How to own the gaps your competitors leave wide open

Most leaders obsess over what competitors are doing right. They benchmark features, copy pricing, and scramble to catch up. 

However, the real opportunities often lie in the neglected pain points, underserved audiences, or broken promises that rivals overlook.

Owning these gaps doesn’t mean being louder or cheaper. It means spotting where customer needs aren’t being met and positioning your business as the answer.

This can enable you to access less crowded markets, stickier customers, and aim for growth that isn’t built on a race to the bottom.

In this article, we’ll explore how to uncover those open spaces, test your positioning with minimal risk, and learn from companies that dominated by focusing where others didn’t.

Why competitor gaps matter

Competing head-to-head is exhausting. 

When everyone is competing across areas such as price, features, and speed, customers see little difference and make decisions based on the cheapest option. 

That’s not a sustainable strategy.

Finding gaps gives you a chance to:

• Differentiate without relying on gimmicks.
• Build loyalty by solving overlooked pain points others ignore.
• Target audiences who feel underserved.
• Create a niche that competitors can’t easily copy.

“The only way to beat the competition is to stop trying to beat the competition.” - W. Chan Kim, co-author of Blue Ocean Strategy

Map competitor promises against delivery

Start by analysing the gap between what competitors say and what they actually deliver.

Look at:

• Marketing claims. What benefits or values do they highlight?
• Customer reviews. Where do they consistently fall short?
• Support forums or social media. What frustrations do users vent about?

For example, many food delivery apps promise speed and reliability, but customer reviews tell a story of cold food, hidden fees, or unhelpful support. 

That gap becomes a positioning opportunity for any brand willing to tackle the basics better.

Create a table like this for each competitor, showing the difference between promises and delivery. This helps you to see the gaps where you can gain an advantage.

Identify overlooked pain points

Not all customer problems scream for attention. Some are subtle, persistent irritations that competitors dismiss as unimportant but matter for users. 

Questions to ask:

• What tasks still feel clunky, confusing, or slow in your industry?
• What’s the ‘hidden tax’ customers pay? Is it extra time, effort, or money?
• What’s missing from the experience, even if the core product works?

Zoom is a great example of this. Before the pandemic, plenty of video tools existed, but many were clunky and unreliable. 

Zoom matched the features of other video tools, and also solved the quiet pain point of ease and reliability. That focus turned it into a default choice at a time of maximum opportunity. 

Small frustrations can be big opportunities if you’re the only one fixing them.

Test your positioning with minimal risk

Owning a gap doesn’t mean betting the whole business on an unproven idea. 

You can test quickly and cheaply:

• Landing page tests. Build simple pages targeting a neglected need and track sign-ups or interest.
• Message A/B tests. Run ads with different angles (e.g. ‘fastest’ vs. ‘most reliable’) to see what clicks.
• Customer interviews. Ask prospects how they perceive your offer compared to competitors. Does your angle feel new, useful, or irrelevant?

Dropbox famously validated demand with nothing more than a demo video. 

Instead of building the product upfront, they tested whether solving the pain point of file syncing resonated. 

Learn from companies that found the gaps

Some of the biggest market disruptors won by playing a different game from their competitors and finding the gaps. 

Monzo entered the crowded banking space but focused on transparency and user-friendly mobile experiences. These are the areas that traditional banks neglected.

Warby Parker spotted the eyewear industry’s inflated prices and poor shopping experience. 

Their direct-to-consumer model solved both pain points and built a loyal following. 

Canva made design accessible to non-designers, addressing the gap between pro-level software like Photoshop and the everyday user’s need for quick, simple visuals. 

Casper simplified the mattress-buying experience with a direct-to-door model and a 100-night trial, closing the gap on convenience and trust in a confusing market.

In each case, success came not from being everything to everyone, but from focusing on neglected gaps.

Position yourself to own the space

Once you’ve found your gap and tested your story, it’s time to claim it. That means embedding it everywhere - on your website, sales pitch, product roadmap, and culture.

• Make your promise explicit and memorable.
• Deliver relentlessly so customers experience the difference.
• Protect the gap by making it hard to copy (through brand, service quality, or community).

Once you expose a gap, competitors will notice. Your job is to build trust and momentum faster than they can react.

Summary

Competitors will always have strengths but they’ll always leave something on the table too. 

The startups that win own the spaces others ignore rather than just chasing what rivals do well.

By mapping promises against delivery, uncovering overlooked pain points, and testing your positioning quickly, you can turn those gaps into your growth engine.