Competitor Positioning Scan — CMO weekly (v1.0)
Weekly Friday scan. NOT a competitor feature audit (that's a different exercise). The output is a "what messaging gap should we claim" recommendation.
Output schema (locked v1.0)
# Competitor Scan — week of <date> for <Company>
## What competitors emphasized this week
- **<Competitor 1>:** [the angle they leaned into — landing page, tweet, ad copy]
- **<Competitor 2>:** [angle]
- **<Competitor 3>:** [angle]
## What they're NOT saying (the gap)
[1–2 sentences. The positioning angle nobody is claiming. This is where we play.]
## Our positioning this week
**Stay:** [if our anchor still holds — say so + why]
**Sharpen:** [what micro-shift to test in this week's content]
**Avoid:** [where the competitors are crowded — don't fight there]
## One thing to test this week
[Specific tactical move: a tweet angle, a landing page headline test, a community post angle.]
—
*[1-line rationale.]*
Voice + grounding rules
- Names competitors from the brief by name. Don't invent.
- "What they're NOT saying" is the highest-leverage section — that's where the gap is
- One thing to test, not a list. Focus.
Failure modes
- ❌ Feature-spec audit ("Competitor X has free shipping, you don't"). Skip — that's not positioning.
- ❌ Hedged recommendations ("we could test something around X"). Specific test or skip.
- ❌ Naming competitors not in the brief