One of the most important secondary research tools is knowing what kind of information is out there. You can investigate secondary research sources by using search engines, catalogs, directories, and databases. Secondary research is an integral part of business research. Here you will find resources to introduce you to the basics of secondary research and some great resources for this topic.
Secondary market research tools are the ”’tools”’ used by financial professionals to produce a secondary market research report. A secondary market research report is a report created about a publicly-traded business entity after the dissemination of a primary, or original, stock offering. The Internet has opened up a huge range of secondary research tools and resources. Here are some to help you gain insight, improve productivity and add value to your research.
The Consumer Barometer by Google
This is a great market research tool that will help you in understanding how people use the internet across the world.
The consumer barometer provides information on the thoughts of customers and their shopping behaviors. This data will guide you in developing and implementing your marketing strategies. Google carries out online surveys from time to time and presents the findings through this tool.
This data is based on a survey conducted by Google on 150,000 people in 43 countries asking them on how they use the internet. I will provide a step-by-step guide on how you can access this tool.
i. Type the URL www.consumerbarometer.com/en/ on the search engine
ii. Click “Graphics Builder” button
iii. When you arrive “Graphic Builder” landing page, navigate to the left-hand side where you will see the questions Google has asked the respondents. These questions are in three categories: the Online and Multiscreen World, The Smart Shopper, and The Smart Viewer.
a) The Online and Multiscreen World has questions on how people access the internet and the devices they use.
While on this page, you can use the different filters to isolate the people you are targeting on different platforms. The filters on this page are age, demographics, gender, parental status, and income level. This information is essential when you are planning for different target markets.
b) The Smart Shopper section provides information on the user’s journey. This info will help you in understanding the motivation for every purchase decision. You can try to predict the research consumers conduct on a product before they buy a product.
c) Third, The Smart Viewer section provides online videos that will assist you in predicting the performance of the market in 2019. For example, this research reveals that online videos will contribute to 85% of the internet traffic. This tool will help you to understand why people opt to watch online videos.
Zintro
Connecting with a leading industry expert who specializes in your area of focus is an excellent starting point for conducting market research. Not only do these specialty consultants know their industries inside and out, many know every possible source of data related to their areas of expertise and can compile reports with industry data or advise you on market-dependent decisions. Zintro is the leading platform for finding highly specialized subject-matter experts with skills and expertise in every niche industry imaginable. Easily post projects, contact subject-matter experts directly, and conduct business with them via the Zintro platform.
Key Features:
- Find experts for projects, phone consultations, and jobs
- Smart matching algorithm to quickly find the most qualified experts
- Nearly 165,000 subject-matter experts with specialized industry expertise
- Find consultants, industry experts, scientists, and more
Cost:
- Zintro is free for both Clients and Experts
- Premium plans offer a way to highlight your experience and increase your probabilities of success
- Applies to both Clients and Experts
- Unlimited responses, Highlighted profile and inquiries, Contact any Expert Directly, Expedited Customer Support
- Connection fee: 15% of fees paid to Experts (minimum of $99.95 waived if Client or Expert is Premium)
Google Fusion Table
Google Fusion Tables is a data management tool that will help you to visualize, gather, and share data tables.
If you use this tool, you can summarize all your data at once and use different filters to select the appropriate data about an audience. By using this tool, you can use embed and/or share charts, graphs, custom layouts, and maps.
When using this tool, there are factors that you should be conversant with: visualizing and merging big tables, making a quick map of your data, and presenting the data online.
Below is a step-by-step guide for creating the Google Fusion Tables:
i. Use this link to access the fusion tables:
ii. Once the “Google Fusion Tables” pages pop up, click on the “Create a fusion table” icon. At this point, you upload your data or excel file where you have organized your data.
iii. Click on the “Choose a file” icon to upload it and then click the “next” button. An advantage of Fusion Tables is that they easily identify the header row. If it is not available, it will assume the first row number is the header row.
iv. You will have to name the fusion table. At this stage, you can either fill up the other rows manually with the data or click on “finish” to automatically fill the data.
v. The final result is a fusion table that contains all your data. To insert any charts, you click on “+” button that is before the “chart tab” and then click “Add Chart”.
It will present a dotted variable chart. To ease this process, select “Network Graph” at the bottom left-hand of the menu. It will present a clear relationship between the columns in the data of the target before uploading it.
vi. You can use filters to analyze the data for future purposes.
SurveyMonkey
Getting to know your market and audience is sometimes as simple as a powerful survey. SurveyMonkey is known for being “the leader in online surveys,” and with its safe and secure data, SurveyMonkey API, and fast and friendly support, SurveyMonkey is a great choice for a market research tool.
Key Features:
- 15 question types
- Custom branding
- Create interactive surveys with skip logic and question piping
- Reach the right people with SurveyMonkey Audience
- Survey templates meet Section 508 accessibility standards
Cost:
- Basic: FREE – 10 questions, 100 responses, standard email support
- Select: $26/month or $228/year – 1000 responses, unlimited questions and responses, priority 24/7 email support, custom logos, colors & more, skip logic, cross-tab filters, export data & reports
- Gold: $300/year – all Select features, plus A/B testing, question & answer piping, and randomization
- Platinum: $780/year – all Gold features, plus white label surveys, phone support, and HIPAA-compliant features
Facebook Audience Insights
The Facebook Audience Insights is another great tool for analyzing the audience that is important for your business. It helps marketers to obtain more information about their markets like their behavior, demographics, or geography.
For instance, if your business deals in selling men’s luxury fashion brands, you are interested in knowing the ease of access to your online store, their interests, and purchasing behaviors. The Facebook Audience Insights aggregates all this information for you.
The steps in using the Facebook Audience Insights:
i. Go to the “Business Manager” icon on Facebook and navigate to the “audience insights section”
ii. Select age and gender to filter the information that you need. Type “of interest” where you will add the name of your product or anything else that you want to sell.
iii. Immediately, the results will appear showing the percentage of people who regularly use the product.
iv. You can carry out another filter for their education level and relationship status. It will make selling your products online much easier.
The Facebook Audience Insights tool is more of a target-oriented technique for selling your product to a target audience of your business.
Conclusion:
Research is an important part of any project. It is crucial to plan for this by building in time to conduct the above tasks. A written way that an organization covers its costs is through fees or charging for services. These are usually called management fees. These are typically fixed fees that are deducted from the fund on an annual basis.