Getting started in market research? On a tight budget? You’ve come to the right place. Market Research Tools and Techniques is a guide for those who want to perform market research, but don’t have a lot of money to spend. It will teach you about primary research methods, how to use the internet as a resource, and other techniques you can use to help you ask relevant questions and find relevant answers.
In this post, we will be looking at some of the most common market research methods that companies can use to collect information from target market segments. Market research is a key component of any new business venture and it helps to guide decisions in a company’s overall strategy. Take a look at some of the types of information you can get from this kind of research.
Tools
BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo allows you to quickly identify what content is working well in an industry and who the major influencers are.
Some of its main features are:
- Delivering Content Insights
- Instant Search of Last 12 Months
- View All Social Networks
- Advanced Filtering
- Social Backlinks
- Content Curation
- Competitor Comparisons
Google Trends
In the same realm as Answer the Public is Google Trends, which surfaces trends data from all over the internet. You can refine by the location you’re most interested in, or go worldwide.
When you enter a term into Google Trends, it shows you how that term has been trending over time, and assigns it a score out of 100. You can also compare different terms to see how they hold up against each other.
As an example, let’s say we enter ‘Christmas’ as the search term. We’re presented with a graph that clearly shows that it hits peak trendiness in December, for obvious reasons, and then trends very low for the rest of the year. And now, as I write this in October 2020, it’s beginning the upward trend again – a sign that perhaps people are willing Christmas to come early.
Google Analytics
Whilst not technically a wider tool providing market research in its entirety, Google Analytics can provide feedback as to how your customers are behaving whilst on your website. It may show you which products many view, but few buy (or vice versa) and it can illustrate what social media channels your customers are responding to, amongst many other insights.
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.
Pickfu
Pickfu is a powerful market research tool to get reliable and unbiased real-world feedback within minutes. It is an interesting tool not only because it lets you test your idea and collect feedback from people out of your first-degree network but also because it does it within minutes of creating a poll.
With Pickfu, you not only get a definite and unbiased result of your poll, but also you get to know the reasons of why people selected the given option as the tool also shares the demographic information about the participants so you can break down the preferences by gender, age, income, etc. This research tool even lets you target a demographic to give you a feedback on your product, design, idea, etc.
Pickfu is a freemium tool which charges you per response ($1).
WordSift
Make My Persona is appealing, in part, because it enables you to make sense of raw data — to separate the signal from the noise. The same can be said about WordSift, the final free tool we’ll be discussing today.
Built to help teachers with the instruction of vocabulary and reading comprehension, WordSift allows you to generate word clouds: images that represent the frequency with which certain words are used in a given body of text. Look what happens when I copy the introduction to this blog post and paste it into WordSift:
Instantaneously — and unsurprisingly — I can conclude that “business,” “market,” and “research” are among the most frequently used words in the introduction to this post.
What does this have to do with market research? Well, let’s say you’ve been using SurveyMonkey to ask your customers about their reasons for buying your product. One by one, if you were to copy their responses and paste them into WordSift, you’d be able to see which words your customers use most often. That’s a market research gold mine!
Google Keywords Tool
The Google Keywords tool acts as a window into the behaviour of consumers when searching online for products or services such as yours. To use this you’ll need to create a Google Adwords account (it’s free however) and it’s also advisable that you read a couple of introductory articles to the tool and making the most of it.
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.
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.
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
Make My Persona
As you collect and analyze customer-related information, it’s a good idea to create or tweak your buyer personas: detailed profiles of the semi-fictional people for whom your product or service is designed. In the context of market research, personas are useful because they help you synthesize and comprehend the information you’re gathering.
Thanks to our friends at HubSpot, you can use a wonderful free tool called Make My Persona.
Intuitive and fun, Make My Persona is a seven-step process that walks you through the essential components of your target customer: demographic information, firmographic information, job title, pain points, and so on. And if you want to go beyond the bare essentials, you can add as many extra sections of information as you like.
Important note: Your personas should be dynamic. As you conduct further market research and learn more about your target customers, your personas should evolve accordingly.
Statista
Statista is one of the best market research tools for building an online statistic in market research. It gives access to the data from market research institutions and their opinion. You can even get an assessment from business organizations and government institutions in different languages with this tool. Researching various industries helps you to understand the nature of competition. Furthermore, using Statista lets you discover the relative size of the industries, their average expenditures, and individual company expenditures.
Features
- Statistics portal
- Research and analysis
- Content and information design
- eCommerce insights for your business
Price
You can use the basic plan of the Statista for primary data and statistics for free. For the Premium account, you need to buy it for $59 per month, and for a Corporate account, you have to pay $700 per month.
Techniques
One-on-One Interviews
One-on-one interviews are conducted in a similar manner to focus groups, but with one person. One-on-one interviews go a step beyond typical personal interviews. Company managers use these interviews to watch someone actually use their product.
