market research and tools

13 Market Research Tools: Best in Class for 2023

Free Website Traffic Checker

Discover your competitors' strengths and leverage them to achieve your own success

Most market research tools are designed to make it quicker and easier to find relevant data . Whatever the market, product, or purpose, the right research tools can do just that.

But, let’s be honest, some do it far better than others.

Whether you’re an enterprise firm with complex needs and a budget to suit or a smaller business needing free market research tools, read on to discover which online tools for market research are hot right now.

Note: The top market research tools list has been collated using review platforms like G2 , along with direct feedback I collected from over 500 business leaders in June, 2o22.

#1 Best overall market research tool: Similarweb Digital Research Intelligence

Most-loved feature: The Benchmarking tool

We might be a little biased, but this really is the fastest way to see how you measure up against competitors in any sector or location. Analyze market leaders and rising stars to unpack and track their digital success instantly.

Quick Explainer

Similarweb Research Intelligence is a single source of truth for the online world. Giving any business the ability to quickly analyze the online aspects of any industry or market in an instant. It displays critical insights in a way that makes it easy to view trends, competitive performance, audience insights, growth opportunities, and more. It’s the only market research analysis tool that brings together data from desktop, mobile web, and apps to provide a complete view of the digital landscape.

Key abilities

• Competitive benchmarking
• Market research
• Company research tool
• Audience analysis
• Consumer journey tracker
• Mobile app intelligence

Freemium Version: Yes, there is a lite version of the product that provides limited data for a single user, and a single location.

Free Trial: Yes, there’s a 7-day trial available. Try it out here .

Ongoing Subscription: Yes, you can pay monthly or annually for a subscription. Different levels are available, and each package is tailored. Review pricing and plans for Similarweb here.

Like what you’ve seen so far?

See our market-leading digital research tool in action in this quick 2-minute clip.

#2 Best free market research tool: Think with Google

Most-loved feature: Find my Audience

A way to discover new audiences on YouTube based on things like habits, interests, and intended plans to purchase.

Think with Google is a suite of digital research tools that curate resources from a huge pool of data across the web. It presents them as insights that aren’t typically available elsewhere. It’s a unique way to view trends, insights, and stats. Data isn’t offered in real-time but serves more as a library of figures and facts that take the form of articles, videos, interviews, case studies, and more. In addition to being a place people can go for forward-looking perspectives and data, there are several tools designed to help marketers.

Key functions

• High-level insights into most local or national markets
• Behind the scenes look at cross-platform digital campaigns
• Consumer insights
• Deck-ready stats (not in real-time)
• A range of tools to inform marketing objectives and actions

Freemium Version: The entire suite of market intelligence tools is free.

Free Trial: As a free market research tool, no trial is needed.

Ongoing Subscription: You can subscribe to a newsletter, but not the product.

#3 Best digital research tool for content and FAQ development: Answer the Public

Most-loved feature: Search listening alerts

A pro feature that sends you weekly emails that indicate how search behaviors shift over time. It takes the specific phrase or keywords you’re tracking in the platform and updates you weekly.

Quick Explainer 

Discover the questions people are asking online about key terms, products, or services. It’s designed to help content teams and website owners develop new content ideas, and relevant FAQs that are based on the types of queries people ask online.

• Track important keywords and phrases
• Get weekly emails about changes in search behavior
• Enter any keyword to uncover relevant questions or search terms
• Folders to help organize your research

Freemium Version: Yes. You get a limited number (3) of searches per day.

Free Trial: No.

Ongoing Subscription: Yes. You can pay monthly or annually for this service. Pay-monthly fees are a flat rate of $99. Discounts are offered for yearly subscriptions.

#4 Best tool for market research surveys: SurveyMonkey

Most-loved feature: Question bank

A library of hundreds of questions, pre-written by survey methodologists.

As far as market research surveys go, it’s the leading online research tool for surveys worldwide. With plans to suit the individual through to the enterprise, it’s a feature-rich, easy-to-use platform that encompasses creation, collection, and analysis under one roof. Surveys are optimized for any device and integrate with platforms like Zoom, Salesforce, Marketo, and more.

Key functions 

• Create and send unlimited surveys, quizzes, and polls
• Pop-up online surveys
• Mobile app access to create, send and analyze surveys on-the-go
• Team collaboration function (unlocked with a team plan)
• Survey builder
• Customization and branded surveys (available with advantage or premier plans only)

Freemium Version: Yes

Free Trial: Occasionally, free trials are offered for premium plans.

Ongoing Subscription: Yes, you can pay annually or monthly. There are three different plans to choose from, ranging from $25 to $129 per month.

Helpful: Check out our blog and see 18 different ways to use market research surveys .

#5 Best online research tool for marketplaces: Similarweb Shopper Intelligence

Most-loved feature: Cross-shopping analysis

Cross-shopping analysis shows you how loyal a segment of customers is to a brand, along with what other brands they browsed or bought from. Uncover competitors and discover new partnership opportunities; these are game-changing insights if you sell on any marketplace.

Similarweb Shopper Intelligence is a type of online market research tool that helps you uncover and analyze browsing and buying behavior across marketplaces. Using its data, businesses can track category, product, and brand performance with ease. It helps ecommerce organizations to detect potential threats, unearth new product or category opportunities, discover new potential partnerships, and optimize search strategy and performance.

• Monitor consumer demand for any product, brand, or category
• Retail search strategy optimization
• Consumer behavior insights
• Track cross-shopping, loyalty, and purchase frequency
• Analyze brand awareness

Note: This solution uses a unique data methodology via multiple networks and partnerships. At the time of writing, there is no other consumer behavior insights tool for market research that offers this quality of data for marketplaces.

Freemium Version: No.

Free Trial: Yes. There is usually a 7-day trial available here .

Ongoing Subscription: The price is determined by things like the number of categories and/or domains you want to access. Each quote is customized to a client’s specific needs.

Want to know a little more?

Watch this quick clip to see the best ecommerce digital market research tool in action.

#6 Best market research tool for brand tracking: Latana

Most-loved feature: MoE (margin of error) Readings

To deliver transparency on data confidence levels, Latana’s dashboard includes a feature that allows clients to toggle-on, or toggle-off, margin of error (MoE) readings on all data points. These are highlighted using a traffic-light system of confidence (red=low confidence, orange=medium confidence, and green=high confidence). This small feature makes a big impact — it helps clients to correctly interpret the data and to visibly see quality shortcomings.

Latana is a B2C brand tracking tool that provides granular insights about online audiences. It helps organizations understand how key segments of consumers feel about brands and portrays relevant standings vs. industry rivals.

• Focus on niche consumer segments that matter to your business
• Uncover rival’s audience data and identify opportunities to grow
• Understand brand perception, and track how it changes over time
• Discover the most well-known brands in your industry
• Track rival’s brand awareness across gender, age income, location, and education
• Find out the main purchase drivers for your industry
• Infrastructure gives reach to over 6 billion smartphone users globally for representative brand opinions

I caught up with Latana’s CMO, Angeley Mullens. Here’s what she has to say about their offering.

Ongoing Subscription: Pricing for Latana isn’t available online. All packages are tailored to individual brands and their specific needs.

Enjoy 360 Visibility 24/7

Get the data you need to adapt to market changes and industry trends in an instant.

#7  Best research tool for social media listening: Hootsuite

Most-loved feature: Multi-channel insights

It’s a legacy feature, but one which makes it the best online research tool for social listening and monitoring. Having the ability to easily schedule posts, ad campaigns, and handle responses for every social media channel from within a single platform is what makes this a market-leading digital research tool.

Hootsuite continues to claim the number 1 spot on G2’s list of digital research tools for social media monitoring . It’s a tool to help you manage all aspects of business social media, across multiple channels, in a single platform. As well as being able to manage your socials, it also keeps you up-to-date with the latest trends and activities of your rival’s social media channels.

• Publish and schedule social media posts
• Measure cross-platform results
• Message management
• Social media trend analysis
• Social media ad-campaign management

Freemium Version: Yes. You can get a free version that supports 2 social accounts and 1 user.

Free Trial: Yes. A 30-day free trial is available here .

Ongoing Subscription: There are four plans; professional, team, business, and enterprise; ranging from $49-$739.

#8 Best digital research tool for prospecting: Similarweb Sales Intelligence

Most-loved feature: Insights generator tool

The insights generator shows you unique facts for your prospects and accounts; with complete visibility into their digital strategy and performance. It’s ideal for refining sales and marketing efforts while staying focused on growth.

Similarweb Sales Intelligence helps organizations find viable prospects by showing you who to reach out to, when to do it, and how to capture their attention. The lead generator tool helps you find the right prospects, and key insights help create engaging outreach emails. For sales departments, ecommerce and mar-tech sectors, this type of digital research tool can take prospecting and engagement to a completely new level; along with revenue and growth.

Key functions: 

• Lead generation and enrichment
• Digital insights for 100M+ ecommerce websites, publishers, and advertisers
• Fraud detection
• Sales engagement
• SFDC integration

Free Trial: Yes, if you would like a free trial, please request that here.

Ongoing Subscription: Prices for this digital market research tool varies depending on the package and options chosen. Grab a live demo of the product and get a tailored quote here .

Insightful : If you’re looking at market research tools for the ecommerce industry, bookmark our Ecommerce Trends and Predictions for 2023 to read later.

#9 Best market research analysis tool for data visualization: Tableau

Most-loved feature : Connects to almost any data source

As a clear market leader, and a no-brainer for larger organizations with business intelligence analytics and teams. Tableau leads the way in online research tools for data visualization . It connects to a huge range of data sources and pulls information into a highly-appealing dashboard that is designed to make it easier and faster to explore and manage data . It takes data from platforms like Similarweb, then combines it with other data sources before presenting crisp, clear, insights that have the power to shape strategies and drive key transformations.

• Lightning-fast analytics
• Smart dashboards for richer insights
• Live connection to almost any data source, with automatic updates
• Drag-and-drop style UI: easy to use

Freemium Version: No. However, students and teachers get a year’s free access to the platform.

Free Trial: Yes. You can subscribe to a free 30-day trial.

Ongoing Subscription: Most plans are offered annually, with prices ranging from $15 per month upwards. The price depends on whether you use their hosted or on-premise versions, the number of users, and the inclusion of specific plugins.

#10 Best market research tool for UX testing: Loop11

Most-loved feature: Online usability testing

This feature analyzes the usability of a website with users performing live tasks on a site. It helps you understand user behavior, and shows how and why a website is used.

Loop11 is a market research tool that provides usability testing to help organizations build better websites and products. It comes with a pack of useful features that provide both moderated and unmoderated testing, helping businesses to find the right audience to test prototypes and products. It’s designed to help you see how appealing a product is to a particular audience, determine their preferences, then build these insights into a design.

• Ability to test across multiple devices, including tablet, mobile, or desktop
• User-friendly test builder that requires no coding
• Easy-to-add surveys that collect psychographic and demographic data
• Provides useful metrics like time on task, task completion rates, and NPS
• Mapping of customer journeys during a test period

Free Trial: Yes, a 14-day trial is available here .

Ongoing Subscription: All plans come with the option to pay monthly or annually. Prices range from $199-$599 per month.

#11 Best research tool for measuring customer experience: Temper

Most-loved feature: Rating stream

See real-time feedback as customers respond to questions via website or email channels. The stream provides a detailed view of ratings, comments, locations, referrers, email addresses, and more.

Temper allows any company to find out how customers feel about their product at all times. It directly provides first-party data to a business, preventing the need to design and distribute complex surveys. It can be placed as a widget on the site or in emails, and questions are asked to gain real-time feedback from visitors and customers alike.

• Easily deploy questions across website and email channels
• Quickly spot poor experiences to identify problematic areas of a business or product
• The rating graph gives you a real-time view of results for any question asked
• Public rating wall shows how you’re performing, instilling confidence and trust
• Ratings come with open text fields to give additional context to responses
• Referrer data gives you the ability to segment feedback and relative performance
• Tracking variables let you send data with ratings, such as order numbers, user IDs, etc.
• User targeting lets you determine who sees questions and how often they see them

Freemium Version: There is no freemium version. However, their hobby plan gives you a slimmed-down version of the product and costs $12 per month.

Ongoing Subscription: Four plans are available, ranging from hobbyist to enterprise. The lowest pricing tier starts at $12 monthly, and their top-tier solution costs $199 monthly. All plans are pay-monthly, with a 60-day money-back guarantee.

#12 Best online market research tool for focus groups: Remesh

Most-loved feature: Common topics

In just a few clicks, you can view the themes and topics that are most common with your focus group across an entire session. It groups similar responses, specific phrases, and interesting responses in seconds.

Remesh facilitates live, qualitative conversations with focus groups of up to 1000 people at a time. Replicating the focus group format online delivers powerful segmentation and dynamic capabilities that speed up your time to insight and let you hold a real-time conversation at scale.

• Launch a live conversation with up to 1000 people at a time
• Organize and analyze responses in an instant
• Segment your audience based on demographic and response data
• Share visuals and text-based content with the group to get instant feedback
• The algorithm analyzes open-ended responses in real-time

Freemium Version: No

Free Trial: Yes. However, you must first book a demo with a member of their team.

Ongoing Subscription: Remesh provides custom pricing plans that can only be obtained once you’ve taken a demonstration of their platform with a member of their team.

#13 Top collaboration and documentation tool for market research: BIT.AI

Most-loved feature: Content library + smart search

While it sounds quite basic; in essence, this tool for market research professionals makes it quicker and easier to keep track, share, and store key data. Forget trawling through emails, slack, and g-docs to find files; the smart search feature helps you locate files in an instant.

A dynamic platform that helps researchers collaborate, track, share, and manage research data in a single place. This is one of the best online market research tools for those who need a place to bring together resources like websites, PDFs, articles, images, infographics, blogs, reports, videos, etc. it’s low-cost and connects to some of the most widely used tools. Being able to share multidimensional data with others, or simply keeping track of secondary market research in a single place makes it a firm favorite.

• Over 100 integrations with applications like Tableau, Miro, G-docs, Onedrive, and more
• Real-time editing and live collaboration
• Content Library
• Smart search
• Supports a huge range of content and file types

Freemium Version: Yes. Available for teams of up to 5 collaborators.

Free Trial: Yes, a free trial is available here .

Ongoing Subscription: A range of packages are available, costing between $8-$20 monthly.

Best market research tools for startups

There is another often-forgotten set of tools used for market research that are ideal for startups. If you’ve got zero budget and a little time on your hands, you can do most types of desk research for free. Sources include:

• Company reports, case studies, and whitepapers
• Research and trade associations
• Media coverage
• Internal sales or usage reports
• Academic or scientific journals
• Government and non-government agencies
• Public library records
• Competitor websites
• Educational institutions

Helpful: Check out this article about how to do market research for a startup .

Wrapping up….

With cost and time key considerations for anyone looking at tools for market research, it’s vital to choose wisely. While free market research tools are all good and well, they won’t always serve you when you’re on a deadline or require key insights on a specific competitor, market, or product.

Similarweb helps companies win in the digital world. Whatever the market, goal, or business size, its solutions are designed to help organizations understand their market and compete and beat rivals.

Take it for a test run today. Trial any Similarweb solution free for the first 7-days using this link .

Need to know more about the ROI of Similarweb? 

What are the best market research tools for secondary research?

The internet is probably the best tool for market research there is. It’s a goldmine of secondary market research data. But beware of data validity and check your information is coming from a trusted source.

What are the best market research tools for surveys?

Survey monkey is considered the best online market research tool for surveys, but key players like Typeform and Zoho follow closely behind. Budget and features usually determine the right tool for your needs.

What are the best free market research tools?

The best free tools for market research include: Answer the Public, Think with Google, Similarweb lite, SurveyMonkey’s basic plan, and Hootsuite’s free plan.

What are the best market research tools for qualitative research?

Qualitative research includes things like focus groups, open-ended surveys, case studies, and observation research. As such, the best tool for online research like this would be something like BIT.ai’s documentation and collaboration tool. Another useful tool for qualitative market research would be an online survey provider, like SurveyMonkey, Typeform, or Google Forms.

What are the best market research tools for quantitative research?

As this type of research is focused more on numbers, the best quantitative market research tools include things like Similarweb Digital Research Intelligence and Tableau. Each performs a different function but works together to collect, analyze, and present data in the most useful way possible.

by Liz March

Digital Research Specialist

Liz March has 15 years of experience in content creation. She enjoys the outdoors, F1, and reading, and is pursuing a BSc in Environmental Science.

Related Posts

Audience Segmentation: Definition, Importance & Types

Geographic Segmentation: Definition, Pros & Cons, Examples, and More

Demographic Segmentation: The Key To Transforming Your Marketing Strategy

Unlocking Consumer Behavior: What Makes Your Customers Tick?

Customer Segmentation: Expert Tips on Understanding Your Audience

Market Demand 101: How to Gauge Demand for Your Products

Wondering what similarweb can do for your business.

Give it a try or talk to our insights team — don’t worry, it’s free!

• Integrations
• Case Studies
• State of Competitive Intelligence
• Partner Directory
• In the News
• Crayon Academy

Crayon Competitive Intelligence blog

The 8 free market research tools and resources you need to know.

With over 400,000 new businesses opening in the United States each month, the need for individual companies to conduct their own market research has never been more urgent.  However, conducting market research isn’t an easy task — it presents challenges to businesses of all shapes and sizes.

With that being said, those with large budgets do enjoy certain advantages. When you have access to an endless array of top-tier tools and resources, you can uncover strategy-changing insights with relative ease.

Does that mean businesses with small (or non-existent) budgets are out of luck? Absolutely not.

Nowadays, free market research tools and resources are abundant — and you’ll be familiar with eight of our favorites by the time you’re done reading this blog post.

But first, some housekeeping:

What is market research?

Market research is the process of gathering and analyzing information about your customers — both current and prospective — with the intent of optimizing your business strategy.

Customer-related information that you may want to gather includes (but is not limited to):

• The goals they want to achieve
• The pain points they want to alleviate
• The income or budget that constrains them
• The products and/or services they use (a.k.a. your competitors)
• The strengths and weaknesses of the products and/or services they use

Why is market research important?

Market research is important because — if you’re thorough and open-minded — it dramatically improves your chances of long-term success. Only through market research can you uncover the insights you need to develop a product or service that (1) satisfies the demands of your prospects and (2) stands out from the competition.

For a complete overview of how conducting market research can benefit your business, here’s Market Research Defined and How to Get Started .

Cool? Cool. Let’s dive into the good stuff.

Top 4 Free Market Research Tools

For clarity, we will define a free market research tool as any tool that:

• Costs nothing, and
• Helps with the collection and/or analysis of customer-related information

Keep in mind that “customer-related information” encompasses everything from a pain point to a weakness of one of your competitors’ products.

1. Google Trends

If you want to get a sense of the level of interest in a particular product or service — as well as how that interest fluctuates over time and across regions — Google Trends is an excellent tool.

All you need to do is enter a search query and toggle with the filters. As an example, take a look at the level of interest in “office supplies'' in the U.S. over the past five years. Perhaps unsurprisingly, interest peaked in February 2020 — at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic:

Plus, you can explore variations in interest across the 50 states, as well as related topics and queries that are surging in popularity:

The “interest by subregion” data is powerful. In Wyoming, searches for “office supplies” account for a greater percentage of all search queries than in any other state. Your average resident of Wyoming, in other words, is more interested in searching for office supplies than is your average resident of, say, Louisiana — a valuable insight for anyone who sells office supplies online.

Equally valuable is the insight that searches for “where to buy office supplies in bulk” are on the rise — potentially indicative of an emerging pain point.

2. SurveyMonkey

As some of you already know, one of the best ways to conduct market research is to ask your customers a handful of open-ended questions. You can do this for free with SurveyMonkey .

Specifically, with a free SurveyMonkey account, you can ask up to 10 questions and field up to 40 responses with each of your surveys.

Open-ended questions you may ask your customers include (but are not limited to):

• Why did you buy our product?
• What has our product helped you accomplish?
• How does our product compare to others that you’ve used in the past?

With just three questions — well under the limit of a free survey — you can learn quite a bit about your target market. If, for example, the majority of respondents say they bought your product because they were struggling to do their jobs in a cost-effective manner, that gives you a clearer picture of your prospects’ pain points and your competitors’ weaknesses .

3. 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.

4. 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!

Top 4 Free Market Research Resources

Again, for clarity, we will define a free market research resource as any resource that:

• Helps with the collection of customer-related information

The scope of “customer-related information" remains the same  —  encompassing everything from a pain point to a weakness of one of your competitors’ products.

5. Bureau of Labor Statistics

A government organization that “measures labor market activity, working conditions, price changes, and productivity in the U.S. economy to support public and private decision-making,” the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is a wealth of information.

Because this is a blog post about market research — not an economics class — we’ll focus on BLS’ industry- and region-specific information. If you’re on the homepage and you hover over the Data Tools drop-down menu, you’ll see a hyperlink to something titled “Industry at a Glance.” Click on that, find your industry of interest, and explore the dozens of statistics that BLS has aggregated.

If, for example, you’re interested in the apparel manufacturing industry — either because you’re in the industry or you sell into it — you can see how earnings, prices, and productivity figures are changing over time.

Head back to the homepage, hover over the Subjects drop-down menu, and you’ll see a section labeled Geographic Information:

Select your region of interest, filter by state or metropolitan area (if necessary), and take a tour of BLS’ enormous library of area-specific data.

6. U.S. Census Bureau

On a mission to “serve as the [United States’] leading provider of quality data about its people and economy,” the U.S. Census Bureau is another terrific resource that costs nothing to use.

Just as we did with the BLS, we’ll focus on industry- and region-specific information. Admittedly, using the Census website to find industry-specific information is slightly more complicated than it is when using the BLS website. If you’re on the homepage and you hover over the Explore Data drop-down menu, you’ll see a hyperlink titled “Explore Data Main.”

Click on that, and you’ll be brought to the Census’ search engine. Then, click inside the search bar and select “Advanced Search.”

Underneath “Find A Filter,” type in the name of the industry you’re interested in researching. Once the search suggestions load, simply check the appropriate box and click “Search.”

From there, you’ll be able to explore thousands of data tables, maps, and whitepapers — many of them chock-full of industry-specific information that you can use to your advantage.

Finding region-specific information is a bit more straightforward. Head back to the Advanced Search engine, select “Geography” from underneath Browse Filters, and go from there:

7. Pew Research Center

A nonprofit dedicated to “inform[ing] the public about the issues, attitudes, and trends shaping the world,” the Pew Research Center is one of the most authoritative sources of information for anyone striving to make better business decisions.

Whereas the BLS and the Census are (among other things) aggregators of economic data, the Pew Research Center is a “fact tank” — an organization focused on public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis, and other forms of social science inquiry. 

So, although you can’t necessarily use Pew to uncover hyper-specific insights related to your industry or region, you can use it to learn more about your target audience. The best way to do this is through the Topics section of the Pew website.

Clicking that hyperlink brings you to an index of dozens of topics, ranging from Online Video to Homeownership to Democracy. Selecting any of these topics will bring you to a list of relevant content — reports, fact tanks, transcripts, and other forms of media that can date back as far as the early 1980s.

As an example, let’s say you’re developing a product or service that targets new homeowners. If you were to click on the Homeownership topic, you’d land on a list of reports like this one:

If I were you, that’s not a report I’d want to overlook!

We’ll wrap up today’s guide with a free resource specifically for those of you in the software world. Designed to help buyers determine which products are best suited to their needs, G2 is the leading source of validated, unbiased software reviews.

G2 is, in other words, an excellent way to find out what your target customers are saying about your competitors’ products. Do a quick search for the type of software you’re developing and you’re in business.

If you were developing a sales compensation software product and you searched this keyword, you’d be brought to the page you see below. To learn more about Spiff — one of your top-rated industry competitors — all you’d need to do is click “Read Spiff Reviews.”

If you want to get granular, you can filter reviews in a number of different ways. As an example, let’s say you’re developing a sales compensation software product specifically for small businesses. G2 has the filter you’re looking for:

And just like that, you’ve got access to dozens of valuable insights like this one:

Start using market research tools today!

If you try to bring a product or service to market without an understanding of your target customers, your chances of success are slim. According to the most recent State of Competitive Intelligence Report , 84% of businesses say their industry has gotten more competitive in the last three years. With the range of choices at your prospects’ fingertips growing by the day, the need for a thorough market research strategy only intensifies.

We hope you find these free market research tools and resources useful. And if you decide to make the leap to a paid solution, make sure to request a demo of Crayon — the competitive intelligence platform that enables you to track, analyze, and act on everything happening outside your businesses’ four walls.

Seeing is believing! Check out Crayon for yourself.

Related Blog Posts

Popular Posts

15 Top Market Research Tools & Software (2024)

In this guide, we’ll cover the 17 best free and paid market research software tools that you can use right now. 

From data collection to conducting one-on-one interviews with key members of your audience, these tools can make the market research process more effective and efficient.

1. Statista

Statista is a statistics portal that also offers customized market research reports. 

To quickly find relevant reports, type in a keyword (like “beverages”) and Statista will produce a list of results.

The information you can get from Statista makes it easy to gauge an industry’s:

• Trend direction
• Consumer behavior

These critical signals can help you decide whether or not to invest or expand into that market.

Statista data comes from three primary sources:

• 49% of the data comes from Statista’s original research (the company employs over 100 data analysts)
• 16% comes from publicly accessible data sources
• 35% is obtained through unique data partnerships, such as with market research institutions

You can even opt to talk to one of Statista’s professional researchers to get further help and insights during your market research process.

It is important to note, though, that the quality of data you find on Statista may vary. This is because a number of the reports—particularly the free ones—are based on public data.

Who Should Use Statista?

Statista is useful for investors seeking their next opportunity, as well as business leaders who want to better understand the competitive landscape.

How Much Does Statista Cost?

Much of Statista’s data is available for free. For advanced insights and reports, you can purchase a paid plan. Options start at $199 per month; you can also purchase single, comprehensive reports for $495.

2. Exploding Topics

Exploding Topics is a trend spotting tool. 

Knowing about a trend before it takes off is the holy grail of market research. The problem, though, is that most trend analysis is highly subjective and based on someone’s best guess about what may take off in the future. 

We built Exploding Topics to solve this problem by identifying trends based on big data. 

The flagship feature is our Trends Database, which contains over 750,000 trending topics across 30+ industries like fashion, finance, tech, marketing, pets, beauty, and more. 

When you view a trend in our database, you’ll see a graph of the trend’s historical search volume. This can help you gauge a topic’s popularity and stability. Users on our Investor and Business plans can also see a forecast of the trend’s projected growth: 

We source our data through social listening—tracking what’s being discussed on:

• Social media
• Business websites
• News media sites

By using a mix of artificial intelligence and human data analysis, we rapidly gather this trend data and qualify it to identify the most popular topics.

We update our database with this information every day, so you’re always getting the most up-to-date trend data.

Exploding Topics also offers a handful of other helpful tools that you can use for market research, too. These include our:

• Trend Search : While our core database is great for discovering new trends, the search feature is useful if you already know what you want to see data about. It’s a good alternative to Google Trends.
• Meta Trends : If you want to see the products and brands that are currently riding a trend wave, you can do so by using our Meta Trends feature.
• Trending Startups : Investors can use the Trending Startups list to identify new and rapidly growing companies in any category.
• Trending Products : When you’re interested in expanding your reach or offerings, the Trending Products feature helps you identify hot products that are currently seeing rapid growth.

Who Should Use Exploding Topics?

Exploding Topics is great for investors, entrepreneurs, marketers, and business leaders who need to understand what the competition looks like right now —and how it might change in the near future.

How Much Does Exploding Topics Cost?

You can view much of our basic trend data for free right now. To unlock all our data, as well as extra features like our lists of trending products and startups, you’ll need a paid plan.

Options start at $39 per month (billed annually), and you can get a two-week trial of any paid plan for just $1.

3. Market Finder

Market Finder is a free Google tool that makes it easy to discover international markets that are ripe for expansion. 

Rather than uncovering specific trends, Market Finder shows you new regions and demographics with strong potential for future growth.

It has two primary tools:

• Dive into new markets : This feature walks you through a quick quiz that identifies your industry and collects some specifications about your company. Then, it shows you which companies would be ideal for expansion based on data from Google Ads, search volume, and household income.
• Test export readiness : Enter your URL in this tool; it’ll analyze your readiness for expansion based on marketing performance (international traffic, e-commerce capabilities, etc.), operational abilities (payment fit, localization capabilities, etc.) and competitive position (category demand).

If you have Google Analytics set up, then Market Explorer can pull data directly from the Google Analytics dashboard for increased accuracy.

Who Should Use Market Explorer?

If you’d like to expand your business and find marketing opportunities in new regions, then Market Explorer is a useful tool. It’s also a good choice for investors who would like to identify new regions in which they can seek potential investment opportunities.

How Much Does Market Explorer Cost?

Market Explorer is free to use.

4. Census Business Builder

The Census Business Builder is a tool that allows brick-and-mortar business owners to explore new geographic markets.

You can use the tool to search by zip code, town, or state and see metrics like:

• Average household income
• Typical education level

The Census Business Builder also has advanced filters that can provide valuable, detailed insights based on the type of business you’re launching.

For example, if you’re opening a fast casual restaurant, you can use the “Consumer Spending” filter and see how much people spend on alcoholic beverages and dining out in a selected region.

You’ll still need to turn Census Business Builder data into actionable insights, though. Once you do, it can be a valuable tool for deciding where to open a new retail establishment.

Who Should Use The Census Business Builder?

Retailers and restaurateurs interested in expanding to new markets can use this tool to find a hot spot. It’s also a useful tool for investors who would like to identify markets for potential investment opportunities.

How Much Does The Census Business Builder Cost?

It’s entirely free.

5. Grand View Research

Grand View Research is a research and consulting company that also offers market reports across a variety of industries. 

Most of their market research reports provide statistics like market size, compounding annual growth rate, market breakdown by sectors, and competitive analysis.

Grand View's paid offering allows you to segment the data to find more specific metrics (i.e., only data for the Japanese pet market).

In addition to the free reports, Grand View Research also offers custom research services, and you can talk to one of their analysts for personalized assistance.

Who Should Use Grand View Research?

The company’s reports and services are useful for entrepreneurs who want to launch a business, existing business leaders interested in finding new opportunities, and investors looking for high-growth markets.

How Much Does Grand View Research Cost?

You can access limited data about many of Grand View Research’s reports for free; licensing a full report can cost over $3,000. You can also opt to use the company’s self-service market research portal, Horizon Databook , and get additional data points for free.

SpyFu is a search engine optimization (SEO) tool for keyword research and competitive analysis. 

