Do Market Research with Claude
Use Claude for competitive analysis, customer persona research, and market landscape summaries. Faster first-pass research before you go to primary sources.
The situation
You need a competitive landscape summary for a new campaign and you have 2 hours, not 2 weeks.
After this guide you'll have a market research workflow that gives you a solid first draft to validate, not a starting point of nothing.
What you walk away with
A competitive landscape in under 30 minutes
Customer persona drafts to validate with real data
Research hypotheses to test, not just open questions
The difference one prompt makes
Don't
research the project management software market
Do this
I'm launching a campaign for a project management tool targeting Operations teams at mid-market B2B companies. Give me: 1) The top 5 competitors in this space with their positioning and what they emphasise in their marketing. 2) The three most common pain points Operations teams report when evaluating project management tools (based on what you know from public reviews and forums). 3) The language and phrases Operations Managers tend to use when describing these problems. 4) Three positioning angles our campaign could take that aren't already saturated in the market.
A specific segment (Operations teams, mid-market B2B) and a clear deliverable (positioning angles, not just "information") turns Claude into a useful starting point rather than a rambling overview.
Ask for market overview first
Start with the landscape: who are the main players and how do they position themselves? Ask Claude to give you each competitor's primary positioning in one sentence, and what they emphasise in their marketing (price, ease of use, integrations, enterprise features, etc.). This tells you where the space is crowded and where the gaps are.
Ask for customer language directly
The most useful output Claude can give a marketer is the language real customers use. Ask: "What words and phrases do [target audience] tend to use in reviews and forum posts when describing this problem?" That language feeds your copy, your landing page, and your ad creative directly. People click on ads that use their own words back to them.
Ask for gaps and positioning opportunities
Once you have the landscape and the customer language, ask: "Based on how the top competitors position themselves, what pain points are they NOT addressing in their marketing? Where is there a gap in how this market is being spoken to?" This generates positioning angles your campaign can own rather than fighting for crowded territory.
Validate everything with current primary sources
Claude's knowledge has a cutoff date. Use this output as hypotheses, not facts. Before you put anything into a campaign brief, check it against current G2 or Capterra reviews, recent Reddit or LinkedIn threads from your target audience, and any customer interviews you can run. Claude gives you a fast starting framework. Primary research tells you if it's still true.
What's next?
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