How we do the work.
Every number in every report is derived from something. This page states what.
Every investigation asks the same four questions.
The companies we research have little in common operationally. A freight brokerage in Indiana and an industrial sampling manufacturer in Minnesota share no market, no buyer, and no economics. What they share is a structure: a real capability, a market that can’t see it, competitors who are more visible than they are good, and a measurable cost to that condition.
The method generalizes because the question does.
What is genuinely working?
Before anything else we establish what the company has actually built — operating history, named clients, quantified outcomes, technical capability, credentials, market position. This is not flattery. It is the asset inventory every downstream finding is measured against, and it is why our reports open with it. A gap only matters relative to something worth surfacing.
Who is taking the share, and how?
We identify the specific firms competing for the same buyer, at both the national and direct level. For each: stated value proposition, digital maturity, observable search presence, content infrastructure, and the specific weakness they carry. A typical report maps five national competitors and four direct ones. Competitors are named. Archetypes are not research.
What happens to a buyer who goes looking?
We run the highest-intent acquisition queries a real buyer would use and record what actually appears. We examine the site as a first-time prospect would — what is findable, what is gated, what captures, what nurtures, what routes, and where the path breaks. Every break is a point where intent fails to become pipeline.
What is the condition costing?
Each identified gap carries a directional monthly estimate, derived from category contract values, observed conversion benchmarks for the relevant B2B category, and the specific infrastructure conditions found. These are floors, not forecasts.
What actually happens after you enter your URL.
Our research is conducted live, against the market as it exists at the moment you ask. Nothing is retrieved from a stored profile of your company or your industry, because no such profile exists until we make one.
One record, read by every section.
This is the part that matters most and is hardest to see from the outside. A report assembled section by section, each researched independently, will contradict itself — naming one set of competitors in one chapter and a different set in another. We have read documents like that. They are not research.
Our findings are established once, then every section of every document is written against them. Your Revenue Intelligence Report and your Growth Blueprint read from the same record for the same reason. If the second document contradicted the first, one of them would be wrong.
What we look at.
Your own digital estate
Every market and service page, history, case studies, resources, facilities, contact paths, metadata, and any client-facing portal or subdomain.
Live search results
The highest-intent acquisition queries for your category, run and recorded, with page-one presence noted by competitor.
Named competitor properties
Content volume, publication cadence, stated positioning, indexed page count, and visible content infrastructure.
Channel presence
Company page presence, follower counts, posting cadence, and content type — for you and for the competitors you’re measured against.
Category and market data
Published market sizing, growth rates, and structural trend data from industry sources, cited where used.
Benchmark data
Average contract values and conversion rates for the relevant B2B category, used to derive the leakage estimates.
How every estimate is derived.
Every monetary figure in a Harbor Beacon report is a directional estimate, and we say so at the point of use rather than burying it in a disclaimer at the back.
A leakage estimate is built from three inputs: the average contract or transaction value for your category, the observed conversion rate for inbound traffic in that category, and the specific infrastructure condition found — the absence of a capture mechanism, the absence of page-one presence, the absence of deployed proof. We multiply addressable volume by benchmark conversion rate by category value, then take the conservative end of the range.
We do not model speculative new audiences. Every estimate describes conversion that could reasonably be expected from buyers who are already searching, already visiting, and already qualified — and that the current infrastructure is not built to capture. That is why we call the total a floor.
If you disagree with one of our inputs, the derivation is printed clearly enough for you to substitute your own and recalculate. That is the entire point of printing it.
What this research cannot tell you.
A research firm that never states its limits is selling something else.
We work from observable evidence
We do not have access to your analytics, your CRM, your close rates, or your margins. Where we estimate your baseline, we say we are estimating it.
Search visibility is a snapshot
Results move. A query run this month may return differently next month, and competitor content infrastructure changes continuously.
Estimates are ranges, not forecasts
They describe a plausible floor under stated assumptions. They are not a commitment, a projection, or a guarantee of outcome.
We do not audit your operations
Nothing in our research speaks to your fulfilment capacity, your unit economics, your staffing, or whether you could service the demand we describe.
Market data is sourced, not generated
Where we cite category size or growth rate, we cite the source — and that source’s own limitations apply to our use of it.
Sometimes there is little to find
If your content, capture, and competitive position are already strong, the report will say so. We would rather report a thin finding than manufacture a problem.
What we don’t do.
We do not take equity in the companies we research.
We do not accept referral fees, commissions, or compensation of any kind from vendors, platforms, agencies, or tools named in a report.
We do not sell placement. No company can pay to appear, or not appear, in a competitive analysis.
We do not research a company on behalf of a third party without the subject’s knowledge.
See the method run on your company.
The Revenue Intelligence Report applies everything on this page to your business. It costs nothing.
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