7 Ways to Research Your Security Competitors

Tight margins and increasing competition make it essential for security firms to stay current on business trends. To compete for talent and contracts, you need a clear understanding of where you stand in the competitive landscape.

Knowing how to research your competitors, including their operations, prices and the value they deliver to clients, gives you an advantage in your own strategy and helps you secure more security contracts. This guide shows you how to research your private security competition so you can:

• Améliorez votre modèle économique
• Better understand your customers and what they value
• Find gaps in the services your competitors offer and expand into them
• Grow your business and protect your margins

Competitor Research Sources at a Glance

Each source answers a different question. Use this table to decide where to start based on what you need to know.

Source	What you learn	Effort	Most useful for
Search results and websites	Services, markets served and positioning	Faible	Spotting service gaps
Online reviews	What clients praise and complain about	Faible	Sales messaging
Social media and ad libraries	Messaging, campaigns and client sentiment	Faible	Marketing ideas
Job postings and employee reviews	Growth, turnover and culture signals	Faible	Recruiting and growth signals
Local organizations and public records	Reputation, legal issues and new entrants	Moyen	Risk and reputation
Industry conferences	Value propositions and new offerings	Moyen	Strategy and partnerships
Clients and new hires	Real service quality and day-to-day operations	Moyen	Bids, renewals and differentiation

Here are 7 practical ways to research your competitors in private security.

1. Do a Deeper Digital Dive

Your first stop for competitive research will probably be a Google search. Most companies maintain a website and a presence on popular sites like Yelp and Facebook, which makes this a great place to start.

Tips for researching local security companies online

• Search “security guard companies near me.” This shows who appears in search results, what their customers say in reviews, and how your competition positions itself in the marketplace.
• Audit competitor websites. Compare the services they offer to yours. The differences are often your best opportunities to grow.
• Research the markets they serve. Are there industries or regions your competitors already work in that you could expand into?
• Read their customer reviews. Reviews show what competitors do well, but the real value is in what they do poorly. If they consistently get negative feedback for something you do really well, feature it on your website and in your advertising.
• Look for services nobody offers. What do none of your competitors do? You might find an opening for executive protection or special event security if those services are lacking in your area.

Once you have reviewed your competitors’ search presence, websites and social profiles, run the same analysis on your own website. What are your opportunities for improvement based on what you discovered? Take the time to update your site so it meets local demand and stands out from the competition.

2. Tap Into Social Networks

Many security firms use social media to engage customers and promote their services. When you want insight into how your competitors talk about themselves, networks like LinkedIn, Facebook and X are the place to look.

Public ad libraries, such as the Meta Ad Library, show the ads any company is currently running, including ads in your area. See how your competitors use paid social to their advantage, and pick up ideas for managing your own firm’s digital marketing campaigns.

You can also use social media to research what customers are saying about local security competitors. Few things are as valuable as learning how and why your competitors fall short of their clients’ expectations. Freemium social listening tools such as Mention make customer sentiment research easy.

3. Keep an Eye on Their Hiring

Another way to research your private security competition is to watch their hiring activity on sites like Indeed and on their own careers pages. Look at:

• Are they hiring on job boards, and is it constant or sporadic?
• Quels types de postes sont à pourvoir ?
• What pay rates and benefits do they advertise?
• What is their reputation on employee review sites like Glassdoor?

The answers help you compete for talent. If a competitor is hiring a lot of new officers, they may be growing quickly.

Be careful not to make too many assumptions, though. Constant hiring can also signal high turnover, which may point to a burnout culture, and turnover is the top challenge for many security leaders. Employee reviews on Glassdoor help you paint a fuller picture of the culture at competing companies.

A more reliable growth indicator is an increase in openings for managers and supervisors, especially in new territories.

4. Check With Local Organizations

Not all competitor research happens online. Getting involved in your community puts you face to face with people who can offer valuable insight into the competitive landscape.

Public records document past and present lawsuits, liens and other legal actions against a competitor. Local organizations like the chamber of commerce, the Better Business Bureau and regional building owners and managers associations often track local businesses and keep their members informed about problematic companies.

Some community and state licensing registries also list companies that provide security guard services in the area, which is a useful starting point when you research unfamiliar markets.

