When understanding your customers and finding new ones, market and brand research tools are your secret weapon.
Without data, your hunch may lead you in the wrong direction if you think you already know everything about your target audiences.
Research involves finding your potential customers, how to reach them, and what they need from you. In the past, a pen, clipboard, and phone were all required to answer these questions.
In today’s world, various smart data collection and analysis systems are available. But, where do you start?
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Getting to know what works best for you and your business begins with experimenting. You might benefit from having a few of the tools below in your arsenal; some tools are more general, while others are more specialised.
We have examined three categories of tools: online listening, broader market intelligence, and direct customer interaction. Prices range from free to thousands of dollars for enterprise-level tools.
These market research tools are great for small businesses, startups and/or even big corporations to gain valuable insights into your marketing. Here are our top ten market research tools.
We’ve selected online business databases as the first go-to-market research tool, allowing you to bring your approach to a new level.
You would be amazed at the incredible data and reports you can find at the British Library's Business and IP Centre. A free reading pass is all you need to access these expensive and valuable business insights.
Source: British Library
For example, the British Library has extensively published business and management material. With this collection, your company can access data published since the early 1980s by many key publishers such as Mintel, Frost & Sullivan, Key Note, Verdict and Statista. Additionally, if you like specific reports or data, you can ask the library attendant to email you the information.
Among the top databases from the British Library, we use Statista, which you can find online for free, but it doesn’t give original sources or full reports.
You’ll be able to find hundreds of market research reports, data visualisations, and statical dashboards from a variety of sources.
When you search for “market research tools”, for example, you’ll find many reports on the usage of different tools in many countries over the last few years. Clicking these results will give you access to analytical dashboards, survey sources, and links to further reading.
Statista's result for "Digital Marketing"
Unlike the free tier, the full version of Statista from the British Library provides your company with full reports, references, and detailed information such as consumer behaviour, market trends, demographics, and consumer opinions.
With valuable data, you would have the capabilities to generate real-time insights and predictions to optimise your marketing performance, leading to informed business decisions for sustainable business growth.
You can access online databases at the British Library with only 2 simple steps:
Answer the Public's result for "Digital Marketing"
You can see what questions people are currently asking online using Answer the Public to search for questions, topics, and common search terms. While some of the topics may not seem relevant, it’s the information customers genuinely need. And if you don’t answer their questions, rest assured that someone else will.
This tool can provide insights that can inform the development of new products and services, and if content marketing is one of your investment channels, it’s even more valuable. Your customers will be more likely to find your website via search engines if you create content that addresses their needs.
This is the very foundation of good search engine optimisation.
Think with Google - Consumer Insights
In contrast to Google’s other services, this one is less well-known outside the data-driven marketing community. However, a marketer looking for statistics, trends, and insights will find Think with Google a helpful tool.
Think With Google differs from the real-time data you'd get from Google Analytics — which many marketers swear by. And it's a bit more focused than its sibling, Google Trends.
Rather than provide information you can find elsewhere, Think with Google provide free, curated facts and figures based on Google’s analytics data. Although you can perform specific searches, features like consumer insights might be best used for creative inspiration rather than answering focused questions.
For instance, you can find interesting profiles of customers searching for different products using the Youtube Find My Audience tool. There are two types of audiences you can see: "affinity audiences" (buyer personas with habits and interests similar to your offering) and "in-market audiences" (people searching for information about your offering or its competitors).
You can use Think with Google to find out what works best for you by experimenting with different market research tools.
Spyfu's result for "Digital Marketing"
When it comes to insights, you can conclude a variety of sources, including:
Users can spy on their competitors’ traffic with Spyfu, a search engine analytics platform.
Upon visiting the website’s homepage, you will be asked to enter the URL of your competitor's website. Spyfu will then provide general information about their traffic metrics, where their traffic is coming from, and what people are searching for to find them.