The platform’s various features make it easy to discover the marketing strategies used by top players in your market or industry. Type in any URL, and you’ll be able to find metrics like:

• Total search traffic
• Search rankings
• Current Google Ads
• Pay per click (PPC) ads history
• Paid keywords

You can then use this data to learn more about one of your top competitors or look at several companies in order to better understand a new market.

Who Should Use SpyFu?

Marketers and business leaders can use SpyFu to better understand who their competitors are—and how much they need to spend on marketing in order to be competitive.

Investors can also use SpyFu to research how potential investment targets are investing in marketing (and what kind of growth they’re seeing as a result.)

How Much Does SpyFu Cost?

You can see a limited amount of SpyFu data for free. Paid plans, which give you access to more features, start at $33 per month when billed annually.

7. Crunchbase

The platform makes it easy to find data like how much money a startup has raised to date, who’s investing in a growing business, or who founded a key industry player.

You can also see other data points through Crunchbase, including acquisition and employee headcount.

To use Crunchbase for market research, just type in an industry and filter results by the type of data you’re seeking. Crunchbase will show you a list of companies that meet the defined criteria.

You can also type in a specific company or competitor name and locate data that way, too.

Who Should Use Crunchbase?

Crunchbase is a valuable tool for nearly everyone involved in business management and funding.

• Entrepreneurs can use the tool to explore new markets and find potential investors.
• Business leaders can keep tabs on competitor growth and relevant industry acquisitions.
• VC firms and investors can monitor how others are investing in growing companies, or explore the investment potential in a new market.

How Much Does Crunchbase Cost?

You can see limited information for free; full Crunchbase access starts at $49 per month (billed annually).

Awario is a social media monitoring and brand tracking tool. 

You can use Awario for market research by tracking specific terms on social media. These can include:

• Brand names
• Product keywords
• Industry influencers’ names

For example, if you’re considering building or investing in a mobile app for sleep tracking, you can easily monitor brand names like Oura or keywords like “sleep tracker”.

This makes it easy to see key industry conversations and glean valuable insights about your ideal buyer persona. You can also identify potential gaps in the market.

Awario even tracks sentiment analysis to see how people feel about various competitors in your target industry.

Who Should Use Awario?

Awario is useful for marketers who want to understand their audience’s frustrations or needs, as well as entrepreneurs and product developers interested in using customer data to improve business offerings.

How Much Does Awario cost?

Awario access starts at $29 per month, billed annually.

G2 is a popular software review website. 

It’s a great resource for quickly finding quantitative and qualitative data about virtually any software market.

The G2 review structure is helpful as it consists of the following questions:

• What do you like best about (product)?
• What do you dislike about (product)?
• What problems is (product) solving and how is that benefiting you?

This customer experience data is a goldmine for investors and startup founders as it makes it easy to spot gaps in a market and understand key pain points that customers are trying to solve.

Plus, G2 provides a list of competitors for each product—useful for identifying related companies to research.

When browsing G2, you can see details about each reviewer including their:

• Business size

This is all useful for accurately identifying your market’s target demographic. You can also filter a product’s reviews by any of those categories.

The platform makes an effort to ensure that the customer feedback is legitimate by allowing users to verify themselves and even marking incentivized reviews.

Who Should Use G2?

G2 is useful for entrepreneurs and product marketers who want to identify and fill gaps in a market. It’s also a good tool for investors who want to learn more about how real users feel about a potential investment target.

The platform only contains software reviews, though. If you’re looking for reviews of other products and companies, you’ll need to find an alternate source (such as Amazon reviews for consumer goods).

How Much Does G2 Cost?

G2 is free for users to browse reviews, though it offers other paid plans for marketers and investors.

10. Prisync

Prisync is a competitor price tracking tool. 

Its automated features make Prisync a great choice for e-commerce entrepreneurs. Use it to:

• Track competitor product pricing and fluctuations
• Estimate customer demand for certain products
• Get price change updates multiple times a day
• Automatically apply dynamic pricing to your own e-commerce storefront

While Prisync is usually best for e-commerce stores that have already launched, you can also use its competitive analysis features to track pricing trends for top players in any market.

For example, in addition to tracking real-time price fluctuations, Prisync also has a price history tracking feature that provides insight into how prices are trending over time, which helps you identify volatility in the market.

Who Should Use Pricsync?

Prisync is most useful for e-commerce startups that want to stay up-to-date with the latest pricing and product trends.

How Much Does Prisync Cost?

Prisync plans start at $99 per month, and pricing depends on the number of products you track. Some features are restricted to higher price tiers, including dynamic pricing, daily email notifications, and API access.

11. Respondent

Respondent is a market research platform for recruiting audience panels.

You can use the Respondent service to find vetted audience members that match your ideal target. Submit a request detailing who you want to talk to—such as CFOs and healthcare companies—and Respondent will find people for you.

You can opt to either talk to these people on one-to-one calls (ideal for getting real-time insights) or run group surveys through Respondent.

Who Should Use Respondent?

Respondent is useful for business leaders and entrepreneurs trying to find the right product-market fit for both B2B and B2C audiences. Investors can use Respondent too—it can be a way to research a particular target market before making an investment.

How Much Does Respondent Cost?

Respondent pricing is based on credits. One credit equals one participant in your interview or survey.

Pricing starts at $24 per B2C credit or $40 per B2B credit. These prices vary based on the total number of credits you purchase. However, you’ll also need to factor in separate incentive payments to respondents. Respondent’s incentive calculator can help you estimate this amount.

12. SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey is a user-friendly tool for building market research surveys 

You can choose from multiple survey templates and question types, including:

• NPS surveys
• Product testing surveys
• Customer satisfaction surveys
• Matrix questions
• Open-ended questions
• Rating scales
• Multiple choice questions

If you don’t have an audience to survey, you can use SurveyMonkey’s audience panel service that distributes your survey to a specific demographic.

To use these audience panels, you’ll need to know a few details about your target market—such as “stay-at-home moms with a household income of at least $50,000.” SurveyMonkey will take care of the rest.

It’s important to note, though, that these audiences are fairly broad, such as “college graduates” or “smartphone owners” who meet a few other demographic criteria. If you need highly specific audience curation, you may want to work with a market research firm .

No matter what distribution method you choose, you’ll get to use SurveyMonkey’s drag-and-drop builder to put together questions in your preferred order.

Who Should Use SurveyMonkey?

SurveyMonkey is great for market researchers that want to learn more about a target audience group, as well as business owners and marketing professionals seeking feedback from their existing customers.

How Much Does SurveyMonkey Cost?

You can build limited surveys for free, though they’ll include SurveyMonkey branding. To unlock additional features, you’ll need a paid plan.

SurveyMonkey’s paid plans start at $39 per month, billed annually. You can also request audience responses for $1 each, with a minimum of 200 responses per survey.

Attest is another online survey software option. 

Like Respondent, Attest provides an audience for you to survey. All you need to do is provide demographic information about who you're targeting, and the questions you want to ask.

Attest can assemble audiences from a pool of over 125 million consumers around the world.

The company then uses a mix of AI scanning and human oversight to review the data collected by your attest survey. This is to improve the reliability and consistency of your data.

Attest won't turn your data into insights, though—once you get your results, you'll have to use other tools to help with the analysis.

Who Should Use Attest?

Attest is useful for business leaders or marketers who want to get audience insights or user feedback—without an existing customer base to survey.

Investors could also use Attest to learn more about consumer preferences and habits in a market.

How Much Does Attest Cost?

Attest offers three plans based on usage, but they don't publish their prices online. You'll need to get in touch with the company and request a quote.

14. Qualaroo

Qualaroo is an audience survey tool.

The platform makes it easy to set up questionnaires that appear on your website at different intervals during a visitor's journey.

Companies can use Qualaroo to gather more information about things like:

• Visitor needs and motivations
• App or website user decisions
• Purchase decisions
• Products for sale

You can target website visitors based on time of day, location, and more. This makes it possible to research specific groups of visitors—useful for building or verifying audience personas.

You can also use Qualaroo to collect focus group feedback about website and app prototypes before you launch them.

The company doesn’t provide audiences for you, though, so you’ll need to have a group that you can survey. If not, you’ll be better served by a tool like Attest or Respondent.

Who Should Use Qualaroo?

Any business leader or entrepreneur in need of audience data can use Qualaroo to get feedback from real customers and leads, build out audience surveys, plan marketing campaigns, and more.

How Much Does Qualaroo Cost?

Qualaroo's free plan allows users to collect up to 50 survey responses a month for free. If you want higher usage limits, you'll need to subscribe to a paid plan.

The company's business tier plan costs $39.99 per month (or $19.99 per month when billed annually) per 100 responses.

You'll be billed extra for any month in which you go over 100 responses; the total cost depends on volume.

15. ChatGPT

ChatGPT is an AI chat assistant that can help you plan for and analyze market research efforts.

There are several ways that ChatGPT is useful during the market research process, including:

• Reviewing information about your target audience and creating survey questions
• Processing and analyzing data collected from tools like Attest or SurveyMonkey
• Analyzing, summarizing, and answering questions about data-heavy PDF reports
• Creating customer persona documents

If you have a ChatGPT Plus plan, you can even train your own GPT to produce the analysis or content that you need. It's possible to save and reuse these GPTs so they can speed up your workflow, too.

All generative AI tools do carry a risk of inaccuracies, though, so you’ll want to make sure to double-check ChatGPT’s outputs before using them or feeding information back into another market research tool.

Who Should Use ChatGPT?

ChatGPT can be a useful tool for anyone conducting market research manually, whether that involves sorting through data, writing questions, or segmenting audiences to survey.

How Much Does ChatGPT Cost?

It's free to use ChatGPT, though you may run into some feature limitations. You'll also have to use a slightly older version of the GPT AI, which can lead to more errors.

To customize your experience and get more tools for document analysis, you'll need a ChatGPT Plus plan starting at $20 per month.

16. Optimal Workshop

Optimal Workshop is a user experience (UX) research tool.

The platform facilitates research, data collection, and data visualization through:

• Card sort tests
• First click tests

Card sort tests are the most useful for teams interested in gathering market research data. By presenting a sample audience with examples of products and categories—and then asking them to group and rank each item—you can get a sense of:

• What your target audience is and is not interested in
• How your potential customers think about products and categories of items
• Whether certain colors, terms, and images are more appealing than others

You could run these card sort tests with actual products that you sell or with ones you’re considering creating or adding to your inventory.

Who Should Use Optimal Workshop?

Marketers and business leaders can use Optimal Workshop’s card sort tests to evaluate how members of a new market or audience think about products—and what their preferences are.

How Much Does Optimal Workshop Cost?

Optimal Workshop plans start at $191 per user, per month (billed annually), with a minimum of three users. Because of this, it’s best suited for organizations that plan to conduct UX research after moving through market research and card testing.

17. AlsoAsked

AlsoAsked is a tool that produces frequently asked questions on any topic.

The way it works is simple—type in a phrase, set your language and location, and see related questions that people are typing into search engines.

Questions display in tree format, so you can see how different queries relate to each other. One click on any group of questions opens up a new tree, so you can dig down even further into related subtopics.

Who Should Use AlsoAsked?

AlsoAsked is useful for anyone who’s conducting preliminary market research. Because you can adjust results by location and language, you can use AlsoAsked to get a feel for:

• What people want to know about a topic, product, or service
• Whether their questions increase, decrease, or change based on location
• How a market’s concerns, interests, and queries change along with language

You won’t be able to do all of your market research in AlsoAsked, but it can give you ideas for survey questions to ask, industry trends to track, and more.

How Much Does AlsoAsked Cost?

AlsoAsked is free to use, though you’re limited to three searches per day. To raise usage limits, bring up increasingly detailed results, and unlock multiple export formats, you’ll need a paid plan. Options start at $12 per month when billed annually.

If you’re new to the market research process, then these tools will help you set benchmarks, get key consumer insights, and collect data for decision making. But even the best market research tool can only go so far—you also need to have a solid understanding of the research process and key industry shifts.

To make sure that you’re getting the most out of your preferred research solution, check out our guide to conducting research for new product development —and look at the biggest trends in market research happening right now.

Find Thousands of Trending Topics With Our Platform

• Do Not Sell My Personal Info

•  ⋅ 
• Digital Marketing

The 19 Best Market Research Tools Of 2024

Market research is a crucial component of any business strategy. Here are some of the best tools you can use in your market research efforts.

Building a successful business is no easy feat, especially in a world where consumers have more options – and distractions – than ever before.

That’s why market research is essential to any business marketing plan and marketing strategy .

Market research lets you learn more about our target consumers and their behavior, spot emerging trends, uncover important data, and make informed business decisions.

But with so many target consumers out there and so many places and methods to reach them, where should you start?

In this article, we’ll cover some of the best market research tools available to you across a variety of tactics and approaches.

Let’s get started.

1. SurveyMonkey

One of the more well-known survey tools, SurveyMonkey offers a broad list of features and capabilities for creating audience surveys.

Whether you want to create your own survey or choose from one of its 250+ expert-created templates, SurveyMonkey offers a user-friendly interface that enables you to customize your surveys to your needs.

It also offers a suite of helpful features, including AI-powered knowledge to help you pose the right questions, as well as built-in reporting and analytics.

• SurveyMonkey offers a free Basic tier with unlimited surveys featuring up to 10 questions and 25 responses per survey.
• Individual plans start at $1169/month with unlimited surveys and questions, and up to 15,000 responses per year.
• Team plans start at $920/user/month, starting at three users. This level also gives you unlimited surveys and questions, but offers 50,000 responses per year.

2. Typeform

Typeform is an easy-to-use tool focused on helping users create intuitive and engaging forms, surveys, quizzes, polls, and more. Its selling point is the ability to create truly conversational, beautiful forms.

With Typeform, you can create slick surveys with customizable interactive elements, such as images and videos, that encourage your audience to take action. Its focus on interactivity makes it an appealing tool for market research.

Typeform offers plenty of useful features – from conditional logic to creating dynamic surveys – that adapt based on answers to real-time data analytics and integrations with tons of popular tools, from Slack to Google Analytics.

The company even offers a standalone video tool, VideoAsk, where users can create “video forms” to prompt responses.

• Typeform offers a Free plan with unlimited typeforms and 10 responses per month.
• Paid plans start at $25/month billed annually for Basic, $50/month billed annually for Plus, and $83/month billed annually for Business.
• The company also offers an Enterprise plan.

3.  BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is a content research and analysis tool that can help you gather some powerful market insights.

Regarding market research, BuzzSumo can help you understand the content landscape in your industry (and beyond), find out what’s resonating with your target consumers, identify influencers in your niche, and track how your content is performing vs. your competitors’.

The BuzzSumo tool analyzes articles (over 5 billion!) and social media posts across the internet to identify top-performing content. It allows you to comb through five years of data so that you can discover the right content ideas for your audience.

• 30-day free trial (no credit card required).
• Membership tiers start at $199/month billed yearly for Content Creation (individual) plan, $299/month billed yearly for PR & Comms plan, $499/month billed yearly for the Suite plan, and $999/month billed yearly for the Enterprise plan.

4. Qualaroo

Want to capture user feedback and deepen your understanding of market trends? Qualaroo might be the tool for you.

Qualaroo is a customer and user feedback tool that claims to be “10X more valuable than email surveys.” Using Qualaroo, you can add a survey to a page on your website or integrate it into your product.

The tool uses behavioral triggering to show surveys or feedback prompts in response to specific user behavior, so you know you’re targeting the right people with the most relevant questions.

Qualaroo also offers visual customization so you can get the branding right, automatic language translation, a library of survey templates, audience targeting, and IBM Watson Sentiment Analysis to help you organize your results.

• 15-day free trial (no credit card required).
• Plans start at $69/month billed annually for Essentials, $149/month billed annually for Premium, and $299+/month billed annually for Business tier.

SpyFu is a great choice if you’re looking to conduct competitive analysis as part of your market research efforts.

It allows you to effectively “spy” on your competitors by viewing their marketing strategies, advertising history, what keywords they’ve bought on Google Ads, and more – which can help you find gaps in the market and optimize your own approach.

You can feed the SpyFu tool a URL, and it will instantly show you its results for SEO topics like organic keywords, top pages, backlink analysis, total traffic, competition, and more.

Not only can SpyFu help you gain an understanding of the SEO landscape for your industry and gain a competitive advantage, but it can also tell you how hard it might be to dominate a specific niche.

• SpyFu offers paid plans starting at $39/month for Basic, $79/month for Professional.

Another great tool for SEO and competitive analysis, Ahrefs is a popular choice of many marketers for good reason.

Using Ahrefs, you can learn more about the search landscape of your market, discover what keywords your customers are searching for, track your competitors, and analyze content in your industry to inform your own strategies.

With its keyword and content capabilities, Ahrefs will help you find gaps and opportunities in the market so that you can improve your content, your site, and your search visibility.

• Website owners can sign up for Ahrefs Webmaster Tools for free limited access to its Site Explorer and Site Audit tools.
• Paid plans start at $129/month for Lite, $249/month for Standard, $449/month for Advanced, and $14,990/month for Enterprise (billed annually).

7. Delve AI

User personas are a crucial facet of an effective marketing strategy – and as such, developing them is a common step in any market research process.

Thanks to tools like Delve AI , it’s easier than ever to build user personas.

Delve AI offers a suite of persona-building tools based on your needs and the data available to you. Depending on what stage your business is in, you can generate:

• Competitor personas using Delve AI’s data.
• Social personas based on your social audience.
• Customer personas using your customer information.
• Live personas for your website based on Google Analytics data.

Beyond its multi-channel capabilities, Delve AI uses AI algorithms for accuracy in personas, offers behavioral insights, real-time updates to your personas, and more.

• The company offers a free Lite plan.
• Business plans start at $89/month for Standard, $199/month for the Growth tier, and $549/month for Pro (billed annually).
• Agency plans start at $209/month for Standard, $429/month for Growth, and $859/month for the Pro tier (billed annually).

8. Sprout Social

We don’t need to tell you about the importance of social media when it comes to connecting with your audience and driving business success. It can also play a major role where market research is concerned.

Sprout Social offers a robust suite of social media management features. Perhaps the most useful for market research are social listening features – which allow you to track market trends, industry keywords, and social conversations – and its competitor analysis capabilities.

It also provides insights into audience demographics, behavior, and interests, which you can use to inform your marketing approach.

• Free 30-day trial.
• Plans start at $199/month for Standard, $299/month for Professional, and $399/month for Advanced.
• Sprout Social also offers an Enterprise tier plan.

9. Google Trends

How can you supercharge your market research efforts? Look to search data.

Google Trends is an incredible tool that enables you to analyze real-time and historical search data to discover market trends, up-to-date consumer insights, and more.

By using this tool to access the latest information on how people search on Google, you can spot emerging interests and opportunity areas, and keep an eye on what consumers are most interested in.

It also offers location filtering so that you can see what’s trending in any given market.

10. Statista

If you’re looking for data and statistics on pretty much anything in the world of business and marketing, you might want to check out Statista.

It’s a business intelligence platform that provides “statistics, reports, and insights on over 80,000 topics from 22,500 sources in 170 industries.” This means that if you’re looking for specific market research insights, Statista most likely has something to fit your needs.

From in-depth reports to data visualizations and industry forecasts, Statista can give you reliable insights into what’s happening in markets around the world, and highlight market and consumer trends.

• Free Basic account available.
• Paid accounts start at $149/month for Starter and $549/month for Personal (billed annually), $959 for Professional (billed annually) with more options available.

11. Qualtrics

If you’re looking for something extremely robust, Qualtrics ’ market research platform is an all-in-one, AI-powered solution for your market research needs.

It offers a suite of features and capabilities, including:

• Panel Management : Enables you to create research panels from email lists, site visitors, social followers, and more.
• On-Demand Respondents : Companies can pay for access to survey respondents that match their target demographic.
• Product Development : Get access to early feedback on your new products and services from customers.
• Purchase Behavior : Explore data on what is fueling purchase decisions among your target customers.

While it requires a more dedicated investment, Qualtrics’ software is scalable and powerful. It comes with automation and integration with many other tools, and customers have access to a support team.

• Qualtrics offers a free survey maker tool with up to 500 responses.
• For pricing details, reach out to the Qualtrics team.

It’s important to stay on top of how your customers feel about your business, services, and products – and Temper provides a super simple way to do just that.

The concept is simple: Come up with a simple question you want to ask your question, and your customers can respond by clicking a smiley face that corresponds to how they feel.

You might want to ask your customers, “How do you feel about our new product?” or “Please rate your experience with our customer support team.” With just a little bit of code, you can place a Temper widget on your webpage, in a blog post, or in an email footer and get quick feedback on audience sentiment.

• Plans start at $12/month for Hobby tier, $49/month for Pro, $89/month for Business, and $199/month for White Label.
• Temper offers a 60-day risk-free, money-back guarantee.

You’ve likely heard of the question-and-answer site Quora , but have you considered its potential as a market research tool?

Quora is an online community where real people can go to ask questions about anything they’d like, and share their experiences and opinions with others via answers.

It offers a unique opportunity for brands to conduct market research within their specific industry or area by connecting with Quora’s diverse community of consumers, professionals, and others.

Try searching Quora for topics related to your business or niche, and look at what types of conversations are trending. Or, you could ask a question yourself!

It’s a great tool for engaging your audience , keeping an eye on your competitors, and even developing new ideas for content, product development, and more.

• Quora is free to use, though it also offers separate business solutions.

14. Crunchbase

Crunchbase is a handy tool for getting a good picture of your industry landscape and how your competitors are faring.

It’s a database of companies that includes information like funding round data, investors, and financial information for each business. It also includes information such as employee headcount, leadership data, and more.

You can search Crunchbase by region or industry, allowing you to see how other companies in your niche are growing, and who is deciding to fund them. This can help you identify investment opportunities and market gaps, or even just gauge the overall health of your industry.

• Crunchbase offers a Free plan where you can preview profile pages at no cost.
• Paid options start at $99/month for Pro (billed annually).
• An Enterprise option is also available with custom billing.

15. Google Market Finder

Another excellent market research tool from Google is Market Finder . This free, interactive tool is focused mostly on researching target markets – so you can use it to discover which markets might have the most potential for your company, monitor demand for your products or services, and more.

There are two primary features within Market Finder:

• Test your export readiness.  By providing your company’s URL and completing a short quiz, the tool will grade your “readiness” to expand into new markets abroad.
• Dive into new markets. You can take another short quiz that will suggest new market recommendations based on the information you provide, as well as external data like search volume and Google Ads.

Market Finder can also integrate with your Google Analytics data for more accurate information.

16. Semrush

Semrush is a one-stop marketing tool that can be leveraged to gain incredibly useful market research insights.

The company offers features dedicated to this type of research, such as its Market Explorer tool, which enables you to get quick information on your specific industry, conduct an analysis of market share, and benchmark your business against your competitors. You can also use the tool to analyze the potential of a new niche or market region for your business.

You might also find Semrush’s traffic analytics tool useful, as it allows you to go deeper with competitive analysis and target consumer demographics.

• Semrush offers a free account with limited capabilities.
• Paid accounts start at $139.95/month for Pro, $249.95/month for Guru, and $499.95/month for Business (billed annually).

17. Pew Research Center

While not a traditional marketing tool, the Pew Research Center is a widely known and respected resource that can be super effective when it comes to market research.

The site hosts a robust catalog of reports, surveys, and research covering everything from tech and digital media to politics, cultural trends, and more. The data is unbiased and credible, offering a unique perspective into what today’s consumers think and feel on various topics.

You can use the Pew Research Center as a tool to further hone your market research efforts, providing you with insights into the attitudes and behaviors of your target consumer, as well as the various factors that are impacting their desires and purchasing decisions.

18. Exploding Topics

We all know the saying, “I liked it before it was popular” – well, with Exploding Topics , your business can be the one to say this.

Exploding Topics helps you spot trends before they become super popular by analyzing searches, mentions, and conversations across the web to identify products, topics, and industries that are on the rise.

You can use Exploding Topics as a resource to help you predict shifts in the market and consumer interests, which can inform everything from your product design and strategy to your marketing approach.

It’s a lot like Google Trends, with some key differences; it pulls in data from a variety of sources and is focused on highlighting emerging trends before they take off.

• Exploding Topics offers a free version of its Trend Database.
• Paid tiers begin at $39/month for Entrepreneur, $99/month for Investor, and $249/month for Business (billed annually).

In today’s day and age, you can’t build a successful business without an effective website. But how can you know whether your website will resonate with your target consumer?

You can use Loop11 , a usability testing platform that helps facilitate user testing of your products.

Loop11 makes it simple to create a usability test and secure participants.

It enables you to view the user’s experience through video, audio, and screen recordings. Then, it presents you with in-depth insights and UX metrics to help you understand what’s working with your website, app, or product and what’s preventing people from converting.

• Free 14-day trial with full capabilities.
• Paid plans start at $179-199/month for Rapid Insights, $358-399/month for Pro, and $533-599/month for Enterprise (price depending on whether it’s billed monthly or annually).

Market research is key to any business plan, no matter what industry you’re in, what stage of growth your business is at, or what customers you’re serving.

From competitive analysis to keyword research, user feedback, and more, focusing on your market research efforts will pay dividends to your business in the long run.

And while there are plenty of different ways to approach market research, these represent some of the best tools available to you – and can be a great jumping-off point for you to get started.

More Resources: 

• How To Calculate Your Total Addressable Market (TAM) For SEO
• Market Intelligence: What It Is & How To Use It
• Competitor Mapping: What Is It & How To Do It

Featured Image: LAONG/Shutterstock

Writer, digital marketer, and content strategist. Annabelle has 8+ years of experience in social marketing, copywriting, and storytelling for best-in-class ...

Market Research: A How-To Guide and Template

Discover the different types of market research, how to conduct your own market research, and use a free template to help you along the way.

MARKET RESEARCH KIT

5 Research and Planning Templates + a Free Guide on How to Use Them in Your Market Research

Published: 02/21/24

Today's consumers have a lot of power. As a business, you must have a deep understanding of who your buyers are and what influences their purchase decisions.

Enter: Market Research.

Whether you're new to market research or not, I created this guide to help you conduct a thorough study of your market, target audience, competition, and more. Let’s dive in.

Table of Contents

What is market research?

Primary vs. secondary research, types of market research, how to do market research, market research report template, market research examples.

Market research is the process of gathering information about your target market and customers to verify the success of a new product, help your team iterate on an existing product, or understand brand perception to ensure your team is effectively communicating your company's value effectively.

Market research can answer various questions about the state of an industry. But if you ask me, it's hardly a crystal ball that marketers can rely on for insights on their customers.

Market researchers investigate several areas of the market, and it can take weeks or even months to paint an accurate picture of the business landscape.

However, researching just one of those areas can make you more intuitive to who your buyers are and how to deliver value that no other business is offering them right now.

How? Consider these two things:

• Your competitors also have experienced individuals in the industry and a customer base. It‘s very possible that your immediate resources are, in many ways, equal to those of your competition’s immediate resources. Seeking a larger sample size for answers can provide a better edge.
• Your customers don't represent the attitudes of an entire market. They represent the attitudes of the part of the market that is already drawn to your brand.

The market research services market is growing rapidly, which signifies a strong interest in market research as we enter 2024. The market is expected to grow from roughly $75 billion in 2021 to $90.79 billion in 2025 .

Free Market Research Kit

• SWOT Analysis Template
• Survey Template
• Focus Group Template

Download Free

All fields are required.

You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

Why do market research?

Market research allows you to meet your buyer where they are.

As our world becomes louder and demands more of our attention, this proves invaluable.

By understanding your buyer's problems, pain points, and desired solutions, you can aptly craft your product or service to naturally appeal to them.

Market research also provides insight into the following:

• Where your target audience and current customers conduct their product or service research
• Which of your competitors your target audience looks to for information, options, or purchases
• What's trending in your industry and in the eyes of your buyer
• Who makes up your market and what their challenges are
• What influences purchases and conversions among your target audience
• Consumer attitudes about a particular topic, pain, product, or brand
• Whether there‘s demand for the business initiatives you’re investing in
• Unaddressed or underserved customer needs that can be flipped into selling opportunity
• Attitudes about pricing for a particular product or service

Ultimately, market research allows you to get information from a larger sample size of your target audience, eliminating bias and assumptions so that you can get to the heart of consumer attitudes.

As a result, you can make better business decisions.

To give you an idea of how extensive market research can get , consider that it can either be qualitative or quantitative in nature — depending on the studies you conduct and what you're trying to learn about your industry.

Qualitative research is concerned with public opinion, and explores how the market feels about the products currently available in that market.

Quantitative research is concerned with data, and looks for relevant trends in the information that's gathered from public records.

That said, there are two main types of market research that your business can conduct to collect actionable information on your products: primary research and secondary research.

Primary Research

Primary research is the pursuit of first-hand information about your market and the customers within your market.

It's useful when segmenting your market and establishing your buyer personas.

Primary market research tends to fall into one of two buckets:

• Exploratory Primary Research: This kind of primary market research normally takes place as a first step — before any specific research has been performed — and may involve open-ended interviews or surveys with small numbers of people.
• Specific Primary Research: This type of research often follows exploratory research. In specific research, you take a smaller or more precise segment of your audience and ask questions aimed at solving a suspected problem.

Secondary Research

Secondary research is all the data and public records you have at your disposal to draw conclusions from (e.g. trend reports, market statistics, industry content, and sales data you already have on your business).

Secondary research is particularly useful for analyzing your competitors . The main buckets your secondary market research will fall into include:

• Public Sources: These sources are your first and most-accessible layer of material when conducting secondary market research. They're often free to find and review — like government statistics (e.g., from the U.S. Census Bureau ).
• Commercial Sources: These sources often come in the form of pay-to-access market reports, consisting of industry insight compiled by a research agency like Pew , Gartner , or Forrester .
• Internal Sources: This is the market data your organization already has like average revenue per sale, customer retention rates, and other historical data that can help you draw conclusions on buyer needs.
• Focus Groups
• Product/ Service Use Research
• Observation-Based Research
• Buyer Persona Research
• Market Segmentation Research
• Pricing Research
• Competitive Analysis Research
• Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty Research
• Brand Awareness Research
• Campaign Research

1. Interviews

Interviews allow for face-to-face discussions so you can allow for a natural flow of conversation. Your interviewees can answer questions about themselves to help you design your buyer personas and shape your entire marketing strategy.

2. Focus Groups

Focus groups provide you with a handful of carefully-selected people that can test out your product and provide feedback. This type of market research can give you ideas for product differentiation.

3. Product/Service Use Research

Product or service use research offers insight into how and why your audience uses your product or service. This type of market research also gives you an idea of the product or service's usability for your target audience.

