Using Claude to Find What Your Competitors Miss

I spent three hours last week analyzing competitor websites manually, copying and pasting their headlines into a spreadsheet. Then I tried the same task with Claude and finished in 5 minutes.

The time saving was nice, but what really caught my attention was what Claude spotted that I'd missed entirely.

Where Manual Analysis Falls Short

My old approach involved opening dozens of browser tabs, scanning through blog archives, and making notes in Excel. It worked, sort of. But after the third or fourth site, patterns started blurring together. How can you ensure the same category framework is applied to all sites? In the back of my mind, I questioned whether I was missing some important point that sat overtop of just the surface level of the content.

Research from SEOProfy suggests marketers spend up to 50% of their time on data analysis. That resonates. Half my content planning time was going into preparation rather than actual planning.

The real issue wasn't just time though. When you're manually reviewing competitors, you tend to notice what you expect to notice. If you think your industry focuses on cost savings, that's what jumps out. You miss the subtle shifts in messaging or emerging topics that haven't quite hit mainstream yet.

It's what Rory Sutherland points out the problem here. You fail to notice the other options that are available to you:

A Different Approach to Competitor Intelligence

Rather than my usual tab-juggling routine, I now start by feeding Claude a handful of competitor URLs. Not with vague instructions like "analyze these," but with specific questions that mirror what I actually need to know.

For instance, last month I was planning content for a SaaS client. Instead of my typical competitive scan, I gave Claude five competitor blog homepages and asked: "What problems do these sites claim to solve that appear in only one or two of them?"

The response revealed something interesting. While everyone talked about productivity and collaboration, only one competitor addressed data sovereignty concerns. Another uniquely focused on integration fatigue. These weren't prominent themes, just passing mentions in subheadings and intro paragraphs. I would have missed them entirely in my manual review.

These represent the outside of a Venn diagram and are good opportunities to fill in the gaps.

Venn diagram of common themes in SaaS positioning

Claude's context window allows it to hold many pages in memory simultaneously, spotting connections across different sources that human readers might miss when switching between tabs. If you ask it to reduce those down to summary points, it can capture the essence of the content in a few sentences.

Finding Real Content Gaps

Content gap analysis sounds strategic until you actually try to do it. The traditional approach involves comparing your content inventory against competitors, usually in a spreadsheet. It's thorough but mechanical.

What I've found more useful is asking Claude to read between the lines. 618media's research confirms that Claude can identify not just missing topics but missing subtopics within existing content.

Recently, I had Claude analyze a client's guide to project management alongside three competitor versions. Everyone covered the basics: planning, execution, monitoring. But Claude noticed that whilst competitors mentioned stakeholder communication, none actually explained how to handle difficult stakeholder conversations. That's a real gap, not just a missing keyword.

This approach extends beyond individual pieces. I'll sometimes give Claude a month's worth of competitor content and ask what customer journey stages they're neglecting. One pattern that emerges surprisingly often: companies focus heavily on attracting new users but barely address the challenges of scaling or enterprise adoption. That's valuable intelligence for content planning.

Working Through the Customer Journey

Most content strategies claim to address the full customer journey but end up heavy at the top of the funnel. It's easier to write "What is X?" posts than to tackle the messy middle where prospects actually make decisions.

I've started using Claude to map competitor content against journey stages. The process is revealing. Research indicates that Claude excels at creating structured content approaches, and I've found this particularly true for journey mapping. Note: I do not recommend DeepSeek at all.

This pattern appears across industries. Competitors often focus on educational content at one end and product features at the other, but miss the crucial middle ground where prospects evaluate options and make decisions.

For example, in financial services, companies produce plenty of content about budgeting principles and detailed feature lists. But they rarely address the practical questions prospects ask when choosing between solutions: how to evaluate security credentials, what switching costs to expect, or how to compare meaningful differences between similar tools. These are all long tail keywords that are not well covered by competitors because it used to be time consuming to research.

Using Claude to analyze competitor content reveals these transition points where prospects need reassurance and practical guidance. The AI can spot where the conversation jumps from general education to specific product pitches without addressing the evaluation phase in between.

Building Your Own Routine

The key is establishing a consistent process that fits your schedule. Here's a framework that works across different industries and team sizes.

Discovery Phase (Day 1): Collect competitor content published in the past week or month, depending on your industry's publishing frequency. Copy URLs into a simple document. Then engage Claude in a structured conversation with questions like:

"What themes are emerging across these pieces that weren't prominent previously?"

"Looking at these announcements, what aspects are they choosing NOT to emphasize?"

"What questions appear in reader comments that the original content doesn't fully address?"

Analysis Phase (Day 2): Use Claude to turn observations into actionable insights. The AI's ability to synthesize multiple sources simultaneously often reveals patterns that sequential reading misses. Claude Pro's analytical capabilities make it particularly effective for translating competitive intelligence into content opportunities.

Audit Phase (Day 3): Review your existing content against recent competitor output. Tools like Semrush's AI-powered Content Audit provide the technical framework, but Claude handles the strategic comparison. Ask whether your content still addresses current market conversations or if the landscape has shifted.

Creation Phase (Remaining Days): Focus on production and refinement. Claude's balanced approach helps maintain quality whilst incorporating SEO best practices without obvious AI fingerprints.

Practical Results

Since adopting this approach, content planning takes about 65% less time. But the time saving isn't the main benefit. The content performs better because it's addressing actual gaps rather than assumed ones.

Engagement metrics tell the story. Posts based on genuine competitive gaps generate roughly three times more comments than our previous average. They spark discussions because they're touching on issues people actually care about but can't find addressed elsewhere.

Search rankings improve too, though not always immediately. When you're targeting genuine gaps, you're often creating content for queries that don't have perfect matches yet. It takes time for search engines to understand and properly index these pieces. But once they do, you're competing in much less crowded spaces.

Getting Started

If you're considering this approach, start small. Pick one competitor, preferably one slightly ahead of you in the market. Feed their last ten posts to Claude and ask what customer problems they're not addressing. You'll likely spot at least one significant gap in the first session.

From there, it's about developing your own rhythm. Some prefer batching all competitive analysis into one day. Others check competitors whenever they publish. The key is consistency and asking the right questions.

Track what works. Which gap-focused content resonates? What patterns emerge in the oversights you discover? Feed these learnings back into your process.

The Quiet Revolution

At £16/month, Claude Pro (explored in detail in our Claude AI business control centre guide) pays for itself in the first week through time savings alone. But the real value lies in the quality of insights. It's like having a research assistant who never gets tired, never develops blind spots, and can hold dozens of articles in memory simultaneously.

The future of content strategy isn't about AI replacing human judgment. It's about using tools like Claude to surface insights we'd miss on our own, then applying human creativity and understanding to turn those insights into valuable content.

What gaps are hiding in your competitive landscape right now? You might be surprised what emerges when you start looking properly.