Discover Competitive Analysis
Creates a structured competitive analysis comparing features, positioning, and strategy across competitors. Use when entering a market, planning differentiation, or understanding the competitive landscape.
MCP get_skill({ skillId: "competitive-analysis-49b151d2" })Use this skill with your agent
Create a free account and connect via MCP
<!-- PM-Skills | https://github.com/product-on-purpose/pm-skills | Apache 2.0 --> # Competitive Analysis A competitive analysis provides structured insight into the competitive landscape, helping product teams understand where they stand relative to alternatives and identify opportunities for differentiation. Rather than exhaustively cataloging every competitor, an effective analysis focuses on actionable insights that inform product strategy. ## When to Use - Before entering a new market or launching a new product - When planning differentiation strategy for an existing product - During quarterly or annual strategic planning reviews - When evaluating build vs. buy decisions - After losing deals to understand competitive positioning - When onboarding new product team members to the market context ## When NOT to Use - You need market size rather than competitor positioning -> use `discover-market-sizing` - You are stress-testing strategic differentiation across the whole business model -> use `foundation-lean-canvas`, or `tool-foundation-sprint-differentiation` inside a Foundation Sprint - You want to understand why customers switch products -> use `define-jtbd-canvas`; it examines competing solutions through the job lens - The landscape is already mapped and you need the problem framed -> use `define-problem-statement` ## Instructions When asked to create a competitive analysis, follow these steps: 1. **Define the Scope** Clarify what you're analyzing: a specific feature area, overall product positioning, or pricing strategy. Identify 3-5 key competitors.direct competitors (same solution), indirect competitors (different solution to same problem), and potential disruptors. 2. **Gather Intelligence** Research each competitor through public sources: websites, pricing pages, G2/Capterra reviews, press releases, job postings, and customer testimonials. Note what you can verify vs. what you're inferring. 3. **Build the Feature Matrix** Create a comparison grid of key capabilities. Focus on features that matter to your target customers, not exhaustive checklists. Use consistent ratings (e.g., Full, Partial, None, Unknown). 4. **Analyze Positioning** Map competitors on a 2x2 positioning matrix using dimensions relevant to your market (e.g., price vs. features, ease of use vs. power, SMB vs. enterprise). Identify white space opportunities. 5. **Assess Strengths and Weaknesses** For each competitor, document genuine strengths (what they do better than you) and weaknesses (where they fall short). Avoid dismissing competitors.respect drives better strategy. 6. **Identify Strategic Implications** Translate observations into actionable recommendations: where to compete head-on, where to differentiate, what messaging to emphasize, and what gaps represent opportunities. 7. **Note Confidence Levels** Mark which conclusions are based on verified data vs. inference. Competitive intelligence has varying reliability.be honest about uncertainty. ## Output Format Use the template in `references/TEMPLATE.md` to structure the output. A complete analysis fills every template section: Overview; Market Context; Competitors Analyzed; Feature Comparison Matrix; Pricing Comparison; Positioning Map; Competitor Deep Dives; Competitive Gaps and Opportunities; Strategic Recommendations; Sources and Confidence; and Next Steps. ## Quality Checklist Before finalizing, verify: - [ ] Scope is clearly defined (what market, segment, use case) - [ ] 3-5 competitors are analyzed, including direct and indirect - [ ] Feature comparison focuses on customer-relevant capabilities - [ ] Positioning map uses meaningful, differentiated dimensions - [ ] Strengths acknowledge where competitors genuinely excel - [ ] Recommendations are specific and actionable - [ ] Sources and confidence levels are documented ## Examples See `references/EXAMPLE.md` for a completed example.
Related Skills
More skills in Business, Marketing & Sales
Ab Testing
When the user wants to plan, design, or implement an A/B test or experiment, or build a growth experimentation program. Also use when the user mentions "A/B test," "split test," "experiment," "test this change," "variant copy," "multivariate test," "hypothesis," "should I test this," "which version is better," "test two versions," "statistical significance," "how long should I run this test," "growth experiments," "experiment velocity," "experiment backlog," "ICE score," "experimentation program," or "experiment playbook." Use this whenever someone is comparing two approaches and wants to measure which performs better, or when they want to build a systematic experimentation practice. For tracking implementation, see analytics. For page-level conversion optimization, see cro.
Ab Test Setup
When the user wants to plan, design, or implement an A/B test or experiment. Also use when the user mentions "A/B test," "split test," "experiment," "test this change," "variant copy," "multivariate test," "hypothesis," "conversion experiment," "statistical significance," or "test this." For tracking implementation, see analytics-tracking.
Ab Test Setup
Ab Test Setup linked from Corey Haines marketing skills, with the upstream skill instructions available on GitHub.
Ab Test Store Listing
When the user wants to A/B test App Store product page elements to improve conversion rate. Also use when the user mentions "A/B test", "product page optimization", "test my screenshots", "test my icon", "conversion rate optimization", "CPP", or "custom product pages". For screenshot design, see screenshot-optimization. For metadata optimization, see metadata-optimization.
Account Research
Research a company or person and get actionable sales intel. Works standalone with web search, supercharged when you connect enrichment tools or your CRM. Trigger with "research [company]", "look up [person]", "intel on [prospect]", "who is [name] at [company]", or "tell me about [company]".
Account Research
Research a company using Common Room data. Triggers on 'research [company]', 'tell me about [domain]', 'pull up signals for [account]', 'what's going on with [company]', or any account-level question.
Explore Other Categories
Skills from other categories with shared topics
Deliver User Stories
Generates user stories in the standard persona, action, benefit story format from product requirements or feature descriptions. Use when breaking a feature into stories for sprint planning, writing tickets, or communicating scope to engineering. For testable Given/When/Then acceptance criteria on a story, use deliver-acceptance-criteria; for boundary and failure scenarios, use deliver-edge-cases.
Develop Adr
Creates an Architecture Decision Record following the Nygard format to document significant technical decisions, their context, and consequences. Use when making technical choices that affect system architecture, technology selection, or development patterns.
Develop Design Rationale
Documents the reasoning behind design decisions including alternatives considered, trade-offs evaluated, and principles applied. Use when making significant UX decisions, aligning with stakeholders on design direction, or preserving design context for future reference.