Healthy competition has always been at the heart of free markets. Likewise, as we have seen a shift toward digitalization, and online information increases, business competition is now all about intelligence.
Companies that know most about their competitors and markets, in general, immediately gain a competitive advantage and increase their chances of outperforming their competitors.
Likewise, a competitive intelligence report is, of course, acquired through data gathering. The data most commonly used to generate accurate competitive insight comes from public web data sources, often accessed through B2B data API solutions such as those offered by Coresignal.
In this article, you will learn about competitive intelligence best practices, data sources, types of competitive research, tools, and more.
What is competitive intelligence?
Competitive intelligence is the practice of gathering and analyzing information about competitors, customers, and general market conditions.
Competitive marketing intelligence aims to improve one’s market understanding, which can be translated into building a competitive strategy.
Such a competitive edge means that companies leveraging competitive intelligence to make decisions improve their ability to get ahead of the competition and solidify their market position.
This type of information gathering and usage is also sometimes called corporate intelligence and is related but not synonymous with business intelligence.
Business intelligence is a broader term that generally includes various tools, software, strategies, and more, to focus on one's own company and to improve the quality and quantity of information relevant to making data-driven business decisions.
The main difference between business intelligence and competitive intelligence is that they focus on different types of data. Competitive intelligence analysis is based on market and competitor data, while business intelligence examines company data.
Competitive intelligence can be considered a type of market research, but with very targeted questions to answer. Its goal is to find any information and uncover unique insights that will help the company stand its ground against the competition.
Companies that use competitive marketing intelligence effectively are better equipped to:
- Anticipate competitor moves
- Identify emerging opportunities and risks
- Strengthen their market position over time
How different B2B departments use competitive intelligence?
Competitive intelligence research types
Competitive intelligence can be categorized into two main types based on its scope and application—strategic and tactical. Each plays a vital role in how a business plans and executes its market positioning and competitive strategy.
Strategic CI (strategic intelligence)
Strategic competitive intelligence focuses on supporting long-term business goals. It offers a macro view of the market and competitors, aiding decisions like expansion, product innovation, or market diversification. According to Investopedia, this includes tracking mergers and acquisitions, evaluating new market opportunities, and analyzing long-term trends in consumer behavior and technology adoption.
Tactical CI (tactical intelligence)
Tactical CI is geared toward short-term needs, helping teams react to competitors’ immediate actions. It’s commonly used by sales and marketing teams for real-time insights. Investopedia notes that tactical intelligence includes data fields like pricing changes, product feature updates, or campaign launches.
Integrating both approaches
For optimal results, businesses should integrate both strategic and tactical CI. Strategic CI sets the foundation, while tactical CI delivers real-time insights that fine-tune execution. By using platforms like CoreSignal, companies can continuously gather public web data to feed both strategic forecasting and tactical decision-making pipelines.. The most effective programs integrate both to enable real-time agility and long-term resilience.
Key components of competitive intelligence
Market intelligence
Tracking of broader market trends, emerging technologies, and macroeconomic shifts that influence your industry. By monitoring regulatory changes, technological disruptions, and shifting buyer behaviors, you can anticipate industry changes before they impact your business.
Competitor profiling
In-depth analysis of competitors' business models, revenue, partnerships, funding rounds, and leadership changes. When a competitor announces a new partnership or hires a high-profile executive, those moves show their priorities and reveal where they're investing. This information helps you identify gaps in their strategy that you can exploit, as well as areas where they're making progress.
Product tracking and feature benchmarking
By monitoring competitors’ product updates, release cycles, pricing changes, and positioning, you can identify patterns in their development cycles and spot areas where they're underinvesting. For instance, if a competitor consistently updates their mobile app but neglects their web platform, that's a potential opening to win customers who prioritize desktop experiences.
Customer sentiment and perception analysis
Collecting data from public reviews, forums, and social media to gauge customer satisfaction and identify unmet needs can help in shaping your product roadmap. By analyzing reviews on different channels, you can pinpoint precisely what frustrates users about competing solutions and what features they wish existed. It can help shape your messaging by highlighting the pain points your solution addresses better than anyone else.
Internal vs. external intelligence sources
Internal sources include CRM data, win/loss analysis, and employee feedback. External sources include public web data (e.g., job postings, reviews, investor reports), third-party databases, and scraping tools. For example, your sales team's win/loss analysis shows how you perform in direct deals. Public data, such as job postings and funding news, can also reveal your competitors' priorities before they are widely known. When you combine these sources, you turn scattered information into useful insights.
How to build a competitive intelligence process?
There are many types of information used to build a competitive intelligence report.
Along with the better-known types of intelligence from the usual sources, now we have enormous volumes of public B2B data that greatly boost the quality and usability of intelligence. You can now access rich firmographic data, employee insights, job posting trends, and funding signals, all of which reveal competitors' strategic moves in real time.
