When starting a company, one relatively important aspect is to obtain competitor metrics (no. of users, traffic, growth %ages, etc.) for several objectives including estimating/planning your own metrics, investment, growth, etc.
I came across several tools including Quantcast, compete.com, comscore, google ad planner, alexa, etc. but quickly found that these are inadequate for many reasons:
- have data only for the big players
- highly inaccurate.
- do not cover the industry I need data on, etc.
It would be great if any of you wish to share your experience with a similar problem, how you worked around it?
Thanks.
Update: I’m looking for experienced people to help me with some approach technique here to figure out the best approximations. I generally try:
- Fine combing the annual reports if I’m studying a listed company (which is rarely the case).
- Googling all online content on the companies.
- Website, company blog.
Is there anything I’m missing? How would you approach the problem?