Brand Strategy Analysis & Research
See how any brand can rise above the competition
Go beyond surface-level research and strategy. SmokeLadder reveals how a brand’s positioning, messaging, and visuals really stack up – and how you can make them stand out, fast.
6500+
Brands analyzed that you can access instantly
2 min
Time to analyze any brand and its key competitors
360°
View across positioning, personas, visuals, messaging
Built on frameworks refined over a decade of strategy work – elevated with AI efficiency
Spot the market opportunities that competitors miss
“Feels like I have a whole team of researchers and microstrategists.”
“It’s uncovering ideas and insights I may not have otherwise had. When I onboard a client I feel like I’m reading their minds – they ask me how did I know that?”
Scott Martin
Founder, Brand Strategist
Purpose built to help strategists and marketers navigate a new era of competitive noise, find ways for brands to stand out, and create memorable connections with customers.
Competitor data and insights to differentiate any brand you work on
Get a complete view of any brand’s strategy backed by data
See in-depth breakdowns of any brand’s target persona, key strengths, competitors, SWOT analysis, and more – plus action items on how you can use the insights.
See where their message misses the mark – and fix it
Use the Message Clarity analysis to find issues, then generate new messaging ideas based on the brand’s positioning, category, and key persona.
Discover the most impactful places to differentiate
Save hours and go deeper on brand and competitor research
Evaluate a brand’s visual impact
Access data on thousands of brands
Message Scores
Category Rank
Action Points
Super easy pricing plans
Free Account
- Run a strategy analysis on any brand
- Get 10 free analysis actions to try out all of SmokeLadder’s functionality
- Sign up for free (no credit card required)!
Premium Account
- Unlimited analysis actions
- Analysis of client brands and their competitors
- Full strategy briefs
- Persona and SWOT analysis
- Brand visuals analysis
- Messaging clarity analysis
- Copywriting generation and editing
- Brand value assessment
- Competitive differentiation
- Category analysis
- Value prop analysis
- Decision maker insights
- PDF downloads
- Access to our full database of thousands of brands
- Sign up for annual for just $17 / month – save 30% (almost 4 months free)
FAQs
Some of the questions we’ve heard from SmokeLadder customers that could be helpful to know as you explore the platform!
Is SmokeLadder only for agencies and consultants?
Nope, all types of strategists and marketers can get value from SmokeLadder. Internal marketing teams can use SmokeLadder to analyze their own brand and stay up to date on the strategy, positioning, and messaging of key competitors.
We focus on agencies and consultants because they have to analyze new brands and competitors constantly, so the level and frequency of need is often a lot higher.
Is it mainly for strategists and marketers or can sales teams use it too?
Sales teams get a huge amount of value from SmokeLadder. Having clear insights on a brand’s positioning. target customers, key competitors, and biggest points of value are all critical when talking with new clients. It’s like getting access to their internal strategy before you’ve even spoken with them.
How can we share the analysis with our team or clients?
Once you’ve created a brand brief (or accessed one for a brand we’ve already analyzed) you can share it via link or if you have a premium account you can download a PDF of the brief to share as well.
What kind of commitment is it to use SmokeLadder?
Premium subscriptions are all month-to-month, so no long term commitment is required. Of course you can sign up for an annual subscription to save money.
And you can test out all of the functionality for free (no CC required) to start.
Does SmokeLadder only analyze a brand's website?
The primary focus is on the brand’s website because this is the purest, most up to date communication of their strategy, positioning, and messaging.
That being said, the AI does reference other supporting brand elements to help inform parts of the analysis though it varies based on the individual brand.
Ultimately our goal is to deliver the most accurate analysis and insights about the brand.
What other analysis does SmokeLadder do?
In addition to any data we gather via AI, the platform performs internal analysis using our own proprietary systems and scoring to create things like our Total Positioning Score.
These processes are based on 10+ years of strategy consulting work across hundreds of clients in a variety of industries.
When you perform a brand analysis is the data current?
Yes, via API we’re able to look at the most up to date info and content for brands. Our only limitation is whatever is currently accessible via normal web search access – i.e. if search engines have discovered the changes for a brand so can SmokeLadder.
Note that we do update analysis on brands regularly to ensure they stay current.
Why is this better than running a brand analysis on ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, etc.?
There are many advantages to using SmokeLadder over a general AI chat product – here are the top 3:
- Data: We don’t just deliver you analysis about a brand in isolation – our scoring and analysis leverage hundreds of thousands of data points we’ve collected on brands to help grade each brand’s value, differentiation, and competitive advantages. This provides access to competitive benchmarks you can’t get anywhere else.
- Expertise: We use a full set of proprietary analysis and scoring systems on the platform based on 10+ years of strategy consulting work to inform our outputs. Instead of using an ad hoc collection of prompts each time, you’re able to use a system that’s been fine-tuned (and continuously evolving) specifically for brand strategy, positioning, visual, and messaging analysis.
- Presentation: You get the analysis in a visual layout with scores, charts, and graphs all designed to make the data more accessible and make it easier to find strategic opportunities. It’s also easier to share this info with clients in a friendly, elevated way that allows you to have strategic discussions with them. It’s the same reason you would use a product like Quickbooks instead of a basic spreadsheet.
Our latest brand data & articles
Report: Positioning’s New 95-5 Rule – Why You Need A Stronger Brand POV
What happens when only 5% of buyers are in-market and only 5% of brands have strong positioning? It creates The 5-5 Squeeze.
The Top 6 Places Where B2B Brand Messaging Falls Apart
Original data and analysis on the top 10 criteria for effective B2B brand messaging and where most brand fall apart.
