Using AI to validate your ICP and Positioning
I have to give a shout out to Liza Adams from Growthpath.net who I caught on a webinar recently where she showcased how to do competitive analysis using AI, so I gave it a try.
The thing that is valuable about doing this using AI is:
It took me 5 minutes to do this, whereas it would have taken me hours or days to do this previously
It let’s you validate your ICP and your positioning in the market, as well as do competitive analysis
Also, if you’re not already doing this, you can bet that your competitors are
Here are the AI prompts I used in ChatGPT (free version):
Prompt 1:
I’m a potential buyer of ___ software. You are an expert in this space and have knowledge of the various competitors. Attached is a PDF summary of customer reviews for ___ and ___ found on G2 (or wherever you got it from, such as Gartner, Forrester, Capterra, TrustRadius, etc). Please review and deeply understand it. What can you tell me about __ and __ based on this information?
In this instance I used Wowza and Brightcove — both video streaming services.
It summarized the information for me. Then I asked it to look up other sources.
Prompt 2:
Please browse the web and find any articles, buyer’s guides, analyst reports, blogs, social posts, or other reference materials from third party sources that compare ___ vs ____. Please also show me the list of resources and the links to the resources you use for this analysis.
It pulled a list of articles and resources with links so I could verify those were valid sources. (NOTE: if it doesn’t just ask it to please provide a list of these third party sources).
Now, you can take all of this information so far and also feed it into another tool (so either ChatGPT or Perplexity, etc to get a second opinion and have them evaluate one another). Or you can review the info and if you’re satisfied ask it to put it into a graph or table for you.
Prompt 3:
Based on the combination of the customer reviews analysis and third party resources analysis, please show me a comparison chart for the two vendors in the key areas analyzed and key takeaways for each area. Then provide a summary depicting the ideal customer and needs for which each one is suited.
And here is what it came back with:
It also came back with use cases:
Ideal Customer & Use Cases
Brightcove is best suited for:
Large enterprises and media organizations needing a comprehensive video management system with monetization options.
Marketing teams that require custom branding, analytics, and ad integration.
Organizations focusing on content distribution at scale, especially those with high revenue goals from video content.
Wowza Streaming Engine is best suited for:
Developers and businesses looking for flexibility in deployment (cloud/on-prem) and multi-protocol streaming.
Live event producers needing real-time streaming across multiple devices and platforms.
Organizations prioritizing advanced analytics and custom API integrations to build tailored streaming experiences.
Download a copy of the prompts here.
If you liked this, you can take it a step further by using Liza’s Competitive Defensibility Analyzer which evaluates your long-term market position based on value offered and uniqueness against competitors.
Not knowing anything about Wowza, only what I had researched so far, I tried putting Wowza in here to see where it landed. I started with the category it is in.
Here’s what it came back with:
It asked me to put in three key differentiators, so I chose these based off of the previous research:
Ease of use and analytics
Cloud-based and on-premises deployment
Better multi-protocol support
It then asked me to weight each of these differentiators, so I answered:
Then it asked me how hard would it be for someone to replicate these differentiators and it gave me a scale. It came back and told me how it calculated the differential score and where Wowza landed in the framework.
It also provided key takeaways and opportunities for growth. I won’t bore you with the details but you should try it out for your own company. It’s pretty cool. 😎
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