4. Observation-Based Research

Observation-based research allows you to sit back and watch the ways in which your target audience members go about using your product or service, what works well in terms of UX , and which aspects of it could be improved.

5. Buyer Persona Research

Buyer persona research gives you a realistic look at who makes up your target audience, what their challenges are, why they want your product or service, and what they need from your business or brand.

6. Market Segmentation Research

Market segmentation research allows you to categorize your target audience into different groups (or segments) based on specific and defining characteristics. This way, you can determine effective ways to meet their needs.

7. Pricing Research

Pricing research helps you define your pricing strategy . It gives you an idea of what similar products or services in your market sell for and what your target audience is willing to pay.

8. Competitive Analysis

Competitive analyses give you a deep understanding of the competition in your market and industry. You can learn about what's doing well in your industry and how you can separate yourself from the competition .

9. Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty Research

Customer satisfaction and loyalty research gives you a look into how you can get current customers to return for more business and what will motivate them to do so (e.g., loyalty programs , rewards, remarkable customer service).

10. Brand Awareness Research

Brand awareness research tells you what your target audience knows about and recognizes from your brand. It tells you about the associations people make when they think about your business.

11. Campaign Research

Campaign research entails looking into your past campaigns and analyzing their success among your target audience and current customers. The goal is to use these learnings to inform future campaigns.

• Define your buyer persona.
• Identify a persona group to engage.
• Prepare research questions for your market research participants.
• List your primary competitors.
• Summarize your findings.

1. Define your buyer persona.

You have to understand who your customers are and how customers in your industry make buying decisions.

This is where your buyer personas come in handy. Buyer personas — sometimes referred to as marketing personas — are fictional, generalized representations of your ideal customers.

Use a free tool to create a buyer persona that your entire company can use to market, sell, and serve better.

What is a Competitive Analysis — and How Do You Conduct One?

9 Best Marketing Research Methods to Know Your Buyer Better [+ Examples]

SWOT Analysis: How To Do One [With Template & Examples]

28 Tools & Resources for Conducting Market Research

TAM, SAM & SOM: What Do They Mean & How Do You Calculate Them?

How to Run a Competitor Analysis [Free Guide]

5 Challenges Marketers Face in Understanding Audiences [New Data + Market Researcher Tips]

Causal Research: The Complete Guide

Total Addressable Market (TAM): What It Is & How You Can Calculate It

Free Guide & Templates to Help Your Market Research

Marketing software that helps you drive revenue, save time and resources, and measure and optimize your investments — all on one easy-to-use platform

The 13 Best Market Research Tools in 2024

Jul 26, 2024

10 min. read

The 328 million terabytes of data we create each day can be very telling about your target audience’s preferences and buying habits. This same data can also be inaccurate and low quality, depending on the source. That’s why the market research tools you choose matter — you need to be able to get the most up-to-date insights and trust what the data is telling you.

While traditional manual methods of market research and secondary research (aka desk research or complementary research ) still have a time and place in the digital world, marketers are supplementing them with market research platforms and software that do most of the heavy lifting.

Astronomical amounts of market-related data are created at lightning speed, far outpacing our ability to consume it all. To help find, filter, sort, and make sense of all this information, we’ve chosen 13 of the best market research tools to streamline and improve the process :

Meltwater Radarly

Think with google, ubersuggest, surveymonkey, answer the public, brandmentions, heartbeat ai, u.s. census bureau.

Tip: Also take a look at the top secondary research companies out there.

A leader in AI market research tools, Radarly is Meltwater’s AI-powered market research platform that provides real-time insights into consumer preferences . This always-on consumer intelligence suite uses a combination of data science, AI, and human market research expertise to surface insights about customers based on online conversations and activities.

Most of the world’s data is unstructured ( about 90% , by some estimates), making it harder to act on and understand its significance. Radarly brings structure to the unknown by detecting patterns and understanding audience sentiments.

Also, Meltwater for market research continuously sources new information and works in real-time. This gives marketers an advantage by working with the latest data so they can make informed decisions when it matters most.

See Meltwater Radarly live in action by requesting a free tour of our platform. Simply fill out the form at the bottom of this post and we'll be in touch.

Statista offers data trends and reports on a wide range of topics and interests, from Facebook’s monthly active users to leading beer brands based on sales. In total, the market research platform spans more than 170 industries and 150 countries .

What sets this resource apart is its visualizations — all of Statista’s stats have been compiled into neat and tidy graphs that are ready to publish or share in your own reports. This makes it easy to see trends over time or gain quick insights about consumer preferences.

There’s a chart for just about anything, and they’re updated on a regular basis. In many cases, Statista will include a brief explanation of the chart’s findings and recommend related charts for further research.

Google’s status as the world’s most popular search engine makes it a great resource for market research. Google has access to billions of first-party data points based on what people are searching for online. 

For market research purposes, users can tap into Google Trends to see the popularity of searches over time. See the terms that are trending on a daily or weekly basis, or check out shopping-related trends to predict the hot new products of the season ( trend prediction ).

Google’s Market Finder can also pinpoint new markets that might be a great fit for your product or service. Learn how various markets compare to each other and how your business might fit in.

And if you’re selling physical products, you can see how sales trends might impact your business using Google’s Rising Retail Categories . Retailers use this tool often to predict hot-selling holiday items and right-size their inventory.

Attest brings old-school focus groups and surveys into the digital era with its rapid-response approach. In the past, organizing interviews and focus groups took weeks or even months. Once the research activities were finished, analysts required additional time to compile the results. No more.

With Attest, you can hear directly from consumers who fit your audience profiles, with ready-made questions and respondents at your fingertips. All responses are recorded in the Attest platform, and the market research software analyzes results and collects consumer insights on your behalf.

Users pay per response, so you can scale your market research as needed.

A popular survey tool, Typeform offers a mobile-friendly way to collect market research insights . It’s unique in that it only shows users one field at a time to limit distractions. The look and feel lend to a more casual, conversational approach, which may encourage survey takers to be more candid in their responses. (We can’t prove it, though.)

Users can create various question types, including multiple-choice questions, open-ended questions, and scale ratings. It’s intuitive and makes basic market research a breeze.

Ubersuggest, a popular k eyword research tool , also has market research capabilities packed into its user-friendly interface . That’s because keyword research is a form of market research , giving you a glimpse of what people are actively searching for online.

Let’s say you’re launching a new facial cleaning device for your beauty brand . By using Ubersuggest for keyword research, you can also uncover:

• Other brands selling facial cleaning devices
• Publications talking about facial cleaning devices
• The popularity of online searches for facial cleaning devices
• Competition for related keywords
• Questions related to the keyword “facial cleaning device”
• Cost per click to rank for the keyword via paid ads
• Search volume (and interest) over time

This is a great tool to help you see who your top competitors are online, what type of content ranks well for a keyword, and how crowded a market is for a particular product or service.

Market Research doesn’t always have to be a costly, complex beast, and SurveyMonkey is a great example. This easy-to-use survey tool can create simple or in-depth surveys sent to targeted audiences for feedback. 

For example, you might have one-off questions to ask customers who made a purchase to learn more about their buying habits. Or, you might want to send longer surveys to customers to help develop a new product. No matter your use case, you can customize surveys to reach highly specific audiences and compile their answers instantly. 

SurveyMonkey also offers turnkey market research solutions, including a global panel survey, translation services, and a reporting dashboard. These services can help you reach more people and get more use from your data.

Answer the Public is a free search listening tool that compiles the questions people are asking online. These questions can serve as a starting point for new product development, product improvements, and content marketing .

This market research software uses autocomplete data from Google . When you start typing a search, Google will try to guess what you’re looking for based on what other people have searched for. You can do this manually, but it’s time-consuming and relies only on your ideas.

Answer the Public makes life easier by compiling related questions in an easy-to-understand graphic. And since the data comes from Google, market researchers can trust its reliability and quality.

Ever wonder what it is about a brand (including yours) that people love? The things that get people talking? BrandMentions can help provide some context.

Specializing in social media monitoring , BrandMentions takes the next step into showing why a particular keyword is buzzing. Type in a keyword and you’ll see recent social media posts that also contain that keyword.

You can also see the keyword’s Reach, Performance, and Number of Mentions — all of which can come in handy when you’re planning a new product launch. You can use these insights to plan your launch-related posts to generate the most buzz.

Tip: Learn more about brand monitoring , brand tracking , brand reputation measurement , about the best brand tracking software , and understand why your brand mentions are spiking .

AI market research tools like Heartbeat AI allow you to put market research on autopilot , or at least close to it. Using sentiment analysis , this market research tool recognizes themes and trends in qualitative text data.

No more poring through pages and pages of text — Heartbeat AI can quickly surface insights about how your audience feels regarding your brand or products (or your competitors). What’s more, it can turn these insights into attractive visuals for simpler understanding or sharing with other stakeholders.

Qualitative research can be more difficult to sort and analyze because it contains more variables. Unlike quantitative research, which deals with specific, measurable data, qualitative research involves the complexities of human behavior and perception. The results are subjective in nature, and it involves more work to extract their value.

Discuss aims to change the narrative with AI-powered insights . Offering video capabilities, built-in note-taking, and auto-generated highlight reels, marketers can capture the “Aha!” moments without losing efficiency.

The market research platform makes it easy to refer back to conversations and keep their audience engaged throughout the process, leading to more complete data.

One of the oldest but most trusted market research sources , the U.S. Census Bureau offers basic demographic information about U.S. citizens. This platform gives you instant insight into America’s people , including things like family sizes, income levels, and populations.

Beyond demographics, the market research platform has thousands of tables and maps to bring your research to life. You can customize your own maps and tables using any of the data available.

Another option is to find your business’s North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code , and then filter the Tables tool to focus on your industry. This allows you to see where your industry is most popular and where it might be over- or under-saturated.

Tableau from Salesforce is a business intelligence platform that connects to all of your data sources, making it easier to connect the dots between disparate systems. It excels at transforming unstructured data into visualizations to streamline decisions.

Their goal is to democratize data and make it more accessible and user-friendly. It accomplishes its mission with a user-friendly interface, visual data transcriptions, and a community of more than a million members who share how-tos and best practices.

Make Your Market Research Tools Work for You

Online market research tools aren’t replacing the traditional survey or focus group — they’re enhancing them by providing an always-on approach to speed up results. By tapping into the wealth of data people are openly sharing online, businesses can gain more insights than ever before, on demand.

Meltwater offers some of the best tools for market research that are accurate, reliable, and easy to use. By tapping into billions of data points and analyzing them in the context of your business, you can make valuable data-driven decisions to move your company forward.

Learn more when you request a demo by filling out the form below:

Continue Reading

How To Do Market Research: Definition, Types, Methods

What Are Consumer Insights? Meaning, Examples, Strategy

Market Intelligence 101: What It Is & How To Use It

Consumer Intelligence: Definition & Examples

Secondary Research Guide: Definition, Methods, Examples

What Is Desk Research? Meaning, Methodology, Examples

Top Secondary Market Research Companies | Desk Research Companies

Send us an email

How to do market research: The complete guide for your brand

Written by by Jacqueline Zote

Published on  April 13, 2023

Reading time  10 minutes

Blindly putting out content or products and hoping for the best is a thing of the past. Not only is it a waste of time and energy, but you’re wasting valuable marketing dollars in the process. Now you have a wealth of tools and data at your disposal, allowing you to develop data-driven marketing strategies . That’s where market research comes in, allowing you to uncover valuable insights to inform your business decisions.

Conducting market research not only helps you better understand how to sell to customers but also stand out from your competition. In this guide, we break down everything you need to know about market research and how doing your homework can help you grow your business.

Table of contents:

What is market research?

Why is market research important, types of market research, where to conduct market research.

• Steps for conducting market research
• Tools to use for market research

Market research is the process of gathering information surrounding your business opportunities. It identifies key information to better understand your audience. This includes insights related to customer personas and even trends shaping your industry.

Taking time out of your schedule to conduct research is crucial for your brand health. Here are some of the key benefits of market research:

Understand your customers’ motivations and pain points

Most marketers are out of touch with what their customers want. Moreover, these marketers are missing key information on what products their audience wants to buy.

Simply put, you can’t run a business if you don’t know what motivates your customers.

And spoiler alert: Your customers’ wants and needs change. Your customers’ behaviors today might be night and day from what they were a few years ago.

Market research holds the key to understanding your customers better. It helps you uncover their key pain points and motivations and understand how they shape their interests and behavior.

Figure out how to position your brand

Positioning is becoming increasingly important as more and more brands enter the marketplace. Market research enables you to spot opportunities to define yourself against your competitors.

Maybe you’re able to emphasize a lower price point. Perhaps your product has a feature that’s one of a kind. Finding those opportunities goes hand in hand with researching your market.

Maintain a strong pulse on your industry at large

Today’s marketing world evolves at a rate that’s difficult to keep up with.

Fresh products. Up-and-coming brands. New marketing tools. Consumers get bombarded with sales messages from all angles. This can be confusing and overwhelming.

By monitoring market trends, you can figure out the best tactics for reaching your target audience.

Not everyone conducts market research for the same reason. While some may want to understand their audience better, others may want to see how their competitors are doing. As such, there are different types of market research you can conduct depending on your goal.

Interview-based market research allows for one-on-one interactions. This helps the conversation to flow naturally, making it easier to add context. Whether this takes place in person or virtually, it enables you to gather more in-depth qualitative data.

Buyer persona research

Buyer persona research lets you take a closer look at the people who make up your target audience. You can discover the needs, challenges and pain points of each buyer persona to understand what they need from your business. This will then allow you to craft products or campaigns to resonate better with each persona.

Pricing research

In this type of research, brands compare similar products or services with a particular focus on pricing. They look at how much those products or services typically sell for so they can get more competitive with their pricing strategy.

Competitive analysis research

Competitor analysis gives you a realistic understanding of where you stand in the market and how your competitors are doing. You can use this analysis to find out what’s working in your industry and which competitors to watch out for. It even gives you an idea of how well those competitors are meeting consumer needs.

Depending on the competitor analysis tool you use, you can get as granular as you need with your research. For instance, Sprout Social lets you analyze your competitors’ social strategies. You can see what types of content they’re posting and even benchmark your growth against theirs.

Brand awareness research

Conducting brand awareness research allows you to assess your brand’s standing in the market. It tells you how well-known your brand is among your target audience and what they associate with it. This can help you gauge people’s sentiments toward your brand and whether you need to rebrand or reposition.

If you don’t know where to start with your research, you’re in the right place.

There’s no shortage of market research methods out there. In this section, we’ve highlighted research channels for small and big businesses alike.

Considering that Google sees a staggering 8.5 billion searches each day, there’s perhaps no better place to start.

A quick Google search is a potential goldmine for all sorts of questions to kick off your market research. Who’s ranking for keywords related to your industry? Which products and pieces of content are the hottest right now? Who’s running ads related to your business?

For example, Google Product Listing Ads can help highlight all of the above for B2C brands.

The same applies to B2B brands looking to keep tabs on who’s running industry-related ads and ranking for keyword terms too.

There’s no denying that email represents both an aggressive and effective marketing channel for marketers today. Case in point, 44% of online shoppers consider email as the most influential channel in their buying decisions.

Looking through industry and competitor emails is a brilliant way to learn more about your market. For example, what types of offers and deals are your competitors running? How often are they sending emails?

Email is also invaluable for gathering information directly from your customers. This survey message from Asana is a great example of how to pick your customers’ brains to figure out how you can improve your quality of service.

Industry journals, reports and blogs

Don’t neglect the importance of big-picture market research when it comes to tactics and marketing channels to explore. Look to marketing resources such as reports and blogs as well as industry journals

Keeping your ear to the ground on new trends and technologies is a smart move for any business. Sites such as Statista, Marketing Charts, AdWeek and Emarketer are treasure troves of up-to-date data and news for marketers.

And of course, there’s the  Sprout Insights blog . And invaluable resources like The Sprout Social Index™  can keep you updated on the latest social trends.

Social media

If you want to learn more about your target market, look no further than social media. Social offers a place to discover what your customers want to see in future products or which brands are killin’ it. In fact, social media is become more important for businesses than ever with the level of data available.

It represents a massive repository of real-time data and insights that are instantly accessible. Brand monitoring and social listening are effective ways to conduct social media research . You can even be more direct with your approach. Ask questions directly or even poll your audience to understand their needs and preferences.

The 5 steps for how to do market research

Now that we’ve covered the why and where, it’s time to get into the practical aspects of market research. Here are five essential steps on how to do market research effectively.

Step 1: Identify your research topic

First off, what are you researching about? What do you want to find out? Narrow down on a specific research topic so you can start with a clear idea of what to look for.

For example, you may want to learn more about how well your product features are satisfying the needs of existing users. This might potentially lead to feature updates and improvements. Or it might even result in new feature introductions.

Similarly, your research topic may be related to your product or service launch or customer experience. Or you may want to conduct research for an upcoming marketing campaign.

Step 2: Choose a buyer persona to engage

If you’re planning to focus your research on a specific type of audience, decide which buyer persona you want to engage. This persona group will serve as a representative sample of your target audience.

Engaging a specific group of audience lets you streamline your research efforts. As such, it can be a much more effective and organized approach than researching thousands (if not millions) of individuals.

You may be directing your research toward existing users of your product. To get even more granular, you may want to focus on users who have been familiar with the product for at least a year, for example.

Step 3: Start collecting data

The next step is one of the most critical as it involves collecting the data you need for your research. Before you begin, make sure you’ve chosen the right research methods that will uncover the type of data you need. This largely depends on your research topic and goals.

Remember that you don’t necessarily have to stick to one research method. You may use a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches. So for example, you could use interviews to supplement the data from your surveys. Or you may stick to insights from your social listening efforts.

To keep things consistent, let’s look at this in the context of the example from earlier. Perhaps you can send out a survey to your existing users asking them a bunch of questions. This might include questions like which features they use the most and how often they use them. You can get them to choose an answer from one to five and collect quantitative data.

Plus, for qualitative insights, you could even include a few open-ended questions with the option to write their answers. For instance, you might ask them if there’s any improvement they wish to see in your product.

Step 4: Analyze results

Once you have all the data you need, it’s time to analyze it keeping your research topic in mind. This involves trying to interpret the data to look for a wider meaning, particularly in relation to your research goal.

So let’s say a large percentage of responses were four or five in the satisfaction rating. This means your existing users are mostly satisfied with your current product features. On the other hand, if the responses were mostly ones and twos, you may look for opportunities to improve. The responses to your open-ended questions can give you further context as to why people are disappointed.

Step 5: Make decisions for your business

Now it’s time to take your findings and turn them into actionable insights for your business. In this final step, you need to decide how you want to move forward with your new market insight.

What did you find in your research that would require action? How can you put those findings to good use?

The market research tools you should be using

To wrap things up, let’s talk about the various tools available to conduct speedy, in-depth market research. These tools are essential for conducting market research faster and more efficiently.

Social listening and analytics

Social analytics tools like Sprout can help you keep track of engagement across social media. This goes beyond your own engagement data but also includes that of your competitors. Considering how quickly social media moves, using a third-party analytics tool is ideal. It allows you to make sense of your social data at a glance and ensure that you’re never missing out on important trends.

Email marketing research tools

Keeping track of brand emails is a good idea for any brand looking to stand out in its audience’s inbox.

Tools such as MailCharts ,  Really Good Emails  and  Milled  can show you how different brands run their email campaigns.

Meanwhile, tools like  Owletter  allow you to monitor metrics such as frequency and send-timing. These metrics can help you understand email marketing strategies among competing brands.

Content marketing research

If you’re looking to conduct research on content marketing, tools such as  BuzzSumo  can be of great help. This tool shows you the top-performing industry content based on keywords. Here you can see relevant industry sites and influencers as well as which brands in your industry are scoring the most buzz. It shows you exactly which pieces of content are ranking well in terms of engagements and shares and on which social networks.

SEO and keyword tracking

Monitoring industry keywords is a great way to uncover competitors. It can also help you discover opportunities to advertise your products via organic search. Tools such as  Ahrefs  provide a comprehensive keyword report to help you see how your search efforts stack up against the competition.

Competitor comparison template

For the sake of organizing your market research, consider creating a competitive matrix. The idea is to highlight how you stack up side-by-side against others in your market. Use a  social media competitive analysis template  to track your competitors’ social presence. That way, you can easily compare tactics, messaging and performance. Once you understand your strengths and weaknesses next to your competitors, you’ll find opportunities as well.

Customer persona creator

Finally, customer personas represent a place where all of your market research comes together. You’d need to create a profile of your ideal customer that you can easily refer to. Tools like  Xtensio  can help in outlining your customer motivations and demographics as you zero in on your target market.

Build a solid market research strategy

Having a deeper understanding of the market gives you leverage in a sea of competitors. Use the steps and market research tools we shared above to build an effective market research strategy.

But keep in mind that the accuracy of your research findings depends on the quality of data collected. Turn to Sprout’s social media analytics tools to uncover heaps of high-quality data across social networks.

• Marketing Disciplines
• Social Media Strategy

Social media RFPs: The best questions to include (plus a template)

Template: Essential Questions to Ask in Your Social Media Management Software RFP

• Team Collaboration

How to build a marketing tech stack that scales your business

• Customer Experience

Brand trust: What it is and why it matters

• Now on slide

Build and grow stronger relationships on social

Sprout Social helps you understand and reach your audience, engage your community and measure performance with the only all-in-one social media management platform built for connection.

Root out friction in every digital experience, super-charge conversion rates, and optimize digital self-service

Uncover insights from any interaction, deliver AI-powered agent coaching, and reduce cost to serve

Increase revenue and loyalty with real-time insights and recommendations delivered to teams on the ground

Know how your people feel and empower managers to improve employee engagement, productivity, and retention

Take action in the moments that matter most along the employee journey and drive bottom line growth

Whatever they’re are saying, wherever they’re saying it, know exactly what’s going on with your people

Get faster, richer insights with qual and quant tools that make powerful market research available to everyone

Run concept tests, pricing studies, prototyping + more with fast, powerful studies designed by UX research experts

Track your brand performance 24/7 and act quickly to respond to opportunities and challenges in your market

Explore the platform powering Experience Management

• Free Account
• Product Demos
• For Digital
• For Customer Care
• For Human Resources
• For Researchers
• Financial Services
• All Industries

Popular Use Cases

• Customer Experience
• Employee Experience
• Net Promoter Score
• Voice of Customer
• Customer Success Hub
• Product Documentation
• Training & Certification
• XM Institute
• Popular Resources
• Customer Stories
• Artificial Intelligence

Market Research

• Partnerships
• Marketplace

The annual gathering of the experience leaders at the world’s iconic brands building breakthrough business results, live in Salt Lake City.

• English/AU & NZ
• Español/Europa
• Español/América Latina
• Português Brasileiro
• REQUEST DEMO

17 Market research tools you should be using

From trawling the mighty US Census, to calculating percent change in an instant, there’s a whole lot of research tools out there to help you do your job as a market researcher. When you’re conducting market research , the obvious tool you need is a world-class research platform. But let’s look at some other tools to help you create the best possible experience for your customers and employees.

Here are 17 of the best.

1. Pew Research Center

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
• 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)

2. 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. You can also pair this tool up with Sitechecker Link Extractor that helps you extract all the links from your target website to see who they're linking to.

3. Living Facts

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
• Demographics

4. US Census Business Data

There’s nothing to top the data to be found in the US Census when it comes to free market research . Start with Data Gems , videos that explain how to access census data to inform your business decisions.

Then dive into the data, with useful tools that cover:

• Economics : the Consumer Price Index and Bureau of Economic Analysis
• Money Statistics from the Federal Reserve banks.
• Income : Earnings by Occupation and Education and Income Statistics .
• The labor market : Employment and Unemployment Statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
• Industries : North American Industry Classification System or NAICS system.

5. Sample Size Calculator

You need to create surveys for a number of people so that they are representative of your target audience, but you don’t know how many. What do you do? Use our sample size calculator .

• confidence level
• population size
• margin of error

and it’ll calculate the sample size you’ll need within seconds.

6. Google Keyword Tool

Where eyes are the window to the soul, Google Keywords are the window to the web. Google’s keyword tool is very popular as it accesses the best data – Google’s.

To start you will need to create a free AdWords account to access all the results.

This Google tool shows you:

• the volume of keyword searches
• how competitive those keywords are
• how keywords are related to each other

You’ll also be able to

• limit your keyword searches to a language or geographical area
• limit searches to only those on mobile devices
• filter results by your chosen criteria

7. Qualtrics Panels

( Contact us for a demo and quote)

It’s hard work finding the right respondents for your surveys, and a survey that no one takes is pretty useless. When you deploy our panel team, you’ll get access to hundreds of thousands of opt-in survey respondents, both B2B and B2C, who are already vetted and qualified. When our team handles your research project, you’ll be able to:

• choose any target audience and access a representative sample
• boost the accuracy of your tracking studies sampling that’s 47% more consistent than standard sampling methods
• get support for your best-in-class study at every stage, from survey launch to results reporting

8. Social Mention

Would you like to know what everyone’s saying about your brand? Social Mention scours more than 100 social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, blogs, videos and images for mentions of your brand, competitors, or any keywords you wish to input. Then, it gives them to you in a single information feed.

You’ll get four key metrics:

• Strength : How much your keywords crop up on social media.
• Sentiment : Positive vs. negative mentions
• Passion : How many people are repeatedly talking about your keywords.
• Reach : Range of influence, i.e, how many individual users are mentioning your keywords.

9. Google Trends

While Google Trends has some crossover with Social Mention, it has the added feature of factoring in data from the Google search engine in addition to social platforms.

Google Trends:

• Shows how frequently your search term is entered into Google compared with the site’s total search volume over a specific period of time.
• Provides keyword-related and geographic data about Google’s users.
• Can be used for comparative keyword research and to uncover keyword spikes triggered by events.
• Gives you a more comprehensive perspective on the news, opinions, posts and perceptions affecting your brand.

10. Think with Google

This tool will give you all the information you need for uncovering market trends, understanding consumer behavior and gaining market insights, ready for your product launch. You’ll find everything from high-level insights to deck-ready statistics and useful marketing tools.

Using fascinating and useful content from Google, using data from their digital searches, Think with Google will inform your marketing campaigns by:

• Making sense of the data with articles that explain its implications
• Highlighting trends in real time
• Showing what other companies have achieved

11. Facebook Audience Insights

With around 2.45 billion monthly active users , marketers are missing a trick if they don’t track social media giant Facebook for marketing purposes. And Facebook Audience Insights will give you information about two groups:

• People connected to your Facebook page
• People on Facebook generally

These will help you create and target content, and find more people who match your target audience. You’ll also be able to extract:

• Demographic information : age, gender, job titles education, relationship status
• What people like : hobbies, interests, pastimes
• Lifestyles : location and relationship status combine to identify the types of people interacting with your business.

12. R Studio

Sometimes it just feels good to get your hands dirty romping through raw data.

• R is free language and environment software for stats computing, data manipulation and graphics, and you’ll need to install it first.
• R Studio gives you a range of statistical analysis tools to use with R. It requires that you know some coding, but it gives you tremendous power to create custom statistical analysis. RStudio is a free, open-source integrated development environment, which means it’s constantly being improved by the data-analysis community that uses it.

13. Stats iQ

( Book a Stats iQ demo )

Stats iQ may be the polar opposite to R Studio because you can do hardcore stats analysis without needing to be a hardcore stats wonk. It’s the world’s most powerful statistical analysis tool , that also happens to be the world’s easiest.

Stats iQ automatically:

• finds relationships in your data
• shows how strong those relationships are
• runs the right statistical tests and visualizations
• translates your results into simple language that anyone can put into action.

14. Make My Persona

Every marketer knows that buyer personas help your business focus time and resources, and inform product development and marketing. A buyer persona is a model of an ideal customer, created through market research and existing customer data.

Make My Persona helps you create these semi-fictitious characters in seven simple steps that you fill in, including:

• Job responsibilities
• Goals or objectives
• Preferred method of communication
• Biggest challenges
• Anything else you want to include

The tool then gives you a profile of your buyer persona that you can share with your whole organization to inform and inspire.

15. Percent Change Calculator

You use percent change to track change over time – e.g. the fluctuations of sales, subscriptions, or prices of financial securities.

For example, you sold 15,000 bicycles this year, and 9,000 last year. You want to know the percent change of your sales:

15,000 (new number) – 9,000 (old number) = 6,000

6,000 x 100 = 66.66666

You’ve sold 67% more bicycles this year.

But do you want to do this calculation every time? No! Put your two values into a simple percent change calculator and it will do the math for you.

16. AMZScout

(Free trial. Prices start at $14.99 per month)

When it comes to understanding what is happening in a market, there is no data more useful than sales numbers. AMZScout is an innovative eCommerce software that provides sellers with the insights they need to identify items that have high profit potential.

With AMZScout you can:

• Get stats for every product, including average monthly sales, reviews, sales history, and more.
• Review demand and competition levels for both products and niches.
• Predict costs and profit margins.
• Track seasonal trends and consumer behavior.

This leads to unexpected product discoveries, significant new customer flows,  efficient market insights, and long-term revenue growth.

17. Tableau

( Prices start at $70 per month for 1 creator, rising to $278 per month for a team.)

Tableau is a tool for data visualization that needs no programming knowledge. It helps you see and understand your market research data pictorially, using analytics, visualization and business intelligence .

It works like this:

• It extracts data from PDFs, Excel, text, R, Hadoop, Python or SAS, to cloud databases.
• The Tableau desktop takes the data, analyses it, then presents it as an interactive and shareable dashboard which shows trends and variations with colorful charts and tables.
• The data can be published, with features such as collaboration and automation included.
• Users can view their visualized data on platforms such as email, mobile and desktop.

Did we miss your favorite market research tool ? Let us know by tweeting us @Qualtrics

Use our market research tool for free

Aaron Carpenter // Experience Management Content Strategist

Aaron is a highly skilled and accomplished content strategist specializing in experience management. With a keen understanding of the ever-evolving landscape of digital content, Aaron brings a unique perspective to the art of crafting engaging and impactful experiences for users.

Ruth D'Alessandro

Ruth has been writing digital content for many years. She’s fascinated by what big data and artificial intelligence can bring to the human experience, and loves writing about it for Qualtrics.

