Many companies use AI to create social media content such as blog posts or LinkedIn articles. This is an important use case, and AI systems can be highly efficient here. Unfortunately, a critical strategic consideration is often overlooked – one that determines whether you’re creating targeted content or content without a compass.
In this two-part practical series, we provide insights on how content production can be optimised through a clearly defined preliminary process that also provides necessary context. In this first part, we offer an overview of AI-powered competitive analysis and AI content strategy. The second part will address specific prompts and the process itself.
The question isn’t just how we communicate, but what about – and most importantly: where our message finds receptive ears.
The Problem: Content Without a Compass
You invest 5 hours per week in LinkedIn posts, but are you reaching the right customers? With AI support, content creation becomes easier. For many companies, this is an important aspect. Whether social media posts, blog articles, newsletters, or LinkedIn updates – texts emerge faster thanks to AI assistance, are often surprisingly good, and the marketing team can devote more time to other tasks. At NordAGI, we do the same, and it works.
However, diving straight into content creation can mean overlooking an important strategic aspect. Those who jump enthusiastically into content production are – figuratively speaking – firing a shotgun at the sky.
The question isn’t just how we communicate, but what about – and most importantly: where our message finds receptive ears.
The Iterative Process: AI-Powered Competitive Screening
Great results don't come from the first attempt – they emerge through deliberate refinement
The Often Overlooked Opportunity: Using AI as a Tool for Strategic Competitive Landscape Analysis
To ensure content actually reaches its target audience, three critical questions should be answered with confidence:
First: Who are our competitors actually? This isn’t about the obvious ones you’ve known for years and encounter repeatedly at trade shows or industry events. It’s especially about those quietly gaining market share in your region or niche.
Second: Where do we overlap with our market companions, and where do we differ? Put differently: Which services or products do all our competitors offer? Which segments are underrepresented despite existing demand, and how can the associated opportunities be leveraged?
Third: What are we already communicating, and what are we overlooking? Perhaps you have a genuine unique selling point that’s only mentioned in passing on your company website. Or you’re emphasising something that ten other competitors say more or less the same way.
AI can help answer these questions systematically – in a fraction of the time manual research would require, and without being biased.
A Practical Example
To demonstrate what we mean, we worked through an example. Not for one of our consulting clients, but because of an everyday occasion: We needed new business photos for our team.
In the end, we connected with a photo studio we had nearly overlooked in our research – but which offered exactly the services we were looking for. Hidden behind newborn photography was an offering for business photos that matched our requirements precisely.
The Practical Question, a Hypothesis, and the Test
The practical question: Can systematic competitive screening pay off even for a smaller service business?
Our reasoning: If it’s worthwhile for a small business, it’s certainly worth trying for mid-sized companies.
The test: Could competitive screening have led to better or more obvious positioning of the photo studio’s offerings?
The Starting Point
A photo studio in the Northern Black Forest. 30-kilometre catchment area. Multiple service offerings (from maternity and newborn photography to business portraits).
AI Competitive Analysis: The Screening
We adapted our prompt for AI competitive analysis with the photo studio’s offerings and ran it with a research function.
The results:
- 43 photographers and studios in the specified catchment area were identified based on web research
- Including six direct competitors with offerings in the core business (newborn photography)
- Additionally, 23 competitors in the business segment
An Entire Service Segment Is Underrepresented
The central insight from the initial screening: An entire service segment remains untapped.
This offering was hard to find: The photo studio offers “business photography” in the context of “personal branding for freelancers and entrepreneurs.”
Well hidden: This information was well concealed behind maternity and newborn photography and therefore not immediately visible on the website.
The key finding: Within a 30-kilometre radius, there is no other provider explicitly offering “personal branding for freelancers.” Of course, there are corporate photographers whose offerings are tailored to SMEs or corporations. And wedding photographers do application photos on the side.
Without good context, you only get mediocre results.
Unrecognised Market Gap
Coaches, designers, founders, and other self-employed professionals – the offering is relevant for this target group but isn’t being adequately addressed by the photo studio.
There actually is a market gap for a specific form of corporate photography, and due to lacking awareness, the existing offering wasn’t being communicated clearly enough to the target audience.
What Changes with This Knowledge? Or “From Shotgun to Spearfishing”
There’s a service segment with customers, but the offering isn’t being sufficiently communicated. What changes with this knowledge?
Shotgun Approach: Whatever Works
The studio posts beautiful baby photos on Instagram because that’s the core business. The business page exists but is barely visible in the navigation. SEO could be improved for “personal branding photographer.”
Spearfishing: Complementary Offering
Marketing can specifically occupy the gap. SEO for “personal branding photographer [region].” Additionally, build a LinkedIn presence because that’s where the target audience is active. Create content that explicitly addresses freelancers. New partnerships with coworking spaces instead of only with midwifery practices as before.
An additional effect: The advertising budget is deployed where competitors aren’t present.
Why “Just Do a Competitive Analysis” Doesn’t Work
This small experiment illustrates: Conducting an initial competitive screening is easily achievable with AI support.
Context is decisive for success: AI can be a sparring partner that questions and delivers results. To deliver results, precise context is always required.
Here’s something we’ve said before: “Just do a competitive analysis” is just as unfocused as “improve my text.” In both cases, context matters. Without it, you’ll achieve mediocre results at best.
Developing Context and Process Together with AI
The good news is that the prompt for competitive screening can be developed together with AI and then further refined (more on this in the second part of this series). It’s also helpful when the AI is trained to ask follow-up questions rather than make assumptions.
The first run of competitive screening focused heavily on the newborn segment – because the studio’s website was most clearly positioned there. The business offering was literally hidden behind baby pictures, as there were pop-ups with baby images on all pages – including those with business content.
Three Iterations Later
Three runs and several adjustments to the original prompt later, we had a robust competitive screening in hand.
The three attempts aren’t a failure – they’re the normal case when processes are first established. AI delivers better results when it understands what you really want to know. For that, it needs context, course correction, and critical engagement.
Insights from the Screening
We refined the prompt further together with AI to also receive actionable recommendations:
- Market positioning: Which segments are overcrowded, which are underserved?
- Differentiating features: What makes this studio unique – and is that being communicated?
- Competitor analysis: Who are the relevant competitors, how are they positioning themselves?
- Visibility: Where does the studio rank on Google, where not? Which keywords are unoccupied?
- Optimisations: Concrete measures for SEO, social media, and content strategy.
The crucial point is that all of this emerged from publicly available information – websites, Google listings, social media profiles. The AI didn’t research anything a human couldn’t have found. But it did so systematically, comprehensively, with an outside perspective, and in a fraction of the time.
Is This Relevant for Your Company?
Before you write your next LinkedIn post or plan your next blog article, ask yourself:
- Do you really know who you’re competing against communicatively?
- Do you know the gaps in your market that nobody has occupied yet, or where there are few competitors?
- Are you communicating your genuine strengths and unique selling points – or what everyone says?
In the second part of this article, we’ll show you how to conduct such a screening yourself. Which questions you should ask, what a good prompt looks like, and what to watch for when interpreting results.
This post is part of our “AI in Practice” series. We show how we use AI ourselves – not just in theory, but in everyday work. Because we believe: Those who offer AI consulting should also live it. Here you can find our blog about our own AI integration.
Coming next: The How-To Guide – How to conduct an AI-supported competitive screening yourself.
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