Problem Solved: Small and Medium-sized IT companies often struggle to stay ahead in a rapidly evolving market. Manually tracking competitor moves, pricing changes, product updates, and emerging market trends is time-consuming, inconsistent, and often too slow for agile sales strategies. This leads to missed sales opportunities, ineffective pitches, and a reactive rather than proactive market approach.
Solution Overview: This n8n workflow automates the continuous collection and AI-powered analysis of competitor data and market trends. By leveraging web scraping, RSS feeds, and advanced AI models, it transforms raw data into actionable insights for your sales and marketing teams. The system generates structured reports, notifies relevant stakeholders, and stores intelligence in your database, empowering your team with real-time, strategic information.
For Whom: This high-value workflow is perfect for:
This system establishes a powerful, automated pipeline for market and competitor intelligence:
To implement this sophisticated workflow in your n8n instance, follow these detailed steps:
Prepare Your Digital Assets & Accounts:
CompetitorName
, LastAnalyzedDate
, Strengths
, Weaknesses
, Opportunities
, Threats
, SalesTalkingPoints
.competitor_profiles
, market_trends
) with appropriate columns.{{competitorName}}
, {{strengths}}
).Identify Data Sources for Intelligence:
Build the n8n Workflow (10 Key Nodes):
Scheduled Analysis Trigger
): Set this to trigger daily or weekly at a specific time (e.g., Every Week
, At Hour: 0
, At Minute: 0
).Fetch Competitor Web Data
): Configure this to call your chosen web scraping service's API. Set Method
to POST
, URL
to the service's API endpoint, and build the JSON/Raw Body
with the startUrls
(competitor websites, review sites) for scraping, including your API Key in Authentication
(e.g., Header Auth
).Fetch News & Blog RSS
): Add the URLs of competitor blogs and industry news RSS feeds.Combine Data Sources
): Connect inputs from both Fetch Competitor Web Data
and Fetch News & Blog RSS
. Use Merge By Position
.Pre-process Data for AI
): Write JavaScript code to iterate through merged items, extract relevant text content, perform basic cleaning (e.g., HTML stripping), and limit text length for AI input. Output should be an array of objects with content
, title
, url
, and source
.AI Analysis & Competitor Insights
): Select your OpenAI credential. Set Resource
to Chat Completion
and Model
to gpt-4o
. In Messages
, create a System
message defining AI's role and a User
message containing the dynamic prompt (referencing {{ $json.map(item => ... ).join('\\n\\n') }}
for content
, title
, url
, source
) and requesting a structured JSON output for analysis. Set Output
to Raw Data
.Generate Market Intelligence Report
): Select your Google Docs credential. Set Operation
to Create document from template
. Provide your Template Document ID
and map the Values
from the parsed AI output (using JSON.parse($json.choices[0].message.content).PropertyName
) to your template placeholders.Sales & Marketing Team Notification
): Select your Slack credential. Set Chat ID
to your team's Slack channel ID. Compose the Text
message, referencing the report link ({{ $json.documentUrl }}
) and key AI insights (e.g., {{ JSON.parse($json.choices[0].message.content).Competitor_Name }}
).Store Insights to Database
): Select your PostgreSQL credential. Set Operation
to Execute Query
. Write an INSERT ... ON CONFLICT DO UPDATE
SQL query to store the AI insights into your competitor_profiles
or market_trends
table, mapping values from the parsed AI output.Generate Personalized Sales Talking Points
- Optional Branch): This node can be part of the main workflow or a separate, manually triggered workflow. Configure it similarly to the main AI node, but with a prompt tailored to generate sales talking points based on a specific sales context and the stored insights.Final Testing & Activation:
This system will empower your IT company's sales team with invaluable, data-driven intelligence, enabling them to close more deals and stay ahead in the market.