Related Articles

May 20, 2024

Best strategy & research books to read in 2024

May 13, 2024

Experience Management

X4 2024 Strategy & Research Showcase: Introducing the future of insights generation

November 7, 2023

Brand Experience

The 4 market research trends redefining insights in 2024

June 27, 2023

The fresh insights people: Scaling research at Woolworths Group

June 20, 2023

Bank less, delight more: How Bankwest built an engine room for customer obsession

April 1, 2023

Academic Experience

How to write great survey questions (with examples)

March 21, 2023

Sample size calculator

November 18, 2022

Statistical analysis software: your complete guide to getting started

Stay up to date with the latest xm thought leadership, tips and news., request demo.

Ready to learn more about Qualtrics?

16 market research tools and resources to help you think like your consumers

• Share on Facebook
• Share on Twitter
• Share on LinkedIn

So you need an online tool or resource to support your market research and help you understand consumer sentiments – but where do you start? How do you assess the different options? And what even counts as a good tool or resource in the first place?

If those questions sound familiar then relax, we just happen to have the lowdown on 16 market research tools and resources that can help you stay close to your target consumer. Let’s start with a quick definition of what we’re counting as a market research tool or resource.  

Market research tools and resources demystified

When it comes to market research, some tools are excellent for end-to-end insights (for example a consumer research platform like GWI), while others are great to dip in and out of to add flavor to your findings. But broadly speaking they all enable businesses to find markets, and/or understand how consumers feel about a product or service.

Common uses for market research tools and resources offered by companies like these include data analysis, social media monitoring, competitor intelligence, and predictive analytics, but that’s far from an exhaustive list.

The big benefit of using market research tools and resources to study a target audience’s perceptions, opinions, beliefs, attitudes, and reactions is that you can make better, more informed decisions based on data rather than intuition or experience. 

Must-have features of market research tools and resources

Choosing a market research tool or resource is a bit like hunting for the perfect banana in your local store. It needs to be ripe with features, firm enough to stand everyday handling, yet soft enough to adapt to your needs. While it’s impossible to draw up a definitive list of must-have features, the following is a good start: 

Quality and variety Look for a tool/resource with access to a wide range of reliable information sources and data types, such as quantitative, qualitative , behavioral, and attitudinal. It’s also important to check how fresh the platform’s data is; the more recent, the more trustworthy.

Analysis and visualization It’s incredibly helpful to be able to analyze and visualize data to identify patterns, trends, insights, and opportunities. It’s an added bonus to be able to slot charts and visuals straight into your pitch decks and proposals.

Integration and collaboration Compatibility with other marketing tools in your tech stack can be important, as are features to support collaboration with team members, clients, and partners. Look for smart sharing features and other integrations that’ll help you embed the tool into your daily workflow with ease. 

Security and compliance You want a tool that can store and transmit data safely, that allows you to control the access and permissions of the data, and complies with local regulations. 

Scalability and affordability The best market research tools and resources adapt to your changing needs, have a transparent pricing model, and provide a good return on investment. It’s always a good idea to opt for a tool/resource that you can scale up and down in terms of seats, markets, and so on as your business grows.

Simplicity and support The final thing to consider is the tool/resource’s ease-of-use and the helpfulness of its team. Reliable, friendly customer support can, and often does, make all the difference.

16 must-know market research tools and resources for better consumer insights

GWI is a global consumer research platform that offers instant access to data on the views, behaviors, and interests of nearly 3 billion consumers in 53 countries.

GWI’s platform is the go-to starting point for organizations large and small when it comes to end-to-end market research – by which we mean finding their ideal audience, getting to know them, and understanding their interests and behaviors. Using that information, organizations can fine-tune their thinking by using other tools mentioned below.

Specialisms GWI excels in revealing exactly what drives buyers, giving users the answers they need, just when they need them. In addition to our flagship consumer data survey – our specialist data sets cover the US, alcohol, automotive, consumer tech, gaming, luxury, sports, travel, work, kids, and more.

Best for Fast, intuitive, and powerful end-to-end market research and consumer sentiment tracking. 

2. Statista

Statista is a data aggregator, collecting insights from various sources. They provide market, company, and consumer data, operating in 13 locations worldwide and providing statistics and forecasts on 80,000 different topics from 170 industries and 150 countries. 

Specialisms The Statista platform supports market analysis and forecasting, data analysis, product and price research, concept testing, and user experience research. It’s equally adept at tracking, positioning and image studies, advertising and PR analysis, target group profiling, and satisfaction surveys.

Best for Grabbing quick stats on a wide range of topics.

3. Qualtrics

Qualtrics’ software powers over 1B surveys every year, providing customers with answers to their market, brand, customer, and product questions. Customers can design their own surveys using Qualtrics’ drag-and-drop survey tool, library of 100+ question types, and pre-built survey templates.

Specialisms Qualtrics divide their offer into six specialist solutions. Contact Center is designed to reduce churn and drive loyalty, Market Research delivers the consumer insights, while CX Professional focuses on the customer journey, uncovering opportunity, and driving organizational outcomes. Human Resources is designed to pinpoint key drivers of engagement, Digital helps users understand the end-to-end experience across all digital channels, while Product Management aims to improve product market fit.

Best for Designing tailored surveys that get to the crux of what customers think. 

4. Google Trends

Google Trends is a good example of a resource that supports market research by giving users a feel for what’s being searched for in which market, rather than being used to perform market research itself. Users can search by geographic location, time frame, and by category for more granular results.

Specialisms Google Trends specializes in showing what people are searching for, in real time. That data helps Google Trends users measure search interest in a particular topic, in a particular place, and at a particular time. The Google Trends homepage shows what topics are trending right now, enabling users to explore and gauge interest in virtually any topic. Best for A high-level view of what’s trending to help gauge interest in a topic.

Tableau is a visual analytics platform that aims to transform the way people use data to solve problems, empowering individuals and organizations to make the most of their data. Basically, Tableau turns data into insights, using AI to accelerate decision-making and eliminate repetitive tasks. They describe their service as “intelligent analytics at scale.” 

Specialisms As an end-to-end data and analytics platform, Tableau specializes in driving better business outcomes with fully-integrated data management and governance, visual analytics and data storytelling, and collaboration. 

Best for Plugging in a brand’s own data to create visualizations that can aid decision making.

6. Typeform

Typeform allows users to create custom forms, surveys, and polls that collect more and better audience data. Their free plan – incredibly useful for any organization just starting out in market research – enables users to create unlimited forms, access 3,000+ templates, and collect responses.

Specialisms Typeform – and you might not be surprised to hear this – is all about forms. They specialize in tools that make it easy to build and customize mobile-optimized forms, then embed them where people see them to boost participation.

Best for Plans start at just £21 so Typeform is great for brands who don’t want to break the bank while gathering insights.

Loop11 is a UX tool for designers, marketers and product managers that gathers feedback on website experiences and usability, with no coding or usability knowledge required. 

Specialisms Loop11 specializes in user testing and digital product optimizations based on an unlimited number of tasks, questions and test duration. Users can test on desktop, mobile, and tablet​, create and share highlight clips and timestamped notes, and get UX metrics for faster analysis and insights​.

Best for Testing or gathering research on different designs or prototypes before making a decision.

8. Qualaroo

Qualaroo is a SaaS-based online survey creator, producing results its developers claim are 10x more valuable than email surveys. Embedded in websites or apps, Qualaroo surveys can target subjects based on their specific actions and behavioral patterns, making it easy to survey specific users while they’re directly engaged with a product, service or brand. 

Specialisms Specialist features include pre-built templates, multiple question types, advanced targeting options, customizable design, intelligent data mining, and multi-channel support. Qualaroo’s Nudge technology enables users to ask the right questions at the right time without being intrusive. Based on years of research, key findings, and optimizations, Nudge can learn a site’s structure to improve response rates over time.

Best for Brands looking to gather quick, unobtrusive feedback on how a product functions and why customers like it.

Temper uses embeddable widgets – most notably the familiar “sad”, “neutral” and “happy” face clickable icons – to measure customer sentiment. The aim is to identify successes to build on – and shortcomings to improve – using feedback and evidence.

Specialisms Temper has three modes that reflect its specialisms. In Tab mode it shows up at the bottom of every web page, helping businesses gauge how satisfied users are with an entire site. In Inline mode Temper is placed on specific web pages that businesses need to gather feedback on. Finally, in Email mode Temper is included at the end of emails, helping assess customer support interactions.

Best for Brands that want to measure customer mood to spot frustrating experiences or highlight problematic areas of a site or product.

10. BrandMentions

By continually analyzing the most important channels on the web and social media, BrandMentions keeps users informed by monitoring online mentions of brands, competitors and people. 

Specialisms BrandMentions specializes in helping businesses get closer to their customers and key influencers. The result helps businesses acquire and retain customers, create products that meet their exact needs, and manage their brand reputation by always being aware of who’s saying what about their brand.

Best for Brands who want an easy way to keep on top of brand monitoring, reputation management, and business Intelligence.

11. SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey describe themselves as “a global leader in free and paid online surveys”. Typical audiences include employees, customers and target markets, although SurveyMonkey works equally well for any group with an online presence. 

Specialisms SurveyMonkey’ specializes in collecting feedback, with over 300 sets of questions optimized for different survey types. SurveyMonkey Audience is a trusted panel of more than 175 million international respondents able to deliver international market insights in as little as an hour. SurveyMonkey Genius brings together AI, survey experts, and machine learning to develop survey intelligence. Best for Anyone without detailed survey experience or who’s time-poor, as everything is templated and therefore quick and easy to use.

12. Answer the public

AnswerThePublic is a free keyword generator tool that lets users see the questions and ideas people are searching for – making it great for any organization taking their first steps with market research. As they put it: “AnswerThePublic listens into autocomplete data from search engines like Google then quickly cranks out every useful phrase and question people are asking around your keyword.”

Specialisms Users get three free searches per day, or they can upgrade to a Pro plan for unlimited searches. A useful pro-only specialist feature is Search Listening Alerts, which is a weekly email digest showing what new questions are being asked online around any topic.

Best for Seeing what’s trending in organic search, so brands can build strategies and campaigns around the most important questions being asked on Google.

13. Make My Persona

Make My Persona is a free tool from Hubspot that’s essentially a buyer persona generator. It helps segment different types of customers a business wants to attract by clarifying key differences between groups within a target audience. As we’ve mentioned above, free is always great for any organization dipping their toes into market research.

Specialisms Make My Persona specializes in creating and sharing avatars quickly and easily, enabling users to visualize key differences between groups within their target audience. In the process it clarifies each persona’s goals, challenges, and day-to-day responsibilities, highlighting ways brands can overcome their obstacles and simplify their workflow.

Best for Getting a top level understanding of a brand’s audience for use as a springboard for ideas and/or more research.

14. BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is a social media and content marketing tool that tracks media mentions, backlinks, and social shares. Used by thousands of businesses worldwide, BuzzSumo helps them create content, monitor their brand and industry, and discover growth opportunities.

Specialisms BuzzSumo’s specialisms include sparking content ideas by browsing topics, trends and forums, content research by scanning billions of articles and social posts for insights, influencer identification by finding creators with engaged audiences on Instagram, Twitter and the web, and mentions, trends and updates tracking. Best for Competitor intelligence, helping brands see what works – and what doesn’t – to optimize their marketing activity. 

15. Userlytics

Userlytics is a user experience (UX) and testing company that works with enterprises, governmental organizations, non-profits, agencies and startups to provide an all-in-one solution for remote user testing.

Specialisms Userlytics’ specialisms include AI-based synthesis and analysis of qualitative sessions, sentiment analysis, and using invisible observers for moderated studies. Their seamless “no download, no extension, no multiple tabs” UX testing easily integrates with prototyping platforms like Figma or AdobeXD.

Best for Testing, testing, and more testing, with multiple models from moderated, unmoderated and qualitative, to web usability, prototype and accessibility testing. 

16. NielsenIQ

Nielsen rebranded its data and analytics branch in January 2021 as NielsenIQ (NIQ). Today NIQ helps clients understand consumer buying behavior and reveal pathways to growth. Full disclosure: GWI currently has a fusion with Nielsen as part of our GWI USA data set. 

Specialisms NIQ in partnership with GfK offers Full View, a solution designed to provide a complete picture of consumer buying behavior combined with omnichannel coverage, data platforms, and predictive analytics.

Best for Brands that want to track shopping habits and purchase behavior, helping them understand what drives consumer activity across channels. 

Last words on market research tools

The end is nigh; if you’re looking for a new tool to gauge consumer sentiment or run market research, then this article should get you off to a great start.

As we mentioned earlier, we think GWI is right up there with the best. But we would say that, wouldn’t we? So we’ll let you be the judge.

Market research tools and resources FAQs

How do you do market analysis.

Classic market analysis is a six stage process: research your industry, investigate the competitive landscape, identify market gaps, define your target market, identify barriers to entry, and create a sales forecast.

What are market research methods?

All market research can be split into two broad areas: primary and secondary, otherwise known as field and desk. Effective ways to do market research include focus groups, surveys, consumer research with social media listening, interviews, experiments and field trials, observation, competitive analysis, and using public domain data.

Can market research tools and resources be used for product development?

Certainly. Market research can help you understand users’ needs when developing new products, as well helping to identify potential risks and market opportunities.  And while doing product development research, you could come across ideas that could improve other areas of your business.

Never miss a post

By subscribing you confirm you’re happy for us to send you our latest articles.

Related articles

How consumers find new brands and research products in 2023, how to use qualitative and quantitative research to your advantage, 6 ways brands are driving roi with in-house audience research, how kids are transforming tomorrow’s status quo, you’ve read our blog, now see our platform.

Every business has questions about its audiences, GWI has answers. Powered by consistent, global research, our platform is an on-demand window into their world.

• Business Strategy

The 10 Best Market Research Tools for Startups to Use in 2024

Table of contents.

Over the last 10 years, the collective market worth of startups has grown by 239%! How can you join the elite club of unicorns and get your slice of this pie? In business, success is a combination of great ideas, talented people, wise decision-making, strategic execution, and a bit of luck. By leveraging market research tools for startups, you increase your chances of turning your vision into reality. Successfully!

Market research tools for startups can significantly speed up gathering and analyzing essential market data. They provide valuable market insights, including customer behavior, target audiences, industry-specific trends, competitor strategies, and more, helping startups successfully navigate the competitive landscape.

Startups are not corporations.

Because of their innovative and agile nature, they need quick and actionable insights that can be accessed with a few clicks rather than a comprehensive understanding that requires extensive time and analysis.

Therefore, startups conducting market research must focus on efficiency and simplicity. Such organizations require tools that are flexible, fast, and easy to use.

And that’s why you’re here, right?

If so, I have good news – you couldn’t find a better article!

Without further ado, let’s dive into the list of top market research software for startups!

Top Market Research Tools for Startups

01 brand24 – best for real-time social media monitoring and tracking brand mentions.

Free 14-day trial.

I will start our list with my favorite market research tool for startups – Brand24.

This AI-powered media monitoring software allows you to track and analyze brand & industry mentions across multiple online sources, including:

• All the major social media platforms – Facebook, Instagram, X (Twitter), YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn, Reddit, Twitch, and Telegram;
• Non-social sources – news sites, blogs, video platforms, podcasts, newsletters, and review sites.

One of Brand24’s core traits is its AI-backed sentiment analysis , which automatically discovers and categorizes people’s emotions regarding your brand, industry trends, hashtags, and any other keyword you define.

Try the best market research tool for startups!

Okay, and how can Brand24 streamline your process of conducting market research?

The tool allows you to create and track multiple projects , allowing you to analyze your own and your competitors’ performance.

To avoid theoretical blah-blah-blah, I decided to show it to you in a real-life example.

I created a project for Garmin – my favorite brand that produces and sells sports smartwatches.

The first step I should take is to find the brand’s top competitors. And the fastest way to do this is to ask the AI Brand Assistant. It’s a chatbot that works like ChatGPT but much better. Why?

Because Brand Assistant has something other chatboxes don’t – access to all the internal data collected for your project!

This one but significant thing allows you to receive personalized insights no other tool would provide and perform detailed brand research .

So, after asking Brand Assistant about Garmin’s top competitors, it replied that the most significant are Apple, Samsung, and Fitbit.

Of course, a Brand Assistant can answer much more detailed and deeper questions.

Here are some sample prompts you can ask the Brand Assistant to perform market research for startups:

• What are the current trends in my industry?
• What is the demographic of the target market for my product/service?
• What are the purchasing behaviors of the target market for my product/service?
• How does my competitor position their brand in the market?
• What are the common pricing strategies in my business niche?
• What are the most effective marketing strategies and channels for reaching the target market?

Next, when we know our competitors, it’s time to gather and analyze more detailed information.

The Compare Projects feature allows you to juxtapose two or more brands. This enables you to do a thorough competitor analysis and see your brand performance relative to your niche rivals.

Look at the table below.

As you can see, Garmin and Apple Watch go head-to-head. While Garmin generally receives more total mentions, Apple Watch has the advantage in terms of reach.

The conclusion? Garmin should focus more on social media posts to increase brand visibility .

I could write much more about Brand24’s awesome market research features, but it’s time to move on!

Key features:

• AI Brand Assistant
• Sentiment Analysis
• AI Topic Analysis
• Compare Projects
• Compare Periods
• Presence Score
• Social media monitoring
• Non-social sources monitoring
• Share of Voice
• Personalized reports

Make a comprehensive market research!

02 Google Trends – for tracking and analyzing search trends

Google Trends is a free tool that allows you to track the popularity of search terms over time.

How could it help you in your market research?

By analyzing search volume, you can discover the demand for your products or services in different parts of the world or during specific periods (i.e., seasonal spikes in popularity).

Such data-driven insights can help you plan logistics, adjust your marketing strategies, or update your products (e.g., adding a new language version).

Moreover, Google Trends allows you to perform competitor research very quickly.

Just insert your competitor’s name in the “+Add comparison” box, check the interest over time, compare the breakdown by region, and more.

Besides, you can check which keywords generated the most interest among your or your competitors’ customers in a given period.

You can also use Google Trends to predict market trends and manage your content strategy.

As for free market research for startup software, it offers a lot!

• Search term popularity over time
• Comparison of search terms
• Geographic interest by region
• Related topics and queries
• Real-time data about trends and queries
• Historical data collection

Try Brand24 – the best market research tool for startups!

03 Semrush – for competitive analysis and SEO insights

At its core, Semrush is a digital marketing tool primarily focused on SEO insights and analytics.

However, Semrush has evolved into a multipurpose platform that goes far beyond search engine optimization.

If you want to use it to conduct thorough market research, the tool offers a variety of features and functions. The most important one is Market Explorer.

Using traffic measures, this Semrush feature allows you to analyze the total size of your market, list key players in that field, calculate your market share, and map the competitive landscape in your niche.

Additionally, you can compare your domain audience demography with the average market audience.

As stated above, Semrush is mainly an SEO tool, and its capabilities, in that matter, are really helpful to conduct market research.

Traffic Analytics provides in-depth website traffic insights. It lets you track your competitors’ traffic, understand visit behavior, and identify traffic sources.

You can use the data to learn from competitor strategies and improve yours.

• Market Explorer
• Traffic Analytics
• Target Audience Analytics
• Market Geo Distribution
• Socialeconomics of a target market

04 Similarweb – for website traffic and consumer insights

Similarweb is another helpful tool for collecting market research data.

It provides insights into website and app traffic, helping evaluate market size and discover detailed insights about people’s behavior on your competitors’ sites.

With Similarweb, you can analyze your industry, see how traffic changes among competitors, and use a special matrix to determine the top players in your niche.

The tool also lets you check what your customers and your competitors’ customers like, how they move through the sales process, and how loyal they are to different brands.

For website traffic, Similarweb helps you measure key engagement metrics like how long people stay on a site, how many pages they visit, and how often they leave quickly. This helps you understand how well a site keeps visitors’ attention.

I also like that you can focus only on the important parts of a website by filtering out the rest.

Any downsides? Some users say that the data Similarweb collects can sometimes be inaccurate.

• Keyword trends
• Traffic and engagement metrics
• Advanced audience insights
• Industry trends
• Mobile app analytics

05 BuzzSumo – for content performance and industry trends

Startups must be present online – that’s pretty obvious. But how can they cut through the noise and make people notice them?

BuzzSumo is a great tool for that purpose! It’s a content research software that helps you find out what’s popular right now and which topics are getting the most attention.

With BuzzSumo, you can discover what kind of content your target audience is engaging with, see what your competitors are sharing, and identify key influencers in your industry to build a competitive advantage.

And it’s not only about text content. The tool’s Content Discovery & Content Research features allow you to explore popular videos, infographics, and other trending media types.

As BuzzSumo is also public relations software , you can use it to discover niche-relevant journalists and establish ties with them. However, this feature is extra-paid and requires purchasing a higher subscription plan.

• Content Research
• Content Discovery
• Content competitive analysis
• Trending topics discovery
• Basic media mentions monitoring

06 Statista – for industry statistics and market data

I bet you have been on the Statista website at least once in your life.

It’s an online platform that provides access to a huge collection of statistics, data, and reports covering nearly endless topics and industries.

Statista aggregates data from over 22,000 sources and presents it in easy-to-understand charts, graphs, and infographics.

This makes it an essential source of information not only for startups but also for huge companies, researchers, educators, and individuals in need of reliable information for market analysis, forecasting & identifying trends, and decision-making.

So, if you need deeper insights into your industry, consumer behavior, or global market trends, Statista is the tool that can provide you with the data you need – with one important caveat.

The tool is based on secondary data. Therefore, it’s always better to double-check the information that is essential for your business decisions. Trust, but verify.

• Extensive database of stats, data, reports, graphs, and infographics
• Detailed market reports
• Interactive data visualization
• Industry & company insights
• API integration

07 Answer the Public – for visualizing customer queries and interests

Answer the Public is a handy SEO tool for anyone wanting to uncover what their potential customers are asking about online.

The tool visualizes search queries, helping you see exactly what people are interested in. This allows you to tailor your content and products to meet real customer preferences.

Technically, Answer the Public gathers data from search engines and presents them in a visual map, showing the most common questions and concerns about your company, competitors, or industry.

How can startups benefit from this tool?

Used properly, Answer the Public allows you to identify market trends quickly, discover what matters most to your audience, and refine your communication strategy.

• Visual representation of customer queries
• Insights into trending questions
• Content inspiration to create targeted marketing messaging
• CPC estimations
• Search behavior comparison

08 SurveyMonkey – for creating surveys and gathering feedback

It’s not a secret knowledge that gathering primary data is one of the best market research methods. And here, SurveyMonkey enters the stage.

SurveyMonkey is an AI-boosted tool for startups that need to do primary market research and gather insights directly from their focus groups.

It allows you to create, distribute, and analyze surveys quickly and easily, helping you understand your prospects and existing customers’ preferences, satisfaction, and needs.

So, SurveyMonkey allows you to collect valuable data about your specific market dynamics and analyze the results in real time.

Such primary research is absolutely crucial for startups looking to refine their products, improve customer service, adjust business strategy, or validate new ideas.

What about AI?

Well, the tool created the artificial intelligence assistant called SurveyMonkey Genius.

It can create a survey from a prompt, score your survey, and give recommendations to make it even more accurate for your market research purposes.

• Easy survey creation and distribution
• Customizable survey templates
• Survey recipients’ segmentation
• AI SurveyMonkey Genius

09 Tableau – for visualizing and analyzing complex data sets

The market research process generates a lot of data. Digging through them might be a time-consuming and frustrating process. Therefore, you need a tool to organize it into a more digestible form.

Moreover, by turning raw data into clear graphs and charts, you can easily spot patterns and identify trends that might otherwise go unnoticed.

With that in mind, let me introduce you to Tableau.

Tableau is a data visualization tool perfect for startups needing to make sense of complex market data.

It allows you to create interactive and shareable dashboards, turning raw data into visual insights that are easy to understand.

Tableau’s customization options enable you to tailor your dashboards to focus on the metrics that matter most to your startup.

Whether you need to track KPIs, compare market segments, or present data to stakeholders, the tool gives you the flexibility to design visuals that will meet your specific market research goals.

The huge strength of Tableau is its drag-and-drop interface. With it, you can quickly build dashboards that provide real-time insights, helping you stay agile and responsive to market changes.

• Real-time analytics
• Easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface
• Shareable dashboards
• Integrates with multiple data sources

10 Make My Persona – for creating detailed customer personas

Make My Persona is a free tool belonging to HubSpot’s suite of marketing tools that helps you create detailed buyer personas for your business.

Why should you even care? And what’s the point of creating buyer personas for market research?

Well, creating personas is like building a roadmap to understand your customers better so you can serve them better, which is key to growing your startup.

Makes My Persona guides you through the process of building these personas step by step.

It asks you the right questions about your ideal customers, such as their age, job, interests, and challenges, so you can create a clear and detailed profile of who they are.

Then, Makes My Persona generates a personalized, easy-to-use template to refer to whenever you launch a new marketing campaign.

This ensures your efforts are always in line with the needs and preferences of your ideal customers, making your marketing more focused and effective.

• Customizable Persona Templates
• Easy download and share
• User-friendly process of creating buyer personas

I personally tested all the tools on the list – from Brand24 and its impressive media monitoring capabilities to Makes My Persona’s intuitive persona-building process – and recommend them with all my heart!

These tools provide the data and insights that truly streamline your market research process. They help you understand your business niche, competitors, audience, industry trends, and more.

Of course, no tool will replace human creativity and strategic thinking. But that’s exactly what these tools are for.

They free up your time from boring & time-consuming tasks so you can focus on what’s really important – driving innovation, making strategic plans, and leading your startup to the gate of success.

Final thoughts:

• Thorough research is crucial for avoiding common startup mistakes, like poor product-market fit and wrong marketing strategies.
• Modern market research tools l ike Brand24 have implemented AI features that streamline the whole process.
• While no tool can replace your creativity and strategic thinking, properly used market research time can free you from boring and time-consuming tasks.

Looking for a top market research tool for your startup? Your search is over! Test Brand24 for free and check by yourself how it will change your life for the better!

Related articles

• Digital Marketing

The 13 Best Startup Marketing Tools to Use in 2024

How to Do an AI Competitor Analysis? Example & Definition [2024]

Top 10 Competitive Intelligence Tools to Use in 2024

How to Do Marketing Research in Less than 30 Minutes? Nike Case Study

• Brand Image

Brand Reputation: Strategy, Definition and Tips [Guide for 2024]

How to Prepare a Competitive Analysis Report?

How to Conduct a Brand Analysis? Track 12 Key Metrics

9 Steps to Solid Brand Awareness Strategy [2024]

What is AI Social Listening? Quick, Easy Guide for 2024

The 12 best market research tools for reliable data analysis in 2024

Market research tools help you get to grips with your market and audience, faster. Here are 12 of the best market research tools you can use today.

12 market research platforms and tools for accurate analysis

Choose the best market research software platform, which is the best tool for market research your faqs answered.

It’s the time of year again when you get to plan a trip. You only have so much to spend on your holiday, and you’ve got other people to keep the whole group happy. 

You scan Google Flights, TripAdvisor, and sneak peek on Instagram to see what people posted at the hotel you were eying. You’re doing your own market research. Because you only get to spend every dollar once, right?

Launch your next product with a data-driven strategy

Attest’s market research platform comes complete with a team of insights professionals who will help your team get real results from your survey data.

Similarly, when it comes to launching a new product , engaging your audience , and making important business decisions, market research is your roadmap to success, and the right tools help you get there.

Here we’ll explore some of the top market research tools and creative testing tools and industry benchmarking that can help you navigate the ever-changing landscape of your market and arrive at your destination with confidence. We’ll cover a bunch of the top market research companies in the US and beyond, so whether your research is local, national or global, make sure your research tool does the job!

Strapped for time? Here’s our TL;DR list of market research tools:

Use these top tools and market research software platforms to gather informed insights about your target audience.

With Attest, you can easily conduct regular surveys, spot trends, and work towards predicting market changes instead of just following them. This ability to predict changes in the market can help you stay ahead of your competitors and make strategic decisions to better prepare for the future. By using Attest’s market research platform, you can make your operations more bulletproof against big changes, ensuring you stay agile and adaptable in a constantly evolving market.

Attest gives you quality consumer insights that are delivered fast! And every Attest customer has a designated research manager to offer advice throughout your research project.

I love Attest. I love the speed and agility. I also really love that you guys provide a dedicated rep. I’m a marketer by trade, not a researcher, so it is nice to be able to have somebody to talk to whenever I have questions. Monica Aguilo, Senior Director – Consumer Insights, Strategy, & Social at Manscaped

Price: Find out more about Attest pricing .

Standout features:

• Dedicated research expert on standby: we want you to make the most of your research. That’s why all of our packages include a dedicated research manager who’ll help you create solid surveys, analyze your data and action your findings. There is no limit on platform support and research advice.
• Always the right audience: you get access to 125 million people in 59 countries. But go ahead and make your survey audience as niche as you need! You can layer different targeting specs to make sure you’re getting super-relevant results.
• Highest data quality: our sampling approach gives you the reliable answers you need from the people you’re looking to speak to. We use a mixed-methodology approach, meaning every survey is answered by multiple high-quality sample sources. Add to that three layers of quality control, both human and machine-learning-led, and you can confidently use your data for business decisions .

Best uses: you want to launch a survey for solid market research . Whether it be a competitive analysis, concept testing, consumer profiling or anything else—Attest has you covered. If you are looking for full support, we’re here for you. Check out our free market research survey templates and get started in seconds!

Turn insights into action with Attest

Our cutting-edge consumer insights platform is cost-effective, easy to use, and truly global. You’ll also get dedicated support from our Customer Research Team to make sure that you get the most valuable insights from your audience.

2. Google Trends

Price: Google Trends is a completely free market research tool!

• Search term analysis over time: imagine being able to track the rise and fall of a trend in real-time, like a stock market chart for search terms. With Google Trends, you can do just that. You can see how frequently a term is being searched and where in the world it’s most popular.
• Related topics and queries: want to know what your customers are thinking about? Check out the “related topics” and “related queries” features. This will give you an idea of the other search terms that are closely related to your original search term, giving you a glimpse into the minds of your target audience.
• Comparative keyword research: with the ability to compare multiple search terms, you can see how your brand stacks up against the competition, or even find new opportunities for growth.

Best uses: the main use case for Google Trends is to see market trends evolve over time. You can easily uncover basic data on how interest in a particular product, brand or industry changes over time. It’s a great starting place for market research to see what direction to go in.

Price : You can book a demo with Latana to find out how much it would cost for your business.

• Industry benchmarking: Latana helps you understand where your brand ranks in your entire industry. You can easily compare your own KPI data against your competitors in an interactive dashboard. They’ve got data from hundreds of industries and thousands of brands.
• Mobile-first micro surveys: with Latana you can conduct your own market research using mobile-optimized surveys. They have a reach of over 6 billion smartphone users, which you can access through in-app surveys.
• MRP algorithm for data quality: Latana uses machine learning to select the right audience for you.

