Business Operations & Growth
Conduct Competitive Analysis
Analyze a product's competitive landscape using user-provided, dated source material and clearly labeled evidence gaps.
Quick facts
- Best for
- Owners · Founder-operators
- Prompt type
- Effectiveness
- Expected result
- A source-linked competitor comparison with evidence limitations, hypotheses, and specific next-research actions.
- Time saved
- 2+ hours
- Required inputs
- PRODUCT OR SERVICE · TARGET MARKET · RESEARCH SCOPE · COMPETITOR SOURCE MATERIAL · CUSTOMER SOURCE MATERIAL · RESEARCH DATE
- Works with
- ChatGPT + Claude
What this prompt does
- Organizes provided competitor and customer research into a source-linked comparison.
- Identifies evidence-backed differences, gaps, risks, and next research actions without inventing market facts.
When to use
- When you have a defined product, target market, research scope, and dated source material for the competitors being compared.
When not to use
- Do not use it without source material or as a substitute for current primary research, customer interviews, legal review, or pricing verification.
The prompt
#CONTEXT:
You are creating a competitive analysis for a product or service. Work only from the user-provided source material and clearly identify unavailable evidence.
#ROLE:
Act as a careful competitive-intelligence analyst. Cite each material claim to the provided source and separate facts, interpretations, and hypotheses.
#RESPONSE GUIDELINES:
1. Summarize the product, target market, research scope, and research date.
2. Analyze only competitors represented in the provided source material.
3. Compare offerings, pricing when explicitly sourced, positioning, strengths, weaknesses, and customer feedback.
4. Cite the supplied source beside every competitor or market claim.
5. Mark conflicting, stale, or unavailable evidence explicitly.
6. Frame gaps, differentiation, and go-to-market ideas as hypotheses to validate, not established market facts.
7. Do not invent competitors, features, prices, reviews, citations, market size, or customer sentiment.
#INFORMATION ABOUT ME:
- Product or service: [PRODUCT OR SERVICE]
- Target market: [TARGET MARKET]
- Research scope: [RESEARCH SCOPE]
- Competitor source material with titles, URLs, dates, and excerpts: [COMPETITOR SOURCE MATERIAL]
- Customer source material with provenance: [CUSTOMER SOURCE MATERIAL]
- Research date: [RESEARCH DATE]
#RESPONSE FORMAT:
Scope and evidence:
- Product or service: [SUMMARY]
- Target market and geography: [SCOPE]
- Sources reviewed: [SOURCE LIST]
- Evidence limitations: [LIMITATIONS]
Competitor [NUMBER]:
- Name: [NAME]
- Offerings: [FACTS AND CITATIONS]
- Pricing: [SOURCED PRICE OR "UNAVAILABLE"]
- Positioning: [FACTS AND CITATIONS]
- Strengths: [EVIDENCE AND INTERPRETATION]
- Weaknesses: [EVIDENCE AND INTERPRETATION]
- Customer signals: [EVIDENCE AND CITATIONS]
Comparison:
- Supported differences: [DIFFERENCES WITH CITATIONS]
- Possible gaps: [HYPOTHESES]
- Risks and unknowns: [UNKNOWN EVIDENCE]
Recommended next research:
- [ACTION, OWNER, SOURCE, OR INTERVIEW]
Decision notes:
- [WHAT CAN BE DECIDED NOW]
- [WHAT REQUIRES MORE EVIDENCE]Input checklist
- PRODUCT OR SERVICE
- TARGET MARKET
- RESEARCH SCOPE
- COMPETITOR SOURCE MATERIAL
- CUSTOMER SOURCE MATERIAL
- RESEARCH DATE
Example input
Product: a facilitated SOP-capture service for U.S. professional-services firms. Target market: firms with 10–50 employees. Scope: compare onboarding method, deliverables, pricing evidence, and maintenance support. Competitor sources: dated public service pages and archived pricing pages for three named firms. Customer sources: eight anonymized discovery-call summaries with dates. Research date: July 30, 2026.Expected output structure
- A source-linked competitor comparison with evidence limitations, hypotheses, and specific next-research actions.
Customize this prompt
- Provide source excerpts with URLs and dates so the analysis remains auditable.
- Limit the scope to the decision you need to make instead of asking for a universal market map.
Guardrails
- Use only user-provided or explicitly supplied source-grounded research; cite sources and label unavailable evidence instead of inventing market facts.
- Verify time-sensitive pricing, product, policy, and positioning facts against current authoritative sources before deciding or publishing.
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