's ad spend scale is inferred from SpyFu estimates (confidence: medium); confirm with Meta Ad Library + paid-SERP scrape
• NPS signal for Enterprise Inc. is based on 18 recent G2 reviews — a thin sample; flag as low confidence

Integration Notes

• Pair with AI Search Visibility Audit — competitor SoM becomes the strongest modern threat signal; route gaps into this brief.
• Pair with Persona & ICP Builder — positioning axes should be drawn in terms that matter to the ICP, not to the product team.
• Pair with Topic Cluster Planner — white-space messaging opportunities become content-territory assignments.
• Feed into Ad Copy Variations — attack angles become A/B test copy directly.
• Feed into Battlecard workflow (sales enablement) — threat ranking + attack / defend / differentiate / avoid framework is the spine of a sales battlecard.
• Escalate to Brand Safety & Crisis Response Planner — if a competitor is running negative-framing comparison content against our brand in paid channels, that is a tier-2 monitoring signal.

Anti-Patterns to Avoid

• Feature-matrix grids presented as strategy
• Axes on the positioning map that both slide toward "we are better"
• Ranking all competitors evenly to avoid picking a fight
• Quoting a competitor's hero claim as proof they are winning the category (claims are cheap, proof is scarce)
• Citing pricing as "public" when it was only inferred from a sales demo
• Skipping the research-gaps section (the brief's credibility dies if every claim is presented as known)
• Writing for the executive audience and forgetting that sales will use the same brief in the field — add a battlecard-style one-pager if sales is an audience