Best uses: Latana is great for quick surveys with short and simple questions. It’s used for brand tracking as well.

4. Pollfish

Price : The concept testing feature starts from $1 per completed survey. A basic plan starts at $95 and allows you to collect up to 100 completed surveys with up to 5 questions.

• AI-powered surveys: tell AI what you want to know, and it will automatically create a survey for you.
• Mobile-optimized surveys: Pollfish has a mobile-first approach, meaning your survey will land on the smartphone of your users.
• Easy concept testing: Pollfish has a feature that lets you test whether your logo is giving you the responses you’re looking for from your target audience.

Best uses: Pollfish is great for short and sweet surveys, for instance for concept testing or brand tracking.

Price: the cheapest Solo plan allows you to do social listening and publishing, and you can set up 2 basic alerts for up to 5,000 mentions. That all starts at just $41 per month.

• Real-time social media monitoring: mention is like having a live news feed for your brand. You can track conversations and mentions of your brand on social media and the web, and find out what people are saying about you, without having to go look for it.
• Competitive analysis: mention doesn’t just monitor what people are saying about you. You can complete your market research by adding what your target audience is saying about your biggest and smaller competitors, to paint a better picture of where you stand.
• Industry tracker: mention comes with a retail and finance industry tracker, allowing you to track live online conversations around trending topics.

Best uses: your market research focuses on what your target market thinks about your brand or about competitors. This is perfect for market research revolving around branding, marketing campaigns and customer experiences.

Price: there’s no mention of pricing on the website, so book a demo to find out more.

• Scalable focus group: Remesh works like a scalable focus group. You can launch a live conversation with an audience that is relevant to you, with up to 1,000 participants at once.
• Live AI analysis: ask in-depth questions to a lot of people at once and let AI do the analytics part. The Remesh AI will uncover trends and themes, compare responses and segment your audience, all automatically.
• Different question types: you can keep the conversation flowing with open-ended questions and polls, and even add visuals to make it more clear what you are asking about.

Best uses: Remesh is ideal for concept testing and innovation processes. It works well if you want to go deep, like in a one-on-one, but need to talk to a lot of people in your target market at once to verify what the best decision is.

7. Heartbeat Ai

Price: Heartbeat Ai doesn’t mention any prices on their website, so book a demo to find out.

• Qualitative text analysis: Heartbeat Ai is like that friend who just knows how you feel by reading the texts you send. They’ve got a strong sentiment analysis tool that can recognize emotions and themes in your qualitative text data.
• Sophisticated sentiment analysis: Heartbeat Ai goes beyond identifying positive and negative sentiments. It can categorize text input into 9 primary emotions, 97 secondary emotions and 3 body sensations.
• Science-based: Heartbeat Ai is a market research tool made with cognitive psychology and affective neuroscience in mind

Best uses: you’re looking to uncover valuable insights on the qualitative side of market research. If you have text data and don’t have the manpower to manually read into the sentiment of it, Heartbeat Ai does the heavy lifting.

8. Answer the Public

Price: You get one free search per day, and can create a free account to unlock 3 free searches per day. If you need more, start with the individual plan for $9 per month and 100 searches per day.

Standout Features:

• Search listening: enter one or two words, a region, and watch all the adjacent topics, questions and thoughts people have about your keywords.
• Content ideas: struggling to come up with content ideas? Give in some keywords and ATP gives you a lot of related topics that will surely inspire your next piece of content.
• Data visualization: all the flat datasets you get can be turned into data visualizations for you to share with your team.

Best uses: during the ideation phase or to track specific key words and find what else people are wondering or saying about that. Also great for research for your content marketing.

9. Stravito

Price: book a demo to find out what pricing plan works best for you.

• Company content database: gather all your company knowledge in one place. Keep it organized and give people access in just a few clicks. With seamless drag-and-drop upload and a wide variety of integrations to centralize all your company knowledge.
• Intuitive UX: Stravito has a drag-and-drop upload system, uses multilingual search powered by Natural Language Processing for finding what you’re looking for, and tops it off with AI-powered content recommendations.
• Dedicated support: Stravito has a clear onboarding plan, promising to get you up and running within 6 to 8 weeks.

Best Uses: for enterprises who have a lot of knowledge, reports and data and want their employees to have easy access to this.

10. Typeform

Price: The cheapest plan starts at $21 per month, but only includes 100 responses.

• User-friendly surveys: Typeform is another survey creation tool that shows respondents one question at a time, mimicking a human conversation.
• Question formats: it’s not just what you ask, it’s how as well—that’s the philosophy at Typeform. They offer all kinds of question formats, like multiple-choice, scale ratings, and open-ended questions. Add in conditional logic to structure your survey based on a respondent’s answers.
• Ease of use: Typeform offers a bunch of pre built survey templates, which helps you to send great-looking surveys in mere minutes. And with all its integrations, you can integrate it in your workflow easily.

Best uses: you want to survey but also be on-brand. It matters to you that each survey elevates the customer experience. Your research can be both qualitative and quantitative, shorter or longer.

11. Qualtrics

Price: It will depend on which market research tools you are looking to use, so reach out to them for a custom demo.

• Survey tool with audience management: don’t have access to your own list of respondents? You can purchase access to millions of respondents through Qualtrics. If you do have your own lists, the tool will help you create neat panels.
• Analyze existing data: upload an existing data set and Qualtrics will run statistical tests and apply visualizations on it to help you make sense of the data you have, and to communicate it to stakeholders.
• A variety of market research tools: Qualtrics comes with tools to measure and analyze purchase behavior, market segmentation, competitor analysis benchmarking—to name a few.

Best uses: Qualtrics has a wide variety of market research possibilities, so if you’re very regularly doing different types of research, this platform might be a good fit for you.

If you’re looking for market research survey software, check out our list of the top 11 Qualtrics alternatives .

12. Statista

Price: you can check out some stats for free, but if you want to have full access to their best market research tools, a starter account starts at €39 per month. Access to Market Insights for one month will cost you €1,950.

• Statistical reports: if you’re wondering about certain statistics, chances are Statista has it. Pick any topic, industry, and country and find detailed reports, numbers and trusted content made by industry experts.
• Visual data: practically anyone can make sense of the data on Statista, thanks to its visualization and easily interpretable data representation.
• Consumer insights tools: With Statista Consumer Insights you get access to all kinds of market research tools and all results of the exclusive Statista surveys.

Best uses: it’s a great starting point for any research, but also a great source to support your research with trusted stats, numbers and existing market research data.

The best market research tools and market research services are the ones that help you reach your goals efficiently. Any tool is just as good as the support you can get, and that’s where Attest sets itself apart from the rest.

If you’re looking to launch market research surveys with ease and expertise combined, reach out to our team. You’ll get a dedicated research expert assigned to you that will help you get all the customer feedback and market data you need. Sign up today!

Choose the #1 market research tool

Attest gives you the best of both worlds in consumer insights: a cutting-edge platform and dedicated research expertise when you need it.

Market research tools come in all shapes and sizes. There are reporting tools that help you visualize data, survey tools that get you first-hand data and tools that give you an in-depth analysis of what’s being said about you on social media platforms. Attest gives you access to a global audience, with the power to drill down into the demographics that matter most.

It depends on the needs of your business. Always keep the desired action in mind when choosing a market research tool: what do you want to be able to decide or change after this? Then trace back which information you need to make those decisions to choose the best market research tools for your plans. Attest makes local and global market research easy.

Depending on your business’s needs, you can choose survey tools, data visualization tools, tools that help you identify trends and many other marketing tools. The best market research tools are the ones that help you reach your goals and enable your business to live up to its full potential!

If you choose the right market research tool for your goals and needs, then yes, market research tools are worth the investment. Market research tools provide your business with insights into your audience, competition and trends. This knowledge will help you minimize risks and maximize profitability in the long run. Plus, many of these tools offer features that save time and resources, such as automated survey distribution or data analysis. 

Market research is what can elevate creative ideas into powerful solutions that your customers will love and buy. It helps you uncover the information you need to reach customers better, to create marketing campaigns that are effective, and to craft products or services that will generate profit over a long period of time. Without data supporting all these elements, you’re taking big risks, and it can slow down your decision-making. Market research helps you take impactful steps, with confidence. 

Customer Research Lead 

Nick joined Attest in 2021, with more than 10 years' experience in market research and consumer insights on both agency and brand sides. As part of the Customer Research Team team, Nick takes a hands-on role supporting customers uncover insights and opportunities for growth.

Related articles

14 essential branding metrics to measure in 2023, brand tracking, 23 brand growth strategies you’ll want to steal, a step-by-step guide to product demand analysis in 2023, new product development, subscribe to our newsletter.

Fill in your email and we’ll drop fresh insights and events info into your inbox each week.

* I agree to receive communications from Attest. Privacy Policy .

You're now subscribed to our mailing list to receive exciting news, reports, and other updates!

Cookie consent

We use our own and third-party cookies to show you more relevant content based on your browsing and navigation history. Please accept or manage your cookie settings below. Here's our   cookie policy

• Product overview What is Typeform?
• Form builder Signups and orders
• Survey maker Research and feedback
• Quiz maker Trivia and product match
• Typeform for Growth For B2B marketers
• Product updates Latest feature releases
• HubSpot for Typeform Our new partner

• Human resources
• Customer success
• Acquire customers
• Get feedback
• Do research

• Help center Find quick answers
• Community Share and interact
• Contact us Speak to our team
• Partners Browse or join
• Careers Join our team

• → The 8 types of market research and ho...

The 8 types of market research and how to use them

There are eight types of marketing research you can try to stay ahead of the competition. Learn more about marketing research methods and how to use them.

Latest posts on Tips

Typeform    |    08.2024

Typeform    |    07.2024

“If you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep getting what you’ve always got.”

Doesn’t sound too threatening if you’ve always been successful, right?

Continuing to do what you’ve always done means you’ll fall behind—and probably fade to darkness—to where all the forgotten brands go.

Take Kodak. They were a major player in photography for decades—remember? When digital photography boomed, Kodak kept doing what they always did. Their business floundered and people forgot about them. Well, everyone apart from Pitbull.

Now, look at Fujifilm, one of Kodak’s biggest competitors. They did the opposite and looked for ways to apply their expertise in film to the technology of the new millennium instead. Their company is still going strong.

The same goes for research. If you’re doing the same old types of market research, speaking to the same old people, and doing the same old tired surveys—you’re already behind.

How do you decide what kind of market research you need to do? It all comes down to what you need to know and what your business goals are.

In this article, we’ll explain the various types of market research you can use to solve issues and challenges in your business. We’ll throw you a freebie, too, and provide some market research tips about when to use each strategy.

Let’s get you ahead of the curve.

1. Brand research

Brand research helps with creating and managing a company’s brand, or identity. A company’s brand is the images, narratives, and characteristics people associate with it.

When to use it

Brand research can be used at every stage in a business’s lifecycle, from creation to new product launches and re-branding. There are at least seven types of brand research:

Brand advocacy: How many of your customers are willing to recommend your brand?

Brand awareness : Does your target market know who you are and consider you a serious option?

Brand loyalty: Are you retaining customers?

Brand penetration: What is the proportion of your target market using your brand?

Brand perception : What do people think of as your company’s identity or differentiating qualities?

Brand positioning: What is the best way to differentiate your brand from others in the consumer’s mind and articulate it in a way that resonates?

Brand value: How much are people willing to pay for an experience with your brand over another?

How to do it

A researcher will use several types of market research methods to assess your and your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses. Generally, they will conduct competitor research, both qualitative and quantitative, to get a picture of the overall marketplace. Focus groups and interviews can be used to learn about their emotions and associations with certain brands.

Market research surveys are useful to determine features and benefits that differentiate you from competitors . These are then translated into emotionally compelling consumer language.

2. Campaign effectiveness

This type of market research is designed to evaluate whether your advertising messages are reaching the right people and delivering the desired results. Successful campaign effectiveness research can help you sell more and reduce customer acquisition costs.

It’s estimated people see up to 5,000 advertising messages each day. That means attention is a scarce resource, so campaign effectiveness research should be used when you need to spend your advertising dollars effectively.

Campaign effectiveness research depends on which stage of the campaign you use it in (ideally, it’s all of them!). Quantitative research can be conducted to provide a picture of how your target market views advertising and address weaknesses in the advertising campaign.

3. Competitive analysis

Competitive analysis allows you to assess your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses in the marketplace, providing you with fuel to drive a competitive advantage.

No business exists in a vacuum—competitive analysis is an integral part of any business and market plan. Whether you’re just getting started, moving into a new market, or doing a health check of your business, a competitive analysis will be invaluable.

A researcher will typically choose a few of your main competitors and analyze things like their marketing strategy, customer perceptions, revenue or sales volume, and so on.

Secondary sources such as articles, references, and advertising are excellent sources of competitive information; however, primary research, such as mystery shopping and focus groups, can offer valuable information on customer service and current consumer opinions.

4. Consumer insights

Consumer insights research does more than tell you about who your customers are and what they do. It reveals why customers behave in certain ways and helps you leverage that to meet your business goals.

Knowing your customers deeply is integral to creating a strategic marketing plan. This type of market research can help you anticipate consumer needs, spark innovation, personalize your marketing, solve business challenges, and more.

Consumer insights research should be specific to your business—it’s about getting to know your target audience and customers. Various market research methods can be used, such as interviews, ethnography, survey research, social monitoring, and customer journey research.

Here are some of the characteristics you should understand through consumer insights research:

Purchase habits

Interests, hobbies, passions

Personal and professional information

How they consume media and advertising

5. Customer satisfaction research

Customer satisfaction research is a type of market research that measures customers’ experiences with products or services, specifically looking at how those meet, exceed, or fail to live up to their expectations.

Customer satisfaction is a strong indicator of customer retention and overall business performance. Successful customer satisfaction research should help you understand what your customers like, dislike, and feel needs improvement. You can use this type of market research to look at the quality and design of products, speed and timeliness of delivery, staff and service reliability, knowledge, and friendliness, market price, and value for money.

There are several ways to measure customer satisfaction, most commonly using surveys. An NPS or Voice of the Customer Survey can help you measure customer loyalty. Customer Effort Scoring measures how satisfied people are with customer service or problem resolution. CSAT is any survey that measures customer satisfaction , typically measured using Likert scale surveys . They can be conducted at different points in the customer experience, allowing deeper insight into that moment.

6. Customer segmentation research

Customer segmentation studies aim to divide markets or customers into smaller groups or personas with similar characteristics to enable targeted marketing. By understanding how people in each category behave, you can understand how each influences revenue.

Customer segmentation research is best used if you’re ready to give customers individualized experiences. Not every customer in your target market is the same. The more you understand each specific persona, the easier it is to focus on delivering personalized marketing, build loyal relations, price products effectively, and forecast how new products and services will perform in each segment.

Market researchers use four characteristics to segment customers.

Demographics: demographic information such as age, gender, family status, education, household income, occupation and so on

Geography: where people live, from cities and countries to whether they are city dwellers or suburbanites

Psychographics: socioeconomic status, class, lifestyle, personality traits, generation, interests, hobbies, etc.

Behavior: brand affinity, consumption and shopping habits, spending, etc.

A researcher will identify your current customers and collect data about them through various market research methods, such as surveys, database research, website analytics, interviews, and focus groups. The aim is to gather as much information as possible.

7. Product development

Market research for product development involves using customer knowledge to inform the entire process of creating or improving a product, service, or app and bringing it to market.

Innovation is hard work. A quick Google will tell you that 80–95% of new products fail every year. Conducting market research for product and app development helps minimize the risk of a new product or change going bust as it enters the market. There are three stages where you can use market research:

Conception: The moment you’re thinking about adding something new, market research can find market opportunities and provide insights into customer challenges or their jobs-to-be-done, so you can find a way to fill the gap.

Formation: Once you have an idea, market researchers can help you turn it into a concept that can be tested. You can learn more about strategizing pricing, testing advertising and packaging, value proposition, and so on.

Introduction: Market research can help you gauge attitudes toward the product once it’s in the market and adapt your messaging as it rolls out.

Keep making the product better or find opportunities to introduce it to new markets.

Product development research will utilize different market research methods, depending on the goal of the research. A researcher could present focus groups with product concepts and listen to their opinions, conduct interviews to learn more about their pain points, or perform user testing to see how they interact with an app or website.

8. Usability testing

Usability testing is concerned with understanding how customers use your products in real time. It can involve physical products, like a new blender, or digital products like a website or app.

Usability testing is helpful when you need to detect problems or bugs in early prototypes or beta versions before launching them. It typically costs far less to test a product or service beforehand than to pull a flawed product off the shelves or lose sales because of poor functionality.

There are several types of usability tests, which vary based on whether you’re testing a physical or digital product.

Journey testing involves observing the customer experience on an app or website and monitoring how they perform. This type of study can be done online

Eye tracking studies monitor where people’s eyes are drawn. Generally, they are conducted on websites and apps, but can also be done in stores to analyze where people look while shopping

Learn ability studies quantify the learning curve over time to see which problems people encounter after repeating the same task

Click tracking follows users’ activity on websites to evaluate the linking structure of a website

Checklist testing involves giving users tasks to perform and recording or asking them to review their experience

Combining types of market research with Typeform

When it comes to market research, you need to ask yourself what business challenge or question you’re trying to address. Then, select the appropriate methods and tools, such as market research automation , to simplify your process.From there, the world of useful data and actionable insights will open to you.

About the author

We're Typeform - a team on a mission to transform data collection by bringing you refreshingly different forms.

Liked that? Check these out:

Make your next market research survey count with these 9 tips

Learn how to get meaningful feedback and strengthen existing customer relationships.

Paul Campillo    |    04.2016

Market research: What it is, how to use it, + examples

Market research allows you to categorize your target audience to better understand your consumers. Learn more about how to do market research here.

Typeform    |    05.2024

What is brand perception? How to measure and improve it

Typeform    |    03.2024

Alex Birkett

The 12 Best Market Research Tools in 2024

Last Updated on March 7, 2024 by Alex Birkett

Understanding the problems your customers have and what they expect requires you to make time for and invest in market research.

However, market research comes with its challenges.

For example, finding honest respondents who are willing to take part in your surveys and interviews is hard. As if that’s not enough, you need to choose tools that will help you collect and analyze the data you collect and get buy-in from other departments to implement your findings.

So even if you want to gather more customer insights or even identify opportunities in the market, these challenges force you to gradually push market research into the backburner.

The result? A mismatch in what you offer and what customers expect:

Image source

While you can’t wish away the challenges that come with market research, using market research tools goes a long way in solving these challenges. These tools help you collect accurate feedback from customers and save time when analyzing the data you collect.

And in this post, I’ve compiled a list of 12 market research tools to help make market research easier for you as you gather useful insights from your customers.

But first, let’s do some housekeeping to make sure we’re on the same page.

What is a Market Research Tool?

A market research tool is a software application that allows you to study market trends, study your competitors, collect customer insights, and feedback about your product or service.

The data you collect using market research tools helps to inform your marketing strategy, improve the product you’re selling, and understand how your customers think and feel about your brand.

Market research tools come with different capabilities. Some help you interact with customers by asking them questions and listen to what they are saying about your brand online.

Other market research tools allow you to study how customers behave online and spy on your competitors to know what they’re up to.

So in addition to helping you collect accurate feedback from customers and save time when analyzing the data you collect, market research tools also help you to:

• Eliminate availability bias by providing you with an accurate picture of what’s going on in your customers’ minds
• Align different departments so market research stops existing in a silo and get everyone’s buy-in when implementing the insights you get after data analysis
• Understand industry trends to help you adapt and position yourself to meet customer needs and expectations
• Understand how customers behave during the buyer’s journey to help you deliver a better customer experience

That said, deciding the kind of market research tool to use isn’t something you have to figure out alone. There are a lot of options out there that provide lots of information about your market allowing you to make better marketing decisions. Here’s a list of the 12 best market research tools I recommend:

The 12 Best Market Research Tools

• SurveyMonkey
• BrandMentions
• Think With Google

1. Qualtrics

As of 2018, Qualtrics was one of the most favorite tools for market research, with 40% of marketers using it to collect data and uncover useful insights from their data.

And it’s easy to see why, given that it is an all-in-one market research platform, taking care of all your market research needs.

Qualtrics is powered by AI and automation meaning that speed, efficiency, and accuracy are baked into its DNA.

Looking through the tool, you’ll find a wide range of features and options available for you when conducting market research and uncovering useful insights from the data you collect:

Image Source

For instance, there’s product development and pricing , which allows you to involve customers during critical stages in product development. Use this feature to:

• Evaluate product-market-fit to avoid saturating the market with a product customers don’t need
• Test different product concepts to make sure your product resonates with customers
• Test different pricing points and models to find out what customers are willing to pay for
• Test what packaging customers prefer to align it with what they desire

And the best part is that Qualtrics allows you to collect all this information from 125 sources and 27 different channels. This makes sure that you have enough variety in the data you collect and avoid availability bias;

As you collect insights from these sources, there’s also iQ , which uses AI to help you uncover unique insights from your data faster, helping you save time.

I also love the fact that in addition to offering a market research tool, Qualtrics also comes with a flexible service model that allows you to either:

• Outsource your research to market research experts from Qualtrics or
• Work together with a market research expert to guide you through the technical details of market research using Qualtrics

Qualtrics also provides on-demand training to users helping them learn how to make the most out of the different features the tool provides. If you’re a researcher looking to grow your career, Quatrics provides certifications to give you the credibility you need when reaching out to and working with your clients.

When it comes to integrations , Qualtrics goes beyond the basics by providing you with a wide range of tools that integrate with it. Take a look:

So if you’re looking to dive deep into market research to collect customer feedback without spending too much time on the process to uncover useful insights, Qualtrics is one of the best market research tools around.

G2 Score: 4.3 / 5

2. SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey comes with three core solutions for large scale market research using surveys:

• Market knowledge
• Product innovation
• Brand and creative development.

Depending on the information you want to get from your market, each of these solutions comes with different options to help you get the feedback you need from your customers through running better surveys.

For example, if you’re looking to understand your market better, use the tool to track current trends in your industry in specific product categories. You can also collect data to help you segment your customers, their preferences, and buying habits.

When using surveys during market research, three elements determine the quality of insights you get: the questions you ask, the people you ask, and how you analyze the responses you get.

Putting these three elements together to create effective surveys can be overwhelming, but you don’t have to figure out everything from scratch.

SurveyMonkey has account managers to help you set things up fast, start your research as soon as possible, and in-house market research experts to help you design effective surveys.

And when it comes to ensuring that you get high-quality data from your surveys, SurveyMonkey:

• Verifies the location and emails of respondents to prevent fraud and duplicate responses in the same survey
• Works with trusted partners who work with panelists in more than 130 countries
• Limits the number of survey invitations to prevent professional survey taking

SurveyMonkey also integrates with more than 100 tools and apps, making it easy for you to optimize your research process:

After creating your survey and sending it out to your respondents, SurveyMonkey uses AI to analyze your responses in real-time.

It also comes with an inbuilt word cloud tool to help you analyze survey responses and identify commonly used words and phrases.

Word clouds cover blindspots that you may not uncover through observation alone.

SurveyMonkey’s AI analysis helps you uncover insights from the responses, their themes, and the emotions behind these responses, helping you derive better insights from your survey responses. Once you’re done with the analysis, SurveyMonkey allows you to compare your insights with industry benchmarks for accuracy.

Another cool feature is the Audience panel , which Wrike, a product management platform used to conduct a survey, analyze the responses they got, and uncover insights that helped them create viral content. Here’s their story;

So whether you’re just getting started with marketing research or you want to refine the information you have about your target market, SurveyMonkey will come in handy to help you get the insights you need.

G2 Score: 4.4/5.0

3. Typeform

It is impossible to have a conversation about market research tools and fail to mention Ty

They’ve always been a crowd favorite in small business circles, given that they make it easy for you to create and manage your market research process using online surveys.

And going by Typeform’s tagline, “there’s a better way to ask” they’ve put a premium on creating simple online surveys that your customers are willing to complete. For starters, the average survey completion rate reduces as the number of survey questions increases;

Given that you’re not the only one sending out surveys to your customers a 65% response rate seems ideal. Also, anything more than eight questions per survey will lead to survey fatigue and a lower completion rate.

So if you’ve struggled with getting a good response rate and your surveys have less than eight questions, here’s how Typeform will help improve your survey completion rate;

It offers you different forms and survey templates for the different types of surveys you want to run:

Using each of these templates, Typeform ensures that respondents see and answer only one question at a time:

From a visual perspective, a single question with multiple choices isn’t overwhelming for your respondents. It also helps them build the momentum they need to answer all your questions by answering one question at a time.

Your respondents have different preferences and to make the survey relevant to them, you want to make sure your questions are relevant to them. Use logic jumps in Typeform to present the next question a respondent sees depending on the answers they provide:

The result is that your surveys will be shorter and you’ll get high-quality responses.

Embed Typeform on relevant pages on your website as a popup, on your sidebar, slider, a full-page embed, among other options to help you get the responses you need from your web visitors:

I also like VideoAsk , one of their latest features which lets you take things a step further by recording your survey questions. In addition to giving the survey a human touch, you can provide more context around each question to help your respondents better understand what you need from them:

Note that respondents also have an option to respond using video, text, or record an audio message. If they’ve got a lot to say, it won’t feel like they have to do a lot of work typing a long response yet they can record an audio or video.

If you’re running a small business, looking for a simple tool that will help you conduct market research to collect customer feedback and valuable insights, keep things simple, and save money while at it, then Typeform should be your first port of call.

G2 Score: 4.5 / 5

4. Statista

If you want to keep up with the latest trends in your industry, forecasts, surveys, and studies, then you’ll love Statista .

It presents valuable insights from the data they collect using neat charts and a high level summary of the key takeaways for the information you’re looking for. Here, there’s no learning curve to help you understand how Statista works.

Start by entering what you need to know about into the search bar and wait for it to provide you with the insights you’re looking for:

Then choose what kind of insights you want from the different categories you see:

Given that market trends evolve, Statista is transparent about the insights they present. Every statistic comes with a date showing when the data was collected, the number of respondents, their region, and demographic information. You also have different options to download the information you get:

You also have access to their market outlooks feature that provides you with analysis of trends from more than 150 countries:

And if you’re looking to understand what drives consumer behavior, take a look at their 2021 global consumer survey :

Accessing ready-made insights might not be the same as conducting your own surveys and analysing your responses to come up with unique insights.

However, since Statista provides you with the latest trends and insights about a given topic then you’ll have an easier time when conducting surveys because you have background information about a topic you want to dig deeper.

For example, you might feel the need to dig deeper to understand the why behind the growing revenues from email marketing. With all the information Statista provides, you already know who to ask (business owners) and the kind of questions to ask e.g. “how do you use email marketing to grow your businesses?”

Statista also provides a done for you market research service for those who don’t have the resources or time to conduct research and analyse their data.

Using a combination of quantitative, qualitative, and analytical research methods, their done for your research service comes with the following options:

• Brand tracking and image studies
• Market monitoring and tracking
• Marketing and PR studies
• Price and product research
• Target group and cluster analysis
• Customer and employee satisfaction
• Market potential and forecast calculation
• B2B market research

For example, their target group and cluster analysis research service provide you with the information you need about your target market, their buying patterns, and their segments.

This information allows you to narrow down your targeting and get a better ROI from your marketing campaigns.

Putting it all together, you’ll realize that Statista isn’t only a pretty tool with a database of insights to help you with market research to identify market trends.

More than 23,000 companies have worked with them led by Adobe, T-Mobile, PayPal, and Samsung to gain insights about their respective markets to improve their marketing strategies.

5. SimilarWeb

Although SimilarWeb has always come across as a website traffic and analytics tool, it has evolved into a formidable market research tool in recent years.

Take a look at a brand like redBus — an online ticket booking service for buses — that has been using it for competitive research and keeping up with industry trends, and it’s clear that SimilarWeb is a solid market research tool.

SimilarWeb has a ton of data from different websites, apps, and industries that allows you to access the information you need about your market such as emerging trends, different industry players, their size, and market share.

So if you’re looking to enter into a new market, you’re going to get enough information that helps you identify opportunities in the market, accurately evaluate market size to see if it is ideal for your product and business goals.

If the information you get from the tool aligns with your business objectives, you’ll then start working on a product launch strategy to enter new markets and establish yourself as a key player.

Similarweb also provides you with an intuitive interface that grows with your needs, giving you control over how you want to access the information you need about your market.

Use the dashboard to create custom categories to track trends you’re interested in to help shape your ongoing marketing strategy.

You can also sort through your data to identify critical insights such as traffic, engagement, and conversions to help you know how your competitors are doing as you compare that with your own performance.

One of SimilarWeb’s cool features is conversion funnel and customer journey analytics which allows you to zoom into your customer’s buying journey to see the different touchpoints, the actions they take, and the channels that lead to conversions.

This information allows you to optimize their buying experience by being present on relevant channels and allocate your resources where they’re needed to help buyers move to the next stage in their journey.

You can also track trends in product searches, to see how you compare against other industry players, and the level of your brand awareness;

With all these features, you’re not only getting a market research tool. SimilarWeb’s market research features will help align your sales and marketing teams to help optimize marketing efforts and improve conversions because they have access to the information they need about your target market.

G2 Score: 4.4 / 5.0

6. BuzzSumo

Buzzsumo is primarily designed for brands that want to identify high performing content in their niche and find influencers they want to collaborate with.

In fact, most users report that the tool has come in handy during market research to inform their content marketing strategy , saving them lots of time in the process.

As Hannah Smith from Distilled puts it, “Historically discovering the most shared content on competitor sites was a slow and painful process – crawl the site with your crawler of choice, clean up your URLs, then use the social APIs to pull back social share data on each URL. With BuzzSumo you can search by domain and modify that search with a topic.”

Now, she uses the tool to identify relevant content that resonates with her target audience and identify gaps in existing content, fast.

Some of the features that help you with during market research features to strengthen your content marketing efforts are such as:

• Competitor intelligence
• Content strategy
• Crisis alerts
• Influencer research
• Video marketing

Buzzsumo’s content strategy feature allows you to find popular content and topics from different sources and angles organized in six different categories:

These categories help paint a clear picture as to what topics are already resonating with your audience. With this information, it is easier to narrow down and choose relevant topics that will help you gain traction.

When it comes to identifying gaps in existing content, Buzzsumo helps you look at the content your competitors are publishing to:

• Identify their content topics and angles,
• Understand how deep they go when covering these topics,
• See how they distribute their content, and
• Identify the mistakes they’re making to help you avoid repeating them.

