Lets not kid ourselves.

Competitive research doesn’t always need to be an art. Or a science.

Many times, it can be as simple as looking at public data.

Maybe an executive just wants a clearer understanding of who a competitor is.

Or maybe you noticed a trend and want to dig a bit deeper without wasting an entire day researching.

Whichever the case, here’s what I’d look at to learn about a competitor as fast as possible without spending a dime:

1. Employee growth rate and hiring trends via PeerSignal.org

These metrics are great for understanding 1) how a company is performing and 2) what they’re actively investing in (e.g. GTM vs. R&D vs. Product, etc.).

PeerSignal is a great resource if you’re in the B2B SaaS, PLG, Fintech, or AI markets. If you can’t find the company you’re looking for in PeerSignal, then LinkedIn Premium is a good paid alternative.

If you go the LinkedIn route, you can find employee growth under the “Insights” tab of a company’s profile.

2. Ad history via Google and Facebook Ad Libraries

Google and Facebook maintain a library of all ads that companies post to their sites.

Search your competitor, then use filters to see which ads have run the longest. This should tell you what’s worked well for them and who they’re targeting.

3. SEO opportunities via Competitive Keyword Generator

This tool sends you a free list of comparison keywords to target ready-to-buy leads.

Just type in the competitors you’re researching, and it’ll send you a personalized spreadsheet with suggested keywords to target, their search volume, and CPC.

4. Earnings via public competitors’ websites or Companies House (UK)

All public companies have to file their earnings on a quarterly and annual basis. You can find these on the companies’ websites—they should have an investors page where you can download the PDFs.

But many people don’t know that UK-based companies that make >$10M in revenue have to file their earnings too—even if they’re privately held. That financial information can be found via Companies House.

5. Customer acquisition strategy via Similarweb

You can go pretty deep with Similarweb’s free website search. Just type in your competitor’s website and you’ll get taken to a massive page that lists:

• the number of site visitors they get per month

• which countries their traffic comes from

• the social channels they get traffic from

• audience interests

• the channels they use (e.g. direct, organic search, social, paid, referral, etc.)

And lots more.

You’ll be surprised how much you learn about a competitor just by spending 20 minutes on these tools. It’s probably not enough to build out an entire competitive program, but it should at least get you started on the right path.

Snippets

• 🍿 | Gong’s Chief Evangelist shared a lengthy post on LinkedIn that describes how they differentiate from their top competitors, Outreach and Salesloft. Then Outreach’s CEO posted a response.

• 🍎 | Apple Music launched a Discover Weekly-esque playlist to better compete against Spotify.

• 🚕 | The robotaxi space is heating up. Cruise, the self-driving subsidiary of GM, is expanding its service area and seeking to compete with Waymo.

• 🎥 | A new app called Callsheet is a cleaner alternative to IMDb. Just goes to show that a product strategy of “well-designed” compared to incumbents can sometimes be enough.

Examples

New Podcast: Behind the Scenes of a Viral Guerrilla Marketing Campaign

Eldad is the Co-founder & CEO of WINN.AI, a real-time AI assistant that helps sales teams save time on busywork and win more deals. I learned about this company through a viral guerrilla marketing campaign—they coordinated with 100+ sales influencers to record and post videos smashing their keyboards.

It completely took over my LinkedIn feed, and I had to learn more. In this interview, we chatted about:

• Eldad's background in the Israeli Defense Forces

• How he researched the AI Sales Assistant competitive landscape before launching their product

• The making of their viral campaign

• The results it produced

And lots more!

From the Community

1,000+ messages are shared every month by Product Marketers and Competitive Intel practitioners in the Healthy Competition community. Here are some recent threads that got folks talking.

Memberships are $10/month. But they come with a free 7-day trial so you can see if it’s for you first without being charged.

🥥🍍🥑 Fruity Memes 🍎🍉🫐

Stay Healthy, my friends.

💚Andy