5. Go to a Conference

Industry conferences are where private security firms show off what they do best. While your competitors focus on new leads, you can study their presentations and booths to learn their value propositions and services. Watching which messages draw visitors in, and which do not, tells you what is resonating with buyers.

Large shows such as ASIS International’s GSX and regional security association events are good places to start. You can also see which industry events the Trackforce team is attending on our conferences and events page.

6. Ask Customers

You probably are not the first security company a property manager has worked with. Your clients’ past experiences are extremely valuable for learning what your competitors do right, and what drove your client away in the first place.

Questions to ask new clients about their previous security provider

• How often did they deliver reports, and in what format?
• Did they use software to document guard tours and incident reports, or was it paper-based?
• Could you see what officers were doing on your property while it was happening?
• Qu'est-ce qui vous a poussé à changer de fournisseur ?

Most companies never step back and ask customers what frustrates them. While you learn what you can do better, you also get a view into industry practices and pitfalls. The same discipline works in reverse: when a client leaves you, run a client exit interview to learn what the winning competitor offered.

7. Ask New Hires

New hires who previously worked for your competitors give you an on-the-ground view of how those firms operate behind the scenes.

Questions to ask employees who joined from a competitor

• What was the culture like at your previous company?
• What did they do well, and what did they do poorly?
• What do you think our company does better, and where could we improve?

Keep it ethical. Ask about experience, culture and general practices, never for confidential client lists, pricing, contracts or internal documents. That information may be protected by confidentiality agreements, and asking for it puts your company and your new hire at risk.

Build a Competitor Profile for Every Key Rival

Research only pays off when it is organized. Keep a one-page profile for each of your top three to five competitors and update it every quarter. This simple template covers what matters most in a security bid.

Profile field	What to capture
Services and markets	Static guarding, mobile patrol, event security and the industries and regions they serve
Size and footprint	Approximate headcount, office locations and well-known client sites
Pricing signals	Advertised pay rates, lost-bid feedback and where they tend to undercut or premium-price
Technology and reporting	Whether clients get real-time visibility, digital reports and a client portal, or paper and email
Reputation	Recurring themes in client reviews, employee reviews and public records
Hiring signals	Volume and type of openings, and whether they are expanding into new territories
How we win	The one or two proven advantages your team leads with against this competitor

Turn Competitor Research Into Contracts You Win

Knowing your competitors is only valuable if it changes how you sell, price and deliver. Use this five-step process to put your research to work.

1. Pick the gap you can prove. Choose one or two competitor weaknesses that you consistently beat, such as slow incident reporting or poor client communication, and build your pitch around them.
2. Price with confidence. Know your true cost before you respond to a low bid. Understand what belongs in your hourly guard rate, and use TrackTik Margin Insight to see which contracts are actually profitable.
3. Walk the site before you bid. A property walk uncovers risks and client concerns your competitors may miss on paper.
4. Show proof, not promises. Bring sample tour reports, incident reports and a client reporting view. Letting clients see the work for themselves is one of the fastest ways to build trust.
5. Revisit every quarter. Markets shift, competitors merge and new firms enter. Refresh your profiles before contract renewals and major bids.

Benchmark Yourself With Your Own Operating Data

Competitor research tells you half the story. The other half is an honest look at your own performance. TrackTik business intelligence turns everyday operational data into dashboards, so you can measure the metrics clients use to compare providers:

• Shift coverage: the share of scheduled shifts filled on time
• Tour completion: the share of checkpoints scanned as planned
• Incident reporting speed: the time from incident to a report the client can read
• Overtime: overtime hours as a share of total hours worked
• Client retention: the share of contracts that renew, which you can improve with a deliberate client retention plan

When you can show a prospect these numbers, the conversation moves away from price alone and toward the service quality only you can prove.

Put Your Research to Work

The importance of understanding exactly where you stand cannot be overstated. Collecting the right information on your competitors can make the difference between winning a new bid and losing an at-risk contract.

Pair your competitor profiles with a SWOT analysis of your own security firm, and you will have a clear picture of where to compete, where to invest and how to position your company to succeed. The resources below go deeper on winning, growing and keeping contracts.