The most important thing to do before you decide which market research tools and techniques to use is to explore what’s on offer. And we’re here to help, with handy guides and checklists on market research tools and techniques that will help ensure that your business goes from strength to strength.
Whether you’re a marketing manager looking for a better way to reach out to your customers, a market researcher trying to find the best analytics software, or an online marketer wanting to know about online market research tools, you’ve come to the right place. In this article we’ll provide keen insights on how to use market research tools and techniques for modern-day marketing, social media marketing, and other marketing initiatives.
Pew Research Center
(Free)
Insightful, rigorous and transparent data. This is what you can expect from The Pew Research Center, a non-profit organization that conducts research and analysis across a diverse range of areas. These include:
- US politics and policy
- Public opinion polling
- Social and demographic trends
- News and media
- Science
- Religion
- Technology and the internet
- Hispanic interest
- Global interest
More specific topics of interest and research include:
- Social media
- Online privacy
- Broadband access
- IoT (the internet of things)
SurveyMonkey
Best for Creating In-Depth Online Surveys
If you’re worried about whether your customers are satisfied with your offerings, then SurveyMonkey can be your best friend. It’s a powerful software that lets you create quick surveys to gauge your target market’s response.
Using this tool, you can easily create advanced surveys, run online opinion polls, and conduct detailed marketing research. It even provides you with many pre-built survey templates and nifty features that help speed up the entire process.
The platform is extremely user-friendly and supports advanced survey logic, and all its questions are framed to eliminate any form of customer bias. Despite offering so much in terms of features, the software leaves a lot of room for customization of surveys.
Features:
One of the best things about SurveyMonkey is that you can also create surveys from scratch despite the presence of pre-built templates. With over a dozen question types ranging from MCQs to rating scales and more, you’re sure to find what you need here.
The following is a list of the essential features that SurveyMonkey offers:
- Ability to create quick surveys
- Fully optimized for mobile users
- Over a dozen pre-built question types
- Easy integration with other software
- Advanced reporting features
- Over 200 customizable survey templates
- AI-powered questions selection
- Supports advanced logic functions
- Automatic scoring and gradation for quizzes
- Easy-to-use interface
Pricing:
As far as pricing is concerned, SurveyMonkey offers enough flexibility to customers. The Basic Plan is entirely free, and you can use it with reasonable limitations. In case you’re a professional or team leader looking to upgrade, you can always opt for one of the paid plans.
Here’s a list of the paid plans that SurveyMonkey has to offer:
- Standard Monthly Plan at $99/month
- Advantage Plan at $32/month
- Premier Plan at $99/month
- Team Advantage Plan at $39/user/month
- Team Premier Plan at $75/user/month
All plans are billed annually. In addition to the above plans, SurveyMonkey provides discounts for students and educators. They also offer Enterprise Plans at custom rates.
Growthbar
(Free Trial)
The quickest and easiest way to perform market research has to be GrowthBar. The tool allows you to do market research on the fly — instantly unlocking critical data points about your competitors or any website and the growth channels and keywords that are working for them. This data will help you identify what others in your space are doing as well as identify which marketing channels may work to grow your own business.
See the following data for any website:
- Domain Authority
- Organic Traffic
- Top Organic Keywords
- Top Paid Keywords
- Top Backlinks
- Suggested Keywords
- Keyword Search Volume
Take actionable next steps to compete with the market by creating content that ranks fast, utilizing their powerful Open AI technology. Enter any keyword and instantly get a content outline that tells you exactly what to write to optimize for SEO.
Google Trends
Best for Keyword Research
Google Trends is a keyword research tool offered by Google that you can use to make your content more friendly for search engines. The tool offers SEOs and marketers deep insights into what audiences around the world are searching for.
The one thing that’s different about Google Trends as compared to other keyword research tools is that it shows you relative search volumes. Relative search volume results allow you to understand how a particular search term performs against other comparable terms.
Using Google Trends, you can get detailed insights into the most popular search topics. You can segment the results according to region, time, and even search network type. This is the ideal tool for checking out seasonal keyword trends.
Features:
You can use the tool to gauge spikes or dips in search volume that specific events have triggered, along with comparative keyword research. Such data can be used in a wide variety of marketing campaigns, from SEO and paid search to content marketing.
With Google Trends you get access to the following features:
- Comparative keyword research
- Coverage across multiple search networks and types, such as image search, YouTube search, and Google Shopping
- Data segmentation based on temporal and geographic parameters
- Allows you to recognize market trends and areas of high customer interest
- Easy competition analysis
Pricing:
Google Trends differs from other market research tools in that it’s completely free to use. You don’t have to purchase a subscription for using it to its full capacity. You can just visit the website and get started with your research without even logging in to Google.
Living Facts
(Free)
Described as the Pew Research Center’s sister site, and created by The Pew Charitable Trusts, Living Facts has the simple strapline, ‘about Americans today—who we are and how we live. Our goal is to inform and inspire. That’s it.’
With clean, colorful design and infographics, and chock-full of statistics, educational quizzes and fascinating facts, Living Facts covers:
- Communities
- Democracy
- Demographics
- Faith
- Health
- Money
- Trends
- Work
Social Mention
Best for Real-time Social Media Research
Social Mention is a dedicated, real-time search engine that’s focused on social media mentions. The tool lets you glean insights about what your present and prospective customers are talking about online.
Using Social Mention, you can gather valuable insights about social media activities across websites. You just need to type in a search term, hashtag, or website URL, and you get to see all mentions across social media for that particular brand or product.
This tool’s unique advantage is that you can use it to get actionable insights for a brand from multiple social media sites. Such an approach makes the task easier for marketers and makes engaging with social media conversations a real-time experience.
Features:
Tracking mentions across social media is one of the essential tools for brand success. Social Mentions helps you do just that by providing a better understanding of how customers interact with your brand.
Here’s a list of the primary features that make Social Mention useful:
- Real-time brand monitoring
- Detailed competitor analysis
- Online reputation management
- Covers all popular social media platforms
- Helps find the right influencers
- Sentiment, keyword, and hashtag analysis feature
Conclusion:
Purchasing a market research tool costs a company a considerable amount of money. The company’s money is lost if the purchased tool does not fulfill the requirements of the company. Thus, the buyer has to do some good market research before he/she commits large amount of money in purchasing a tool.