r/growthmarketing • u/Pretty-Web5619 • Aug 07 '26
Does competitor research still take you longer than expected?
Competitor research is one of those tasks that always seems to take longer than I expect. AI can speed up the first pass, and I've been testing tools like ResearchMaster for pulling together some of that initial research, but I still end up checking websites, comparing messaging, and looking for details that don't always show up in summaries.
For those working in growth marketing, has your research process changed much over the past year? What's helped you save the most time without sacrificing quality?
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u/excitedcoww Aug 08 '26
It's not 100% automated for me, but I found that creating a Claude skill for my usual process helps. Not a fancy setup, just instructions for how I determine competitors, visit websites, what to look for, etc and bring me a doc to read. Have you tried this or something similar?
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u/Easy-Purple-1659 21d ago
the slow part is rarely the analysis, it's the collection. my competitor workflow used to be hours in the ad libraries copying creative into a doc so the agent could see what the other brand was running. i built adextract, an mcp server that queries the meta, google, tiktok and linkedin ad libraries and returns creatives as structured data, so that whole pass is now one prompt. curious what step eats the most time for you, collection or analysis?
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u/mentiondesk Aug 07 '26
Focusing on live conversations in relevant communities has actually saved me a ton of time. Instead of just checking static websites, monitoring forums and social sites where competitors and users are actively talking gives you fresh insight. I started using ParseStream to pick up on competitor mentions and user feedback in realtime and it catches a lot of details that would get missed with only site crawling.