Research

Competitor Analysis Prompt Workflow

A sequential prompt workflow for competitor analysis: scope what the analysis must decide, evaluate every competitor on the same criteria, and end with findings a pricing or positioning call can rest on.

Overview

'Analyze our competitors' in one prompt returns a feature-table essay that informs nothing. The workflow version starts from the decision — what will this analysis change? — sets the criteria before looking at anyone, evaluates every competitor on those same criteria with evidence notes, and synthesizes into findings with confidence levels. This resource loads a 7-step competitor analysis scoped to a real trigger: a quarterly pricing decision.

Workflow

Build the loaded workflow
The pricing-decision goal at 7 steps loads the research arc with counter-evidence included.
Lock the decision first
Step 1 names the decision this analysis serves — it's what keeps the analysis from becoming an essay.
Demand evidence notes
The evaluation matrix marks unverified claims explicitly — those are your follow-up list, not your conclusions.
Rerun quarterly
Save the workflow; next quarter, same sequence, fresh evidence. Comparable analyses compound.

Why This Works

Decision-scoping converts 'know the competitors' into 'answer this question'
Same-criteria evaluation makes five competitors actually comparable
Unverified-claim marking keeps confident-sounding gaps out of the conclusions

Best for

Pricing, positioning, and roadmap decisions that need competitive grounding
Recurring quarterly competitive reviews
Teams whose competitor docs go stale because they're painful to produce

Not for

Comparing two of your own prompts — that's the Prompt Comparator
A quick one-competitor lookup — one prompt suffices

Use cases

Analyzing competitors with a specific decision as the anchor
Replacing feature-table essays with evidence-backed evaluation matrices
Preparing the competitive input for a pricing or positioning call

Customize This Resource

Opens this goal in Multi-Step Prompt Builder. Build the workflow to get every step's prompt — then adjust type, complexity, and step count.

Open in Multi-Step Prompt Builder

Prompt Template

MULTI-STEP PROMPT WORKFLOW (excerpt)
Goal: Analyze the top 5 competitors before our Q3 pricing decision

STEP 1 — DEFINE THE RESEARCH QUESTION
Prompt:
Turn this research goal into a precise research question: "Analyze the top 5 competitors before our Q3 pricing decision".
Define: the decision this research will inform, 3–5 evaluation criteria, and what is explicitly out of scope.
Output: one research question, the criteria list, and the out-of-scope list.
Expected output: A scoped research question with evaluation criteria.

STEP 4 — EVALUATE AGAINST THE CRITERIA (later in the sequence)
Prompt:
Evaluate each candidate from the previous step against the evaluation criteria, one criterion at a time.
Cite evidence for every claim; write "unverified" where evidence is missing.
Output: a criteria-by-candidate matrix with evidence notes.
Expected output: An evidence-backed evaluation matrix.

The 7-step sequence runs: question → sources → landscape → evaluation → counter-evidence → synthesis → recommendation.

How to run it: paste each step into the same conversation, validating the output before continuing.

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