Besides that, BuzzSumo seems to be catching up with growing demand for video content by providing you with insights to help you create better video content.

Use the video marketing feature to identify videos that are already doing well in your niche.

You’ll also see relevant statistics such as popular topics, the length of the video, and the best channels to post these videos.

With this information, you’re going to create a better video marketing strategy that complements your content marketing efforts to help you get the results you’re looking for,.

So if you’re looking for a tool to help you with market research to understand what content works for your target audience, how to distribute it using the right channels, and work with the right influencers to promote it, then Buzzsumo is one of the best tools I would recommend.

G2 Score: 4.5 / 5.0

The kind of experience users have on your website and product determines your conversion rate and whether you retain users who sign up to use your product.

Loop11 helps you identify what elements get in the way of providing a great user experience on your website and products so that you know what to improve upon to increase engagement and conversions.

Clients cut across all industries from government institutions, retailers, educational institutions, digital agencies, software companies, and big corporations.

If you fall into any of these categories then Loop11 will come in handy in market research by revealing how your target market interacts with your website or products.

Here are some of the notable features:

Choose moderated or unmoderated testing options then Identify users who will perform real tasks on your website, understand what they do once they visit your website, what hurdles get in the way of conversions, and why they leave.

With moderated user testing , you (or someone on your team) interacts with 5-8 users as they navigate through your website, collecting their thoughts, views and studying their non-verbal cues;

You can also test different designs to see which one works better for users depending on the information you collect during testing.

Loop11 also allows you to test how your website renders on different devices, allowing you to optimize for usability depending on the device a customer is using when visiting your website.

Take things a step further with its benchmarking feature to compare how well optimized your website for usability as compared to your competitors.

In addition to knowing what works for your web visitors, benchmarking helps you reverse engineer what your competitors are doing, steer clear of their mistakes and stand out from the pack.

To avoid spending a lot of time developing new products that users don’t like, use Loop11 to test your prototype and wireframes and get feedback on what users expect, solve design issues, and improve on your concepts faster.

Loop11 will provide you with a range of metrics such as heatmaps, time spent on tasks, task completion rate, heatmaps among others so you have enough information to uncover useful insights about how users behave on your website and apps.

If you don’t have your own participants to work with when conducting user testing, use Loop11’s panel of verified participants to save you time and money in the process.

You also have an option of working with their consultants to guide you through user testing or even conduct testing on your behalf.

Finally, one thing I like about this tool is its flexibility. If you want to run tests for a few months, then that’s fine. There’s no contract you’ll have to sign forcing you to commit to using the tool beyond the scope of your needs. Start with their free trial and if youreal-time, like it, start using the tool and enjoy all these features without tons of red tape.

G2 Score: 3.5 / 5.0

8. BrandMentions

As a market research tool, BrandMentions helps you identify what your prospects and customers are saying about your brand online to help inform your social media marketing strategy.

Using BrandMentions’ Boolean search, combine different search terms and include modifiers such as NOT, AND, OR to capture every conversation that’s going about your brand and different topics in your niche.

You can also include negative keywords to help you get hold of mentions that fall outside your keywords to get comprehensive results as some people might use variations of your brand name or make spelling mistakes when talking about your brand.

Most of your prospects are on a buying journey and sometimes, reaching out to friends on social media platforms for advice helps them make informed buying decisions.

Use BrandMentions’ competitor spying feature to keep tabs with what your competitors are saying and what other people are saying about them online.

The information it provides allows you to identify potential business opportunities and fill in existing gaps in the market. Take a look at this example below:

If you follow the thread, you’ll find some suggesting some of the tools they like and are already using and others share their views on tools they didn’t like.

However, the highlight of the conversation is when we have brands like Zoho showing up when mentioned to contribute to the conversation or thank someone who recommended them.

So if you’ve set alerts inside BrandMentions tracking HubSpot, ActiveCampaign, and other marketing automation tools, then you’ll be among the first few to notice that there are opportunities with offering integrations, more features, and even friendlier pricing to get more customers.

To make it easier for you to conduct research and keep track of all the information you get, BrandMentions allows you to organize your searches into dashboards.

In your dashboard, filter your data by location, language, number of mentions, and trending hashtags to keep things organized.

These dashboards are shareable so other team members can access different dashboards, and assign custom roles for each team member making it easier for you to share the data you collect without having to export anything from the tool.

BrandMentions also comes with a sentiment analysis feature to help you understand the relationship between what people are talking about and how they feel to help you get in touch with their needs and improve your communications strategy on all your channels.

G2 Score: 4.6 / 5.0

9. Think with Google

Google Trends and Google PageSpeed Insights sound familiar, right?

What you might not be aware of is that these two tools are part of Think With Google , a market research tool that provides you with different market insights to help improve your marketing strategy.

These insights are divided into four categories:

• Consumer insights
• Marketing strategies
• Future of Marketing

What you see in each category varies depending on where you’re searching from as Think With Google wants to make sure you’re accessing relevant information.

For example, consumer insights provides case studies and trends on consumer behavior and insights on the consumer’s buying journey in form of reports, articles, presents, and videos.

Next, we have tools that come in to complement the information you get from other categories.

If you’re in e-commerce, use the Rising Retail Categories to identify different products that people are searching for, the regions they are searching from, and the terms they use to search;

I also like that Rising Retail Categories provides monthly results given that Google users search for different items during different times of the year.

And if you want to enter a new market, use Market Finder to help you narrow down to specific markets that have lots of potential. Here’s the Market Finder tool in action:

Step 1: Enter your URL and let the tool identify categories for you

Step 2: Review and confirm your categories. Feel free to add more categories if you want to:

Step 3: Once you’ve confirmed your categories, go ahead and choose where you want to see your market from the options available. Chose globally or in the region you’re searching from;

4: Choose the market you want to enter from the recommendations you get from Market Finder;

You’ll note that Think with Google isn’t as sophisticated as other market research tools we’re talking about here. However, that doesn’t diminish its usefulness in providing you with information about your target market.

After all, Google is the biggest search engine meaning that most of the information it provides is from everyone who uses it for search purposes.

10. SEMrush

In addition to offering five different toolkits that help you manage all your marketing activities in one place, SEMrush also offers market analysis tools that help you understand your market better and build effective marketing funnels.

To do this, you need to:

• Understand your audience, their needs, and expectations to align your content with what they’re looking for
• Study what your competitors are doing to understand how they build brand awareness, engage prospects, and convert their leads.

Use the market explorer by SEMrush to identify who your competitors are, your growth opportunities, and what products to introduce in the market;

Then study their traffic sources and see how that compares with your traffic sources;

But don’t stop there. Dig deeper to understand how heavily your competitors rely on each traffic source;

Armed with this information, you can then decide what channels to focus on and the techniques you’ll use to get more traffic to help you build brand awareness and outrank your competitors on search engines.

When analyzing a new market to expand your reach, Market Explorer provides you with demographic and geographical information about your target market.

It will also provide you with the topics your audience is interested in to help you create content that keeps them engaged and earns their trust.

And if you’re managing a wide range of products or even operating in different geographical regions, then you’ll need to customize competitor tracking for easier analysis.

SEMrush allows you to create custom lists depending on your needs, add competitors then start tracking their activity.

The other main feature is traffic analytics, which comes with a subfolders report to help you dive deeper into a competitor’s pages to:

• Identify pages in your competitor’s sites that drive the most traffic to identify the topic or new product your audience is interested in
• Identify the techniques they are using to drive traffic to these pages and use them to expand or improve your traffic acquisition strategy.

The traffic analytics tools also provide you with information about user journeys to help you understand the path buyers take on their journey before buying from you.

These insights help you identify gaps that your marketing funnel needs to fill in with relevant content and channels where you need to show up through PR and online advertising to drive qualified traffic to your website.

With Crayon , you’ll find everything you need to conduct competitive research to improve your product and brand positioning in the market.

Unlike other competitive research tools, Crayon goes above and beyond to provide different almost everything you need to know about your competitors:

And it doesn’t stop there. Crayon allows you to keep track of the A/B tests your competitors are conducting and the new landing pages they’re publishing to help you stay a step ahead of them or even find ways to outdo their efforts.

Using its intuitive interface, customize your dashboard to access all your data so you need and share it with team members using email or Slack to ensure that you have a single source of truth and make it easier to make decisions without unnecessary friction.

Before deciding which tool to use, prospects have two or more options on their list to choose from. How do you make sure you stand out from your competitors especially when you have overlapping features?

By using Crayon’s sales battle cards which provide you with insights about your competitors, their product, and ideas to help you win a deal against a competitor. Using their Salesforce CRM integration, sales reps can access these battle cards in one place, helping them to stay organized and efficient.

Michael Greene, Klaviyo’s Product Marketing Manager has nothing but praises for the battle cards they use from Crayon;

“I always have Crayon running in the background, providing me with constant competitive updates that I can reference at any moment…Our competitive win rates have increased as much as 59% since rolling out Crayon Battlecards.”

You can also customize these battle cards and add or remove different elements that your team needs to focus on to improve conversions.

Crayon constantly updates these battle cards such that whenever a competitor introduces a new feature, changes their pricing, or even enters a new market you’ll know.

That means your sales team is always aware of where you excel against your competitors and are able to provide a clear picture of what you offer to help prospects make an informed decision.

Besides, all this information inside a sales battle card improves productivity because sales reps no longer have to figure things out from scratch whenever they have to attend a sales call.

I also like that Crayon has email alerts to keep you in the loop about what you need to know about your competitors. Crayon analysts also share their insights and trends you need to pay attention to in your industry to improve your brand positioning.

When using Hotjar as a market research tool to collect customer feedback and analyze issues with your product or website, there are four main features you’ll be interested in:

• Incoming feedback

For example, if you want to understand the role your content plays in your buyer’s journey,

conduct a survey to understand what’s going on from their perspective.

This information gives you insights into what works for your audience and an in-depth understanding of what problems that your content helps them solve.

This tool also allows you to collect real time feedback from users, know pages that users like interacting with and important pages as well as valuable pages that aren’t getting the attention they deserve:

Hotjar allows you to collect feedback in more than 40 languages so you’re not limited to using the tool in a specific geographical location.

Given that mobile purchases will account for 54% of total sales in e-commerce, then you need to get rid of hurdles that your mobile visitors find when accessing your store from their mobile devices to improve conversions.

Start by tracking their level of engagement on different devices using Hotjar’s heatmaps feature:

You can even record these sessions and see your website from your user’s lenses to understand their behavior, why they leave or choose to use a different device to visit your site.

Hotjar works with different types of website builders and e-commerce platforms. It also integrates with different tools to help optimize your research process and make it easier to share insights with your team.

Finally, no matter how big your team is or the number of clients you’re serving, you won’t have to pay for an extra seat for them to access the tool.

So if you’re looking for a simple tool that’s easy to set up and use to collect customer feedback, insights, study user behavior on all your web properties, backed up by great customer support, you’ll definitely want to consider Hotjar.

G2 Score: 4.3 / 5.0

Thanks to the market research tools in this post, you won’t need to spend a lot of time deciding which market research tool to use and whether each tool has what you’re looking for to conduct market research.

And now that you have a list of tools to choose from, there’s one more question you need to answer;

Which market research tool is right for you? Personally, it depends.

Market research means different things to different people at different times. For some, it’s collecting customer feedback and insights to evaluate the demand for a product they want to launch.

Some use it to keep track of trends in their industry, track competitor activity, or even understand what’s ailing their business. Others want to dive deep and collect all the insights they can get while others want to keep things simple for now.

So whatever your goals are right now, let them guide you to choosing the tool you’re going to use, and then go ahead and collect all the information you need about your market.

And if your goals change, come back and pick a different tool to conduct market research.

• Skip to main content
• Skip to primary sidebar
• Skip to footer
• QuestionPro

• Solutions Industries Gaming Automotive Sports and events Education Government Travel & Hospitality Financial Services Healthcare Cannabis Technology Use Case AskWhy Communities Audience Contactless surveys Mobile LivePolls Member Experience GDPR Positive People Science 360 Feedback Surveys
• Resources Blog eBooks Survey Templates Case Studies Training Help center

Home Market Research

Top 10 Free Market Research Tools to Get Valuable Insights

Understanding your market is crucial for success. However, the market research process can be expensive, impacting small businesses and entrepreneurs. Thankfully, there’s good news – you don’t need a big budget to gather valuable insights about your customers and industry trends. Businesses of all sizes can now use free market research tools to make informed decisions and remain ahead of the competition.

From survey platforms to trend analysis tools, these resources offer a wealth of information at no cost. So, these tools can be your secret weapon for success, whether you’re just starting out or looking to expand your existing business.

In this blog, we’ll take a closer look at the top 10 free market research tools that can help you supercharge your business growth.

What are Free Market Research Tools?

Free market research tools are helpful resources that anyone can use without spending money to learn about markets, customers, and competitors. These tools give insights that can be used to make smart business decisions.

Some of these tools let you ask people questions through surveys or check what topics are popular online. Others show you how many people are visiting your website or your competitors’ sites. There are even tools that help you see what people are saying about your business on social media.

These tools are great because they’re usually available online and don’t cost anything to use. They give businesses important insights without needing to spend a lot of money on fancy research. By using these tools smartly, businesses can make better decisions and sell more successfully.

Benefits of having Free Market Research Tools

These tools provide valuable insights into consumer behavior, industry trends, and competitor strategies without breaking the bank. Here, we’ll explore the benefits of leveraging free market research software and how they can help businesses thrive.

• It Save Your Money: With free market research tools, you can unlock valuable insights without spending a single penny. That means even if you’re running on a tight budget, you can still gather important market research data to fuel your business decisions.
• Making Smarter Moves: Forget relying on guesswork. Free market research tools arm you with real data so you can make informed decisions. Say goodbye to blind leaps and hello to calculated steps toward success.
• Staying One Step Ahead: Keeping an eye on your competitors is key to staying ahead of the game. Free market research tools let you peek into what your competitors are up to, helping you fine-tune your marketing strategies and stand out from the crowd.
• Understanding Customer’s Language : Have you ever wished you could read your customers’ minds? Market research tools won’t give you psychic powers, but they’ll come pretty close. By understanding your customers’ preferences and behaviors, you can tailor your products and messages to speak directly to their hearts.
• Building Better Products : Who doesn’t love a product that’s a perfect fit? With market research tools, you can gather feedback from your target audience and tweak your products until they’re just right. It’s like having a focus group at your fingertips without the hefty price tag.
• Putting Smiles on Your Customers Faces: Happy customers are the lifeblood of any business. Market research tools help you understand what makes your customers tick, so you can delight them with products and experiences that leave them coming back for more.

10 Free Market Research Tools You Should Know

From survey platforms to analytics tools, these tools offer valuable insights into consumer behavior , industry trends, and competitive analysis . Here, we’ll explore 10 free and best market research tools that every business owner should know about.

1. QuestionPro

QuestionPro offers a wide range of free survey features, including customizable question types, Google Sheets integration, and robust analytics. With its user-friendly interface and comprehensive features, QuestionPro is a great choice for conducting market research and surveys to gather insights from its target audience.

How it Works: Users can create customized market research surveys using a wide range of question types and templates. A market research survey can be distributed through email, social media, websites, or embedded into mobile apps. The platform provides robust analytics and reporting features to analyze survey responses in real-time.

Features You Can Avail:

• Create unlimited surveys with up to 200 responses per survey.
• Access to basic survey templates and question types.
• Branching skip logic based on responses to a question.
• Trend analysis and geocoding survey responses.
• Basic reporting and analytics features
• Data visualization .
• Easy-to-use interface for creating surveys.
• Up to 30 different question types.
• Integration with popular third-party tools like Salesforce and Google Sheets.
• Customizable branding options for surveys.
• Responsive customer support team.
• Email support may have slower response times compared to premium plans.

2. Google Trends

Google Trends allows you to explore the popularity of search queries over time and across different regions. By analyzing search trends, you can identify emerging topics, monitor consumer interest in your industry, and track the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns.

How it Works: Users can enter keywords or topics into the search bar to view trends in search volume over time. The tool provides data on regional interest, related queries, and trending topics. Users can also compare the popularity of multiple search terms or topics.

• Access to search trends data for free.
• Explore historical search trends and regional interest.
• View related queries and trending topics.
• User-friendly interface for exploring trends.
• Ability to compare multiple search terms or topics.
• Useful for identifying trending topics and keywords.
• Integration with Google Analytics for deeper analysis.
• Limited to search data from Google’s search engine.
• Data may not always be representative of overall market trends.

3. SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey offers a free plan that allows you to create surveys, collect responses, and analyze data. With its intuitive survey builder and customizable templates, SurveyMonkey makes it easy to gather feedback from customers, employees, and other stakeholders.

How it Works: Users can create surveys using customizable templates and a variety of question types. Surveys can be distributed through email, social media, websites, or embedded into mobile apps. The platform offers advanced analytics and reporting features to gain insights from survey responses.

• Create unlimited surveys with up to 10 questions per survey.
• Basic survey templates and question types.
• Collect up to 100 responses per survey.
• Basic reporting and analytics features.
• Email support.
• A wide range of question types and templates are available.
• Multiple distribution options, including email and social media.
• Real-time analytics for quick insights.
• A limited number of responses and questions in the free plan.
• Advanced features like skip logic and A/B testing are available only in paid plans.

4. Statista

Statista provides access to a vast database of statistics and market research reports across various industries. While some premium content requires a subscription, Statista offers a significant amount of free data that can help you understand market trends, consumer behavior, and industry benchmarks.

How it Works: Users can search for statistics and reports on specific industries, countries, or topics of interest. The platform provides access to data from thousands of sources, including government agencies, industry associations, and market research firms.

• Access to limited statistics and infographics is free.
• Basic search and browsing capabilities.
• Limited access to reports and studies.
• Access to data from reputable sources.
• Customizable charts and infographics for presentations.
• Ability to download data in multiple formats.
• Limited access to data and reports in the free plan.
• Some statistics may require a premium subscription for access.
• Full access to reports and advanced features is available only in paid plans.

5. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a powerful web analytics tool that allows you to track website traffic, user behavior, and conversion metrics. By analyzing website data, you can gain insights into your audience demographics, engagement metrics, and the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.

How it Works: Users can install a tracking code on their website to collect data about visitor interactions, page views, conversion rates, and more. The platform offers customizable reports and dashboards to analyze website performance and audience demographics.

• Access to basic web analytics features is free.
• Track website traffic, user behavior, and conversion metrics.
• Customizable reports and dashboards.
• Integration with other Google products like Google Ads and Search Console.
• Comprehensive insights into website performance and user behavior.
• Customizable reports and dashboards for analyzing data.
• Real-time data tracking for up-to-date insights.
• Audience segmentation for targeting specific user groups.
• Limited support for tracking offline interactions.
• Requires technical setup and implementation of tracking code.

6. Google Alerts

Google Alerts notifies you when new content related to specific keywords or topics is published online. By monitoring mentions of your brand, industry trends, and competitor activity, you can stay informed and identify opportunities to engage with your audience.

How it Works: Users can create alerts for keywords, phrases, or topics of interest. Google Alerts will then send email notifications whenever new content matching the alert criteria is published on the web.

• Create unlimited alerts for free.
• Monitor keywords, topics, or phrases.
• Receive email notifications for new content.
• Adjust frequency and sources for alerts.
• Free and easy-to-use monitoring tool.
• Set up alerts for specific keywords or topics.
• Receive email notifications for new mentions or content.
• Monitor brand mentions, industry trends, or competitor activity.
• Adjust alert settings for frequency and sources.
• Limited to monitoring online content indexed by Google.
• May receive irrelevant or duplicate alerts.
• No advanced filtering options for alerts.
• Email notifications may not always be timely.

7. Qualtrics

Qualtrics offers a free plan that allows you to create surveys, collect feedback, and analyze data in real-time. With its advanced features and customizable reporting options, Qualtrics is a valuable tool for businesses looking to gain insights into customer satisfaction, product usability, and market trends.

How it Works: Users can create surveys using a drag-and-drop editor or choose from pre-built templates. Surveys can be distributed through email, social media, websites, or embedded into mobile apps. The platform offers advanced analytics and reporting features to gain insights from survey responses.

• Access to basic survey creation and distribution features is free.
• Create unlimited surveys with up to 100 responses per survey.
• Drag-and-drop editor and pre-built templates for quick survey creation.
• Integration with popular third-party tools like Salesforce and Slack.
• Limited number of responses in the free plan.
• Advanced features like skip logic and branching are available only in paid plans.

8. Pew Research Center

The Pew Research Center conducts public opinion polling and demographic research on a wide range of topics. By accessing free reports and datasets, you can gain valuable insights into social and political trends, consumer attitudes, and demographic shifts.

How it Works: The Pew Research Center publishes reports and studies based on surveys conducted among the general public, specific demographics, or expert panels. These reports provide insights into public opinion, attitudes, and trends on various issues.

• Access to reports, studies, and datasets for free.
• Explore research topics by category or keyword.
• Download reports and datasets in various formats.
• Email subscription for updates and notifications.
• A trusted source of data and analysis on social and political issues.
• A wide range of research topics and reports are available.
• Access to raw data and datasets for further analysis.
• Regularly updated with new research findings.
• Suitable for academic research and policy analysis.
• Some reports and datasets may be restricted to paid subscribers.
• Limited to research topics covered by the Pew Research Center.
• Reports may have a lag time between data collection and publication.
• Limited customization options for data analysis .

9. Make My persona

Make My Persona is a free tool by HubSpot that helps you create detailed buyer personas based on customer demographics, behaviors, and goals. By understanding your target audience better, you can tailor your marketing messages and product offerings to meet their needs effectively.

How it Works: Users answer a series of questions about their ideal customers’ demographics, behaviors, goals, and challenges. Based on the responses, Make My Persona generates a customized buyer persona template that can be used for marketing and sales strategies.

• Create one buyer persona for free.
• Answer questions to define your ideal customer profile.
• Generate a customized buyer persona template.
• Download the persona template in PDF format.
• Easy-to-use tool for creating buyer personas.
• A guided questionnaire helps define the ideal customer profile.
• Customized persona template includes key details and insights.
• Suitable for businesses of all sizes and industries.
• Integration with other HubSpot tools for seamless workflow.
• Free and accessible for businesses with limited budgets.
• Limited to creating one persona for free.
• Basic customization options for persona templates.

10. Qualaroo

Qualaroo is a user feedback tool that helps businesses collect insights from website visitors through targeted surveys and feedback forms. With its customizable survey options and real-time feedback collection, Qualaroo enables you to gather actionable insights and improve the user experience on your website.

How it Works: Users can create customizable surveys and feedback forms that target specific segments of website visitors based on behavior, demographics, or other criteria. Qualaroo offers advanced analytics and reporting features to analyze feedback and identify actionable insights.

• Integration with popular analytics and CRM platforms.
• Collaboration features for team-based research projects.
• Integration with third-party tools may require additional fees.

Why Choose QuestionPro as The Best Free Market Research Tool?

Understanding your market is crucial for business success in today’s competitive landscape. This is where market research tools like QuestionPro come into play. Here’s why you should choose QuestionPro as your go-to free market research tool:

• Comprehensive Features: QuestionPro offers a comprehensive suite of features designed to meet all your market research needs. From survey creation to data analysis, you’ll find everything you need to gather insights and make informed decisions.
• Free Forever: Unlike many other market research tools that offer limited free trials, QuestionPro is free forever. You can access essential features without any time restrictions, allowing you to conduct market research without worrying about costs.
• Wide Range of Question Types: With over 50 question types available, QuestionPro allows you to design surveys that meet your specific requirements. Whether you need multiple-choice questions , rating scales , or open-ended responses, you’ll find the right tools at your disposal.
• Google Sheets Integration: QuestionPro is the only survey platform that offers free seamless integration with Google Sheets. This feature allows you to easily export and analyze survey data using familiar tools, streamlining your research process.
• Multiple Distribution Channels: Reach your target audience wherever they are with QuestionPro’s multiple distribution channels. Whether you prefer email surveys, social media polls, or website embeds, you can engage with your audience effectively.
• Customization Options: Use QuestionPro’s customization options to personalize your surveys to align with your brand identity . From branding elements to question formatting, you have the flexibility to create surveys that resonate with your audience.
• Seamless Collaboration: Collaborate with your team members seamlessly on research projects using QuestionPro’s collaboration features. Share surveys, analyze data together, and brainstorm strategies in real-time, enhancing productivity and efficiency.

These free market research tools provide valuable resources for businesses looking to understand their target audience, monitor industry trends, and make data-driven decisions. By leveraging these tools effectively, you can gain consumer insights that will help you boost your business and stay ahead of the competition in today’s dynamic market environment.

QuestionPro offers a powerful and user-friendly platform for conducting free market research. With its comprehensive features, intuitive interface, and dedicated support, QuestionPro is the right choice for businesses looking to gain valuable insights and stay ahead of the competition.

So why wait? Start using QuestionPro as your market research tool today and take your business to new heights with QuestionPro!

LEARN MORE         FREE TRIAL

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

These tools typically offer access to demographic data, consumer behavior trends, industry reports, competitor analysis, and market segmentation information.

While free tools provide valuable insights, they may not offer the depth or customization of paid services. Businesses often use a combination of both for comprehensive analysis.

These tools provide cost-effective ways for businesses to access valuable market data, understand customer preferences, track competitors, and make informed strategic decisions.

While free market research tools may not offer the depth of premium tools, many free tools provide credible data sourced from reputable databases and research sources.

MORE LIKE THIS

Stay Conversations: What Is It, How to Use, Questions to Ask

Aug 26, 2024

Age Gating: Effective Strategies for Online Content Control

Aug 23, 2024

Work-Life Balance: Why We Need it & How to Improve It

Aug 22, 2024

Organizational Memory: Strategies for Success and Continuity

Aug 21, 2024

Other categories

• Academic Research
• Artificial Intelligence
• Assessments
• Brand Awareness
• Case Studies
• Communities
• Consumer Insights
• Customer effort score
• Customer Engagement
• Customer Experience
• Customer Loyalty
• Customer Research
• Customer Satisfaction
• Employee Benefits
• Employee Engagement
• Employee Retention
• Friday Five
• General Data Protection Regulation
• Insights Hub
• Life@QuestionPro
• Market Research
• Mobile diaries
• Mobile Surveys
• New Features
• Online Communities
• Question Types
• Questionnaire
• QuestionPro Products
• Release Notes
• Research Tools and Apps
• Revenue at Risk
• Survey Templates
• Training Tips
• Tuesday CX Thoughts (TCXT)
• Uncategorized
• What’s Coming Up
• Workforce Intelligence

The 8 Best Market Research Tools

• By Hailey Friedman
• December 4, 2019 March 24, 2021
• Recent Posts

• The 13 Best AI Sales Software Tools - July 30, 2024
• Packola vs Packlane vs PackM vs Arka [2024 Guide] - March 12, 2024
• 12 Best Companies for Custom Boxes and Packaging [2024] - February 12, 2024

Market research tools have come a long way in recent years. Conducting market research is no longer an enormous, arduous task like it was in the days of Mad Men.

Today there are tools out there to take all the hard work of market research off your hands. You just need to know which tools are best for your business and how to use them.

This is where I can help.

But before I do, let’s cover the basics…

Table of Contents

What is Market Research?

Market research is the process of gathering information about consumers’ needs and preferences.

It is important to spend time doing market research before building a business or formalizing your marketing strategy.

If you skip this step, you can end up spend a lot of time and money in the wrong places. Trust me.

How do you do Market Research?

You do market research by finding out what your customers really want, looking at what your competitors are doing, and using this to deduce the ideal product permutation as well as which marketing channels will work to grow your business.

1- Look at what your competitors are doing

Please, for the love of God look at your competitors.

I stalk my competitors for

• Google Ads and SEO keyword ideas
• Facebook marketing ad inspiration
• Product ideas
• And a whole lot more

There are already plenty signals in the market — that are publicly available — that will tell you what’s working and what’s not as far as product market fit and consumer preferences.

Your competitors (especially ones that are further along) have already done a lot of this work for you, so it makes sense to look at successful businesses in your space and what they’re doing.

The best tool for this: GrowthBar

2- Find out what your customers really want

The best way to find out what your customers really want, is to ask them. You can do that using surveys or setting up calls to talk to the customers you already have about their challenges and desires.

The best tools for this: A few phone calls and/or SurveyMonkey

3- Use these insights to build your product and marketing plan

We help thousands of founders and marketers build a bullet-proof growth strategy and we ALWAYS start with market research. Like I mentioned above, we primarily use GrowthBar and a few phone calls to get the information we need, but below is a comprehensive list of all the best market research tools available as well as our thoughts on them.

The Best Market Research Tools

Here’s an introduction to 8 of the best market research tools to help you get a competitive edge by better understanding your target market and audience’s needs.

1. GrowthBar

About: The tagline reads: “Make it 10X easier to get more customers. The only growth tool marketers and entrepreneurs need for SEO, SEM, and Facebook advertising.”

GrowthBar is the perfect market research tool because it gives you instant access to critical data points about your competitors and the growth channels and keywords that are working for them. It is a market research tool for marketers and for understanding marketing channels. And it’s only $29/month.

GrowthBar has a web version and comes free with a simple Chrome extension that instantly allows you to do market research from the comfort of your Google search page, which saves you a ton of time from having to login to other platforms or switch tabs.

New features are being steadily rolled out that continue to make performing market research a breeze. You can explore your competitors’ backlink data, social signals, which keywords they rank for, best performing keywords, spy on their facebook ads and so on.

Ease of Use:

• Just type in a URL or keyword into GrowthBar and see everything there is to know about that URL or keyword.
• Comes with a free Chrome Extension for the market research obsessed among us!

Features:  

Unlock this data for any website:

• Domain Authority
• Page Authority
• Organic Traffic
• Traffic Value
• Top Paid Keywords
• Organic Keywords
• Keyword Search Volume
• Keywords Competition
• Keywords CPCs
• Keyword Research
• Top Backlinks
• Facebook Ads

Price: GrowthBar is free to try for 5 days and then it costs $29/mo (a steep discount from comparable tools that cost between $100-$200/mo).

Bottom line: GrowthBar is the most complete market research tool that is 100% free to try and more affordable than any alternative. It holds its own against some of the more expensive paid keyword and market research tools on the market, like Ahrefs and SEMrush. It’s become a key part of our market research process for snooping on competitors.

2. SurveyMonkey

About: Are your customers satisfied? Could you be doing more for your customers?

The answers to these questions offer valuable consumer insights if you want to increase lead generation , your conversion rates, customer retention rate, improve your bottom line, and so on.

