Competitive research is essential for standing out.
It'll give you insights into how your competitors position themselves, how they talk about their services, and how they try to attract your ideal customers — all so you know what NOT to do.
But, I'll let you in on a little secret.
Competitive research is boring as hell.
I should know. I've easily researched 400+ competitors for my clients.
There are only so many sh*tty social media posts and websites I can take.
So I developed a ChatGPT prompt that creates a deep analysis of your competitors and outputs an Excel spreadsheet with all the information.
It's helped me do a deep dive on my clients' competitors in a fraction of the time.
The Competitive Intel Prompt
Here's the prompt I use:
You are an expert business and marketing strategist. Your task is to perform market and competitive research for my company and give me recommendations for positioning opportunities to stand out and own a unique position in the market.
Here is a breakdown of what we do:
{Add 3-4 sentences about your company and what you do. Try to include your differentiator, if you know it.}
Here is a breakdown of our ideal customer:
{Add 2-3 sentences about your ideal customer. Include their DNA if you know it.}
You can find more information about my company at these links:
- Website: {url}
- Case Studies: {url}
- Blog Posts: {url}
- Lead Magnet: {url}
- Email Newsletter: {url}
- LinkedIn Personal: {url}
- LinkedIn Company Page: {url}
- Youtube: {url}
- Instagram: {url}
- Facebook: {url}
- Threads: {url}
- X: {url}
- TikTok: {url}
- Reddit: {url}
- Podcast: {url}
Here are my competitors:
- {name} - {url}
- {name} - {url}
- {name} - {url}- {name} - {url}
I want you to create an Excel spreadsheet analysis of each competitor that includes:
Company Name
- Company Summary
- Offer Summary
- Brand Identity Summary
- Brand Differentiator Summary
- Company and CEO social links
- Content themes and observed performance on each platform (LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Threads, X, Tiktok, Reddit)
- Key website resources and summaries of each (blog, case studies, lead magnets, newsletter, podcast)
- Clear source links and notes where information was incomplete
Excel Spreadsheet Layout:
Please layout the excel spreadsheet as follows:
- Columns to include:
-- Column 1: Labels
-- Remaining Columns: Competitor Names
- Rows to include:
-- Website URL
-- Company Summary
-- Offer Summary
-- Brand Identity Summary
-- Brand Differentiator Summary
-- Positioning Opportunities
-- LinkedIn Company Page URL
-- LinkedIn CEO Account
-- LinkedIn content themes and observed performance
-- YouTube
-- YouTube content themes and observed performance
-- Instagram
-- Instagram content themes and observed performance
-- Facebook
-- Facebook content themes and observed performance
-- Threads
-- Threads content themes and observed performance
-- X
-- X content themes and observed performance
-- TikTok
-- TikTok content themes and observed performance
-- Reddit
-- Reddit content themes and observed performance
-- Case Study Link
-- Case Study Summary
-- Blog Posts Link
-- Blog Posts Summary
-- Lead Magnet Link
-- Lead Magnet Summary
-- Newsletter Link
-- Newsletter Summary
-- Podcast Link
-- Podcast Summary
Constraints:
- Do NOT make up information.
- If you don't know something, please state that. Do not make assumptions.
Use Agent Mode
I recommend using Agent mode with this prompt.
Agent mode is for paid users that lets ChatGPT perform complex, multi-step tasks — like accessing social media and websites, filling out forms, and acting like a virtual assistant to automate research and data analysis.
Just know that Agent Mode will take time and stop periodically (Stopped after 50 seconds) while it accesses websites and builds the excel document.
Expect this to take 20-40 minutes to complete.
Here's how to turn on Agent Mode:
- Enter the prompt into the "Describe a task" field
- Click the Agent icon across the bottom (see image)
If you don't see the Agent icon, it likely means you don't have a paid version of ChatGPT.
Additional Resources
This prompts you to provide information you may not have about your company — a breakdown of your offers, ideal customers, and differentiatior.
These resources will help you create those breakdowns:
- Uncover Your Differentiation Workshop — prerecorded workshop running through multiple exercises to find your differentiation. Includes a Miro white board template to run the exercises yourself.
- Ideal Customer Playbook — create an ideal customer profile with buying journey and customer DNA. You'll end by creating a marketing plan to attract them.
- Sales Staircase — create a tiered offer staircase that takes your audience from a prospect to a lead to a customer to a high-ticket client. This YouTube video shows you how.
Using Your Results
When ChatGPT is finished, you'll get a breakdown in the chat as well as a link to download the Excel Spreadsheet.
Use this spreadsheet as a starting point.
Click the links, review the content, and look for things ChatGPT might have missed.
Remember, AI does make mistakes.
However, the output should be mostly accurate and give you a basis for standing out and being different from your competitors.
Want to take this prompt to the next level?
Turn it into a GPT and upload your brand strategy, marketing strategy, brand guidelines, and ideal customer profile.
Use that conversation for any question you have about standing out from your competitors.
It's like having a corporate spy embedded in your competitor's companies.
(Yes, I'm evil that way)
Until next week,
#SassyJason out.
✌🏼
