A pitch-ready competitive audit in an afternoon
By Owen Fisher·Updated 24 July 2026·9 min read
An agency can build a pitch-ready competitive audit in one afternoon: capture the prospect's site and five rivals at the same page types, pin the gaps in the prospect's site against the field, and assemble the deck under the agency's own logo. This worked example walks the process, the pitch narrative and the leave-behind.
The Thursday pitch
The scene is familiar to any agency: a new-business pitch lands on Thursday, and the strongest thing you could walk in with is the prospect's own competitive landscape, annotated. Not your credentials deck. Their market, on screen, with their site sitting inside it. The problem is the build cost. Captured by hand, six sites at two widths is the best part of a day before a single slide exists. This example walks the tooled version of that afternoon, as a process you can copy for any pitch. No client, pitch or win is being claimed here; it is a worked example.
Capture the prospect plus five rivals
Capture the same page types across all six sites: homepage, pricing, the main product page, and one proof page each, on desktop and phone. Sameness is the discipline that makes the deck fair. If you show the prospect's homepage against a rival's polished campaign page, the comparison flatters nobody and the room will feel it. The five-page framework explains the page choices; for a pitch, four page types across six sites is usually plenty.
In Stravue, that is one project: paste each site with the page types you're after, confirm the proposed pages, and the captures arrive clean, full-page, both widths, with cookie banners and chat widgets removed. The whole field sits on one board, dated the same day, ready to pin.
The afternoon, step by step
- 1
List the six sites and the page types
The prospect plus five rivals they would name themselves, and the same three or four page types for each. Ask the prospect who they lose to, if you can; their answer beats your guess.
- 2
Capture everything in one run
All six sites, both widths, one sitting, so every capture carries the same date. This is the step that costs a day by hand and minutes with Stravue.
- 3
Pin the field first, the prospect last
Work through the five rivals before touching the prospect's site. You need the category norm in your head before you can say what the prospect is missing, rather than what you personally dislike.
- 4
Mark the prospect's gaps against the field
Pin the differences on the prospect's own captures: "four of five rivals show pricing here, this page does not", "their call to action sits a full screen higher". Gaps against the field, not taste.
- 5
Assemble the deck under your own logo
One capture per slide, pins visible, a one-line reading under each. On the Agency plan the exports carry your agency's logo, so the deck walks into the room as your work, because it is.
- 6
Prepare the leave-behind
Export a PDF for the follow-up email and keep a read-only share link ready. The link opens without a signup, which matters when the deck gets forwarded past the room you pitched.
Marking the gaps, not the taste
The pins on the prospect's site are the heart of the pitch, and they only land if every one is anchored to the field. "This homepage has no proof section; four of the five rivals lead with one" is a gap. "This homepage feels dated" is taste, and taste invites argument. Typical gaps this kind of audit surfaces: a call to action that sits lower than every rival's, a missing page type the rest of the category has, pricing hidden where the field shows it, a phone version that cuts what rivals keep. Label observation and interpretation separately, exactly as in a standard teardown, and the deck reads as evidence rather than opinion.
The pitch narrative
Open on the prospect's market, not the agency's credentials. The first slides show the field: what the category does, where it clusters, who breaks rank. Then the prospect's site enters, and the gaps mark themselves. The credentials slide can wait until the room already believes you understand their market, because by then it is barely needed. The table below maps a working pitch structure to the evidence slides that carry it; the general slide craft is in how to present competitor research.
| Pitch section | Evidence slides behind it |
|---|---|
| This is your market | The five rivals' homepages, side by side, with the category norms pinned |
| Here is where the category clusters | One slide per page type showing the pattern across the field, sweep-style |
| Here is where your site sits | The prospect's captures with gap pins, each anchored to a rival slide already shown |
| The phone story | Desktop and phone pairs where the prospect's mobile page cuts what rivals keep |
| What to do first | At most three moves, each pointing back at a pinned slide the room has seen |
The leave-behind
Two artefacts leave the room. The PDF goes in the follow-up email, because procurement and forwarding still run on files. The read-only share link goes to your champion, because it opens on any device without a signup and shows the deck exactly as presented. If a decision-maker who was not in the room opens either one, the deck has to work without you talking over it, which is why every slide carries its own one-line reading.
From pitch to retainer
Win or lose, the project keeps earning. The captures are dated evidence of the field as it stood at the pitch, and the same project becomes the baseline for a quarterly update if the retainer lands. Put the rivals' key pages on watch and the next quarter's deck starts from real changes, before and after, rather than from scratch. The quarterly watch example walks that cadence; the deck refresh itself is a shorter rerun of this same afternoon.