Are you looking for an effective way to find and track competitor pricing? Well, you are not alone!
One of the most common requests we receive from many of our B2B clients is to find and deliver competitor pricing information on an on-going basis. Many sales and marketing teams crave this competitive analysis to accurately position their products and services to gain the most customers while maintaining optimal margins.
Although consumer pricing information may be easy to gather, many researchers, product teams, and market analysts working in the B2B sector struggle with this task.
So, where should you look for this pricing information?
Competitor Websites
If your competitors publish their pricing on their website, then of course you’ll need to check it often to look for changes. If they are constantly changing their pricing, then subscribing to a ‘website change detection’ or ‘price scraping service’ may be a worthwhile investment. It will save you lots of time and help you avoid missing any changes.
Reseller and Partner Sites
Sometimes a competitor’s reseller or partner can unknowingly provide valuable information about competitor price points. These firms sometimes leave price sheets and training materials on developing sales quotations unsecured where they can be discovered within their website. Be sure to check overseas sites as we have had lots of success with firms in other regions of the world.
Government Sites
Many city, county, and state government websites may publish contract awards to comply with transparency requirements. By searching these sites on a periodic basis, you may be able to find pricing on competitive products and services that sell to government entities.
Presentations and Reports from Industry Consultants
If you operate within an industry space that has analyst and consultant coverage, it is most likely that they have covered price comparisons and other competitive analysis on your competitors. Presentations by consultants may be freely available while analyst reports usually require a subscription. Sometimes you may find these analyst reports for free by searching vendor websites who may have licensed them for free distribution.
Customer Board Minutes and Business Plans
Sometimes customers of your competitors will publish pricing of a new vendor contract as part of the reporting to executive boards or for inclusion in a new business plan. You’ll need to dig for these as they are not widely published.
Request for Proposals (RFP)
If your product or service is typically purchased through an RFP process, then searching for and requesting RFP responses may yield the competitor pricing you are looking for.
Plus, on top of pricing intelligence information, RFPs responses can provide a wealth of market intelligence such as a competitors’ approach to product customization and professional services used to implement the solution.
Searches on Google
Beyond the sources listed so far, running manual queries on Google can sometimes identify useful pricing documents and information sheets. Be sure to use the “filetype:pdf” and “filetype:ppt” search parameters to help fine-tune your search efforts.
Should you consider outsourcing price research?
If you have the resources, free time, and are willing to put in the extensive effort required to search and review pricing sources, you can consider doing it on your own. However, if you need deep market intelligence expertise in this area and would rather focus your time and effort on your main business operations, consider outsourcing the services to a professional subscription service.
Request a demo today if you are interested in learning more about how CI Radar delivers hard-to-find “gold nuggets” of intelligence like competitor pricing!