As a brand or business, it’s not enough for you to intimately know your products and services. You also have to know your industry and customers inside and out if you want to achieve the highest level of success.
To help you gain these insights, there are sites for market research that can offer a deeper look at your business and uncover ways to win over your audience.
What Is Market Research and Why Does It Matter?
Market research is the act of gathering and analyzing data about the position of a product or service in a market. It looks at information regarding current customer interest and potential growth.
The market analysis also gathers information about the people who are and might be interested in a product or service. It interprets data as they relate to customer spending habits, geographic locations, industry competitors, and economic conditions.
These insights help you find out:
- How many people are likely to become your customers
- Who your customers are
- Why they buy
- How they buy
- How much they buy
- Why do they buy from you
- Why do they buy from a competitor
- Where there might be opportunities for niche marketing
To find answers to these questions, there are many sites for market research that can help you uncover insights about your customers and industry.
The Best Sites for Market Research
Some of the best sites for market research include the following tools, platforms, and research methods. Use these free marketing research websites to gain insights into your industry, customer base, and potential for growth.
U.S. Census Data Tools
A vital part of marketing research is determining your market size, or the potential reach of your products or service. Research to see how many people you could reasonably expect to become your customers.
For this type of research, there are the U.S. Census data tools. The site has more than a dozen online market research tools and free industry research reports that help you gain insight into the demographics and geographic locations of populations who might be interested in your offerings.
Statista
For researching data and stats, Statista is another one of the best sites for market research. The site includes datasets on topics in over 600 industries. In addition to providing hard data, Statista also provides many supporting charts and infographics that make the data easy to consume, understand, and use in your market analysis.
SBA’s Office of Entrepreneurship Education Resources
Another one of the best sites for market research as it relates to customer demographics and economic statistics is the U.S. Small Business Administration website. Their Office of Entrepreneurship Education has a variety of market research analysis tools, resources, and reports that provide information useful for learning about customer statistics, product production, economic factors, and data you can use for your marketing intelligence.
Pew Research Center
For more reports and datasets to use in your market research, search the Pew Research Center. The company conducts “public opinion polling, demographic research, content analysis, and other data-driven social science research,” all of which offer insights into social, industry, and media trends. The varied and in-depth reports help businesses get a data-focused perspective on the topics shaping industries and geographic areas.
Google Surveys
One of the most powerful ways to learn about your target market is to ask questions. Creating surveys and distributing them to people who match the characteristics of your ideal audience allows you to get direct insight into the minds of your target customers.
One of the best sites for market research like this is Google Surveys. You create a survey, describe who you want to take the survey, and Google pools people who match your criteria and provides you with the results.
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SurveyMonkey
Getting information from people who match the criteria of your ideal customer is useful and so is gathering data from the people who actually do business with you. A part of your market research should include surveying your current customers to gain insight into their buying decision process and information that can help you create buyer personas. To perform this type of research, use SurveyMonkey to create surveys that you can distribute to your list of current customers.
Semrush
Researching your audience is a powerful way to gain insights to use in your marketing intelligence, which is why Semrush is one of the best sites for market research. Using Semrush, you can uncover a variety of details about your audience’s demographics, interests, and habits.
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City Town Info
To get more detailed demographic information as it relates to careers and geographic areas, use City Town Info. The site allows you to search by region and explore details about what types of jobs and college experience residents of those areas have. The data helps businesses get to know the people living in specific areas around the U.S. and gather insights into what they do, how much they earn, how much education they have, and more.
Google Trends
Google offers another one of the best sites for market research with Google Trends. It allows you to get insight into the minds of consumers and audiences. The tool helps you see what topics and stories are popular by displaying reports on the top, most searched for terms. You can use filter functions to see trending stories based on region and category to gain more insight into the areas that are most relevant to your audience and industry.
Social Mention
Another tool that helps you get a radar on industry trends and hot topics is Social Mention. The tool curates social posts that mention a target search term. It also provides details about the search term such as audience sentiment (how users feel about the term) and reaches (how much influence the term has). To gain insight into your business or industry, you can search both your brand name and related terms to get an idea of how audiences feel about the topic.
Start Your Market Research Today
When it comes to understanding and winning over more customers, don’t rely on guesses, estimates, or feelings. Get the facts. Do a detailed competitive analysis of your industry using these sites for market research and discover new growth potential for your business and the path you need to take to get there.
