Federal Market Research: How to Find and Analyze Government Spending Data

In government contracting, the work you do before a solicitation drops determines whether you win or lose. Market research is the process of systematically analyzing government spending data, agency needs, competitive landscapes, and procurement patterns to identify and position for opportunities you can win.

Here's what effective market research gives you:

• Target the right agencies. Instead of responding to every opportunity on SAM.gov, focus on agencies that consistently buy your services, have budget growth in your area, and have procurement patterns that favor companies like yours.
• Understand the competitive landscape. Know who the incumbents are, what they bid, how they perform, and where their weaknesses lie. This intelligence shapes your competitive strategy and proposal themes.
• Price competitively. Historical contract data shows what agencies have paid for similar work. This prevents you from pricing too high (and losing) or too low (and losing money).
• Engage agencies early. Procurement forecasts tell you what agencies plan to buy in the next 12-18 months, giving you time to build relationships, shape requirements, and position your company before competitors even know about the opportunity.
• Make smarter bid/no-bid decisions. Data-driven analysis of your win probability eliminates the guesswork from your pipeline management. Stop wasting resources on opportunities where the data says you can't compete.

The federal government publishes an extraordinary amount of procurement data for free. Contractors who learn to use these tools have a massive advantage over those who rely on gut instinct. Every dollar you spend on market research saves you multiple dollars in wasted proposal costs on opportunities you were never going to win.

USAspending.gov is the official source for federal spending data, maintained by the Department of the Treasury. It tracks every federal dollar spent — contracts, grants, loans, and other financial assistance. For government contractors, it's an indispensable research tool.

How to use USAspending.gov for market research:

• Award Search — Search for specific contracts by keyword, agency, recipient, NAICS code, or award amount. See who won, how much they received, and the period of performance. This is your primary tool for competitive intelligence.
• Spending Explorer — Visualize spending by agency, budget function, or object class. Quickly identify which agencies are the biggest spenders in your industry and whether their budgets are growing or shrinking.
• Agency Profiles — Drill into individual agencies to see their spending breakdowns by contract type, competition type, set-aside status, and NAICS code. This tells you how an agency typically buys and whether small businesses get a fair share.
• Recipient Profiles — Look up any company to see all their federal awards. Use this to research competitors, potential teaming partners, or your own contract history as the government sees it.
• Download Center — Download raw data for deep analysis in Excel or a database. Power users pull contract data by NAICS code and build spending trend analyses that reveal emerging opportunities.

A practical approach: search for your primary NAICS code, filter by agency and fiscal year, and analyze the results. How much is being spent? Who are the top recipients? What's the average contract size? Are contracts growing or declining? This 30-minute exercise gives you more market intelligence than most contractors gather in a year.

The Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS) has been retired and its data is now accessible through SAM.gov's contract data reports. This dataset contains detailed information on virtually every federal contract action, making it the most granular source of government procurement data available.

What you can find in SAM.gov contract data:

• Contract award details — Award amounts, dates, contract types (firm-fixed-price, cost-reimbursement, time-and-materials), and modification history
• Vendor information — Who won the contract, their UEI, business size, and socioeconomic status
• Competition data — Whether the contract was competed, the number of offers received, and the basis for award (LPTA, best value, sole source)
• Set-aside information — Which contracts were set aside for small business categories and which were full-and-open competition
• Place of performance — Where the work is being done, useful for identifying opportunities near your operations

To access this data, go to SAM.gov and navigate to "Contract Data" under the Data tab. You can run standard reports or build custom queries. Key reports include the Top Contractors Report (who gets the most money), Competition Report (how often work is competed vs. sole-sourced), and the Small Business Goaling Report (how agencies are performing against their small business goals).

Pro tip: Look at contracts that are expiring within 6-18 months. These represent recompete opportunities — the government will need to resolicit them, giving you a defined timeline to prepare your capture strategy, build relationships, and develop a competitive proposal.

Most federal agencies publish a procurement forecast — a list of anticipated contract actions for the upcoming fiscal year. These forecasts are gold for contractors who plan ahead because they reveal opportunities months before any solicitation appears on SAM.gov.

Where to find procurement forecasts:

• Agency websites — Most agencies publish their forecast on their Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization (OSDBU) page. Search for "[agency name] procurement forecast" to find them.
• SAM.gov — Some agencies now post forecasts as "pre-solicitation" or "special notice" entries on SAM.gov.
• Agency Industry Days — Agencies present upcoming opportunities at industry day events, often providing more detail than published forecasts.

A typical procurement forecast entry includes:

• Description of the requirement
• Estimated dollar value
• Anticipated solicitation date and award date
• NAICS code and set-aside status
• Contracting office and point of contact
• Whether it's a new requirement or recompete

When you spot a forecasted opportunity that fits your capabilities, start your capture process immediately. Contact the listed program office to learn more about the requirement. Offer to provide a capabilities briefing. Submit a capability statement. Attend any related industry days. The contractors who engage 6-12 months before solicitation have a win rate dramatically higher than those who first learn about the opportunity when the RFP drops. Procurement forecasts are typically published at the start of each fiscal year (October) and updated quarterly.

Not all agencies buy the same way, and understanding an agency's specific procurement patterns gives you a significant competitive edge. An agency spending analysis examines how a target agency allocates its budget, what it buys, and how it buys it.

