A competitor brief is worth having only if it arrives every week and you can trust it. Here is how to set one up so it does both.
Decide what you are watching
Pick three to five competitors per client, and what counts as news: pricing, new products, launches, hiring, partnerships. Write it down. In Afarin, put the list on the client's project Wiki so every brief starts from it.
Step by step
- Set a routine. On the client's project, a weekly routine starts a card every Monday morning and assigns it to Afarin, with a spend cap.
- Search and read. Afarin searches the web for each competitor and reads the pages that matter: pricing, announcements, the blog.
- Write the brief. What changed, why it matters to this client, and what to do about it, with a link beside every claim.
- Review. The card waits in review. Check each claim against its link, cut what does not matter, and turn any suggestion worth doing into its own card.
- Share it. When it is right, approve it and send it to the client yourself.
Keep it honest
- Every claim gets a source. If a change has no link, it does not go in.
- Dates on everything. Raised the starter plan from $29 to $39 (pricing page, changed 2 October) is useful; raised prices recently is not.
- Say when nothing changed. A short "no material changes" brief is still a brief.
Make it better each week
When you cut something, say why in your review. When you request changes, the note goes back with the thread, and the Wiki keeps the watch list and what you care about, so the next Monday starts closer to right.