Where to Find Public Information About Competitors
This post asks how to gather information about my competitors. Every start-up and established business faces competition. Understanding who your competitors are and what they do will help you stay ahead of them. Use competitor analysis to gather information about your competitors. So then, how about the best ways to research competitors
What Information Should You Look For?
Competitor analysis identifies, analyses, understands and learns from your rivals. It is a great way to answer the question. How can I gather information about my competitors?
Question: How can I use customer preferences to spot competitors I might be missing?
Answer: Watch how buyers describe solving their needs. If customers mention alternatives or compare your solution with another, that’s a clue. Word of mouth, niche forums, or review sites often surface upstarts before they become obvious. Record these signals alongside standard market tracking to build a proactive competitor map.
It has to be an essential aspect of your marketing strategy. If it’s not, you are wasting time developing a marketing strategy. It will enable you to identify what makes your offering unique in the marketplace and what will make you attractive to your target audience.
If you are pre-startup, you must do a Competitor Analysis before starting your business. To determine what you will do and assess if it’s a good idea in the first place. It’s an ever-evolving document. So once you have written it, you should keep it up to date and amend it once your world changes. Read more: Innovative Disruption: How Fintech is Reshaping Australia’s Landscape.
Who are those competitors?
There will be many businesses like yours with the same passionate owners. If you set up a market stall selling fruit and vegetables, the chap across the street is likely a direct competitor. The supermarket down the road also has robust direct competition. Look at the competitors that are not established yet. Where could they come from? Who could they be? What about indirect Competitors? Fast food restaurants are indirect competition. Customers can spend their cash on fruit and vegetables or buy takeaway instead. With the internet taking over our lives, it’s essential to remember to occasionally return to basics.
Step away from the mobile screen, get out, and look at your market. Take time to walk around where you plan to open your business. Look through industry magazines. Read the local business press. Look for telephone directories and talk to your potential customers. The bigger the market, the more use of the internet and online research tools will be needed.
However, you can still attend trade shows and exhibitions and explore the exhibits. Armed with a set of questions you need to answer about your market. Collect all the associated marketing material you can find to give you an idea of what your competition is saying, what they are missing and how you can do things better. Read more: Simplifying Competitor Analysis Using the powerful Occam’s Razor.
Useful Competitor Information to Collect
If you look hard enough, you can find out anything about your competitors:
- Who and where are your competitors in the world
- What they offer and what they don’t offer
- Their pricing strategy
- Their customers
- How and where they advertise.
- What they say in their advertising and marketing
- Understand their strength and take advantage of their weaknesses
My customers
- What is your ideal customer demographic? Age, gender, income level and so on.
- How often will they purchase?
- What are their service expectations?
- How much do they generally spend?
- What after-sales support do they expect?
Potential customers
- Why will they select a specific competitor?
- Are there any patterns to their spending with your competitor?
- Where are they currently shopping?
Start With Public Sources
Fire up Google, as even the smallest companies will have a web footprint. Look for companies that offer products similar to yours. Look beyond your city, county and even country. A competitor’s website will provide you with sufficient information to get started. It will show its products and services. How does it sell them? What do they say about their product, target market, and USP? Some will offer their prices. And if they don’t show you any of the above, you could be off to a great start.
Review websites and testimonials on their websites. Look through old and new trade magazines. Seek out their social media accounts, relevant blogs, forums and feedback. What do their customers say? How satisfied are they?
Another great way to gather more information is to ask your customers. Find out what they like and dislike about your competitors, where improvements can be made, and what they are not doing that they would like them (or you) to do.
Steps to Accurately Identify Your Business Competitors
Identifying your business competitors is the first step in developing an effective competitive strategy. Start by looking at businesses that offer similar products or services within your industry. Don’t just focus on direct competitors; consider indirect competitors and new entrants that could disrupt your market. Additionally, analyse market trends, customer preferences, and geographic location to better understand who your true competitors are. By thoroughly understanding who your competitors are, you can better position your business to outperform them and capture a larger market share.
Useful Public Sources of Competitor Information
To effectively research your competitors, start with publicly available information. Examine their websites, social media presence, and customer reviews. This can reveal their strengths, weaknesses, and customer satisfaction levels.
Next, online tools such as SEMrush, SimilarWeb, or Ahrefs can be used to analyse their SEO performance, traffic sources, and keyword strategies. You can also study their backlinks to identify partnerships or influencer relationships. Lastly, pay attention to financial reports or news articles, which can provide valuable insights into their business strategy and plans. Following these steps lets you stay informed about your competition and adjust your strategy accordingly.
How to Identify Your Real Competitors
When searching for new competitors, don’t only look at surface-level companies in your niche. Track customer behaviour, examine evolving market trends, and observe subtle shifts—such as emerging rivals moving into your territory. This helps you see not just who’s active now, but who might matter tomorrow. A fuller view helps you act smarter, not just faster.
Using the Information You Find
This post asked how to gather information about my competitors. It explained why it’s important to understand who your competitors are and what they do to stay ahead.
Public sources are a useful starting point. Some competitor questions need information that cannot be found through websites, databases or search tools. Competitive intelligence research can use primary sources to fill those gaps.
We are Octopus. The Global People-Powered Competitive Intelligence Agency.
Outsmart your competition. Make the unknown known. Octopus helps you gain clarity in complex markets. With clients and tentacles around the world, we deliver sharp, actionable competitive intelligence through a blend of deep primary (HUMINT) and secondary research. If you’re looking to make smarter decisions, beat the competition, and reduce uncertainty, we’re the partner you want on your side.
