run-competitor-analysis

name	run-competitor-analysis
description	Compare competitors using current, source-linked evidence and explain the patterns, gaps, opportunities, and implications for a real business decision. Use for positioning, pricing, product, campaign, market, partnership, or recurring competitor-research questions.

Run a competitor analysis

Help the user understand a competitive landscape well enough to make a real positioning, pricing, product, campaign, market, or partnership decision. Deliver current evidence and interpretation, not a generic company fact sheet.

1. Start from the decision

Clarify the decision, audience, deadline, market boundary, timeframe, and useful output. “Research Company X” could mean evaluating a partnership, preparing for a conversation, comparing positioning, or tracking where a market is headed; the purpose changes the evidence and depth.

Use approved company materials, the user's website, and prior research when they help establish the user's product, positioning, customers, and current assumptions. For client work, use only that client's approved context and keep its evidence, conclusions, and artifacts separate from every other client.

Identify direct competitors, indirect alternatives, and emerging players that could change the decision. If the comparison set is uncertain, propose a reviewable set and explain the inclusions and exclusions before deep research.

2. Choose the evidence and depth

Agree on the dimensions that matter, such as product, pricing, positioning, audience, channels, traction, capabilities, geography, partnerships, or recent strategic changes. Reuse an accepted comparison frame when it still fits rather than asking the user to redesign it.

Start with a broad source check when the landscape is uncertain. Go deeper on the competitors and questions most likely to change the decision. Separate bounded companion passes can improve depth for a small comparison set, but they cost more; explain that tradeoff when it matters.

Prefer current primary sources, preserve URLs and publication dates, and use reputable secondary sources to corroborate or fill material gaps. Treat company claims, review sentiment, estimates, and third-party analysis according to what each source can actually support.

3. Research the competitors

Use the visible browser, approved logged-in tools, prior materials, and the live web to inspect the evidence behind each comparison. Useful signals may include:

• product or service details, packaging, pricing, and offers;
• positioning, audience, campaigns, ads, and changes in messaging or content;
• launches, partnerships, funding, financial, hiring, and geographic signals;
• job postings, leadership posts, talks, and articles that reveal priorities; and
• customer reviews or community discussion that expose strengths, gaps, and switching behavior.

Follow useful links to their underlying source instead of relying on search-result summaries. Note what was checked, what could not be verified, and which evidence may be stale or incomplete.

4. Compare and interpret

Normalize the comparison enough to make like-for-like claims. Show important differences in scope, currency, package, period, geography, audience, or source definition instead of flattening them.

Separate observed facts, competitor claims, other people's interpretations, and the companion's inferences. For example, hiring several enterprise sellers in one region is evidence; expansion into that market is a hypothesis. Surface contradictions and missing evidence rather than resolving them with guesses.

Interpret what the patterns mean for the user's decision. Identify meaningful gaps, crowded claims, credible opportunities, risks, and questions worth testing. Do not turn difference into advantage without explaining why the target audience should care.

5. Deliver and review the result

Produce the agreed brief, comparison table, report, or presentation with source links and dates beside material claims. Lead with the decision-relevant conclusions, then show the evidence, uncertainty, and implications that support them.

Let the user correct the comparison set, evidence bar, dimensions, depth, and interpretation before expanding the work. When the request becomes primarily SEO, use strawberry/marketing/audit-seo-create-report; when it requires a broader market taxonomy and entity landscape, use strawberry/research-analysis/map-a-market.

6. Continue within the current permission

Follow Strawberry's active scoped permission for every source, account, client, destination, and action. Public research, using logged-in competitive-intelligence tools, creating an internal artifact, sharing it, and changing a campaign, website, product, or pricing record are separate actions. Draft or ask when permission is insufficient, stop when identity, scope, impact, or sensitive-data handling changes, and verify completed external actions.

After the workflow proves useful, preserve the accepted scope, comparison set, source rules, dimensions, depth, and output as a custom or team skill. Add a Routine only when the team has a real cadence or trigger; define the competitors, sources, meaningful-change rule, output, destination, review behavior, and stop conditions rather than assuming a weekly or monthly schedule.