Instead of going on a wild goose chase for information, the best thing to do is systematically find the best competitive intelligence sources to create competitors profiles. Once you know who your competitors are, you can start your competitive analysis.
In this blog, you can find 7 free and useful sources of competitive intelligence, that can help you with this task.
A competitive intelligence source is a medium that provides relevant insights about competitors. Processing real-time and up-to-date data is crucial to gain accurate insights. These sources often use artificial intelligence, machine learning and/or NLP.
This tool was developed by Amazon 20 years ago and is known simply as Alexa Rank. It can be used to check the popularity trend of a website compared to its own and provides commercial web traffic data and analytics. Alexa ranks websites based on their traffic volume. By entering competing websites, you can learn a lot about their number of visitors and online presence.
Crunchbase is one of the easiest platforms to access company data. It is a kind of statistics-based Wikipedia for startups. Founded in 2007 by Mike Arrington, it is a platform where analysts, angel investors and entrepreneurs go to get vital business information. Crunchbase is a useful market research tool if you want to know how fast your competition is growing. Find answers to questions such as "Which of your competitors have received new rounds of funding?" or "How fast are they growing?
Google Maps will give you a more complete understanding of your competitive location. Improve your local position by comparing and locating other businesses in the same area as you. This free registration effectively helps to increase your competitive advantage. If you haven't already done so, go claim your Google Business report your presence to increase your online visibility. It is often confusing how to set up Google MyBusiness, as the goalposts are always being changed as the service is updated quite frequently. This local SEO guide provides an up-to-date step-by-step process for you to set up your Google business listing correctly. Once you have claimed your business, you can optimise it to stay ahead of your competitors.
Next up: SEMRush, an easy tool for researching keywords. When you run your competitors’ URLs through SEMRush, you’ll be able to identify important keywords they are optimizing their sites for. You can only see the top 10 keywords if you subscribe for the free version but if you need useful in-depth competitor keyword analysis; you will have to get a paid SEMRush account.
Of course, you can find a lot of information on your competitor's social profiles. What is he/she talking about? How are they interacting with customers? Are others talking about him in a positive or negative way? As these profiles are publicly available, you can go on them and do your analysis. Or use one of the many social media monitoring tools. One useful and free tool is Social Searcher. It allows you to search for content in social networks in real-time and give you deep analytics data. Type your competitors’ names and you’ll get their social engagement and how they are perceived online. DataScouts, a competitive intelligence source, and platform
Your local company register, allows you to find more information about your competitor's revenue, employees, or how long the company already exists. This can help you see how he is growing his business. One way to find this register information is by using Open Corporates. This open database can also give you the first glimpse into your competitors.
Last but not least: Ahrefs. This tool has a free version that might really help you gain insights into your competitor's digital footprint. From backlinks and domains to organic and CPC keyword ideas, this tool can show you what mark your competition is leaving on the web.
Generally, there are a lot of useful tools, databases and competitive intelligence sources that can help you to understand your competition. All these tools combined will give you an interesting profile and vision of your competitive landscape.
Request a demo and learn how to use the DataScouts Platform to map and monitor your business environment, scout for innovations and technologies, and build your own ecosystem!