Questions about your customers are best answered by your customers themselves. This brings me to SurveyMonkey, one of the most popular questionnaire and survey platforms that might be the missing link in your current market research efforts.

• You can create surveys in just a few clicks
• Easy to create and answer questions on both PC and mobile
• A wide range of other tools and products that integrate seamlessly
• Survey creation
• Integrates with other software and platforms
• Tools to measure engagement and analyze results
• Reporting features

Price: Their basic plan is free, which is a great way to get used to the platform and start surveying your audience. You can upgrade for advanced features ranging from $25-$85 per month.

Bottom line: If you don’t survey your audience, you leave money on the table by not getting inside their minds and figuring out what they want from your product or service. My advice is to head over to SurveyMonkey, sign up for a free plan, and get started today.

About: Gartner provides insights into market segments and arm leaders with the right metrics to make informed decisions. 

Known for its Magic Quadrant, the research tool provides accurate data to identify trends, weaknesses, opportunities, and more. 

Get peer insights, research, and a full arsenal to dispose of your competition. 

• Use of visualization
• Comprehensive questionnaires 
• Makes decision-making easier

• User experience reviews
• Presentations and reports
• Analyst calls
• Magic Quadrant

Price: Gartner has a free basic account, but it can cost upwards of $30,000 per year if you want access to expert analysts and other services. 

Bottom line: Gartner offers some of the most accurate market research with expert insights relayed in an easily digestible manner. It can be expensive for startups, but invaluable to organizations on the cutting edge of their industry.

4. Tableau Public

About: Tableau Public enables users to publish interactive visualizations to the internet. Marketers can leverage this research by embedding the data to websites, blogs, and more. 

A product of the popular business intelligence software, Tableau, Tableau Public helps journalists, marketers, and everyone else access the data and research they need. 

It’s basically a free version of Tableau, but users are unable to save workbooks locally with the Public version. 

• Works with Excel, Google Sheets, text files, and more
• Clean and clear dashboard design and menu options
• Easy to read visuals and clear reporting features
• Access to all other Public users’ visualizations (“vizes”)
• Useful data, free of charge and ready to share
• Up to 15 million rows of data

Price: This tool is free, and open to the public. Just remember, your vizes aren’t private.

I Think: As far as market research tools go, Tableau Public is an interesting way to get access to data in your space – so it’s worth checking out to see if there is anything interesting or helpful.

5. BuzzSumo

About: BuzzSumo is a powerful tool that finds the most popular types of content for any given topic. You can then analyze that content to see why it works, which of your competitors benefits from this content, and what you can do better in these areas.

This tool focuses heavily on the social footprint and backlinks of content. These are two very important metrics if you plan on doing some content marketing. You want people to share your content so you get a social mention. The more a piece of content gets shared, the more likely it will attract backlinks.

• Very easy to use, just type in a keyword and hit “Search”
• Large icons and plenty of filtering options
• Fluid and intuitive reporting features
• Social media and content insights
• Personalized alerts and reporting
• Social media analytics
• Backlink analytics

Price: Plans start at $99 per month and go up to $499+ per month for custom plans.

Bottom line: BuzzSumo gives some insight into the minds and wants of content consumers in your niche that you can’t get with many other tools. As far as I’m concerned, it can be super helpful for content marketing strategies.

6. Social Mention

About: Social Mention is an online market research tool that enables you to gather real-time social media data on any site.

All you need to do is type in a website’s URL, and the tool pulls all the social media mentions related to that site. You can either use this on your own site, to see where you’re being talked about on social media, or use it to analyze your competitors.

The strength of the tool is being able to see a social media footprint for a brand across all the media platforms without having to aggregate the data yourself.

• Just simply input a URL to perform a search
• The data is laid out in a simple and easy to read format
• Find out who’s been talking about your brand and how positive your social media presence is
• Use it to discover where and why your competitors are being mentioned to help you tailor your own marketing efforts
• See the sentiment, hashtag, sources, and keywords most frequently associated across social media for a target URL

Price: Free to use.

I Think: While not one of the most powerful marketing research tools on the market, Social Mention gives you a quick point of reference for whether or not social media is important to your business. It’s free to use and the data is good, so it’s worth bookmarking the URL.

About: Survata uses a digital network to help you collect data from millions of customers quickly.

They do this by putting up your surveys on their affiliate sites that users must answer to access the site. This is similar to how Google Surveys operates, but you have more control over your data.

Their dashboard presents the information in real time, enabling you to analyze your customer’s insights to better understand their wants and needs.

• Extremely simple user interface and reporting
• Good customer support
• Ability to reach millions of targeted audiences
• Wide range of reporting options to analyze data
• Granular demographic information and behavioral targeting of respondents

Price: Pricing starts at $1 per respondent.

I Think: Survata opens up more options for businesses that want to survey targeted audiences that they wouldn’t otherwise reach. It’s a valuable tool for small to medium-sized businesses or businesses looking to enter a new market and create accurate buyer personas.

8. Statista

About: Statista is an online portal that aggregates market data from more than 600 industries across 50+ countries. You can tap into this data by typing in keywords related to an industry you want to analyze and browsing their reports.

You may be familiar with the blue charts Statista generates when you perform a search, they’re pretty much a standard for blogs and sites publishing statistics. Statista is one of the best places to get statistical analysis backed by facts and figures for just about any topic.

If you’re performing market research you can get some valuable insights into buyer behavior, market size, market growth and trends, and much more.

• Performing searches couldn’t be any easier, just type a keyword and click “Search”
• The charts provide a clear visual answer to your search
• Download data and statistics in various formats
• Additional data and related statistics are also returned with searches
• Lots of advanced reporting features and tools

Price: Their free to use plan enables you to pull basic statistics. You can upgrade for $59 per month to get full access to their statistical database, or $650 per month for their corporate solution package.

I Think: Statista is great for pulling visual market statistics backed by factual data – an integral part of any research activities and a helpful tool for content marketing efforts as well.

Conclusion & Tips for Conducting Market Research

Market research is one of the key steps in building a sustainable, awesome business. It’s not something you do once and move on — it’s important to get competitive benchmarks as often as possible — and use them to steer your ship in the right direction.

Our favorite tool is GrowthBar.

Some things to remember about research:

• Start broad . I always find that getting on the phone with customers is the best way to begin. Speak with ~10 customers and learn about their likes and dislikes. Let your customers really speak — don’t guide them down any conversation path — you want to hear their real, honest thoughts. You can always drill in on interesting nuggets of information at the end.
• Be unbiased . Yes, that’s basically impossible. But still, don’t put words in anyone’s mouth and be honest with data you collect. Your business will thank you in the long run.
• Ask the right questions . Surveys are only as good as the questions you ask. It’s important to remove biases from questions and focus on getting actionable insights from answers.

Other reading:

• The 8 Best Ways to Launch Your Online Business
• 3 Ways to Use Surveys for Market Research
• How We’ll Make $90,648 this Year from One Software Recommendation

Hailey Friedman

Does Google Ads Work & Will it Work for My Startup?

• By Mark Spera ,
• June 29, 2021 July 23, 2021

We Sold GrowthBar!

• July 5, 2023 August 5, 2024

SEOPress vs Rank Math vs Yoast vs All in One SEO [2024]

• January 1, 2023 January 2, 2023

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

• Skip to primary navigation
• Skip to main content
• Skip to primary sidebar

WPBeginner - WordPress Tutorials for Beginners

WPBeginner » Blog » Showcase » 14 Best Market Research Tools in 2024 (w/ Free Options)

14 Best Market Research Tools in 2024 (w/ Free Options)

Last updated on January 2nd, 2024 by Editorial Staff | Reviewed by: Syed Balkhi

Are you looking for the best market research tools?

Market research tools can help simplify your research process and make it easy to collect, analyze, and put customer and market data to use.

In this article, we’ll share the best market research tools for your business, so you can make data-driven decisions.

Why Do You Need to Use Market Research Tools?

Market research is the process of understanding your customer’s behavior, preferences, and industry as a whole.

Market research tools simplify this process and make it easy to understand your target market, refine your marketing strategy, and gather helpful customer feedback.

By doing market research, you give your business a better chance at success. When you deeply understand your customers and market, you can create better content, better products, and better serve your customers.

Using a market research tool can help streamline your workflow and help give you additional insights:

• Uncover gaps in the market and launch new products and services
• Understand market trends , so you can be the first business in new niches
• Create more compelling content and website copy to turn visitors into customers
• Study your competition to see what they’re doing well, and where you can improve
• Use data to better serve your customers, so they stay with you over the long-term

With that said, let’s take a look at some of the best market research tools you can use along with your WordPress website .

WPForms is the best WordPress survey form plugin and contact form plugin in the market, used by over 6 million websites.

It’s very beginner friendly and lets you build out online surveys, polls, questionnaires, and user feedback forms simply with the drag and drop builder.

You can also use one of the 700+ pre-built templates to quickly create the exact form you need.

The powerful survey and polls addon lets you easily create engaging survey forms to collect customer and market data.

You can combine this addon with other useful features like conditional logic, multi-page forms, and even conversational forms to make your forms feel more human.

You can add all kinds of survey form fields, like checkboxes, radio buttons, net promoter score (NPS) field, ratings, and more.

Best of all, WPForms automatically creates beautiful reports with graphs and charts to help you better understand your data. You can also export these graphs as images to share on social media or embed them into your website.

For more details, see our guide on how to create a survey in WordPress with beautiful reports.

The free version of WPForms lets you simply create contact forms in WordPress , but if you want to create advanced surveys and more, then you’ll need a premium plan that currently starts at $199 per year.

2. Think with Google Research

Think with Google Research is a collection of tools that will help you understand your market, uncover new trends, and gain valuable insights to give you an advantage.

This group of tools offers high-level insights into your market, useful statistics, and other marketing tools to put your insights to work.

For example, there’s a Market Insights tool that can help you find new regional and global markets.

You’ll also find a Rising Retail Categories tool that will show you trending eCommerce categories, like Google Trends for eCommerce.

You can filter this data by different countries and view it on a weekly, monthly, or yearly basis.

For those who edit videos , or have a YouTube channel , you can use the Find My Audience Tool to uncover new audiences on YouTube and learn how you can easily reach them.

Semrush is the best keyword research tool and content marketing research tool in the market. It’s used by everyone from SEO professionals to beginner bloggers.

Note: We use Semrush here at WPBeginner for a lot of SEO and content tasks like tracking keyword rankings and keyword research .

You can use the keyword research features to see how many people search for a given keyword and if it’s growing in popularity or becoming less popular.

If you’re using Google Analytics , then you can also use that to get additional insights about your website visitors.

It also provides in-depth data on other relevant and popular search terms, your competitor’s search engine ranking positions, and a lot more.

To get a big picture view of your market and competitors, you can use the competitive research toolkit to see your competitor’s traffic, authority sites, up and coming websites, and more.

If you want access to detailed content and keyword research data, then the pricing for premium plans starts at $119.95 per month and gives you full access to keyword, SEO, and traffic data.

Deal: Our readers can get an extended 30-day free trial by using our Semrush coupon code .

Alternatives: If you’re looking for a free keyword research tool, you can use WPBeginner’s Keyword Generator . It lets you instantly generate 300+ keyword ideas in a downloadable report. You can also use the free Keyword Density Checker to see what keywords your competitors are optimizing for.

4. UserFeedback

UserFeedback is one the best feedback survey plugins for WordPress. It lets you easily ask your website visitors questions and collect their feedback in real-time.

UserFeedback is super easy to use and it only takes a few minutes to set up. It comes with pre-made templates to help you quickly create a popup feedback survey.

The plugin allows you to ask unlimited questions and receive unlimited responses. You can ask multiple choice questions or free form questions, capture emails , and even ask for star ratings.

Using shortcode, you can embed the feedback popup anywhere on your site. Or, use the easy targeting rules to customize where and when the survey appears.

UserFeedback also comes with simple reporting right inside of the plugin, and it integrates with Google Analytics and MonsterInsights to easily analyze your responses.

UserFeedback premium plans starts at $49.50 per year, which includes custom branding, premium templates, export results functionality, and more. There’s also a free version of UserFeedback to get you started.

5. Statista

Statista is a data research platform that provides easy to digest data across multiple industries and niches.

The reports, graphs, and data are continually updated with the most recent information, so you’ll never be viewing data that’s out of date.

The data this tool provides is very specific. No matter how niche your industry you’ll be able to access valuable data you can use to create buyer personas, unique content, and more.

Plus, the same chart is updated as new data becomes available. So, you can continue to view the same graph and see how market data changes as time goes on.

This tool provides a ton of free data, while the more niche reports and data are only available on premium plas that start at $39 per month when billed yearly.

6. BuzzSumo

Buzzsumo is a great content research and market insight tool used by brands like Hubspot, Buzzfeed, and more. It lets marketers take a deep dive into what content is the most popular in certain niches.

When you’re creating a new article for your WordPress blog you want it to be successful. A great way to do this is to see what content your audience already loves and create something similar.

Buzzsumo lets you dig deep into the top performing articles across the web, so you can see what gets the most social shares and the types of content that are the most popular.

You also get access to data from the past 5 years, so you can see which topics are trending.

It can also help you find influencers in your space and uncover keyword opportunities you might have missed.

Buzzsumo has a free forever plan that gives you 10 free searches per month. If you want access to unlimited searches and more tools, then pro plans start at $99 per month.

7. US Census Bureau

The US Census Bureau has a free resource that lets you search all US census data.

This can provide you with a lot of useful demographic information. You can filter your searches by income, age, year, and location.

There are also built-in data visualization tools so that you can see the size of potential markets across the US.

If you’re looking to expand your business into different areas across the US, then you can see where your industry is already oversaturated and where there are still gaps in the market.

8. NielsenIQ

NielsenIQ offers retail and consumer insights to help grow your business. If you’re considering launching a new product line, then the data and insights here will help you launch more effectively.

You get access to product forecast metrics which will help to predict how well your products will sell when you launch. It will also help you determine the right channels to distribute your products.

If you don’t have a lot of customer data to work with, then you can run a market research survey to NeilsenIQ’s list of partners.

However, NielsenIQ is a more expensive solution, so businesses with a smaller budget will want to try different business intelligence solutions on this list first.

Gartner provides incredibly accurate and detailed industry reports that experts create. One of the most popular offerings is Magic Quadrant, which helps you identify industry trends , gaps in the market, and much more.

There are various other reports too, like the Critical Capabilities report that compares competing products and services against each other.

The goal of the reports is to help make your business decision making much easier.

You’ll also find data analysis and visualization tools to give you a big-picture understanding of your market. Plus, in-depth research reports to help you stay ahead of your competition.

10. Tableau Public

Tableau Public is a free data visualization tool. This tool can help you make sense of the complex data you’ve gathered and better understand your market.

You can import data from a ton of different sources including, excel spreadsheets , PDFs, text, and more. The tool will then analyze the data and present the data in an interactive dashboard.

Here you can customize the data with colorful tables and charts.

Since it’s a free public platform, you can share this data with your team across mobile, desktop, and even email.

Upwave (formerly Survata) is a market research and analytics platform to help measure the success of your marketing campaigns.

It lets you easily visualize your marketing data in real-time, so you can see what areas of your marketing are the most successful.

Upwave includes predictive analysis to help forecast the success of your campaigns and let you make changes on the fly.

Beyond gathering data for your current campaigns, they offer a platform called Instant Insights by PureSpectrum. This lets you launch your own customer study to gather valuable respondent data.

Your unique data is updated in real-time and presented in an easy to understand graph format.

12. Pew Research Center

The Pew Research Center is a nonprofit that provides in-depth and accurate data across a wide range of industries.

The research and in-depth reports cover industries like social trends, science, technology and the internet , global interests, social media, online privacy, and much more.

Each report also includes graphs and a demographic breakdown of each industry, like this one on social media use for US adults.

Included with each report is a detailed breakdown of how they conduct their studies, which can help you understand how the data can apply to your business.

All of this information will help you find new opportunities to expand and better understand your market.

13. LivingFacts

LivingFacts is created by The Pew Charitable Trusts, the same company behind The Pew Research Center.

The focus of this data is on Americans and how they live. If you have a website with a US audience, then this website will help you understand current demographic trends.

For example, you’ll find research covering US demographics, faith and religion , overall health, money and work, and upcoming trends.

Best of all, the data is presented in an easy to read format filled with statistics, infographics, and fun facts.

14. Facebook Audience Insights

Facebook Audience Insights is a tool that gives you access to data about your Facebook page and Facebook as a whole.

As the largest social media network in the world with nearly 2.5 million monthly active users, this data can be very useful to your brand.

It gives you information like age, gender, job title, hobbies, location, relationship status, and more.

This data will help you deeply understand your target audience and find new ways to expand your audience across Facebook.

Bonus: Formidable Forms

Formidable Forms is the most advanced WordPress form builder and best WordPress calculator plugin in the market. It helps you build complex form solutions quickly.

One great feature is the ability to create custom calculators. When most people think of a calculator, they think of math class or an app on their phone.

However, Formidable Forms lets you create unique calculators that can provide you with all kinds of unique data about your audience.

For example, you can create mortgage calculators , request a quote calculators, car payment calculators, and much more.

These calculators are not only a great way to get backlinks and get more traffic but can be a very useful source of data you can use to improve your website and business.

You can also format, filter, and display your user-submitted data on the front end of your website.

To get access to the powerful calculator features, you need to purchase the Business plan that’s currently $199.50 per month.

Which is the Best Market Research Tool? (Expert Pick)

After using the most popular market research tools we believe that WPForms, Think with Google, and Semrush are the best tools in the market.

WPForms lets you easily collect customer data that you can use to create better content, improve your website and business, and more.

Think with Google is a great market research platform that helps online store owners and new startups gather useful market data.

Semrush can help you understand what brings your competitors traffic, and what your customer’s are searching for online easily.

If you’re looking for detailed statistics you can use throughout your content, or just gain insight into your market as a whole, then Statista is also a great option.

We also tried other market research platforms like Qualtrics, TypeForm, SurveyMonkey, Make My Persona, and Social Mention, but we decided to keep the list short to make your decision easier.

We hope this article helped you find the best market research tool for your business. You may also want to see our list of the best email marketing services and our expert picks of the best business phone services for small business.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our  YouTube Channel  for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on  Twitter  and Facebook .

Revealed: Why Building an Email List is so Important Today (6 Reasons)

13 Things You MUST DO Before Changing WordPress Themes

How to Easily Move Your Blog from WordPress.com to WordPress.org

How to Install Google Analytics in WordPress for Beginners

Disclosure: Our content is reader-supported. This means if you click on some of our links, then we may earn a commission. See how WPBeginner is funded , why it matters, and how you can support us. Here's our editorial process .

About the Editorial Staff

Editorial Staff at WPBeginner is a team of WordPress experts led by Syed Balkhi with over 16 years of experience in WordPress, Web Hosting, eCommerce, SEO, and Marketing. Started in 2009, WPBeginner is now the largest free WordPress resource site in the industry and is often referred to as the Wikipedia for WordPress.

The Ultimate WordPress Toolkit

Get FREE access to our toolkit - a collection of WordPress related products and resources that every professional should have!

Reader Interactions

3 comments leave a reply.

Syed Balkhi says

Aug 26, 2024 at 2:24 pm

Hey WPBeginner readers, Did you know you can win exciting prizes by commenting on WPBeginner? Every month, our top blog commenters will win HUGE rewards, including premium WordPress plugin licenses and cash prizes. You can get more details about the contest from here . Start sharing your thoughts below to stand a chance to win!

Moinuddin Waheed says

Dec 29, 2023 at 9:42 pm

keeping an eye on the market trends is the must do practice for any one having online business. it gives insights of the upcoming trends and the customer preferences. Great list of all the market research tools at one place. will explore each of these to understand and grow with the market.

WPBeginner Support says

Jan 2, 2024 at 10:15 am

Leave A Reply Cancel reply

Thanks for choosing to leave a comment. Please keep in mind that all comments are moderated according to our comment policy , and your email address will NOT be published. Please Do NOT use keywords in the name field. Let's have a personal and meaningful conversation.

Don't subscribe All new comments Replies to my comments Notify me of followup comments via e-mail. You can also subscribe without commenting.

Copyright © 2009 - 2024 WPBeginner LLC. All Rights Reserved. WPBeginner® is a registered trademark.

Managed by Awesome Motive | WordPress hosting by SiteGround

I need help with…

Popular searches:

• What is the MoSCoW prioritization method?

Last updated

17 April 2024

Reviewed by

Mary Mikhail

Several techniques are available to project managers to plan a team’s workload by ranking projects or tasks by significance. These prioritization techniques also help communicate to project teams and stakeholders where resources must be directed to accomplish goals. 

The MoSCoW method is one such popular prioritization technique. Learn what the MoSCoW method is and how to apply it. 

The MoSCoW method ranks the significance of a task by determining the requirements for a project's successful completion.

Some may be essential and must be included in the project’s deliverables. You may find other specifications are not required for a successful conclusion, but you might consider them to improve the result or business value.

This prioritization technique requires you to classify projects and tasks by their levels of necessity in reaching your goal.

• Where does the term MoSCoW come from?

MoSCoW is an acronym that signifies the names of the categories in which the requirements are placed:

M = Must-haves

S = Should-haves

C = Could-haves

W = Will not have at this time or wish for

The Os were added to make the acronym easier to pronounce. Using these categories makes projects more manageable, helps with better resource control, and increases the chances of meeting deadlines.

• Using MoSCoW prioritization categories

Requirements with the highest level of importance are must-haves. You'll place lesser-ranked requirements in the should-haves and could-haves categories. Anything in the will-not-have category defines the requirement as nice to have, but not a necessity, at least for now.

Deliverance of effective solutions

Because a project can't be accomplished without must-have initiatives, your team must be committed to completing these requirements.

Should-haves

These tasks or elements are important to completing the project or product, but they're not necessary. Although the product will still function without should-have requirements, you shouldn't disregard them or underestimate their importance because they can significantly increase the product's value.

Performance improvements and new functions are examples of should-have requirements.

Could-haves

These initiatives take a back seat to must-haves and should-haves. If left out, they will not significantly influence the completion of a product or project. A could-have element is desired but not necessary.

Will-not-haves (at this time)

The items in this category set realistic expectations for what the product will not include. A clear visual representation of these requirements communicates to the team and stakeholders items identified as out of scope.

What do your users really want?

Just upload your customer research and ask your insights hub - like magic.

• When do you use the MoSCoW method for prioritization?

The idea behind Agile project management is to decrease the risk of missed goals and deadlines. It uses resources and time more efficiently by breaking the project into smaller sections and prioritizing tasks, requirements, products, and stories.

To prioritize these, you can use the MoSCoW method within the scope of an Agile project.

• What is an example of the MoSCoW technique?

Imagine you're building an e-commerce website that must launch by a specific date. You'll have to prioritize its features because you don't have unlimited time to work on the site.

The functionality you want to incorporate into the website could be:

Users can log onto the website

Users should have access to a "Forgot Password" solution

Users can change account details

Users can send an email to the system requesting a change to the account page

Here's how you might categorize these features based on how effective you want the website to be and the time constraints you face:

Must-haves:

Should-haves:

Could-haves:

Will-not-haves

Users can click on a phone number on the webpage, and a call will automatically be made from their desk phone to that number

• Benefits of using MoSCoW prioritization

MoSCoW prioritization offers several benefits in project management:

Clarity and focus: It helps teams identify and prioritize the most critical requirements, ensuring clarity on what needs to be delivered first.

Efficiency: By categorizing tasks into must-haves, should-haves, could-haves, and won't-haves, teams can allocate resources more efficiently and focus on delivering essential features first.

Stakeholder alignment: It facilitates stakeholder discussions by providing a common language to discuss and prioritize requirements, ensuring alignment on project goals and objectives.

Risk mitigation: MoSCoW prioritization helps mitigate project risks by addressing must-have requirements first, reducing the likelihood of critical features being overlooked or delayed.

Flexibility: It allows for flexibility in project planning and execution by accommodating changes in requirements throughout the project lifecycle while ensuring that essential features are prioritized.

Time and cost savings: By focusing on must-have requirements early in the project, teams can deliver value more quickly, potentially reducing project timelines and costs.

Overall, MoSCoW prioritization promotes a structured and systematic approach to project management, leading to more successful and efficient project outcomes.

• Disadvantages of using MoSCoW prioritization

The major disadvantage of the MoSCoW method is that it isn’t an objective or consistent scoring system. For this methodology to be effective, other scoring systems, like the weighted scoring or the Kano model, should be used in conjunction with it.

Not combining another scoring system with the MoSCoW method can exclude the organization's leadership from the decision-making process. Decisions would then be in danger of being made based on the project manager's personal preferences rather than adhering to business goals and values.

This method does not involve supporting reasoning on how you prioritize requirements within the same category or why one requirement is a must-have or should-have. The parameters of each category can be blurred. There is also uncertainty about whether will-not-haves are being left out of the tasks required now or out of the entire project.

• How can teams use MoSCoW to their advantage?

Resources, time, and skill sets are not unlimited in the business world. You must constantly strive to work around those constraints efficiently for a maximum return on investment (ROI). Using the MoSCoW method can help.

Use budgetary constraints to prioritize

Some projects have tight budgets. You can use the MoSCoW method by using the budget to determine which items must be and should be completed.

Use the team's skill sets to prioritize

Experience and expertise levels can help determine which tasks to prioritize. If a task requires skills that the team lacks, you must prioritize it accordingly.

Use the competing needs of the company to prioritize

While your team is working on a specific aspect of a project, the company's leaders may have added additional requirements for your team to complete within the same timeframe. You would then have to reshuffle the priorities to accommodate the additional requirements. The MoSCoW method can help you do this.

• Best practices for using MoSCoW prioritization

Include all stakeholders in using the MoSCoW method, from the executive level down to the different teams involved in the successful completion of the project. Get them to also use objective scoring systems like:

Opportunity scoring: uses data from market research to determine what customers expect from your product or service. Prioritization is done according to their wants and needs.

Priority poker: based on priorities that will provide the highest yields in a specific target market. The marketing team, executive team, and customers should be involved for accurate ranking of priorities.

Cost of delay: based on determining how much money the company is losing by waiting to work on a particular task, product, or feature.

100-point method: all stakeholders vote for what they think is the most important requirement. They each get 100 points to distribute among the requirements, ranking them from most important to least. If a stakeholder thinks four requirements are of equal value, they can allocate 25 points to each. If they feel strongly that one requirement overrides all others, they can put all 100 points on that requirement.

Incorporate the data you receive from these scoring systems when inserting the requirements in your MoSCoW categories. Share the results with stakeholders so that they can understand why you prioritized the criteria as you did. This exercise might even reveal a reason to expand a budget constraint or allocate more resources to a priority the stakeholders initially thought unimportant.

How the MoSCoW method differs from the 100-point method

While the 100-point method helps in general brainstorming sessions, the MoSCoW method focuses on working within budget and time constraints.

Once the teams and stakeholders reach an agreement (perhaps by using the 100-point method) on the importance level of each requirement, the product managers or owners will use the MoSCoW method to categorize requirements based on:

High customer value

An elevated benefit to the business

Simple implementation

Inflated costs, when not applied as soon as possible

Technical specifications that are interdependent 

This will help stakeholders and project teams visualize the intended direction.

• MoSCoW prioritization in Agile project management

In an ideal world, your business would have unlimited time and a limitless source of funds to become the most efficient revenue generator it could be. But in the real world, you've got budget and time constraints.

When deciding on projects that will help increase revenue, decrease operational costs, boost productivity, or heighten customer satisfaction, you must choose the projects and project requirements that will most impact the goals you find important. The MoSCoW method can help you do just that.

Should you be using a customer insights hub?

Do you want to discover previous interviews faster?

Do you share your interview findings with others?

Do you interview customers?

Start for free today, add your research, and get to key insights faster

Editor’s picks

Last updated: 22 August 2024

Last updated: 17 August 2024

Last updated: 26 July 2024

Last updated: 11 January 2024

Last updated: 20 July 2024

Last updated: 10 August 2024

Last updated: 27 July 2024

Last updated: 13 August 2024

Last updated: 13 May 2024

Latest articles

Related topics, .css-je19u9{-webkit-align-items:flex-end;-webkit-box-align:flex-end;-ms-flex-align:flex-end;align-items:flex-end;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:row;-ms-flex-direction:row;flex-direction:row;-webkit-box-flex-wrap:wrap;-webkit-flex-wrap:wrap;-ms-flex-wrap:wrap;flex-wrap:wrap;-webkit-box-pack:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;justify-content:center;row-gap:0;text-align:center;max-width:671px;}@media (max-width: 1079px){.css-je19u9{max-width:400px;}.css-je19u9>span{white-space:pre;}}@media (max-width: 799px){.css-je19u9{max-width:400px;}.css-je19u9>span{white-space:pre;}} decide what to .css-1kiodld{max-height:56px;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}@media (max-width: 1079px){.css-1kiodld{display:none;}} build next, decide what to build next, log in or sign up.

Get started for free

• Your Project
• MoSCoW Method

What is the MoSCoW Method?

The MoSCoW Method is a prioritization tool that helps professionals in managing their time and effort .

To do so, it proposes to classify the importance of the different characteristics of a product (or a Project) according to their importance .

Its name is an acronym of the 4 Prioritization Categories proposed (adding two “o”):

• M ust Have .
• S hould Have .
• C ould Have .
• W on’t Have .

Four Prioritization Categories

Must Have : Essential Requirements that the product or project must have.

• Critical Features without replacement.

Should Have : Important desired Requirements for the product or project.

• They can be substituted if necessary.

Could Have : Improvements to the product or project.

• There are different alternatives.

Won’t have : Characteristics agreed not to be adopted .

• No one will waste time implementing them.

Let’s see the first example:

MoSCoW Method example

Imagine that you have been hired to create a Website for a Law firm.

They want a professional Site where people can Register and, once inside, track their court cases .

Since you want to deliver the best possible Site on time, you decide to follow the MoSCoW method .

How does it look like?

Must Have :

• Solid programming without any bugs.
• A Solid Register System.
• A Safe and Reliable personal directory.

Should Have :

• A Fast Site.
• An outstanding Design.
• Notifications sent by e-mail.

Could Have :

• Custom menus.
• Suggestions.
• A Blog section with latest news.

Won’t Have :

• Paid content.
• A Public Members section.

As we usually say, this Method may seem obvious.

Then… Why is it important?

Why is the MoSCoW Method important?

Many of professionals end up wasting time , effort and resources on useless task s that are ultimately not essential at all.

Surely you have experienced this situation working in a Team:

• Everyone spends hours modifying a minor feature and, ultimately, the important thing is missing .

