A competitor analysis is useful when it changes a decision. A long matrix of company facts can look thorough while leaving positioning, pricing, campaign, product, or market choices exactly where they started.

Strawberry can research the live web beside your approved product, positioning, campaign, and customer context. Your companion can follow sources beyond search-result summaries, inspect logged-in competitive tools when permitted, and keep facts, claims, outside interpretation, and inference distinct.

Start from the decision

Clarify the decision, audience, market boundary, timeframe, deadline, and useful output. Identify the direct competitors, indirect alternatives, and emerging players that could change that decision. Review the comparison set before deep research when the landscape is uncertain.

Want to try it?

Ask your Strawberry companion: “Help me compare our top competitors and explain what the evidence means for our positioning and next decisions.”

Skill

Run a competitor analysis

Compare the competitors and dimensions that matter for a current positioning, pricing, product, campaign, market, or partnership decision.

Research the live evidence

Use current primary sources where possible: product and pricing pages, offers, campaigns, ads, launches, partnerships, job posts, leadership commentary, and other material the competitor controls. Add reputable secondary sources, reviews, and community discussion when they can corroborate or expose a different perspective.

Preserve the URL and publication or observation date behind material claims. Record what was checked, what could not be verified, and which evidence may be stale or incomplete.

Compare without flattening the evidence

Evidence typeHow to treat it
Observed product, price, message, or actionRecord the scope, market, package, period, and direct source.
Competitor claimAttribute it; do not turn positioning language into independently verified performance.
Customer or community sentimentShow the population and examples without treating volume or visibility as representativeness.
InferenceExplain the observed signal and the reasoning, then keep uncertainty visible.

Normalize enough to support like-for-like claims, but do not erase meaningful differences in audience, geography, currency, period, package, or source definition.

Turn difference into an implication

Identify crowded claims, meaningful gaps, credible opportunities, risks, and questions worth testing. A difference becomes an advantage only when you can explain why the target audience should care and why your company can credibly act on it.

Lead the result with the decision-relevant conclusions, then show the evidence, uncertainty, and implications. Let the team coach the comparison set, evidence bar, dimensions, depth, and interpretation before the work expands.

Go deeper on search or the wider market

Use the SEO workflow when the question is primarily organic search opportunity. Use market mapping when the work needs a broader taxonomy and entity landscape. Public research, logged-in tools, internal artifacts, sharing, and changes to campaigns, websites, products, or pricing are separate actions with separate permissions.

Skill

Audit our SEO and create a clear action plan

Investigate competitor and query gaps when organic search is the primary decision.

Skill

Map a Market

Map the broader market, entity universe, whitespace, and concentration when the comparison set is only one part of the question.

Official Strawberry skill
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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.