Learn about the key metrics you need to know in order to determine if the market for your startup idea is viable. Market research can be done relatively cheaply by anyone, anywhere. Whether you are a current student, teacher, entrepreneur, or researcher, this guide will take you through the different market research methods available.
The market research tools for startups help you figure out what your customers want, and how to do a startup. There are a lot of examples on the internet, although some of them are not for a startup example.
Survey Monkey
If you wish to get honest feedback about your product or services, Survey Monkey is probably the best for startups and small businesses. The Basic plan lets you create online surveys and polls, which you can send to your list for free.
Think with Google
Ever wondered how digital innovation results in changing of consumer behaviour? Google monitors and analyse every such change and shares the same with us through Think with Google.
Think with Google is a one-stop resource for consumer trends, marketing insights, and industry research. This free marketing research tool can be used along with other free marketing tools from Google like shopping insights, consumer barometer, Google trends, and market finder to get the best results.
Pew Research Center
The Pew Research Center has copious data on social trends, technology usage, science and many other current topics. Register and you can get access to datasets and reports with excellent charts. Pew does a great job explaining the methodology behind its studies, with good demographic breakdowns helpful to marketing teams. Pew data can help you identify new opportunities and understand your target market.
Price: Free
Consumer Barometer
This market research tool is free and best used by businesses that deal with online shopping. If you want to know what drives your consumers to buy your product – which is a good way of enhancing it as well – this tool is definitely handy. Any public user can use this tool.
Statista
Statista calls itself a facts destination. This market research tool has consolidated statistical data on over 80,000 topics from more than 22,500 sources and is available in English, German, French, and Spanish. The company also owns ecommercedb.com that allows you to analyse online shops and ecommerce markets in an instant.
It’s a freemium tool which lets free users access basic statistics but charge $49 per month from premium account users who get a full access to all the statistics.
Statista also entertains individual research requests and creates customized infographics, videos, presentations, and publications in the corporate design of your choice.
Living Facts
Living Facts is a sister site to the Pew Research Center that can provide information to help you market to potential customers. The site says it “is about Americans today — who we are and how we live.” The site has colorful image infographics, videos, and quizzes and is easy to use. Get a snapshot of consumer trends, demographics, faith, health, work and other topics about American life for your marketing plan or campaign.
Price: Free
Ask Your Target Market or AYTM
If you are keen to use a tailored-fit survey, AYTM is a great option. Once you create your survey, you can either send it to your list of contacts or AYTM panel that is made up of 4.5 million people. Although, the service is free, there is a minimal fee of 95 cents per response. So, it is better to create a survey that should be completed within 24 hours.
Semrush
Semrush is an all in one digital marketing suite which provides you tools for the following services:
- SEO (search engine optimization)
- PPC (pay-per-click advertising)
- Keyword Research
- Competitive Analysis
- Social Media
- Public Relations
- Content Marketing
These tools, when used holistically, not only can help you identify the different trends that happen within your niche, but also help you in competitor research. You can also conduct a research for the most searched keywords and the most profitable keywords of your niche using Semrush.
Semrush has four premium plans starting at $99.95 per month.
U.S. Census Business Data
The U.S. Census is a top market research tool. Census Business Builder is a source for conducting market research targeting a single geography. Explore Census Data is helpful for segmenting customers by demographics. The U.S. Census Bureau also provides Data Gems, a collection of videos to better explain how to access census data for your business. Other tools for market research from the U.S. government include:
- Economic indicators: See the Consumer Price Index and Bureau of Economic Analysis for additional economic figures.
- Income statistics: Find market rates of pay and similar data. Earnings by Occupation and Education and Income Statistics.
- Money statistics: Find Money Statistics from the Federal Reserve Banks.
- NAICS Codes: Look up industries by the North American Industry Classification System or NAICS system.
- Employment statistics: See various Employment and Unemployment Statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Price: Free
GutCheck
This is an online agile market research tool that can help you get quick answers by conducting 30-minute one-on-one online video interviews. GutCheck is based in US, so all of your participants will be from there. It has a wide variety of criteria such as age and income to ensure high-quality results.
ContentMine
As the name suggests, ContentMine offers a broad range of text mining services and a free software to help researchers look for, download, analyse and extract data from academic papers using an open source mining code.
Besides text data mining services, ContentMine also offers consultancy services and deliver training and workshops too.
Facebook Audience Insights
96% of small businesses worldwide have Facebook accounts. This tool is easy to use. You can create any target demographic based on the region, age, gender, interest, likes, and more. If you don’t have one yet, sign up now to enjoy this awesome free app!
Surveypal
This free tool is perfect for non-techy business owners. It has a pretty straightforward drag-and-drop interface. Survey takers can either use a desktop or mobile in answering the survey.
KNIME Analytics Platform
KNIME is an open source data analytics, reporting and integration platform which integrates components of machine learning and data mining through its modular data pipelining concept.
Its interface allows assembly of over 1000 native and embedded nodes for data access, data transformation, data analysis, data mining, and data visualization.
Zoho Survey
Zoho Survey is a relative newcomer to the survey software industry, but has quickly ramped up to match rivals. Zoho Survey has a free version which allows you to do 10 questions and receive up to 100 responses, per survey. Zoho has over 250 professional templates. You may need a paid version to give you the flexibility and features you need. Added plus: a full version of Zoho Survey is included at no additional charge in Zoho One subscriptions.
Price: Free and Paid Plans from $20 / month.
Conclusion:
Startups have the advantage of being able to grow from within an industry, leveraging from existing infrastructure and services already in place. This also means that there is a big need for market research tools that can help entrepreneurs or startups create an effective plan for entering a market. In fact, many entrepreneurs have used the skills they have learned from studying case studies to succeed at breaking into an industry. Conducting research on your competitors can help you understand what works for them and what doesn’t, so that you can deliver a more effective entrance to the market.