Some examples of competitive intelligence are listed below.
1. Define competitive intelligence goals and objectives
Start by defining the specific outcomes you aim to achieve. Are you looking to:
- Track competitors’ strategic moves?
- Identify market entry opportunities?
- Monitor emerging threats or innovations?
- Support sales teams with timely insights?
Clarity on goals helps you focus your resources and avoid information overload.
2. Identify key competitive intelligence research areas
- Company profile: use firmographic data (e.g., size, revenue, employee count) to benchmark competitors and understand their market positioning. This helps in segmenting rivals and spotting fast-growing disruptors.
- Technology stack: technographic data reveals what tools and platforms your competitors rely on. Knowing their CRM, eCommerce, or analytics solutions uncovers strengths, vulnerabilities, and innovation gaps.
- Product offering: compare features, pricing tiers, positioning statements, and customer pain points. This uncovers whitespace opportunities and informs product development or differentiation strategies.
- Marketing & strategy: examine SEO tactics, paid campaigns, thought leadership content, partnerships, and acquisitions. This paints a picture of strategic intent and marketing aggressiveness.
- Customer sentiment: monitor social media platforms, review sites, and forums to extract qualitative feedback on competitor products and services. Pay attention to recurring complaints or praise, as they are powerful signals for positioning.
- Market signals: monitor indicators such as job postings, funding rounds, executive hires, and regional expansion. These often reveal early signs of growth, downsizing, or shifting strategic direction.
3. Collect competitive intelligence data efficiently
Use public web data as the foundation: scrape company websites, job boards, social platforms, and product pages. Combine this with competitive research platforms (like SimilarWeb, BuiltWith, or SEMrush) and third-party data providers to scale your efforts. Outsourcing to CI specialists or data vendors can accelerate data acquisition while ensuring accuracy.
4. Analyze and contextualize competitive intelligence data
Raw data alone doesn’t drive decisions. Context is key. Compare competitor metrics against your own benchmarks. Look for strategic gaps, emerging threats, or underexplored opportunities. Visualize trends over time to forecast trajectories and prioritize actions.
5. Share competitive intelligence insights with stakeholders
Insights are only impactful if accessible. Distribute your findings in tailored formats for:
- Marketing: messaging shifts, competitor campaign strategies
- Sales: battlecards, objection handling, prospect intelligence
- Product Teams: feature gaps, roadmap direction
- Leadership: strategic threats, M&A signals, market trends
Use dashboards, monthly briefs, or collaborative tools like Notion or Confluence for structured visibility.
6. Continuously monitor and update competitive intelligence
Markets shift fast, and so must your intelligence. Establish a cadence for updating insights. Automate alerts for key changes (e.g., new funding, tech adoption, leadership moves). Treat CI as a living system, not a one-time report.
How to build a scalable competitive intelligence program?
You could also establish competitor intelligence programs within your company, accessible to all teams or key stakeholders, and make sure that everyone is up to speed on a business strategy that would help outperform the competition.
A competitor intelligence program focuses on revealing and analyzing the competitive environment to provide market intelligence and actionable insight.
Best data sources for competitive intelligence
Now that the basic structure of competitive intelligence is clear let’s look at how a competitive intelligence analyst would gather information for it.
As mentioned, public web data sources are vital these days, as the intelligence acquired through them is more versatile and often more revealing.
Below are the key types of data sources for competitive intelligence.
Competitors and other industry sources
The most basic way of data collection about the competitors is as old as business development itself – one can simply do what their clients would do.
That means buying and analyzing their products, subscribing to their news releases, visiting competitors’ websites as well as their shops and other locations that are open to the public.
Additionally, one can gather information through various associations, online and offline conferences, and forums with industry experts.
Simply being part of the community and keeping in touch with other industry professionals is a way of staying informed of what is happening and what matters the most.
Customers and feedback
After the competitor companies themselves, the main source of competitive intelligence is the customers.
This means that one should survey the customer base restlessly both online and in person. Additionally, it is always advisable to organize focus groups and get feedback on how your product or advertisements compare to those of the competitor.
Furthermore, public web data from online sources such as social media information or online product reviews are great sources of helpful information.
Public web data providers
The data used for competitive intelligence is very diverse, and not all companies can get it on their own.
Therefore, it is advisable, and more often than not, necessary that businesses turn to public web data providers to ensure intelligence quality and value. In fact, 69% of companies that used outside help for their competitive intelligence have reported positive results.
Such help can come from a reliable third-party public web data source, such as Coresignal, which offers:
- Multi-source company records with firmographic data, funding information, workforce metrics, and growth signals
- Ethically collected data, ensuring you're working with only publicly available, business-related information
- Flexible access via data APIs for on-demand queries or complete datasets for large-scale analysis
Suppliers and business partners
Other sources of competitive intelligence are competitors’ suppliers and other partners. One can gather actionable information by looking at the companies that supply materials for the competitor or by their logistic partners.