For example, a computer software firm may want to test a new program, so they set up a computer and watch as individuals use the software. Like focus groups, managers observe behind one-way mirrors. Moderators then sit in the room with each person and ask them questions, including how they like the software, or how easy it is to use. Companies then determine whether they need to make changes to the software, based on actual consumer usage.
Questionnaires
Some companies choose to perform market research by sending questionnaires to their existing customers or users who have shown interest in their product or service. A company may ask the customer or person to fill out a survey while in the store or they may send out a survey via mail or email. Examples of questions that a questionnaire may ask include:
- What benefits do you get from this product?
- How does this product compare to other products like it that you’ve used?
- What would you change about this product?
- What would make you a perfect company or brand?
- What is your primary method of communication (for future questionnaires or marketing efforts)?
- What made you purchase this product from our company?
- What features are the most valuable to you?
- Where do you typically do your shopping?
- What income range are you in?
- How old you are?
- What gender do you identify with?
Conducting Phone Surveys
Companies use phone surveys to further validate information obtained from focus groups and one-on-one interviews. Marketers conduct phone surveys among higher numbers of consumers and customers. Consequently, data obtained from the higher number of phone surveys are more indicative of what the average consumer thinks about a particular product or service.
For example, a bank may conduct 300 phone surveys to measure how satisfied customers are with its customer service. Marketers would develop a questionnaire from which to ask the questions. This may include key measurable elements like friendliness, timeliness and accuracy in the questionnaire, and then ask customers to rate those elements on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest rating. The bank may ask customers to elaborate on their responses, which the bank manager could then use to make improvements in customer service.
Observation
Watching how customers use your products or services is a quick way to spot potential problems, such as how difficult it is for customers to navigate your online store. Observation spans a huge range of applications – from browsing habits on a website to watching the flow of traffic into and out of a car park.
How does observation work?
Observation is a type of qualitative market research, where you gather insights and information by watching people go through a series of activities. Observation is usually hidden – for example using online customer monitoring software such as LuckyOrange or through security cameras – though some might be overt, such as walking with a customer around a store. They don’t have to take place in special rooms or labs; observing customers in shops, restaurants or even out-and-about are all valid approaches.
Advantages of observation – While you always need permission and full consent from a subject, if you’re able to watch them covertly subjects often behave more naturally and show their true actions, rather than their ‘ideal selves’ that they typically show to strangers.
Disadvantages of observation – Observation is time-consuming and expensive. Researchers have little control over the situations and environments typically used in observational research, and sometimes the act of observing can bias results or influence the situation. Someone who knows they’re being observed may act less naturally.
Using Test Marketing
Companies often take marketing research one step further with test marketing. For example, the restaurant company may actually roll its chicken meal out into five of its 10 local restaurants, advertising the meal on local television and radio and through coupon magazine ads. Corporate marketing managers may then track sales and profits to validate the success of the new meal. The restaurant would then know if its marketing research was an accurate indicator of success.
Testing
Testing focuses on learning about people’s experiences. Often used in later stages of product development, it’s a chance for potential customers to test out your product or service. It can be used to ensure a product is fit for market – such as being robust enough when handled – to getting feedback on how a product works.
Any time that your customers try a new product or service is technically a test – for example, a restaurant chain may place a new dish on the menu, advertising the dish with discounts and money-off coupons. Sales of the new dish can then be tracked to validate its success, and feedback sought from customers as to whether they liked it.
Advantages of testing – Testing can result in specific feedback that can help hone a product. By letting customers test a product, any rough edges can be refined before rolling it out on a larger scale. Testing also puts the product in a real-world environment, which can throw up usability issues that otherwise wouldn’t have been spotted.
Disadvantages of testing – It can sometimes be expensive and time-consuming, and some companies can often overlook this stage because it happens quite far into the development cycle.
The Use of Focus Groups
Focus groups are usually conducted at focus group facilities. These facilities have one-way mirrors so managers can listen to consumers’ feedback about their products and services. A moderator, or special interviewer, usually runs the focus group. She develops a discussion guide of five to 10 questions related to the product. She then asks participants various questions about the product. The ideal size for a focus group is six to 10 people.
A moderator may speak to customers about a small restaurant’s new chicken sandwich meal. She may ask them if they like the idea of a new chicken sandwich, how much they would pay for it and whether or not they would purchase it. Companies often use focus groups to narrow several versions of a product down to the best offering.
Conclusion
What is market research? It can mean different things to different people, but at its most basic level, it’s the process of gathering information on your target market. If you’re just starting out with your first or next business venture, then chances are you’ll be doing some form of market research. Market research methods and techniques vary widely based on the type of business, the industry it falls under, the geographic location of where the business will be sold or accessed, etc.