As a business owner, you want to keep on top of your competitors. If they change up their products or services or begin offering customers more value than you do, you can quickly lose a portion of your client base — something no business owner wants.
However, it’s not always easy to identify who your competitors are, especially if you serve clients across multiple regions or countries. Consider these tips if you’re struggling to stay on top of your competitor research or simply need help finding competitors in your industry.
1. Find Your Competitors on Crunchbase
Crunchbase is a large-scale database of organizations and executives across a broad spectrum of industries, including fintech, manufacturing, and consulting. Many organizations have a Crunchbase profile because it provides information about their company, including its location and industry.
You can search Crunchbase to find companies that offer services and products similar to yours. TakingAsiaciti Trust’s Crunchbase page as an example, you can click on “similar companies” to see a list of firms in related industries. The companies that appear may be your competitors, so it’s worth researching to understand what they offer.
2. Perform a Search on Venture Radar
Venture Radar is a free tool that identifies companies similar to yours by simply entering your organization’s name. It relies on an AI-driven algorithm to source results from over 300,000 businesses worldwide. You can export the list of organizations it provides into Excel or CSV format.
Venture Radar’s search results are relatively basic. You won’t receive insights about current company revenue or the length of the organization’s time in business. However, you’ll learn the name and location of each company, which you can use as a starting point for more comprehensive competitor research.
3. Try Out Comparable Companies
Like Venture Radar, Comparable Companies offers a large-scale database that can help you identify organizations within your industry. You simply input your company name, and the platform retrieves a list of organizations that offer the same types of products or services that you do.
Beyond offering organizational names, Comparable Companies also ranks each business according to a similarity index factor, helping you to identify the organizations most relevant to your company. It also provides contact details and current news about each business.
To try out Comparable Companies, you’ll need to create a free account. More extensive features are available through the service after paying a fee.
4. Use Google to Find Your Competitors
Google remains one of the best ways to locate your competitors, but you’ll need to use a little creativity to optimize the quality of your results. To start the competitor search process, think like a customer and enter relevant queries about your products and services.
For instance, if you’re the founder of a law firm that offers personal injury services in Cleveland, Ohio, you might search for competitors using the terms “car accident lawyer in Cleveland” or “slip and fall accident lawyer in Cleveland.” Your search results will contain a list of Cleveland law firms offering personal injury legal services.
Once You Know Who Your Competitors Are, You Can Monitor Their Marketing Strategies
When you know who you’re competing against, engaging in competitor research is much easier. You can use the information you uncover to stay on top of their company news or monitor their website. Remember, competitor research is critical to staying at the forefront of your industry — whether you’re a local or global company.
