Entrepreneurs Love These 18 Tools for Conducting Market Research

Best tools for market research

Eric Brown, founder and CEO of Imperio Consulting, highlighted the importance of using top-notch market research tools. “They give you the data you need to make more informed, faster decisions,” Brown said.

Consider the following tools, apps, platforms and websites to help you conduct effective market research.

1. Google Ads

Google Ads gets your business in front of online users who are actively searching for the services or products you offer. The platform’s artificial intelligence (AI) features help maximize successful lead conversions by determining which ad formats will perform best for a brand’s needs. It also offers numerous opportunities to review audience insights and create targeted campaigns. 

Google Ads includes search features to help you determine demand for specific products and services so you can target the right audience. (The official Google Ads website explains more about starting and running a campaign.)

2. SurveyMonkey

Creating surveys on SurveyMonkey is a great way for brands to gather market research and analyze collected data in the program’s reporting dashboard. As the SurveyMonkey website explains, this excellent customer feedback platform can help businesses measure audience interest and better understand their market’s needs.

3. Typeform

Typeform helps businesses create and seamlessly integrate data collection forms, surveys and quizzes on their websites and in their email messages. This code-free software allows businesses to evaluate audience interest, increase sign-ups and conversion rates, test products and services, and collect valuable data from consumers in an engaging and visually appealing way. The Typeform website explains how to get started.

4. AYTM

AYTM, which stands for “ask your target market,” allows businesses to create surveys to gauge the interest of their customers or those within AYTM’s community of over 100 million people worldwide. The platform prides itself on having a highly curated community of respondents to ensure businesses get insights from the right market for their needs. Businesses can view insights from surveys with AYTM’s dashboard, which offers heat maps and other data visualizations, along with filters and testing options. Visit the AYTM website to get started or schedule a demo.

5. Semrush

Semrush offers detailed insights about competitors’ search engine optimization (SEO) strategies to help businesses increase traffic and compete more effectively. It allows entrepreneurs to see how their website traffic compares with competitors’ and run SEO audits to find the most effective keywords to attract their target market. Semrush can also analyze any domain’s backlinks to give you a better understanding of how competitors rank on search engines and pinpoint website design mistakes and other shortcomings. The Semrush website explains how to get started.

6. Quora

Quora is a free market research tool that provides authentic customer feedback through a question-and-answer format. Users can interact with topics that interest them, which, in turn, allows businesses to identify their target audience and ask specific questions to engage these individuals effectively. Businesses can use Quora to understand their market better and learn about consumer preferences. The Quora website explains more.

7. Qualtrics XM

Qualtrics XM software helps businesses improve their offerings and avoid bad product launches by providing insight into marketing trends, revealing how consumer and market behaviors are changing, and optimizing the user experience. Using your audience, including site visitors and those on email lists, Qualtrics XM helps businesses create research panels to obtain feedback (including video feedback) and test offerings before their launch. You can request a demo or learn more via the Qualtrics XM website.

8. PickFu

PickFu helps businesses easily obtain consumer feedback through polls and testing. Brands can get in-depth, written responses at any step of their creative journey, from inception to launch. The platform allows you to get feedback from up to 500 people within a target demographic by asking questions that gauge their opinions through experiments, comparisons and personal decisions. You can sign up for free on the PickFu website.

9. Statista

The Statista data platform provides insight into various industries via statistics, infographics, consumer insights and studies to help guide business decision-making. The platform includes over 1 million statistics on more than 80,000 topics to help businesses understand their industries’ nuances and stay updated on the latest trends and predictions.

10. Tableau Desktop

Tableau is a data visualization tool with a clean, intuitive interface. Through the platform, businesses can analyze data, browse AI-powered predictive analytics and make data-driven business decisions. With Tableau, businesses can visualize, clean and combine their data to understand their customers and spot trends and gaps in the market. The Tableau Desktop website allows you to sign up for a free trial.

11. Google Trends

Google Trends is a great starting point for businesses to access real-time data and gauge public interest in specific topics. Using Google Trends, entrepreneurs can see how often people search for a particular term on Google search, YouTube and Google News. You can filter searches by location to identify where your target audience resides.

12. BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is a powerful tool for tracking media mentions, backlinks and social shares, so it’s ideal for content marketing and competitor analysis. BuzzSumo stands out with its ability to scan social media posts and articles to identify trending topics and find creators with engaged audiences across all major platforms. With BuzzSumo browsing forums, trends and topics, businesses can easily gain valuable insights to optimize their content and find growth opportunities. You can learn more and sign up for a free trial via the BuzzSumo website. 

13. Answer the Public

Answer the Public generates keyword ideas and insights by analyzing autocomplete data, which helps businesses understand the questions their audience is asking online. Businesses can get unlimited searches with some paid plan options or use the free plan for up to three searches per day. The upgraded plans offer additional helpful features, including the ability to set alerts for new questions on any set topic. This tool makes it easy to identify top audience concerns so your business can gauge its performance and build (or pivot) campaigns to meet customers’ needs.

14. Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest, a tool created by renowned marketing expert Neil Patel, provides keyword research, SEO insights and competitor analysis to enable businesses to optimize their online presence and content strategy. Despite a text-heavy design, the Ubersuggest online tool is fairly straightforward to use. Typing in a phrase yields ranked keyword search results and shows top-performing pages to help businesses identify standout content. Businesses can also gauge top competitors, analyze market trends for their products, and view search frequency data. 

15. Pew Research Center

Pew Research Center offers in-depth reports on trends and behaviors in society, politics and technology, thereby providing valuable insights for businesses to understand their target audiences. The completely free Pew Research Center website offers an abundance of articles that can be filtered by topic. The interactive content allows you to filter through the information, view it in the format you prefer and extract targeted insights. Businesses can also view the sources used and see participant feedback.

16. Qualaroo

Qualaroo specializes in unobtrusive website and app surveys that allow businesses to gather contextual user feedback with advanced targeting features. This tool’s AI-based analysis focuses on improving client response rates by learning a site’s structure and highlighting real-time keywords; it claims to be 10 times more effective than email surveys. Qualaroo can also create branching surveys and allows simultaneous surveys across six channels. The tool’s information-gathering abilities and quick feedback help businesses map customer preferences and expectations. The Qualaroo website explains the tool’s free plan. 

17. Make My Persona

This free HubSpot tool helps businesses create detailed customer personas to segment and better understand their target audience and lay the groundwork for effective marketing strategies. By enabling a better understanding of the brand audience and creating a quick persona for new products, Make My Persona is particularly great for the first stage of business-to-business product launches. Businesses can segment customer types and pinpoint demographic information. These data-driven insights can help businesses avoid “scope creep” and provide insights for their marketing strategy.

18. Social media platforms

In addition to using stand-alone market research solutions, you can leverage data from your business’s social platforms and their built-in analytics to inform your social media marketing and other marketing strategies. Social media allows businesses to access real-time feedback, even after a service has been launched or a change has been made, which allows for continual improvement. Each platform offers various features, including polling and livestreams, to assess consumers’ interests and learn what resonates most. You can also connect with your audience on a personal level in the comment sections or via direct messages and listen to their concerns and suggestions.

Why market research is so important 

According to Beth Cooper, vice president of sales and marketing at KNB Communications, launching and operating a business without market research is like “throwing a dart with your eyes closed.” While you may have a general direction in mind, getting a clear picture of your target audience dramatically improves your chances of success. 

“That’s what market research does: It reduces uncertainty, allowing businesses to make better decisions,” Cooper said.

Thorough, well-analyzed market research data provides critical insights that help you refine ideas, tailor products to customer needs, and uncover growth opportunities. Gathering feedback early confirms demand for your offerings and reduces the risk of investing in a product or service that won’t resonate with your target customers.

Market research also encourages a customer-centric approach that aligns a business’s strategies with its audience’s needs, preferences and economic realities. People feel valued when their input shapes product development, so leveraging market research insights can help strengthen your brand’s connection with its customers.

How to choose market research tools for your business

Ksenia Kolyeva, marketing manager at Ecosense Inc., a company that specializes in radon-detection products, emphasized that choosing the right market research tools can affect your results significantly while playing a vital role in consumer education. “Numbers are a powerful way to convey impactful messages to our audience,” Kolyeva explained. “For example, highlighting that ‘21,000 people die every year from radon-induced lung cancer’ [can] help us emphasize the importance of our mission and resonate with our customers.”

Here are some essential factors to consider when you’re looking for a market research tool:

• Research goals: If you want to grow a particular audience segment to increase sales, you’ll need specific information and resources. If you want to understand how much of the market you’re capturing, you’ll require different resources.
• Data needed: Different goals require different data. For example, demographic information typically comes from customers or tools that gather this specific data. In contrast, if you want to determine your business’s market share within your industry, you’ll need data from industry sales and statistics.
• Available features: Ensure that your chosen resources offer the features you need. For example, a tool designed to survey customers will differ from one built to scan social media platforms or analyze market statistics.
• Scalability and flexibility: Some tools are multifunctional, while others focus on one purpose. Consider your short-term and long-term business goals while evaluating the tool’s abilities, pricing and contract requirements. If your research goals are complex, you may need a more advanced and customizable tool. 

With so many options available, it’s a good idea to test potential solutions before committing to one, Kolyeva said. “If possible, take advantage of free trials to test the tool thoroughly before committing your entire team to a new system,” Kolyeva suggested.

If your current market research tools or strategies aren’t delivering the results you’re looking for, it might be time to explore new technologies and solutions. “Don’t be afraid of change,” Kolyeva advised. “While switching tools or systems can feel daunting, it’s often necessary for growth and improvement.” 

Miranda Fraraccio contributed to this article. Some source interviews were conducted for a previous version of this article.