Key data points to analyze for each target agency:

• Total contract spending and trends — Is the agency's contract budget growing, flat, or declining? Look at 3-5 year trends using USAspending.gov to avoid targeting agencies in budget decline.
• Spending by NAICS code — What are the agency's top NAICS codes by dollar value? This shows you where the money actually flows and whether your services are a significant spend category.
• Small business achievement — How is the agency performing against its small business goals? Agencies that are behind on goals are under pressure to award more to small businesses — that's your opportunity. Check the SBA Scorecard at sba.gov/scorecard for agency-level performance.
• Contract types — Does the agency prefer firm-fixed-price, cost-reimbursement, or time-and-materials contracts? This affects your pricing strategy and risk profile.
• Competition rates — What percentage of the agency's contracts are competed vs. sole-sourced? High sole-source rates may indicate established relationships that are hard to break into, while high competition rates suggest more open opportunities.
• Contract vehicles — Does the agency buy primarily through GSA Schedules, GWACs (Government-Wide Acquisition Contracts), BPAs (Blanket Purchase Agreements), or standalone contracts? Knowing this tells you which vehicles you need to be on to access their opportunities.

Build agency profiles for your top 5-10 target agencies and update them annually. This becomes your strategic roadmap for business development. Focus your limited marketing and capture resources on the agencies where your data analysis shows the highest probability of success.

Your NAICS codes define the markets you compete in. Deep research into each relevant NAICS code reveals market size, competition levels, and strategic positioning opportunities.

For each of your primary NAICS codes, research:

• Total federal spending — How much does the government spend annually on this NAICS code? Use USAspending.gov to pull 3-year trend data. Growing NAICS codes represent expanding markets.
• Number of competitors — Search SAM.gov entity registrations by NAICS code to see how many companies list it as a capability. Fewer competitors mean less competition per opportunity.
• Size standard threshold — Check SBA's size standards table. If the size standard is $16.5 million in annual revenue and you're at $5 million, you have room to grow while maintaining small business status. If you're approaching the threshold, plan for graduation or consider secondary NAICS codes with higher thresholds.
• Top winners — Pull the top 20 companies by award amount for each NAICS code. These are your primary competitors. Study their websites, past performance, capabilities, and teaming relationships.
• Set-aside percentages — What percentage of spending in this NAICS code is set aside for small business? Higher set-aside rates mean more opportunities restricted to small firms.

For competitive intelligence, research specific competitors in depth. On USAspending.gov, look up their total federal revenue, contract mix, and agency customers. On SAM.gov, check their entity registration for capabilities and certifications. Look at their proposals if any are publicly available (some become public after award through FOIA requests). Understanding your competitors' strengths and weaknesses is essential for developing proposal themes that differentiate your approach.

Market research is only valuable if it drives action. The output of your research should be a capture strategy — a specific, actionable plan for winning a target opportunity based on data and intelligence.

A capture strategy for a specific opportunity should include:

• Opportunity Profile — Contract name, agency, estimated value, NAICS code, set-aside status, anticipated solicitation and award dates, and incumbent contractor information.
• Win Theme Development — Based on your research, what are the 2-3 key themes that will differentiate your proposal? These should address the agency's priorities, the incumbent's weaknesses, and your unique strengths.
• Competitive Assessment — Who are the likely bidders? What are their strengths and weaknesses? How will you position against each? Assign a probability of winning (Pwin) based on objective factors.
• Teaming Strategy — Who do you need on your team to be competitive? What gaps do partners fill? Who have you already approached and what's their status?
• Customer Engagement Plan — Who are the key decision-makers at the agency? What's your plan for meeting with them before the solicitation drops? What events, briefings, or RFI responses will you use to build the relationship?
• Price-to-Win Analysis — Based on historical data, what is the likely winning price range? How does your cost structure compare? Where can you be competitive?

The best capture strategies are living documents that evolve as you gather more intelligence. Update them after every agency meeting, industry day, and competitive development. Start capture 12-18 months before the solicitation for major opportunities. For contracts under $1 million, a lighter-weight capture process is appropriate, but even simple opportunities benefit from basic research and a clear competitive strategy. Data-driven capture is the difference between a 10% win rate and a 40% win rate.

The most successful government contractors don't do market research once — they build it into their weekly operating rhythm. Here's a repeatable process you can implement immediately.

Weekly activities (1-2 hours):

• Review SAM.gov contract opportunity alerts for new solicitations matching your profile
• Check for new procurement forecast updates from your target agencies
• Monitor industry news for budget changes, agency reorganizations, or new program announcements that affect your market

Monthly activities (2-4 hours):

• Update your pipeline tracker with new opportunities from research
• Run USAspending.gov queries for recent awards in your NAICS codes — who's winning, what are they getting, and what does it mean for you
• Review expiring contracts in your target agencies that represent upcoming recompete opportunities

Quarterly activities (half day):

• Refresh your agency spending analysis for your top target agencies
• Update competitor profiles with new award data
• Assess your teaming partner network — are there gaps you need to fill?
• Review and update your capture strategies for your top 5-10 target opportunities

Track all of this in a simple system — even a spreadsheet works. The goal is consistency over sophistication. A contractor who spends 2 hours weekly on disciplined research will outperform one who does a 20-hour deep dive once a year and then forgets about it. Compound your intelligence over time, and each quarter you'll see opportunities earlier and compete from a stronger position.