Keyword research, backlink checkers, and other SEO tools can improve your online marketing strategies. Based on traffic overlap, it can also help you discover competitors you weren't aware of. In addition to free tools, there are paid options with additional features.
BuzzSumo result for "Digital Marketing"
In addition to content marketing, Buzzsumo also offers social media insights. With Buzzsumo, you can discover what people are posting, engaging with, sharing, and blogging about - and learn much about what interests your target audience.
It focuses on metrics such as how many shares and backlinks a post has. As a way to discover the best content in your industry or niche, Buzzsumo is unmatched.
As a result of analysing the data, you can create high-performing content that will go viral with your target audience and gain excellent press coverage.
BuzzSUmo lets you monitor the social mentions on a specific topic and set alerts based on keywords or comments. So, if you care about what people say, this tool is invaluable.
Qualtric's creating survey interference
With Qualtrics, you can quickly perform high-quality market research using an AI-based platform that helps more than 11,000 brands manage customer experience.
Whether you are looking to segment the market, benchmark your competitors, or gather feedback on new services or products, Qualtrics has you covered.
You can use this platform to conduct detailed market research. It uses advanced statistical methods to gather detailed information about your target market in a concise amount of time.
With Qualtrics, you can easily construct a marketing strategy, better understand your customers, or develop a marketing strategy.
Typeform's report summary
Using Typeform, you can quickly and easily create engaging, meaningful, and exciting surveys for collecting customer data.
In addition to its easy-to-use interface, Typeform offers detailed analytics and reporting features and the ability to view real-time survey responses.
Customising surveys according to your brand image is one of our favourite features of this tool. Moreover, the variety of surveys available, from short-text quizzes to picture-based surveys, is also appealing.
With Typeform, you can create trending surveys that users can’t get enough of using a simple premise: the quality of the answers you get depends on how the questions are asked.
Tableau's data visualisation
Businesses can analyse critical data items quickly and gain essential insights using Tableau, a visual analytics platform that helps startups and established businesses understand complex data.
You can better understand the market by combining the data items from multiple sources, like Excel sheets, relational databases, and Google Analytics.
Moreover, data can be segmented and analysed using Tableau using criteria such as geography, demographics, etc. Interactive visualisations can also be created and shared.
There are multiple versions of Tableau available, including desktop, server, online, and mobile, and it has a drag-and-drop interface that makes creating reports and visualisations easy.
SEMrush's result for "Digital Marketing"
SEMrush gives you the power to run SEO campaigns, paid search campaigns, social media campaigns, and content marketing campaigns in one place.
It allows you to understand your page better and optimise it for SEO for better lead generalisation by identifying trends within your industry niche with SEMrush’s on-page analysis.
Aside from finding valuable keywords for your campaign, SEMrush helps you identify competitor keywords. This gives you an idea of how you compare to your competitors.
SEMrush is intended for people who need help with digital marketing. If you lack experience or knowledge, SEmrush is designed to make learning and using SEO easy.
Userlytics's testing platform
With the Userlytics tool, you can monitor consumer behaviour on your website or mobile app.
There are several possible survey types on Userlytics, such as short questions, MCQs, open-ended questions, Net Promoter Score questions, Singe Ease Questions and System Usability Scaling methods.
It is possible to conduct remote usability testing to align your products with your target audiences with the help of Userlytics, one of the best tools for market research and user testing. Furthermore, it allows you to collect market data by interacting with real-time conversations without the burden of arranging personal interviews, making it a convenient tool for online market research.
These marketing research tools will significantly enhance your daily toolkit. Many options are available when you’re seeking metrics trends, conversations, or valuable insights. Knowing where to find potential customers will help you excel as a marketer.
Learn more about the difference between Market Research and Consumer Insights here. Or check out our ultimate guild to market research here.
Carter Consulting can help you manage your research if you lack the skills, capacity or inclination. As an extension of your team, our research services can assist with designing, writing, programming, and reporting the survey based on your needs.
Book a meeting with us today!