How to Build SWOT Guides in Google Sheets & Excel Fast

Why Competitor SWOT Still Matters

If you run a business, agency, or growth team, you already do competitor analysis — usually in a rush before a pitch, launch, or board meeting. A good competitor SWOT template turns that scramble into a steady habit: one sheet where strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats are laid out clearly across every rival.

The question isn’t if you should do this. It’s how you do it without losing half your week to copy-paste, screenshots, and messy notes.

Below are practical ways to build and maintain your competitor SWOT analysis, from fully manual to fully automated with an AI computer agent like Simular.

Way 1: Manual SWOT in Google Sheets (Single Marketer Mode)

Best for: Solo founders, marketers, and consultants validating a few key competitors.

Step-by-step:

1. Create your grid. In Google Sheets, set columns for Competitor, Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats, Notes, and Source URL.
2. List competitors. Add the 5–10 names you actually bump into in deals, search results, or RFPs.
3. Research systematically. For each competitor, open their website, pricing page, product docs, review sites, and social channels.
4. Write bullets, not essays. Capture 3–7 bullets per SWOT quadrant. Link each bullet back to a source.
5. Color-code patterns. Use simple conditional formatting (e.g., blue for product, green for pricing, orange for GTM) so patterns pop at a glance.

Pros:

• Zero setup cost.
• Forces you to really read and understand each rival.

Cons:

• Time-consuming and repetitive.
• Hard to keep fresh once the day job catches up with you.

Way 2: Excel Power User Workflow (Deeper Quant + Pivot Views)

Best for: Revenue leaders, finance, or strategy teams who want numbers and narrative.

Step-by-step:

1. Start from a table, not a matrix. In Excel, build a long-form table: each row is one competitor + one SWOT item.
2. Add structure. Columns like Type (S/W/O/T), Theme (pricing, product, brand), Evidence Score, Source, and Date allow for pivot analysis.
3. Use PivotTables. Summarize: “How many pricing-related weaknesses does Competitor A have?” or “Which threats appear across all rivals?”
4. Link to charts. Turn pivot results into quick bar charts and heat maps for exec slides.

Pros:

• Great for large competitor sets and long time horizons.
• Easy to slice by segment, region, theme.

Cons:

• Still manual data entry.
• Can feel heavy for non-analysts.

Way 3: Semi-Automated Research (Formulas + Simple Scripts)

Best for: Teams not ready for full agents but tired of pure manual work.

Ideas:

• In Google Sheets, use IMPORTXML or IMPORTHTML to pull pricing tables, feature lists, or headlines directly from competitor sites.
• Store common review URLs and use Apps Script or simple add-ons to fetch recent review snippets.
• Use lookup tables to auto-tag themes (e.g., any bullet containing “price” or “discount” becomes Theme = Pricing).

Pros:

• Reduces some grunt work.
• Still easy to understand and maintain.

Cons:

• Breaks when websites change structure.
• Limited to data that lives in predictable HTML.

Way 4: Fully Automated With a Simular AI Computer Agent

Best for: Agencies, growth teams, and sales orgs who need living, weekly-updated SWOTs across dozens of competitors.

With Simular Pro, you’re not just using an API. You’re delegating the entire computer workflow to an agent that behaves like a focused analyst.

What the Simular agent can do:

• Open a browser, visit each competitor site, and navigate pricing, product, docs, and blog.
• Log into tools you already use (e.g., review platforms) and gather up-to-date feedback.
• Paste structured summaries straight into your Google Sheets or Excel workbook.
• Run thousands of micro-steps reliably, with every action logged and inspectable.

Example workflow:

1. You maintain a simple list of competitor URLs and target keywords in Google Sheets.
2. On a schedule (say, every Monday), a Simular Pro agent:
   • Reads that list.
   • Visits each site, scans pages, and extracts changes in messaging, pricing, and features.
   • Pulls 5–10 fresh reviews per brand from your usual sources.
   • Writes concise SWOT bullets and updates the appropriate cells.
3. You open the sheet, scan highlights, and refine strategy instead of digging for raw data.

Pros:

• Massive time savings for recurring analysis.
• Production-grade reliability across thousands or even millions of steps.
• Transparent execution: every click and keystroke is visible, editable, and repeatable.

Cons:

• Requires a bit of upfront onboarding (defining your template, login flows, and sources).
• Best suited to knowledge workers comfortable letting an agent drive their desktop and browser.

Way 5: Blended Model — Human Judgment, Agent Muscle

In practice, the sweet spot is hybrid. Let Simular’s AI computer agent handle:

• Opening tabs, logging in, exporting CSVs.
• Copying key snippets and metrics into your SWOT template.

Then you — founder, marketer, or strategist — do what humans are great at:

• Framing which strengths actually win deals.
• Interpreting whether a “threat” is noise or a strategic warning.
• Turning the SWOT into positioning, pitches, and campaigns.

This way, you keep your brain on high-leverage thinking while the agent handles the 1,500 hours a year of clicks and drags.