Deep-dive market research with AI: your new competitive power move
Let’s face it. Market research is crucial, but it’s also a massive time suck. If you’ve ever found yourself buried under tabs, scrambling to benchmark competitors while juggling 6 other tasks... you’re not alone. The game-changer? AI.
Today, we’re breaking down how to use ChatGPT’s Deep Research mode + Welov’s Insight IA to flip the script on market analysis. Less grunt work, more strategic firepower. This combo helps you answer questions like:
- are we actually communicating our strongest brand traits?
- is a competitor turning our weaknesses into their selling points?
- what golden opportunities are we sleeping on?
What Deep Research mode unlocks for the modern SMM
Think of ChatGPT’s Deep Research like your dream junior analyst:
- It pulls info from legit, up-to-date sources.
- Cross-checks facts.
- Organizes everything into clean, readable formats
- And (bless it) cites where everything came from.
(activate it from the "+" icon in the input bar and select "Deep Research”)
Now that we know what Deep Research mode brings to the table, here’s what really matters to us as SMMs: it helps us get under the hood of the market and our brand from a more corporate, big-picture lens.
We’re talking about digging into how brands define themselves on their websites (their values, voice, tone, positioning, culture, product focus….), and the promises they keep repeating (are they selling luxury? design? sustainability? human-centered care? a connection to place?).
This kind of intel lets us:
- Build a rock-solid SWOT.
- Check if a brand’s self-perception matches what’s actually on their site.
- Pull out the brand statements we’ll later match against their social content.
Ready to dive in?
Grab a notebook, or open Notion. Let’s go!
STEP 1. Use ChatGPT to scan the market
Start with a market sweep. Say you’re working in luxury hospitality in the Basque region. You’ll want to pull from: official hotel websites, Booking and TripAdvisor reviews and travel blogs and press articles
Market research prompt for ChatGPT
Copia y adapta este prompt en el modo investigación en profundidad de ChatGPT:
Analyze the companies [INSERT COMPETITORS]. For each, find:
- Unique value prop
- Location
- Key services
- Partnerships or notable clients
- Testimonials
- Pricing (if available)
- Anything else relevant
Present in bullet points. Include source URLs for each data point. Separate by competitor.
STEP 2. Build your brand's SWOT
Now that you’ve got a solid read on your competitors, it’s time to ask ChatGPT to size up your brand’s market positioning. We’ll use the classic SWOT framework breaking down your brand’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Stay in the same ChatGPT thread (with Deep Research mode still active), and drop in the following prompt tailored to your brand:
You’re a strategy consultant with 10+ years in marketing. My brand is [BRAND NAME] and the site is [LINK].
Based on the competitor data, build a SWOT matrix:
- Weaknesses
- Strengths
- Threats
- Opportunities
Present in a 2x2 table. Only mention my brand
This is your brand’s health check. Super visual. Super useful.
STEP 3. Make it actionable with a CAME plan
A SWOT without action is just a pretty chart and kind of useless. To actually get value out of it, we need to turn it into a CAME plan: a clear path to Correct weaknesses, Address threats, Maintain strengths, and Exploit opportunities. Now ChatGPT becomes your strategy consultant, turning all those SWOT insights into real strategic moves.
In the same conversation, just drop in this prompt:
Using the SWOT above, create a CAME plan. Organize into 4 sections:
- Correct
- Address
- Maintain
- Exploit
List clear, actionable steps under each.
STEP 4. Prep an AI-ready brief for social media analysis
At this point, we’ve got all the corporate intel we need on the industry, but now it’s time to shift gears. As Social Media Managers, we want to dive into the social side and figure out:
- Are the strengths and opportunities we uncovered actually showing up in our content? Or is a competitor owning that narrative instead?
- Is our social strategy helping neutralize weaknesses and threats or making them worse?
But before we feed this into any AI, we need to boil everything down into something it can actually digest. Use the prompt below to turn all your research into a tight, strategic brief.
You’re a senior brand strategist. Create a strategic brief based on my market research, SWOT, and CAME. For each, list 4 bullet points:
- Weaknesses to correct
- Threats to address
- Strengths to maintain
- Opportunities to explore
Then include:
- Messages to double down on
- Messages to tweak or avoid
- Red flags or risk areas
This brief is your command center. You’ll feed it to Welov's Insight AI.
STEP 5. Take your market analysis into Welov's Insight AI
Now that you’ve done the heavy lifting with ChatGPT, it’s time to bring all that market research into Insight AI: Welov’s AI that analyzes social media content (yours and your competitors').
The idea? Let Insight AI read your brand’s social posts and your competitors’ with all that strategic context you just built. That way, it can answer high-impact questions like:
- Are we really reflecting our brand strengths in what we post?
- Are we activating the market opportunities we already identified?
- Which brand territories are our competitors owning on social?
- Are we unintentionally reinforcing our weaknesses in content?
- How can we adjust our messaging to better match our brand positioning?
If you don’t have a Welov.io account yet, create a free trial, connect your brand and competitor profiles, head into Insight AI, and drop in the brief you created.
What kind of insights can you start unlocking?
Here’s where your strategic brain kicks in because with that brief as a base, you can ask Insight AI anything: test content ideas, validate campaigns, stress-test hypotheses, monitor competitors, review content territories, you name it.
Expect insights like:
- "Only X% of your posts mention [TOPIC], even though it’s a key strength in your SWOT."
- "[COMPETITOR] is owning the conversation around [TOPIC], which shows up in your CAME as a top opportunity".
- "X% of your content references [TOPIC], flagged as a major brand weakness."
Why it's time to speed up market analysis with AI?
Because the competition’s getting louder and faster.
In today’s attention war, agile market analysis isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s survival.With a streamlined, AI-powered research process, spotting competitor moves and trend shifts becomes way more doable and strategic reactions come faster.
Because SMMs are already stretched way too thin.
Let’s be real: we’re part content creators, part analysts, part crisis managers. Reporting, metrics, decks, performance reviews and the deeper strategic work often gets rushed or skipped altogether. AI doesn’t just save time. It frees up headspace to think, plan, and actually lead.
Because the SMM role isn’t what it used to be.
We’re not just “running the socials” anymore. The job has evolved into strategic brand leadership and that takes context. Context built from structured, relevant, trustworthy, real-time data.
Because your decisions need real backup.
Fast, AI-supported market analysis helps you align brand messaging with brand values, spot gaps, and justify pivots with hard data. It’s how you go from “I think we should…” to “this makes sense because…”.
So now that you’ve got the framework, are you really going to keep scrambling through manual research with 27 tabs open?
Because let’s be honest: if you already know a better way…
Sticking to the old one?
That’s the real strategic mistake.
