Competitor analysis with AI is a Workflow: you gather what three competitors say on their websites, their Google listings and their ads, the AI reads it all and names the gap, and it takes one afternoon. The output is a one-page report that tells you what they all claim, where each one shows up, and the one thing customers care about that none of them say well. The AI does the reading and the comparing. You do the gathering, the checking, and the decision about which gap to take. Done once, it changes what your website, your listing and your posts lead with for the rest of the year.
- Shape
- Workflow
- Sitting
- an afternoon
The shape: Workflow
This job is a Workflow because it is a short chain of steps, and each step feeds the next. A single prompt cannot do it well, because the AI needs material it cannot reliably fetch on its own, and the comparison only works once all three competitors sit side by side. The chain is four steps. First, you pick three competitors and collect their material. Second, the AI reads each competitor alone and writes a short profile. Third, the AI compares the three profiles with what your own business offers. Fourth, you read the gap it names and decide whether it is true and whether you can own it. Keeping the steps separate matters. When the AI profiles each competitor on its own first, it is less likely to blur two businesses together or credit one with another's claim. It also gives you three small things to check instead of one large one. Plan on about an hour of gathering, a few minutes of AI time per step, and an hour of reading and deciding.
What you give the AI
Gather this into one document before you open the chat. Label each block with the competitor's name and where it came from, so the AI can cite its source and you can check it.
- Three competitor names: the two you lose jobs to most often, and the one that appears first when you search for your main service plus your town.
- Each competitor's homepage text: pasted from the page, with headlines, the first paragraph and the buttons kept.
- Each competitor's main service page or pricing page: whichever page a customer would read just before calling.
- Each competitor's about page: how long they have been around, who runs it, and what they say makes them different.
- Each competitor's Google Business Profile: where it appears in the map results when you search your main service plus your town, the categories, the description, the hours, the review count and rating, the date of the latest post, and five recent reviews copied word for word, good and bad.
- Each competitor's current ads: the text and offer of each ad from Meta's Ad Library and Google's Ads Transparency Center, or "no ads found" with the date you looked.
- Each competitor's last three social posts: the captions and dates, from whichever channel they use most.
- Your own homepage text and service list: the AI needs what you actually offer before it can name a gap you can fill.
- Three questions customers ask you before they buy: in their words, from calls, emails or memory.
That last item is the one most people skip, and it is the one that makes the gap real. If you have never written down what customers ask, our customer pain points generator is a quick start.
What comes back
You run two prompts. The first goes once per competitor, in the same chat, with that competitor's material pasted below it.
You are reading public material from one competitor of a small local business.
Read only what is pasted below.
Do not use outside knowledge about this company.
Write a profile with these headings:
1. What they lead with: the first promise a visitor sees, quoted.
2. Who they say they serve.
3. Services and offers named, with any prices exactly as written.
4. Proof they show: reviews, years, credentials, photos, guarantees.
5. Where they show up: website, Google listing, ads, social, and how recent each is.
6. What reviewers praise and what reviewers complain about, quoted.
7. What a customer would still not know after reading all of this.
Quote wherever possible.
Mark anything you are inferring as "inferred".
If something is not in the material, write "not found".
Do not guess.After all three profiles are done, paste the second prompt with your own material below it.
Above are profiles of three competitors. Below is my own business: my homepage text,
my service list, and three questions customers ask before they buy.
Write a one-page competitor report:
1. What all three say: the claims every competitor makes. These are table stakes.
2. Where each one shows up and where each one is quiet or out of date.
3. The gap: the customer questions and concerns none of them answer clearly.
4. For each gap, whether my material shows my business can honestly fill it, with a quote.
5. One recommendation: the single gap to lead with, and one sentence that says it plainly.
Use only the profiles and my material.
Mark every inference.
Do not invent facts about anyone.What comes back is three short profiles and one report. The report should read like a page a careful friend wrote after an afternoon with your notes: what everyone says, where everyone is, and what nobody says. The single recommendation at the end is the part you act on.
How to judge it
A good report quotes. When it says a competitor leads with "fast, friendly service", those words should be on that competitor's homepage, and you should be able to find them in a few seconds. Reject or redo the report if you see any of these:
- Claims with no quote and no source: if it says a competitor "focuses on premium clients" and you cannot find where that came from, it guessed.
- Facts from outside your paste: a founding year, price or location you never gave it came from memory or a search, and may be wrong or out of date.
- A gap that is really a table stake: every business claims quality, so "none of them mention quality" is not a gap.
- A gap you cannot fill: a 24-hour line is the wrong advice for a business that stops answering the phone at six.
- Blurred competitors: one competitor's review quoted under another's name, so check at least one quote per competitor against your notes.
- Generic advice: "improve your SEO" or "post more consistently" could be pasted into any report for any town.
- Insults: a report that calls a competitor bad or lazy is useless to you and dangerous if any of it leaks into public copy.
A useful test: read the one-sentence recommendation aloud to someone who knows your customers. If they nod and say "nobody else says that", keep it. If they shrug, ask the AI for the second-best gap and try again.
What stays with you
The AI reads faster than you, and it does not know your market. It cannot tell which competitor actually takes your jobs, which reviewer is a known complainer, or which claim on a competitor's site everyone in town knows is not true. That knowledge is yours, and it decides whether the gap is real.
You also own every fact that goes public. If the analysis leads you to change your homepage or your listing, write the new line from your own facts, in your own words, and make sure you can deliver it every time. Never name a competitor or repeat a claim about them in public unless you have checked it and are comfortable defending it. Never copy their text, photos or offers. Prices you collect are true only on the day you read them, so date them in your notes.
Finally, the choice is yours. The report can name three gaps. Picking one and saying it everywhere for six months is a decision about your business, not a research result.
An editorial example
This is an invented business, used only to show the workflow. Say you run a two-person dog grooming shop in a mid-size town, with three other groomers within a few miles. You collect each one's homepage, Google listing, ads and recent posts, plus your own service list and the three things new customers ask on the phone: how long the dog will be there, whether anxious dogs are okay, and whether they can stay and watch.
The three profiles come back. All three lead with some version of "gentle, professional grooming." Two run Facebook ads for a first-visit discount. One has not posted on its Google listing in months. Reviewers praise all three for results and complain about two of them for long waits at pickup.
The report's gap: none of the three say how long a groom takes or what happens with a nervous dog. Your own service list shows you book one dog at a time with a set pickup time. The recommendation is to lead with that, in one plain line on the homepage and the listing.
That is the whole result. Nothing in this example is a real business or a real outcome. What happens after the line goes up depends on the shop.
Where the gap goes next
A gap only helps once customers see it. The places it belongs, in order:
| Where | What to change | Who does it |
|---|---|---|
| Your homepage | The first line and the first paragraph | You, with the AI drafting options |
| Your Google listing | The business description and your next few posts | You |
| Your service pages | An answer to the question none of them answer | You, with the AI drafting from your facts |
| Your social posts | Posts that show the gap in action, week after week | You, an assistant, or software |
The first three are a single afternoon of edits. The last one is the only part that repeats. For what customers look at before they pick up the phone, see what customers check before calling a local business. If you want to know how competitors and you appear in AI answers too, read how to show up in ChatGPT local business searches.
Of every job on this list, social media is the one that comes back every week, and Boomp is software that does that one for you. See ten posts made from your website, free
