Instead of copying what top competitors do well, analyze what they do poorly or neglect. Excelling in those specific areas creates a powerful differentiator. This is how Eleven Madison Park focused on rivals' bad coffee service to become the world's #1 restaurant.

Founders without a marketing background can bypass traditional learning curves. By using AI tools to analyze the strategies of successful competitors or admired brands, they can quickly gain a practical understanding of positioning, funnels, and messaging, and then apply those proven concepts to their own business.

Go beyond simple prompts. Gather raw data—comments from your social media, competitor book reviews, and podcast feedback—and feed it all into ChatGPT. Then, ask it to synthesize this data into a detailed avatar guide, identify market gaps, and suggest opportunities for your offer.

Instead of matching rivals' strengths, identify their weaknesses or overlooked details, like a poor coffee program. Focusing on these neglected areas allows you to create a unique, best-in-class experience and gain a competitive foothold. Guidara's team calls this 'reverse benchmarking.'

Instead of reacting defensively when a customer mentions a competitor, use it to probe their underlying needs. Asking 'What do you like about it?' helps differentiate between a critical feature gap ('the steak') and a superficial want ('the sizzle'), keeping you focused on solving real problems.

Instead of general analysis, feed your AI a defined customer persona (e.g., "Growth Gabby") and ask it to evaluate a competitor's website copy from that specific perspective. This uncovers messaging weaknesses that directly relate to your target audience's concerns, like complexity or pricing.

Instead of asking one-off questions, build a detailed, pre-written prompt (a "shortcut") within an AI browser. This standardizes your analysis framework, allowing you to instantly reverse-engineer any company's marketing strategy with a single command, making deep research scalable and repeatable.

A powerful AI workflow can collapse the time between market insight and execution. The speaker screenshots a competitor's site, uses AI to identify a weakness ("complexity"), then immediately prompts the AI to build an email campaign that highlights their product's counter-strength ("ease of use"), turning analysis into action in minutes.

Don't shy away from competitors. A powerful customer discovery tactic is to present competing solutions directly to prospects and ask them specifically what they dislike or what's missing. This method surfaces critical product gaps and unmet needs you can build your solution around.