competitors analysis pain points

“But honestly, my process feels way too time-consuming, and I’m curious how others do it.”

“It works, but honestly, it takes forever.”

“The hard part for me is getting holistic data on features. especially SaaS when they’re complex products hidden behind a website without thorough documentation on the comparisons you’re looking for.”

“My sense is that AI can make this a lot less time-consuming (and can therefore do more of it).”

“adding to that...what makes competitive analysis so time consuming (for me anyway) is scouring the content I listed for the negative sentiments, quotes, about competitors.”

“The process of finding information through different channels by hand is possible but very time-consuming.”

“If they have help docs open, that's a treasure trove - but can be time consuming unless you know exactly what you are after.”

“Most good competitor research is not going to be found in a tool.”

“Totally agree! SpyFu, Semrush, all tools are just pretending to know, but there is no truth... Is just hard work.”

“You might be able to get a glance of what the competitor is doing with SEMRush, Spyfu.... but take it with a grain of salt as they are not very accurate.”

“No AI is not good at competitive analysis, imo. When doing competitive analyses you need to be able to find the small nuances about the competition so that you can differentiate. AI does broad strokes when it does any kind of research.”

“A general tool like ChatGPT or Perplexity will give answers that sound good on the surface but don't hold much water if you drill into them for specifics.”

“Most of the tools (SEMRush, Spyfu...ect) people will say are garbage as the data is incorrect. 95% of time with their data is not even close to reality.”

“Similarweb is usually amazing for large websites. When I looked myself up I actually got quite mad at how accurate they were.”

“I was quite impressed with it myself but it's very expensive :(”

“The hard part for me is getting holistic data on features. especially SaaS when they’re complex products hidden behind a website without thorough documentation on the comparisons you’re looking for.”

“And often times you don’t have access unless you can find someone who uses the product (a competitor isn’t just gonna show you a demo or get you a demo account).”

“What you're doing is good. Although it might feel like a lot of work, the only way you're going to get decent insights into what competitors are doing is through this kind of deep work. What you are defining as 'good' - ie the link, hook, visuals, style - they're not things that can be easily measured or quantified without your expert opinion.”

“Why would you not focus on customer reviews? Especially from a third party like TrustPilot, not from the company website obviously. This is where you'll find what the customers really like and really don't like about the competitor and could give you a leg up on the competition. You're not going to find what customers like and dislike about the company in their help docs.”

“It’s a SaaS product, little tricky to use their product. It was difficult to find their pricing too”

“Without there sales data, identifying there customers is one of the toughest parts. Typically social media followers are not a good identifier.”

“Typical rookie exercise - you will never know actual conversion rates CPA roas revenue etc. focus on what you can control.”

“No AI is not good at competitive analysis, imo. When doing competitive analyses you need to be able to find the small nuances about the competition so that you can differentiate. AI does broad strokes when it does any kind of research.”

“For example - I found a tweet from the cofounder of the company talking about some things that enabled me to position them as “for small businesses” and us for bigger brands, thus retaining one of our biggest customers. How would you guide AI to find something like that?”

“A general tool like ChatGPT or Perplexity will give answers that sound good on the surface but don't hold much water if you drill into them for specifics.”

“We've found a few requirements for building AI that answers competitive questions effectively: 1. You need to feed it the right data. Don't expect ChatGPT etc. to find reviews, social threads, pricing data from Amazon Marketplace. This is tedious as you say but without the right data then don't count on reliable answers.”

“You need to provide a framework for why one company or product is "better" than another. If you ask an LLM a broad question like "Why is Company X better than Company Y?", it will do its best but an LLM isn't any kind of expert at your domain and won't know how to compare companies or products.”

“My sense is that AI can make this a lot less time-consuming (and can therefore do more of it).”

“Most of what ChatGPT sends back we already know, but sometimes there are tidbits that we haven't thought about before. We always go and validate those points.”

“How did you discover your competitors for product based businesses? I’m aware you can go the route of digging in to google by typing the keyword, the actual product you’re trying to sell, social media keyword search, word of mouth in the space, and retail search. However, they’re are brands that doesn’t get visibility especially start up businesses so I’m interested to know tools/methods you used how you really dug in deep?”

“If you start a business in an existing market you should already have an idea of the competitors or you should find them easily online as that is part of knowing your market. If you are going into a new market or possibly creating a new market that is more tricky. I would search the problem or solution that the product address.”

“Our industry is relatively small and not many competitors so word got around quickly as we're were up against them in sales pitches.”

“Identify your competitors (Real and perceived ones)”

“This is crazy. The amount of information you can learn from a competitors site is insane.”

“Without there sales data, identifying there customers is one of the toughest parts.”

“Why would you not focus on customer reviews? Especially from a third party like TrustPilot, not from the company website obviously. This is where you'll find what the customers really like and really don't like about the competitor and could give you a leg up on the competition. You're not going to find what customers like and dislike about the company in their help docs.”

“Ask your customers”

“How to analyze your competition in terms of PPC?”

“You might be able to get a glance of what the competitor is doing with SEMRush, Spyfu.... but take it with a grain of salt as they are not very accurate.”

“If your competitor has verified their Google ads you can see everything they’re running via SEM + On their ad, tap More (three dots icon) + Click “See more ads this advertiser has shown using Google””

“Determine their main differentiator / unique selling point”

“I usually use this formula to identify their USP: <a competitor> is confident that customers will buy <a competitor>’s product because <a competitor> solves <a customer problem> better than any alternative due to the following reasons: Proof 1: (e.g. cost advantage, location and so on) Proof 2: …”

“What I define 'good' is really a subjective one for our brand. I think criterion must be set different. I first filtered viral contents based on their data(likes, shares like that) and then use my metric. I try to catch new viral hooks and visuals that I think I can use it for our brand. I guess that to sort what content references won't interrupt the brand voice is still a marketer's job even if we're living in an AI era.”

“Save good examples: When I find interesting videos, I note things like the link, the hook, visuals, and even the editing style.”

“I use airtable to archive it manually rn. I usually take a screen capture of visual appeals on viral short form videos and leave my thoughts too.”

“Finally, I compile everything into a resource we can use when planning our own content.”