Talk about a build

Competitive intelligence

Your competitors publish their strategy.
We read it, date it, and score it.

Pages, postings, campaigns, locations and service lines are public record. Monitored on a schedule and scored on a fixed standard, they tell you where you actually stand and where the market has left ground unclaimed.

Scorecard grid / absolute scale 1 to 5 Click any score to open its evidence
Competitive scorecard. Rows are companies, columns are the five scoring lenses. Each score is a button that opens the evidence behind it.
Company PositioningService architectureInbound & contentConversionAudience Evidence
Your company You 31
Northgate Industrial 29
Meridian Field Group 26
Cardinal Works 24
Halyard Services Co. 22
Illustrative grid. Company names are substituted and figures show the shape of the shipped product, not a live client cohort. Note the flat column: not one company in this field scores above par on Conversion. That flatness is the finding.

Northgate Industrial Inbound & Content

5 Authoritative

Original research the category references, cited outside their own properties, and present in AI answers for category questions.

Evidence (3)

  1. Publishes an annual industry benchmark report, now in its fourth edition, with primary survey data.

    Research page, editions 2023 to 2026 captured 2026-08-04 high confidence

  2. Benchmark figures quoted in three trade publications and in one competitor’s own marketing.

    Citation sweep, dated 2025-11 to 2026-06 captured 2026-08-06 high confidence

  3. Cited by name in AI answers for four of six tested category questions.

    Direct check against Google AI Overviews and ChatGPT captured 2026-08-07 medium confidence

    Caveat. AI answers vary by session. Four of six questions returned the brand across three repetitions each.

5 Lenses scored Positioning, architecture, inbound, conversion, audience
1–5 Absolute tiers Defined independently of who is in the set
100% Scored claims with a source Verbatim quote, source, capture date

The five lenses

What gets scored, and what each tier requires.

Tiers are written before any company is examined, so a score is a statement about execution rather than about who else happened to be in the comparison.

Positioning

Is there a stated point of view, is it carried consistently across the site and collateral, and is it evidenced in a named customer outcome? The top tier requires proof, not repetition.

Service Architecture

Is the portfolio organised around buyer problems or around the internal org chart? Can a buyer reach any line in one click and see its scope?

Inbound & Content

Publishing cadence, depth and format range over the trailing twelve months, verified by direct sweep rather than inferred from a keyword tool.

Conversion

How many ways can a ready buyer act, how much friction sits in the path, and is there any self-serve route to a scoped estimate?

Audience

Is a target vertical, size band or geography stated, and is it backed by dedicated pages and proof rather than implied by imagery?

Every company in this market scored at par on conversion. Not one offers a buyer any way to get a specific answer without waiting on a human. A ranked leaderboard would have shown a winner in this column and hidden the opportunity completely. The absolute scale shows the truth: the whole field is flat, and the flatness is the finding.

Custom alerts

Signals arrive while the window to respond is still open.

Threshold based rather than change based, with a weekly volume ceiling set deliberately. An alert stream a busy operator can read in three minutes gets read.

New or rewritten pages

Before and after text with capture dates, filtered to your core service categories.

Positioning changes

Homepage and service page headline revisions, which usually precede a campaign.

New ad campaigns and messaging

Changes in publicly visible ad copy, offers and landing page structure.

Hiring velocity

Postings per role family per quarter, compared across the set rather than counted raw.

Team and leadership expansion

New senior roles and functions that did not previously exist.

New service lines

Added offerings, certifications and licences named in requirements.

New locations and service areas

Territory expansion, typically visible a quarter before local marketing.

Reviews and reputation

Volume, velocity and recurring themes, not just an average star rating.

Hiring signal

Headcount is the earliest reliable signal of intent.

Two signals, deliberately never merged. Capacity means field and delivery roles: volume is coming. Structural growth means leadership, a branch or a new service line: something new is being built. Collapsing them into an open-role count destroys the finding.

Velocity is measured as new appearances week over week, not as a count of currently open roles. Job boards keep filled roles listed for weeks, so a raw count measures listing hygiene as much as it measures hiring.

Structural growth New since you last looked 2026-08-03

Three senior service-leadership roles posted in one week, all in your home market.

Capacity hiring means volume is coming. This is not capacity hiring. Three leadership roles at once in a single metro is a competitor standing up a division, visible months before it would appear in their advertising.

Capacity New since you last looked 2026-08-03

Nine field technician roles added across two metros over three weeks.

Sustained capacity hiring. Volume is being prepared for. Tracked as new appearances week over week, not as an open-role count, because job boards keep filled roles listed for weeks.

Structural growth 2026-07-20

First posting for a service line this company has not previously offered.

A single posting, but for a role that does not fit the existing portfolio. Flagged as a watch item rather than a conclusion. One posting is a signal to monitor, not a finding to act on.

Illustrative. Company names and details are invented for this demonstration.

Building the comparison set

The competitor you are not watching is the one taking share.

A reputation-based list of three familiar rivals describes the market as it was when the list was written. We assemble the set from observable signals and review it on a schedule.

  • Who appears for your commercially scoped search terms
  • Who is named in your lost deals
  • Who hires for your delivery roles in your geography
  • Who publishes for your buyers
  • Adjacent firms adding your service line
  • National or platform entrants competing on convenience

Questions about the competitive lane

How do you choose which competitors to audit?
From observable signals rather than reputation: who appears for your commercially scoped search terms, who is named in your lost deals, who hires for your delivery roles in your geography, and which adjacent firms are adding your service line. A reputation-based list of three familiar rivals describes the market as it was when the list was written.
Is the score relative to the other companies?
No. The scale is absolute. Tier language is written before any company is examined, so a score does not move depending on who else is in the comparison set. If the whole field lands at par, the grid is flat and the flatness is the finding.
How often does the scoring refresh?
Competitive standing does not move monthly, so it is re-scored on a set interval with dated differences rather than re-run continuously. Threshold alerts run between scorings, which is where the time-sensitive signal lives.
What stops the comparison being biased toward us?
The parity gate. Research depth is enforced to a comparable floor for every company in a set, including the ones nobody finds interesting. Without it, the company that received the most attention scores best and every comparison is quietly biased.
Can you see a competitor’s internal strategy?
No, and any provider claiming otherwise is worth avoiding. This reads observable behaviour: what they publish, post, advertise, hire for and where they operate. It does not see internal plans, margins or roadmaps, and the methodology page says so in the limits section.

See where you
actually stand.

Bring the three companies you lose deals to most often. The first conversation covers what you sell, what you cannot currently see, and whether the questions you care about are answerable with evidence.

Talk about a build Read the scoring standard first

No prices on this site. Every engagement is scoped and quoted after the first meeting.