Competitor monitoring is part of the PM job — but most teams do it in the least scalable way possible:
- periodic manual checks
- a competitive spreadsheet that drifts out of date
- a Slack message when Sales notices something first
The outcome is predictable: you miss important shifts (or find them too late), and you spend too much time interpreting raw changes.
This post explains what PMs should monitor, how to set up a low-maintenance system, and a workflow to turn changes into short, shareable briefs.
What to monitor (the pages that reveal strategy)
If you monitor everything, you drown in noise. If you monitor the right pages, you catch strategy.
Start with:
- Pricing + packaging (tiers, limits, add-ons, enterprise plans)
- Feature pages (claims, comparisons, “what’s included” tables)
- Landing pages by segment (ICP messaging, positioning, differentiators)
- Comparison pages (direct attacks, head-to-head tables)
These pages change when the company is:
- moving upmarket
- changing monetization
- repositioning the product
- updating how they sell value
Why manual monitoring fails
Manual monitoring breaks down because it’s not a system.
Common failure modes:
- You don’t remember what changed last week
- You miss quiet edits (a single line can change meaning)
- You can’t scale past a handful of competitors
- It’s hard to share raw diffs with stakeholders
If your workflow requires “open diff, interpret, summarize, update docs”, it won’t happen consistently.
The system that scales: detection + interpretation
A good competitor monitoring loop has two layers:
- Detection: reliably notice when key URLs change.
- Interpretation: quickly understand what changed and why it matters.
Most tools stop at detection.
The real bottleneck is interpretation: deciding whether a change is pricing-related, feature-related, or just layout noise.
A 10-minute setup for PMs
Here’s a simple setup that works for most teams:
- Pick 10–30 URLs across your top 3–8 competitors.
- pricing pages
- plan comparison pages
- 2–4 landing pages per competitor (core + enterprise + integrations)
- 2–6 key feature pages
- Set cadences:
- pricing pages: every 6 hours (or daily)
- landing pages: daily
- feature pages: daily or weekly
- Add a prompt template that matches your objective.
Copy/paste prompt templates
Pricing + packaging prompt
"Summarize pricing and packaging changes. Highlight new tiers, removed tiers, usage limits, discounts, add-ons, and changes to plan comparison tables. Ignore footer, navigation, and purely visual changes."
Feature claims prompt
"Summarize changes to feature claims and differentiation. Call out new capabilities, removed capabilities, claim wording changes, and shifts in what is included by plan. Ignore layout and formatting."
Landing page positioning prompt
"Summarize positioning changes on landing pages. Call out target audience changes, headline/subheadline updates, new differentiators, and changes to proof (logos, testimonials, metrics). Ignore navigation/footer."
How to share competitor updates (without extra work)
A competitor update is only valuable if it reaches the people making decisions.
A simple pattern:
- send pricing changes to Sales enablement
- send positioning changes to Marketing
- send feature claim changes to Product + Exec stakeholders
The key is to share one short brief (what changed, why it matters, next step) instead of a raw diff.
A faster workflow with BriefPanel
BriefPanel is designed for this exact use case:
- monitor the competitor URLs you choose
- detect meaningful changes
- generate AI-written briefs you can skim and forward
- deliver via email, push, or digest
If you want competitor monitoring without the manual busywork: