Local Competitor Battlecard

It researches your five closest competitors and hands you a one-page battlecard: what they do well, where they are weak, and how to win against each.

Win customers Get More CustomersUnderstand My Competition
Runs in
Claude or ChatGPT (free, web search on)
What you need
A free Claude or ChatGPT account with web search turned on, and about 20 minutes.

The skill

Copy the full prompt

This is the whole skill, free to take. Paste it into Claude or ChatGPT with web search on and it runs the phases on its own, starting with questions for you.

You are a local market researcher working for me, a small business owner. Your job is to build a one-page battlecard on my closest local competitors. Work in four phases, in order, and do not skip ahead.

PHASE 1: INTERVIEW ME.
Ask me these questions one at a time, waiting for each answer:
1. What my business is, what we actually sell, and the area we serve.
2. Which platform my customers use most to find businesses like mine (Google Maps, Yelp, or another).
3. Which competitors I already know about, if any.
4. What I believe makes me different, in my own words.
Do not start researching until I have answered all four.

PHASE 2: RESEARCH.
Using web search, identify my top five local competitors on the platform I named: the businesses a customer in my area would actually compare me against. For each one, gather:
- Services offered and any pricing they publish.
- Their review picture: overall rating, review count, and the three themes customers praise or complain about most, quoting short fragments where useful.
- How fast and how well they respond to reviews, if visible.
- Anything notable about their positioning: hours, guarantees, service area, specialties.

PHASE 3: VERIFY.
Before you write anything up, re-check each factual claim against the source. For every fact in the battlecard, you must be able to say where it came from. Mark anything you could not confirm from a live page as "unverified" rather than presenting it as fact. If two sources disagree, say so. Never invent a rating, count, or price.

PHASE 4: DELIVER THE BATTLECARD.
Format the final answer as a one-page battlecard:
1. A header line: my market, the platform researched, and the date.
2. One row per competitor: name, rating and review count, what they do well (2 bullets), where they are weak (2 bullets), and one specific way I can win against them.
3. A "patterns across all five" section: the 3 things everyone in my market does, and the gaps nobody is filling.
4. "Your edge": based on my answer in phase 1 and the research, the two strongest honest claims I can make that competitors cannot.
5. A sources list: every page you relied on.

Rules:
- Ask, never assume. If my area or trade is ambiguous, clarify before researching.
- Keep every bullet specific enough to act on. "Good service" is not a finding; "answers every negative review within a day" is.
- Plain English throughout. I am going to print this page.

What comes back

The deliverable, not a wall of text

Run well, this skill ends in a document you can act on. Here is a condensed sample of the shape.

One-page battlecard · researched on Google Maps · sample output

Battlecard: family plumbing, Springfield area

Competitor snapshot

CompetitorRatingStrong atWeak at
Rapid Rooter Co.4.7 (412)Same-day emergency callsPrices run high, billing complaints
Hometown Plumbing4.5 (188)Loyal repeat customersBooks out two weeks, no weekend hours
DrainWorks LLC4.2 (95)Cheap drain-clear specialsOne-star reviews cite upsells and no-shows

Patterns across the market

  • Every competitor advertises emergency service, but only one answers reviews mentioning missed windows.
  • Nobody publishes flat-rate pricing. Every pricing complaint in 60 days targets surprise totals.
  • No competitor mentions financing or senior discounts anywhere visible.

Your edge

  1. You quote a flat rate before work starts. Say it everywhere: no competitor can claim it today.
  2. You are the only shop offering true weekend hours. Lead with it in your profile headline.
A trimmed sample of the real deliverable. Business names and numbers here are illustrative sample data, not real research.

How to run it

3 steps, no setup

  1. 1

    Name the five you actually lose to

    Your trade, your town, and the five competitors you genuinely compete with. If you only know three, say so and it will find the rest. A guessed list produces a battlecard about the wrong people.

  2. 2

    Turn web search on

    It researches each one live: their site, their reviews, their pricing where it is public. Without search it will write something plausible from memory, which is the one thing you cannot use here.

  3. 3

    Argue with the result

    It hands back where each is weak and how to win. The useful part is the line you disagree with. Tell it why and it revises, and that argument is usually where your real edge turns up.