There are few things more satisfying than catching a competitor snooping around your website. We had one of those moments recently.
Primer’s Website Reveal identified someone from one of our competitors visiting our site. They moved between our comparison page, customer stories, and homepage, which gave us much more context than a single pageview would have.
That kind of browsing path is useful for any team using Website Reveal. A visit to one page tells you very little, but seeing someone move across comparison content, customer proof, pricing, or product pages gives you a better sense of what they’re interested in and what may be worth paying attention to.
That’s one of the useful things about Website Reveal. You spend plenty of time trying to understand what competitors are doing, and every so often, you get a glimpse of what they’re trying to understand about you.
Account Research lets you turn that around and study how a competitor is going to market, while Website Reveal shows you when they’re paying attention to yours.
Together, they give you a much fuller view of what’s happening on both sides.
Start by turning the lens around
Most competitive research still starts manually. You open a competitor’s website, check LinkedIn, look through ad libraries, save a few screenshots, and try to piece together what has changed.
The information is usually there. The harder part is pulling it together and working out what actually matters.
That’s where Account Research comes in. Enter a company’s domain and Primer creates a report covering the business, the buyers it appears to target, its GTM approach, and advertising activity across LinkedIn, Google, and Meta.
You can also inspect the ads behind the summary, so you’re not relying on interpretation alone.
Look at who they appear to be selling to
A good place to start is the buyer. Account Research can surface primary and adjacent personas, along with signals around company size, industry, and geographic focus.
Compare that with what you already know about the competitor. Maybe a company you’ve historically thought of as SMB-focused suddenly looks more enterprise-heavy. Maybe one department is showing up much more prominently than before.
Those signals don’t prove the company has changed strategy, but they can show you where its attention may be moving. Sometimes the interesting shift isn’t a new product, but a change in who the company seems most interested in reaching.
Look at what they’re putting into market
Next, look at the themes showing up in their advertising. One ad on its own doesn’t tell you much, but repeated messages across campaigns or platforms can show you what the company is prioritizing.
Maybe it keeps leading with speed, cost savings, or control. Maybe AI has suddenly become central to the message. Or perhaps its homepage presents a broad platform while the ads focus heavily on one specific use case.
Account Research helps surface those patterns, so you can see whether a competitor is pushing a new product, speaking to a different persona, or leaning harder into a particular message.
Then compare that with your own positioning. If everyone in the category is making the same promise, there may be more value in finding something your customers care about that competitors aren’t talking about particularly well.
Just keep in mind that public advertising shows you what a company is putting into market, not whether it’s actually working.
You can see how Account Research works here.
Then see when competitors look back
While you’re researching competitors, some of them may be researching you too.
Website Reveal shows which companies are visiting your site, which pages they’re looking at, and whether they come back. Where sufficient signals and privacy rules allow, Primer can also surface contact-level information.
For competitive research, the interesting part is the pattern. One visit to a blog post probably doesn’t mean much. But repeat visits to your comparison pages, customer stories, pricing, or a particular product area can give you a better sense of where a competitor’s attention is going.
Say you’ve just launched a new comparison page and notice the same competitor returning to it alongside a related product page and customer story. You probably wouldn’t change your strategy based on that alone.
But it could be a reason to look more closely at how that page is performing, whether the same message is resonating with prospects, and whether it needs more customer proof or supporting content.
Website Reveal can’t tell you why someone visited or what they’re planning. It simply gives you another signal to use alongside what you already know.
Use both sides together
Sometimes those signals line up. You might notice a new message appearing across a competitor’s ads, then see people from that company spending time on the equivalent part of your product.
Or a competitor might keep returning to one of your comparison pages, giving you a reason to check what they’re currently saying about the same problem.
Neither gives you access to private competitor data. Account Research works from public information, while Website Reveal measures activity happening on your own site.
Together, they give you more context than periodically checking a competitor’s homepage and updating a battlecard.
Start with the competitor that keeps coming up in sales calls, run their domain through Account Research, and see what stands out. Then check Website Reveal to see whether they’ve been paying attention to you too.
