# Competitors: Position Your Posts Against Your Top 5 Rivals

_Marketing & Campaigns_

Save up to 5 competitors, set your business stage and goal, and let CRMown AI build a short positioning brief per competitor from their public website. Social posts (single-post AI Draft and Autopilot) can opt in to use this context so they differentiate from your competitors instead of sounding generic.

## Steps
1. Go to Marketing → Competitors (requires Marketing suite).
2. Set "Your business" stage — Newly launched, Growing, or Established — and optionally a Primary goal (awareness, leads, sales, launch). This shapes the tone/strategy CRMown AI leans into.
3. Add a competitor: name (required), Website URL (optional), and Notes / their weakness (optional). You can save up to 5.
4. Click "Refresh brief" on a competitor — if a URL is set, CRMown reads that public website and CRMown AI writes a short positioning brief (their messaging, tone, and where the gaps are). Without a URL, or if the site can't be read, CRMown AI writes the brief from general knowledge of the competitor instead.
5. A status badge on each competitor shows where the brief came from: "researched" (site was read), "AI knowledge" (no URL or the site was unreadable, so general AI knowledge was used), "refresh failed" (the brief generation itself failed — try again), or "no brief yet".
6. Use it on a single post: Marketing → New Social Post → Content → Text tab → next to "✨ AI Draft", type an optional product/offer in "Featuring a product? (optional)" and check "Competitor-informed", then click AI Draft.
7. Use it in Autopilot: Marketing → Autopilot → Social tab → optionally fill "Featuring a product/offer? (optional)" and check "Use competitor insights" before generating the content calendar — every generated post in that batch is competitor-aware.

## Tips
- CRMown does not scrape competitors' Instagram, Facebook, X, or other social posts — that isn't permitted by those platforms' terms. Positioning briefs are built only from the competitor's public website (if you give a URL) plus CRMown AI's general knowledge.
- The AI is instructed to differentiate, not imitate: generated posts never copy a competitor's approach and never name them by name — the competitor context is used purely to find gaps and contrast angles.
- Business stage changes the strategy CRMown AI leans into: "Newly launched" biases toward awareness and trust-building, "Growing" biases toward differentiation versus competitors, "Established" biases toward authority, retention, and expansion.
- Product focus is optional and set per post/batch (not saved on the competitor) — leave it blank for general brand posts, or fill it in when you want a post centered on a specific offer.
- Want a daily email about what these competitors are publishing? Create an AI Agent from the "Competitor Social Monitor" template — it uses this same list.
- Competitor-informed context is inert until you turn it on — leaving "Competitor-informed" / "Use competitor insights" unchecked posts exactly as before.

## Troubleshooting
- **Competitor shows "refresh failed"** — CRMown AI did not return a usable brief on that attempt (transient AI error), independent of whether the site was reachable. Fix: Click "Refresh brief" again. If it keeps failing, check AI Usage in Settings for outages or exhausted AI allocation.
- **Competitor shows "AI knowledge" instead of "researched"** — No Website URL was set on that competitor, or CRMown could not read the site (blocked, too large, or timed out). Fix: Add or correct the Website URL, then click "Refresh brief" again. If the site keeps failing to load, the brief will keep using general AI knowledge, which is still usable.
- **"Add competitor" is disabled** — The org already has 5 competitors saved — 5 is the max. Fix: Delete a competitor you no longer need to track, then add the new one.

## Plans
Marketing suite required.