Before you can get too deep into your digital marketing campaign, you must first take the time to understand your customers and locate new ones.
This is where market research comes into play.
Many brands make the mistake of assuming they know exactly who their audience is, but when it comes down to it, it is possible to take the wrong path if you haven’t performed the research and have the data to back up your moves.
Market research helps to determine:
- Who your prospects are.
- The best way to reach them.
- What they’re looking for from you.
There are many market research tools that can help you obtain this type of data and analyze it to better understand it.
With so many options available, where do you begin?
Let’s take a closer look at seven of the best and most essential market research tools you should be using.
1. Pew Research Center
The Pew Research Center offers a wealth of free research that can aid you in the understanding of your market at a higher level.
This is a non-profit organization that performs in-depth research and analysis across a wide variety of industries, such as politics, science, news and media, religion, technology and the internet, social media, and public opinion polling.
Here, you will be able to gain access to insightful and transparent data that can be used to take your marketing research efforts to the next level.
All the reports in the database offer a demographic breakdown of the industry as well as graphics, which can help you understand the data itself better and how it may apply to your particular business.
2. Think with Google Research Tools
When it comes to uncovering trends in the market, gaining market insights, understanding the behavior of consumers, and more, Think with Google research tools can give it to you.
With this robust collection of tools — that are free to use, we might add — you will gain access to top-level insights, valuable statistics, and even marketing tools that you can use to your advantage.
With the information you get from this particular market research tool, you can better grasp the data with articles, highlight real-time trends, and find out what other companies similar to your own have been able to achieve.
One example tool available in this collection includes the Rising Retail Categories tool.
This tool is designed to show you some of the trending eCommerce categories. The data can be filtered based on the country, and it can be viewed on a weekly, monthly, or yearly basis.
Another great tool you will find here includes the Market Finder, which will give you insight into which markets you should launch your products to.
3. Growthbar
Growthbar offers a quick and easy way to conduct market research.
This tool gives immediate access to various data points regarding your competition and the keywords and growth channels that are currently working for them.
You can tap into your competitors’ social signals, best performing keywords, top ranking keywords, top paid keywords, backlink data, Facebook ads insights, and so much more.
You can try this tool for no charge, then it costs $29 per month after that. For such a comprehensive tool, this is a great price.
4. Statista
Statista is a research tool that provides consumer and market data for various industries.
It is a very user-friendly tool that can remit hundreds of data visualizations, market research reports, and statistical dashboards that are created from numerous sources.
For instance, if we use the term “goat milk,” it returns a long list of reports based off of consumer activity over recent years, including production in certain areas, per capita consumption in various areas, and more.
From this data, you can gain access to survey sources, analytical dashboards, and similar studies.
This tool is great at helping you find valuable information regarding consumer opinions, demographics, market trends, and consumer behavior.
It is free to begin, although there is a paid option that offers more details.
5. Tableau
Tableau is a collection of various market research tools that allows you to connect with almost any source of data and simplify complex data.
Unlike some market research tools, though, Tableau provides you with the data in easy-to-read tables.
You can visualize the data retrieved in a way that can help you communicate it effectively with potential investors and stakeholders.
This tool can extract data from numerous sources like PDFs, Excel spreadsheets, Python, and cloud databases.
It will take this data, analyze it, and present it on a dashboard that can be shared and interacted with. It uses colorful tables and charts to show variations and trends.
6. Qualtrics Panels
If you are using surveys to spark some of your market research, then you may have realized how difficult it is to locate the right participants.
If no one is taking your survey, then you won’t gather the data you need to inform your business decisions.
In enters Qualtrics Panels.
This tool gives you access to hundreds of thousands of respondents for opt-in surveys.
These individuals are both B2B and B2C and have been thoroughly vetted to determine their eligibility and qualification.
Qualtrics Panels allow you to choose your target audience and gain access to a representative sample, increase the accuracy of your sampling, and gain support throughout the entire process.
7. Answer the Public
Since it can be helpful to know what questions are being asked online, the Answer the Public tool can be used to your advantage, especially as you embark on creating a strategic digital marketing and content marketing plan.
Entering your particular topic on the search page will display a list of different questions, common search terms, topics, and related subjects that can help power your campaign.
For example, if you enter the term “goat milk,” some of the data that pulls up includes the following:
- Are goat milk products good for your skin?
- Can goat milk be frozen?
- How goat milk is good for you
- What goat milk tastes like
- How to tell if goat milk is bad
- Which goat milk soap is good for eczema?
In many cases, this list will provide you with questions and terms that you never thought of using.
Using these questions and search terms can help ensure you are catering to your target audience.
You will attract your customers via search, and once they land on your website, you have the opportunity to turn a prospect into a loyal customer.
Oh, and did we mention it is free to conduct a couple of searches? After that, you’ll need to wait until the next day to perform another search or invest in the paid option.
Wrap Up
When launching a new product, market research is critical. The same is true if you are just trying to gauge a better understanding of your target audience.
With the market research tools mentioned above, you can determine who needs your product, why they need your product, and how you can improve your digital marketing campaign to ensure the new product launch is a true success.
This is all done through the collection of trends, metrics, insights, and conversations.
Don’t forget that an important step in your market research and being able to move forward is creating a buyer persona, which is a relatively fictional character that represents your ideal customer.
With an accurate buyer persona, you have the enhanced ability to create solutions tailored to your target audience, increasing your overall chance of success.
Need help building your buyer persona? Check out the Buyer Persona Generator!