Knowing what sort of B2B services the competing companies are using will reveal both their current competitive position as well as future intentions.
Such B2B data can also provide insights for better business decisions by revealing which partnerships work and which don’t.
Media and academic research
Finally, another broad category of sources for competitive information is published and visual media, including both popular media and academic research.
For example, data gathered about a firm’s media presence by monitoring mass media outlets is a strong indicator of a competitor’s brand recognition. One should research both positive and negative coverage of competitors and compare it to their own company’s media presence.
Additionally, it is advisable to subscribe to journals that aim to illuminate the current market stance and may contain articles by industry experts touching on competing companies.
Furthermore, academic market research and reports will provide valuable statistics about other firms and case studies that may be a source for a deeper understanding of particular competitors.
Competitive intelligence tools
The effect that data has had on contemporary markets is only comparable to the way business has been affected by advancements in AI-based tools and software programs.
These tools are extremely helpful with competitive intelligence tasks as they are capable of handling large volumes of data efficiently.
They can help both with analysis as well as visualization of the results, ensuring that insights show up clearly and are easy to comprehend.
For starters, there are many free competitive intelligence software tools that can be used for improved competitive intelligence.
For example, Google Alerts or Talkwalker can be used to track online mentions of particular keywords, thus allowing you to know what is said by or about your competitors.
The importance and benefits of competitive intelligence analysis
The importance of competitor intelligence in the business world after the informational revolution is more than clear. Information is an asset, the more of it you have and the better you are able to utilize it, the greatest business success you can expect.
To specify how competitive intelligence gathered with public web data helps companies, here are a few key points about its benefits.
1. Competitive advantage through competitive intelligence
It is not hard to guess that the main objective of competitor intelligence is a competitive advantage. The old saying that “knowledge is power” has a very practical meaning in the data-driven competitive landscape of today.
Through information analysis, companies know what their competitors are doing and going to do. Additionally, they can learn from their mistakes and adapt their best practices.
Furthermore, correct evaluation of competition allows you to prepare better strategies and increase the ability to go head-to-head with your competition.
2. Market insights from competitive intelligence research
Tracking competitors means knowing the particular industry and the market they operate in. Other firms can be generally understood as market variables that one needs to account for when forecasting market trends and planning for the future.
Thus, competitive intelligence research leads to invaluable market insights that can boost strategic planning at all levels and departments.
3. Product and marketing research using competitive intelligence
Gathering competitive intelligence, especially with public web data, also inevitably means marketing and product research.
Thus, by collecting such information, companies also learn about products in the market and how their own product can be improved.
Of course, this information also helps the sales team and gives ideas on how to reach the target audience and showcase the strong features of the product better.
In turn, it can make the sales process more efficient in the future.
4. Understanding customer sentiment with CI
Competitive intelligence gives insight into customer sentiment both directly through getting information from the consumers and indirectly through looking at what works for the competition.
Thus, knowing your competitor also leads to knowing their existing and prospective customers, which are, of course, also your potential customers.
And with good intelligence, you are better equipped to make sure that they drift towards you and not the competing company.
These are several business intelligence benefits that competitive analysis can offer to you.
Competitive counterintelligence
The value and importance of competitive intelligence are best proven by the sheer scope of its usage in modern business. In 2020, as much as 94% of businesses had been investing in competitive intelligence. This might be the most important business trend you need to know, as it shows how important intelligence is for successful competition.
Additionally, it makes it worthwhile to say a few words about competitive counterintelligence. As previously mentioned, 94% of businesses investing in competitive intelligence suggests that it’s highly likely other companies are also gathering competitive intelligence about your company. To counter these business practices, you can include counterintelligence practices into your overall competitive intelligence strategy.
These practices include the above mentioned measures against industrial espionage. Additionally, one should invest in data security technology and be very careful about what is published on the company’s official websites and social media pages.
Finally, along with researching the competition, you can research yourself to see if something can be found that should not be available externally.
The future of competitive intelligence: why it matters in 2026
In 2026, markets move at AI speed, and the winning companies aren't those with the biggest budgets; they're the ones who see competitor moves first and act before anyone else notices.
AI-powered decision-making means analyzing market signals faster than human teams can. Real-time market signals, such as job postings, funding rounds, and technology adoption patterns, can change within weeks or even days. Periodic analysis fails because markets move too fast. Companies without continuous intelligence miss opportunities, get blindsided by launches signaled months earlier, and invest in markets that already shifted.
Instead of manually tracking competitors, you can continuously update firmographic data, monitor hiring patterns, and integrate competitive signals directly into your CRM, business intelligence tools, or internal dashboards using Coresignal’s B2B API solutions. In 2026, this type of business information gathering is drastically improved by public web data, leading to versatile and actionable market insights and helping to stay ahead of the competition.
