COMPANY

Name: Competiscan

Location: Chicago, IL

Founded: 2006

Founder(s): Richard Goldman

Website: https://www.competiscan.com/

Social Media: 264 Followers on Twitter, 926 Followers on LinkedIn, 97 Followers on Facebook

INDUSTRY – Market Research

Size: Global market valued at $76Bn in 2017, 44% (~$33.4Bn) US (Source: Consultancy.org)

Projections: Global market will cross $100Bn by 2020 (Source: Infiniti Research)

Introduction

Competiscan is a competitive intelligence market research company which helps track and analyze the direct marketing efforts of competitors. Clients can analyze ongoing direct marketing efforts, access a database of past campaigns, and receive daily reports to track their competitors across email, social media, online, and offline paid promotions.

The Product

Competiscan offers a simple web-based search utility which allows clients to parse through the company’s dynamic direct media tracking database. This allows the company’s clients to observe marketing activity of their competitors in real time, and use this to inform their own direct marketing efforts.

This is accomplished through Competiscan’s network of financial advisors, consumers, and business advisors across the United States active in various sectors such as Banking, Credit Cards, Financial Services, Insurance, Investments, Loans, and Telecoms. This community forwards every instance of direct marketing communications they receive, and Competiscan uploads it into their database in <24 hours.

Competiscan provides subscription services on an annual basis, providing 24/7 access to the database, industry reports, weekly newsletters and alerts, trend and topical reports, and on-demand retrieval of information from the database by the company’s analysts. It also offers a custom service for targeted research needs, providing bespoke reports which deliver omnichannel insights, competitive benchmarking, engagement analysis, monitoring, brand protection, experiential journeys, and other research deliverables.

Origin and Founding Team

Richard Goldman is the Founder and CEO of Competiscan. A graduate of Michigan State University in 1993, there is little publicly available information about him outside of his role with the company in 2006. He is recognized by American Banker as a ‘leading and longest tenured expert in the process of collecting direct marketing communications and materials’. The company seems to specialize in banking, financial services, and insurance sectors; he and Competiscan participate in various events catering to professionals in the sector.

Two reviews on Richard’s LinkedIn stress on his expertise and experience in aiding clients in the insurance industry in what would have been the first few years of operating Competiscan, suggesting that they were actively collecting data about those sectors in that time.

The company’s Glassdoor page also features multiple negative reviews which suggest that Richard has issues with anger and managing talent, though these allegations have been strenuously denied in one review where Richard has responded.

Performance and Trends

Competiscan is referred to by itself as well as other platforms as a leading provider of competitive intelligence. It claims to be the only statistically balanced direct marketing consumer panel in the marketplace. Third-party platforms such as Owler credit Competiscan as a competitor to well-known brands and businesses such as Euromonitor, and estimate that it has $5M of annual revenue.

The company has been active since 2006, and there is no information suggesting that they have raised any funding during this time.