That is why this Method is so important:

• Because it concentrates your efforts and forces you to think about what is really important .

As you can imagine, this Tool can be employed in practically all kinds of situations.

But when do we especially recommend it?

When should you use the MoSCoW Method?

We highly recommend to use the MoSCoW Method:

• To put order and prioritization.
• To avoid wasting time with non-essential touch-ups.
• In order to meet the Essential Requirements.
• When the product can have very different characteristics.

Now, let’s see more examples:

MoSCoW Method examples

We have chosen different real examples where the MoSCoW Method can be of great help for the development of certain products.

Let’s begin:

A Wallet - MoSCoW Method example

Let’s imagine that you are developing a wallet .

As you know, wallets are very modular products.

They can have:

• Several or few departments for cards.
• Coin purse… or not.
• 1 or 2 bill slots.

There is not a canonical wallet (one that is the benchmark for all the others).

• That is why you decided to use the MoSCoW Method to develop it.

After some thoughts, you decide that your wallet:

• 2 bill slots.
• 8 compartments for credit cards.
• High resistance materials and sewing.
• Leather as its main material.
• A translucid Credit card compartment.
• A transverse horizontal compartment.
• A striking color on the inside of the bill slots.
• Completely black exterior color.
• One translucid compartment for small photos.
• A Coin purse.
• A Passport compartment.

Making a Cake - MoSCoW Method example

In this example, we’ll imagine that you are preparing a wedding Cake .

• You have a very rigid deadline (the wedding day, of course).

In addition, as you also know, Cakes can have lots of variations.

• We could say they are very modular .

That is why you decide to use the MoSCoW Method.

How does it look?

Well, your Cake:

• White coating.
• Two sugar figurines on top.
• 6 layers of sponge cake inside.
• Belgian chocolate between the layers.
• Decorations on the edges
• Sugar flowers.
• Chocolate balls.
• Scattered sugar pearls.
• Multicolor layers.
• An excessive amount of decoration.
• Fruit flavor.

Designing a Poster - MoSCoW Method example

You are now an artist hired to Design a poster for a Rock concert.

Obviously, this is a Design job with infinite variations possible.

• Also, you have a close deadline to finish it.

No need to mention that you will use the MoSCoW Method.

Finally, the Poster:

• The name of the Main rock band, very prominent.
• Images and colors that best suit their style.
• A typeface that best suits the musical style.
• An illustration related to Rock in the middle.
• The name of the rest of the bands that will play.
• Where and when it will take place.
• Where you can buy the tickets.
• Nearby metro and bus stations.
• The name of the city.
• The maximum capacity of the stadium
• At what time each band will play.

Summarizing

The MoSCoW Method is a prioritization tool that helps professionals in managing their time and effort.

It proposes to classify the importance of the different characteristics of a product in 4 Categories :

• M ust Have.
• S hould Have.
• C ould Have.
• W on’t Have.

Although this Method can be used in all kinds of situations, we highly recommend to use it:

• When working in a team .
• In Design tasks .
• When there is a close deadline .
• With modular products or projects .
• Economies of Scale
• Business Plan for Beginners
• Business Plan Basics
• How to write a Business Plan
• Cash Flow Calculation
• Raising Funds for a Business
• 4 C’s of Credit
• Business Plan Templates
• Customer Insight
• Customer Experience
• Customer Pain Points
• 4C Marketing Model
• RATER Model
• Augmented Product
• Product Mix
• Unique Selling Proposition
• DAGMAR Model
• Marketing Storytelling
• Content Marketing
• Psychographics
• Barnum Effect
• Market Segmentation
• Market Research & Big Data
• Marketing to Generation Z
• 4P Marketing Mix
• 7P Marketing Mix
• Sales Funnel
• Loyalty Ladder
• RACE Planning
• Push and Pull Marketing
• Marketing Strategy
• Marketing Templates
• Starting your own business
• From Startup to a Business
• Entrepreneur FAQs
• Start your Business Idea
• Entrepreneur Golden Rules
• Innovate or Imitate?
• Design Thinking
• SCAMPER Model
• AAR Process
• Work From Home
• Growth strategies for Startups
• VMOST Analysis
• 3P Framework
• SOAR Analysis
• TELOS Analysis
• 5 C’s of Entrepreneurship
• Crowdfunding
• BATNA & ZOPA Negotiation
• Entrepreneur with no Money
• Entrepreneurship Templates
• Strategy vs Tactics
• Mission and Vision
• Business Values
• Value Chain
• Scenario Planning
• Porter 6 Forces
• Bowman’s Strategy Clock
• GE-McKinsey Matrix
• Delta Model
• PEST Analysis
• PESTEL Analysis
• SWOT Analysis
• VRIO Framework
• Strategy Canvas
• Competitive Advantages
• Porter’s Four Corners
• 5 Ps of Strategy
• Porter’s Generic Strategies
• Porter’s Diamond Model
• Wardley Map
• Core Competencies
• Resource Based View
• Bridges Transition Model
• CAGE Distance Framework
• McKinsey’s 3 Horizons
• Vertical Integration
• Horizontal Integration
• Blue Ocean Strategy
• Red Ocean Strategy
• Porter 5 Forces
• Ansoff Matrix
• McKinsey 7S Framework
• CATWOE Analysis
• Strategy Pyramid
• Bain’s RAPID Framework
• Balanced Scorecard
• Resources and Capabilities
• Strategy of Apple
• Strategy of Amazon
• Strategy of Starbucks
• Strategy Templates
• Communicate Effectively
• COIN Conversation Model
• SCARF Model
• SBI Feedback Model
• CEDAR Feedback Model
• How to behave at a meeting
• Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle
• Bloom’s Taxonomy
• 5E Learning Model
• 9-Box Performance Grid
• SEEDS Bias Model
• Halo Effect
• Pygmalion Rosenthal Effect
• Dunning-Kruger Effect
• How to be an Entrepreneur
• How to be a Leader
• Mintzberg Managerial Roles
• Cog’s Ladder
• The Peter Principle
• How to Negotiate
• Teamwork Skills and Profiles
• Gantt Chart
• RACI Matrix
• Eisenhower Matrix
• FMEA Process
• Problem Solving
• Ishikawa Fishbone diagram
• 5 Whys Method
• 8 Disciplines Method
• ADDIE Model
• ORAPAPA Method
• Cynefin Framework
• Just In Time
• SMART Goals
• KISS Principle
• Birkinshaw’s 4 Dimensions
• Parkinson’s Law
• OGSM Framework
• OKR Methodology
• APQP Framework
• Theory of Constraints
• Success through Organization
• ADKAR Model
• Lewin’s Change Model
• Kotter’s 8-Step Model
• The Greiner Curve
• GAP Analysis
• Planning Templates
• Mean, Median and Mode
• Define your Data
• Pareto Principle 80/20 Rule
• Decision Matrix
• Decision Tree
• TARA Framework
• Root Cause Analysis
• Simplex Process
• Forecasting Methods
• Product Life Cycle
• How to use Google Trends
• Correlation vs Causation

© 2024 - Consuunt .

We're not around right now. But you can send us an email and we'll get back to you, asap.

Log in with your credentials

Forgot your details.

31 Great Content Writing Examples, Tips, and Tools

• by Ann Gynn
• | Published: August 21, 2024
• | Content Creation

Great content writing must be powerful and effective to captivate your audience.

But accomplishing that with your content writing isn’t an easy task. Whether you craft words for B2B or B2C audiences, the challenges can be many.

To help, I’ve compiled web writing examples, tips, tools, and resources. The goal is to give you some insights and new tools to help address or minimize the creation stumbling blocks web and content writers face.

Let’s get to it.

1. Go for the surprise

When you write something that’s unexpected, your audience will likely stop scrolling and take a moment to learn more. In the worst cases, this approach to content writing falls under the nefarious clickbait category. But in the best cases, it can delight and engage the viewer.

Nike is always a go-to source for the best content examples. The summer of 2024 didn’t disappoint with its Winning Isn’t for Everyone campaign.

With a debut in time for the global games, Nike featured the world’s greatest athletes (well, all the great Nike-sponsored athletes) talking about they are motivated by victory and that there’s nothing wrong with wanting to win. Writing those four words — winning isn’t for everyone — fosters a strong reaction. After all, there are far more people who don’t win than do. But audiences are also likely to watch more of the videos to learn what Nike is really talking about.

As you watch the video, note the repetition of the same question (“Am I a bad person?”) followed by short, staccato-paced statements. This approach creates a lyrical story. And it paid off, earning over 2.2 million views in two weeks.

2. Don’t forget text has a starring role in video

Words appear in blog posts or descriptions of product features and benefits. But writers can also shine in  video scripts, along with set designers, actors, and filmmakers. Writers can take any topic and help make it captivating.

J.P. Morgan used animation and strong scripts to explain finance-related concepts in its Unpacked series, a finalist in the Content Marketing Awards for best video. This 4.5-minute episode covers how private companies go public:

3. Tap into trends with simple writing prompts

I’m always a fan of Dove’s #KeepBeautyReal campaigns. Most recently, it created an example of powerful writing in this simple question, “ What kind of beauty do we want AI to learn?”

Capitalizing on the AI trend and interest, Dove illustrates the difference between AI-created images for prompts about “beautiful women” and “beautiful women according to Dove’s Real Beauty ads.” In the first three months of its debut, the video with few words has earned over 100K views on Dove’s YouTube channel and garnered mainstream and industry media attention.

4. Let your audience create great writing and video examples

Creativity can emerge in many ways. Sometimes, it’s a simple starting point that reflects the times, as Dove did in its content example.

It also may lead a brand to contribute to its own pop culture trend as The Stanley did with its Quencher Cup social media campaign in 2024 . Its influencer campaign prompted these fun user-generated examples of web writing and illustration in the form of memes and TikTok videos promoting the brand’s popular drinking vessel.

Hilarious Scales created this sample that’s been seen by over 10 million viewers:

@hilarious_scaless How yall be lookin with them Stanley Cups 🤣 #fypシ #fyp #stanleycup #stanleytumbler ♬ original sound – Hilarious_scales

Fans of hockey (that sport with the other Stanley Cup) also got into the action as Instagram account Daily Facebook shared this example:

View this post on Instagram A post shared by DailyFaceoff (@dailyfaceoff)

5. Nail down your headlines

I’ve said it often: Headlines are the powerhouse of your content writing. After all, if the headline isn’t a success, the content behind it will never be read.

A 2024 study published in Science Advance conducted over 30,000 field experiments with The Washington Post and Upworthy headlines. It found that readers prefer simpler headlines (more common words and more readable writing) over complex ones. They also paid more attention to and more deeply processed the simpler headlines.

The e-book headline in this example from OptinMonster is straightforward: 50 Smart Ways to Segment Your Email List. It uses a numeral (50), a helpful adjective (smart), and a second-person pronoun (your) to speak directly to the audience, all of which elevates the article’s value in the reader’s mind.

Image source

6. Analyze the potential impact of your content headlines

Size up headlines with the Advanced Marketing Institute’s Headline Analyzer , which reveals an emotional marketing value score.

This headline example — 14 Ways Marketing Automation Helps B2B Companies Succeed — earns an emotional marketing value (EMV) of 37.5%. Most professional copywriters’ headlines typically have a 30% to 40% EMV score.

The same headline in a similar tool, CoSchedule Blog Post Headline Analyzer , earns a score of 77 out of 100. This analysis looks at word balance, headline type, sentiment, reading grade level, clarity, and skimmability. It also identifies areas for improvement, such as the use of uncommon, emotional, and power words.

7. Adjust title formats with this content writing tool

Speed your formatting tasks with TitleCase . The tool converts your title into various circumstances — all caps, hyphen, etc., so you don’t have to rekey or reformat.

8. Write headlines with words that resonate

BuzzSumo research consistently identifies “how-to” or guidance-focused headlines that resonate far better with audiences than any other type.

It makes sense. Audiences are seeking information that will help them in their lives, and they have a lot of content from which to choose. By writing phrases like “how to” in a headline, you tell them clearly what they’re going to get.

Get more tips from CMI’s article How To Create Headlines That Are Good for Readers and Business .

9. Focus on clarity for web content

Explaining your product or service can get cumbersome, but it shouldn’t if you want the audience to quickly understand how your company can help solve their pain points.

In this example, Zendesk succinctly highlights three results gained by the enterprise clients of its customer service platform:

• Drive better conversations
• Maximize agent efficiency
• Adapt faster to change

The three- and four-word headlines are followed by short explanations (two sentences) and a link to the product’s relevant features for that category.

10. Write to win over readers

How does your content inspire readers or get them to care?

Some suggestions include:

• Focus on actionable content they could use right away.
• Establish instant credibility and expertise so they understand why you’re the go-to resource.
• Add value they wouldn’t see or find elsewhere.

This ad for the Content Marketing Institute newsletter works well as a sample of website content writing. It illustrates how to motivate the audience to see that the content is relevant for them. Its headline “Looking for Fresh Content Inspiration?” speaks directly to the reader. Its follow-up sentence explains in detail what the reader will get — expert advice, standout examples, and creative ideas.

11. Choose words that motivate actions

Sometimes, it’s a simple word or phrase that prompts someone to take the next step. Buffer offers a list of more than 150 words . These 19 words and phrases are examples of how to gain the audience’s trust:

• Bestselling
• Endorsed by
• Money-back guarantee
• No obligation
• No questions asked
• Recommended
• Transparent
• Try for free

In this web page example, OptinMonster opts for one of those words in its headline — How To Create a Fail-Proof Digital Marketing Plan in 5 Steps .

12. Keep it brief but convey a lot

Given your audience reads on screens, your web writing usually appears in a small space. Yet, it still must reflect a strong message.

For example, this American Express Business web copy uses five words to indicate that it gets the reader’s problem — “Don’t stress over seasonal surges.” Then, it uses another five words to indicate that it has a solution — “Help you keep your business thriving.” On the right, it shows the product name that will do all that (American Express business line of credit.)

13. Create compelling content with better words

Choosing a single word to convey the perfect sentiment makes the most of your available content space. To help, Jon Morrow of Smart Blogger offers a collection of words that can make a difference in your writing: 801+ Power Words That Make You Sound Smart . Here are 15 of them:

• Frightening

In this headline — Firefox Hacks for Everyone: From Cozy Gamers to Minimalists and Beyond — the Mozilla blog opted for one of the power words, “hack.”

 I’ll issue a caveat on this option: Power words can quickly become overused. “Hack” is coming close to saturation.

14. Length isn’t everything

I like to know content length rules and preferences. They give me guideposts for my web writing.

Google makes 30 characters available in its ad headlines, and it’s hard to go shorter than that. This simple sample — Best Enterprise CRM Platform — is 28 characters.

On social media, though, the character parameters are greater, and you could improve engagement by falling short of the upper limits.

Instagram is a perfect example of where writing content short of the 2,200-character maximum caption is a better decision. In fact, experts say the ideal length is 125 characters, which takes up the space visible before the viewer must click to read more.

Still, sometimes writing fewer than 125 characters can work well and draw attention in a crowded feed, as this sample from Grammarly shows. Its caption — “Learn actionable strategies for leveraging Gen AI to elevate your team’s productivity.” — totals just 88 characters.

Of course, exceptions exist. If your content’s primary goal is search engine optimization, longer content is almost always best. As a website ages, it may be able to get by with shorter pieces because it’s already established authority and has more pages, inbound links , etc. However, extended content often helps generate high rankings for targeted keyword phrases and similar words.

15. Choose short words for your web writing

You don’t need to use a lot of words to get your point across. Short ones can work in your favor. Consider these common examples of better choices:

• “Show,” not “indicate”
• “Get rid of,” not “eliminate”
• “Use,” not “utilize”
• “To,” not “in order to”
• “Help,” not “facilitate”
• “Get,” not “obtain”

16. Use a tool to keep track of word counts

Meet your word count goals and improve your word choice with the WordCounter tool. It also helps identify keywords and their appropriate frequency of use.

17. Recognize common writing mistakes

Grammar Girl , created by Mignon Fogarty, founder of Quick and Dirty Tips, outlines some common mistakes, such as this example on the use of that vs. which in writing.

“The simple rule is to use ‘that’ with a restrictive element and ‘which’ with a non-restrictive element … The cupcakes that have sprinkles are still in the fridge. The words “that have sprinkles” restrict the kind of cupcake we’re talking about. Without those words, the meaning of the sentence would change. Without them, we’d be saying that all the cupcakes are still in the fridge, not just the ones with sprinkles.”

18. Use parallel construction

Parallel construction organizes the text and relieves your readers of expending mental energy to piece together the thoughts.

• For example, this mish-mash list is not parallel because the sentence structures vary:
• It could be time to look over your business software contract.
• Consider the best products.
• If you want the product to benefit your company, include others’ points of view.

The list is parallel because every sentence starts the same way – with a verb .

• Review your business software contract.
• Shop for the best products based on features, costs, and support options.
• Ask key members of your team for their perspectives, including productivity barriers.

19. Know when to break the infinitive rule

Avoid splitting infinitives. However, sometimes you might need to bypass grammatically correct in favor of unawkward content.

Pro Writing Aid explains that split infinitives are nothing new — their use dates back to the 1300s. However, there is a time and place for them, as shown in this example from Northern Illinois University’s Effective Writing Practices Tutorial :

• Split infinitive but easily understood: It’s hard to completely follow his reasoning.
• No split infinitive, but awkwardly written: It’s hard to follow completely his reasoning.

20. Be conscious of pronouns

A conversational approach typically works best when you’re creating web content. Writing in the first or second person can accomplish this.

Embracing inclusivity also fosters a conversational atmosphere.

When you’re using pronouns, make sure it’s clear to what the pronoun refers. Given some people use they/them pronouns, ensuring pronoun clarity is especially important.

In those cases where the reader may be confused, explain the person’s use of the plural non-gendered pronoun in the text, for example, “Alex Alumino, who uses they/them pronouns …” Even better, just repeat their name in the sentence so there’s no need to explain and no misunderstanding.

21. Don’t overuse words

Redundancy bores. To figure out if you’re committing this sin, paste your text into the Word It Out tool. The word cloud reveals those used most often in your text.

We input a recent CMI article about user stories to create a word cloud for that content sample. It is no surprise that “user” shows up front and center, but it’s also an indicator for us to review the article to see if “user” is overused. “Katie” also shows up prominently in the word cloud as it’s the first name of the source for the article, and CMI uses first, instead of last names, on second and subsequent references. A review of the article could reveal it unnecessarily references the source too many times.

Similarly, WordCounter detects whether you’re using the same words too often. Use Thesaurus.com to find alternatives.

22. Try this content writing tool to replace jargon-like words

You need to speak your audience’s language, but that doesn’t mean you need to adopt the industry’s jargon. De-Jargonizer is designed to help analyze the jargon in scholarly articles, but the tool works just as well with your content writing.

In this example from a CMI article about building a social media plan , De-Jargonizer identifies four “rare” words — ebbs, inhospitable, clarifies, and actionable.

You can upload a file or paste your text to discover those rare words, aka potential jargon, in your content writing. Then, you can find more reader-friendly replacements.

23. Check your readability score

Even if readers can understand the jargon and complex sentences, they still don’t want to work hard to understand your content. To help understand if your writing is on the easier side, use a tool like Web FX’s Readability Test . It scores your content’s average reading ease and targeted readership age.

In this example, it evaluates the Fedex.com website and concludes it has a reading ease of 27.8 out of 100 and is targeted at 14- and 15-year-olds.

You can scroll down to see other readability scores, including Flesch Kincaid reading ease, Flesch Kincaid grade level, Gunning Fog, Smog Index, Coleman Liau, and Automated Readability Index.

The bottom of the evaluation includes the statistics about the evaluated text, including:

• Total sentences
• Total words
• Complex words
• Percent of complex words
• Average words per sentence
• Average syllables per word

Adjust your writing to meet the preferred readership level of your audience.

24. Evaluate sentence structure with the Hemingway App

Want more help to write content that’s easy to read? Consider tools like the Hemingway app, which provides immediate and detailed feedback on content structure, including sentence formatting. With the website version, you can replace the default text with your own.

The Hemingway app identifies potentially unnecessary adverbs, warns about passive voice, and triggers alerts to dull, complicated words.

In this web writing example from its home page, Hemingway App highlights one of the 13 sentences as very hard to read, one as hard to read, two weakener phrases, and one word with a simpler alternative.

25. Get web writing right with good grammar

Proper grammar is a necessity; you want to get everything correct to satisfy readers (and bosses). Try Grammarly .

Improve your writing with this cloud-based, AI editor. Grammarly automates grammar, spelling, and punctuation checks, often giving better, cleaner content options. The tool also alerts writers to passive voice, suggests opportunities to be concise, and assesses overall tone.

You also can save time and energy with ProWritingAid . It eliminates the need to reread to polish your content. This AI editing software offers more than grammar checks. It checks for vague wording, sentence length variation, and overuse of adverbs and passive voice. The tool also identifies complicated or run-on sentences. (“Content Writing Examples, Tips, and Resources”)

26. Read your web content in scanning mode

Here’s some sad news for content writers: Readers won’t consume every word in your content. They skip and scan a lot to see if the content is a good fit for them, and then they hope they can glean the relevant information without having to consume all the content.

As you write, think about how the text will look visually. Make it easy for readers to scan your content by including:

• Short paragraphs
• Bulleted lists
• Bolded text
• Words in color

27. Read aloud

If your content doesn’t flow as you speak it, it may not work for the reader . Pay attention to when you take too many pauses or pause in places where no comma exists. Adjust your text — add a comma or break the sentence into two.

Microsoft Word offers a read-aloud feature through its immersive reader tools, while Google Docs can use a Chrome extension to give a voice to the content .

28. Use plagiarism checkers

In recent years, advancements in artificial intelligence have prompted growth in automated plagiarism checkers. Microsoft Word embeds the feature option in its software as does Grammarly. You also can use tools dedicated to ensuring that the content writing isn’t a copycat (or being copycatted), including:

• Unicheck – Verify the originality of work with plagiarism detection. You can spot outright copying and minor text modifications in unscrupulous submissions.
• Copyscape – Protect your content and your reputation. Copyscape uncovers plagiarism in purchased content and detects plagiarism by others of your original work.

Of course, no plagiarism checker is 100% accurate, so before you accuse a content writer of plagiarism, triple-check the results (and add a human touch whenever appropriate).

29. Use a topic tool for writing inspiration

HubSpot’s Ideas Generator works well to get your creative content writing juices flowing. Just fill in the fields with three nouns to get some ideas.

For example, if you input the words car, truck, and SUV, HubSpot delivers these ideas along with the targeted keywords for the topic:

• Keyword: Top truck accessories
• Keyword: Comparing SUV models
• Keyword: Truck bed organization ideas

HubSpot’s topic generator also allows users to pick a title and have an outline created for that article.

You also could perform a similar exercise by writing the prompts in other generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT and Gemini .

NOTE: Always review the titles and accompanying data to ensure accuracy. In the HubSpot sample, the generator included a headline — Discover the Best SUVs for Families in 2021. Yet, it’s 2024.

30. Know SEO responsibilities in web writing

Sometimes writers create content with multiple purposes. They have the burden of blending SEO into the content . I frame it as a burden because it’s one more variable to deal with. If you have a knack for SEO and goals you can measure, it’s not a burden.

Unfortunately, you sometimes don’t know what realistic keywords to pursue. Aim too low and you use rarely searched keywords. Aspire for something too competitive, and the content won’t rank.

How are you evaluating keywords? Learn how to find your sweet spot with keyword selection (and how to appear on the first page of Google). Identify potential keywords by using tools like:

• Moz Keyword Explorer
• Google’s Keyword Planner
• Keyword Tool
• AnswerThePublic
• Neil Patel’s Ubersuggest

31. Monitor relevant topics to get ideas for your content

With Feedly , you can stay informed about what matters most and avoid information overload. This AI assistant learns your preferences, then culls and curates content from the internet that you want and need.

Share your favorite writing tricks

What content creation and copywriting productivity tools do you favor? What do you do each day to make your writing tasks just a little easier? Please tag CMI on social media using #CMWorld.

All tools mentioned in this article were suggested by the author. If you’d like to suggest a tool, share the article on social media with a comment.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can't attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:

• 7 Ancient Archetypes That Give Your Content Fresh Relevance
• How To Write Faster With or Without an AI Assist
• How To Get Branded Content Right: Examples, Ideas, and Tips
• How To Catch Audiences With Extraordinary Hooks
• New Study Reveals Clear Writing Tips for B2B Marketers
• 6 Easy Things You Can Do To Improve the Content Experience for Your Audience
• How To Turn Old Content Into a New Work of Art With an AI Assist

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

• United States

United States Housing Market

The average United States home value is $362,481 , up 3.3% over the past year and goes to pending in around 15 days .

What is the Zillow Home Values Index?

Zillow Home Value Index (ZHVI), built from the ground up by measuring monthly changes in property level Zestimates, captures both the level and home values across a wide variety of geographies and housing types.

wn1sdwk000Q1O

• Our Customers
• Our Locations

Working At WoodMac

• Your Career
• Life at WoodMac
• Our Culture

See All Products

• Real-Time Analytics
• Supply Chain Intelligence

How Else We Can Help

• Consulting Case Studies
• Creative Strategies

Browse All Industries

• Power & Renewables

Accelerate the move to clean energy with low-carbon intelligence connecting assets, markets, and companies.

• Metals & Mining

Access reliable research and analysis within and across the metals and mining industry to make strategic, operational and investment decisions.

• Oil & Gas

Access world-class insight from exploration to end product, with data by assets, country and region.

• Gas & LNG

In-depth insights, supported by robust data offerings, thorough research, and comprehensive consulting services.

• Commodity Trading & Analytics

Access real-time data and analytics in all major commodities with innovative data points and comprehensive insights to guide strategic and trading decisions.

Understand strategic opportunities and challenges in the rapidly changing upstream industry.

Access unparalleled detail and depth into the Maritime landscape through the most accurate, integrated view of terrestrial, satellite and dynamic AIS networks.

• Oils & Chemicals

Understand the connections from feedstocks to end products and how each fits.

Market Insights

Blogs, podcasts, newsletters.

Explore the themes shaping the energy transition with our monthly thought leadership.

Unique energy insight, spanning the renewables, energy and natural resources supply chain, to support strategic decision-making.

Weekly discussions on the latest news and trends in energy, cleantech and renewables.

• The Inside Track

Our weekly round up of the lasted opinions, new, industry analysis from our global analysts.

Guides and featured insights

• Energy Transition

In depth analysis of the energy transition and the path to a low carbon future.

Explore the future growth potential for carbon capture, utilisation and storage.

The latest views from our global experts on the rise of the hydrogen economy.

• Electric vehicles

Explore the growth trajectory for EVs and spot any possible bumps in the road.

As the world maps out a low carbon future, COP29 will dive deeper on financing the energy transition.

• Material Transition

Explore trends around sustainability, recycling and the circular economy and their impact on materials markets.

Browse Events

• Wood Mackenzie Events

Our global events bring together influential decision-makers from the energy sector.

Browse Wood Mackenzie events by Industry

• Global events
• North America

Browse All Reports

• Power and renewables
• Upstream oil and gas
• Macroeconomics, risk and global trends
• Oil and gas markets
• Midstream oil and gas
• Downstream oil refining
• Metals markets
• Metals costs

Featured Reports

• 2024 Featured Reports

Explore our wide range of market outlook reports spanning the natural resources and energy industries.

Pinpoint opportunities on a map. In-depth industry and market-data wallmaps.

An integrated view of global renewable and conventional power data and insights across projects, technologies and markets.

Maximise investment opportunities across the hydrogen, ammonia and methanol value chain.

Industry renowned data and analysis, enabling resilient, sustainable portfolios.

Identify advantaged barrels and support critical investment decisions with an integrated view of commercial and technical data.

• Carbon Management

Analysis of CCUS and offset opportunities to shape decarbonisation strategies.

The single source for exploring industry data alongside leading expertise, analyses, and modelling insights.

Unlock robust data and new unique perspectives across key mined commodities needed to assess the mining landscape.

• Lens Direct - API

Seamlessly integrate Wood Mackenzie data into your own proprietary systems with Lens Direct API services.

• Press releases

CO2 utilisation potential as key global decarbonization tool limited by current economics

Get in touch.

• Kevin Baxter [email protected] +44 408 809922
• Mark Thomton [email protected] +1 630 881 6885
• Hla Myat Mon [email protected] +65 8533 8860
• BIG Partnership [email protected] UK-based PR agency
• Sonia Kerr [email protected] +44 330 174 7267

CO2 utilisation currently represents less than 5% of globally announced capture capacity; stronger incentives needed

1 minute read

• LinkedIn LinkedIn Share on LinkedIn
• Facebook Facebook Share on Facebook
• Twitter Share on Twitter
• Email Share by email

Carbon Capture Utilisation and Storage (CCUS) is a crucial element in global decarbonisation, but current economics limit CO 2 utilisation deployment as high costs and insufficient subsidies hinder the market, according to a recent report from Wood Mackenzie.

In Wood Mackenzie’s 2050 net zero scenario, more than 7 Btpa of CCUS capacity is needed. Currently, 500 Mtpa of planned carbon capture capacity has been announced worldwide, of which more than 95% is dedicated to storage and less than 5% (22.4 Mtpa) to utilization, according to the report “To use or not to use? CO 2 utilisation as a carbon capture enabler.”

“Expanded CO 2 utilisation could bolster overall carbon capture economics, but current high costs, insufficient subsidies, and unsubstantial markets for green premiums are limiting appetite for utilisation growth,” said Rohan Dighe, research analyst, CCUS for Wood Mackenzie.

Most markets remain uncompetitive due to costs

According to the report, e-Hydrocarbons are uncompetitive and cost three times more than incumbent technology when using green H2, which comprises more than 80% of the cost of production.

However, CO 2 mineralisation to high-purity limestone is competitive with traditional manufacturing, showing double digit returns if technology is scaled economically, but the market size is limited.

“Aggregates could be more than a 500 Mtpa market, but conversion to aggregates is too expensive today to be competitive,” said Dighe.

More policy support and tax incentives needed

According to Dighe, tax incentives like the US 45Q and Canadian Investment Tax Credit support utilization but are limited in scope and provide insufficient revenue to justify projects. Only the EU has a legislated CO 2 utilisation mandate, which is confined to e-fuel use in aviation.

“Policy supporting demand for utilisation products is not strong enough,” said Dighe. “Without markets for these products, utilisation economics will continue to be disadvantaged. Declines in feedstock and technology costs and development of strong policy incentives are crucial for utilisation to become a legitimate, widespread enabler of carbon capture deployment.”