Turn Competitor Pages Into a Positioning Map
Most competitor research is a skim: open five homepages, form a rough impression, and land on something like "they focus on ease of use." That impression is real, but it's too vague to write a headline against, and it usually gets forgotten by the time anyone actually sits down to draft copy.
Warning
An impression tells you how a competitor's page felt. A positioning map tells you exactly what they claimed, who they claimed it to, and what nobody's claiming yet.
A competitor scan tells you what they said. A positioning map tells you what's left to say.
Why vague research produces vague positioning
"They focus on ease of use" could describe a dozen different products, so it doesn't actually rule anything out for your own messaging. Real positioning comes from specifics: the exact phrase a competitor leads with, the audience they're clearly writing for, and the claim none of them are making. Without those specifics, "our positioning" tends to become whichever angle felt best in the room, not the one with a genuine gap behind it.
A process for mapping the field before you write
- 1
Paste in the actual copy from 3-5 competitor pages
Their homepage headline, subheadline, and top three feature callouts. Real text, not your summary of it.
- 2
Ask Claude to extract each one's core claim and audience
Not a general summary, the specific promise each page is making and who it's clearly written for.
- 3
Ask what none of them are saying
This is the actual output you're after: the claim or audience every competitor is leaving on the table.
- 4
Turn the gap into a one-sentence angle
A gap is a research finding. An angle is something you can write a headline from. Don't stop at the finding.
- 5
Stress-test the angle against the strongest competitor
Ask directly whether your angle would actually stand out next to their best page, not just whether it sounds good on its own.
Here's the homepage copy from our three closest competitors: [paste each headline, subheadline, and top three feature callouts]. For each one, tell me their core claim in one sentence and who they're clearly writing for. Then tell me what claim none of them are making, and what audience none of them are speaking to directly.
”Turning a gap into something you can use
A gap on its own is still research. Push one step further and ask Claude to phrase it as a real headline candidate, then check that candidate against the same competitor set you just mapped.
Based on the gap you found, "none of them mention setup time," write three headline options that lead with speed to first result, for a reader who's already tried at least one of these competitors and found onboarding slow.
”Common mistake
Treating "nobody else says this" as proof the angle is good. Sometimes nobody says it because nobody cares. Check the gap against a real customer pain point before building a campaign on it, not just against what competitors left out.
Inside Claude Tutorial
Finding the gap is more reliable than guessing at one.
Working from real source material to find what's actually missing, instead of guessing at an angle, is a pattern that goes well beyond competitor research. The app builds this habit through short lessons you practice on real examples.
Real copy from 3-5 competitor pages, not a summary
Each competitor's core claim and stated audience, named specifically
A gap checked against a real pain point, not just novelty
Continue reading
- Turning Customer Interview Notes Into Shared Pain Points You Can Act On: the same synthesis process applied to internal research instead of competitor pages.
- Turning a Campaign Goal Into a One-Page Brief Your Creative Team Can Use: where a positioning angle goes next, once you have one worth building a campaign around.
- Writing Better Marketing Copy with Claude: turning the angle you found here into an actual first draft.