When you conduct market research, you gather information that will help you decide what type of products and services you should launch. Additionally, they assist you in identifying your target audiences and best marketing strategies so that you can act without guesswork.
In order to minimize risk and make more data-driven decisions, businesses use market research software. The following 15 tools are the best for conducting market research.
1. Similarweb
If you don't want to have an expert analyst whispering in your ear, Similarweb is probably the best way to get and compare traffic information about any website you land on.
You can find useful, high-level information using their free suite of products, including the Chrome extension. They gain deep insights by analyzing their database of real-world data on global website performance gathered over time, which they have already been building for over a decade. From sales to sites to stocks, they keep their finger on the pulse of online business worldwide.
Similarweb provides insights on other enterprise-level operations down to small businesses for Microsoft, Amazon, and even Google. These are serious tools that can help you grow if you want to know how your company stands out and then initiate a robust research and marketing campaign..
Starter plans cost $125 per month paid annually; professional plans cost $333 per month billed annually; team and enterprise plans have custom pricing.
2. Glimpse
Not only is Glimpse valuable for doing quick pulse-checks on the latest trends, but it also leverages the power of AI for even deeper insights. Using natural language processing and artificial intelligence to analyze emotion and sentiment, Glimpse excels in open-ended questions, saving time and providing invaluable insights
People who can invest in AI tools for their businesses without needing a decade-long deep dive like Similarweb's users will benefit most from this tool.
Pricing: Starter Plan - Free; Professional - $500/month; Advanced - $1,000/month; Enterprise - custom pricing.
3. BuzzSumo
As a content research tool, BuzzSumo offers several highly useful features that work best for mid-size businesses and up. BuzzSumo is likely a good fit for your company if you need many ideas for lots of content.
Your keywords of choice can be monitored by their monitoring tools to alert you when new content is created.
Writers, content strategists, and managers of writers and content strategists should keep up with consumer trends within their industries - so they are right there to provide them with information.
You can also access BuzzSumo's reporting tools, which allow you to stay up-to-date on developments and build visual assets to communicate them to your audience.
Through BuzzSumo, you can find major influencers that fit your brand to sponsor and collaborate with.
Because BuzzSumo doesn't integrate well with Instagram, you'll want to focus on influencers who use other social channels unless you're willing to do some IG work on the side.
Pricing: Free 30-day trials are available. Content creation plans cost $199 per month; PR and comms plans cost $299 per month; suite plans cost $499 per month; and Enterprise plans cost $999 per month.
4. GrowthBar SEO
GrowthBar SEO is all-in for AI. You might want to use this tool if your leadership wants a piece of the AI action in the company's market research.
It uses ChatGPT-4, and the peer-to-peer review site G2 ranked it the #1 AI writing tool for SEO in 2022 and 2023.
This AI writing assistant does more than just compile and give words to information it finds online. As you move through the outline, you can select relevant keywords, titles, headings, industry standard word counts, and link suggestions.
Moreover, they provide tools for keyword research, keyword ranking, and keyword competitor analysis. With Google search incorporated into the suite, you can do most of your writing on one screen.
Pro tip: You'll need a writer to bring AI content to life by fact-checking information, adding unique or inside perspectives, meaningful quotes, and many other factors that make the content enjoyable to read.
Pricing: A seven-day free trial is available. Standard plans cost $36 per month; pro plans cost $74.25 per month; and agency plans cost $149.25 per month.
5. Statista
Data visualization website Statista uses data from reputable reports and organizes and presents it in an easy-to-understand format for researchers, marketers, and product creators.
“Statista is like my market research sidekick, giving me all the data I need without the endless search. No more digging through the haystack. With Statista, I can spot trends and make informed decisions with ease," says Icee Griffin, market researcher at HubSpot.
Statista doesn't do original research, but its 100 analysts are always looking for gaps in their resources to develop ever more useful, trending data.
Pricing: Basic plans are free. Starter plans cost $199 per month, billed annually. Professional plans cost $959 per month, billed annually.
6. Think With Google Research Tools
Wouldn't it be great to know what your product's chances of success are?
Think With Google's marketing research tools provide interesting insights on whether anyone is searching for your product (Google Trends), what markets to target (Market Finder), and what retail categories are rising (Rising Retail Categories).
The Find My Audience tool allows you to find out what your potential viewers are interested in and what you should discuss on your brand's YouTube channel if you'd like to market your product on YouTube.
As a free and incredibly useful tool, this can be an invaluable resource for small and new businesses looking to conduct market research and get their growth going.
Pricing: Free
7. Make My Persona
You can create a buyer persona for your potential new product using HubSpot's Make My Persona tool. Personas are created by picking a name for them, selecting their age, identifying their career characteristics, and identifying their challenges.
Demographic and psychographic information can be pinpointed this way.
In order to avoid scope creep, it is important to create a buyer persona early in the marketing process.
My recommendation is Hubspot's Market Research Kit if you're unsure about these details and how to use market research tools.
You can use it free of charge to build a strong foundation for data-driven marketing decisions in the future.
Make My Persona is best suited to B2B product launches because you'll be prompted to document your buyer persona's career objectives and role-specific challenges.
It would be ideal if your product solved a problem for them at work or helped their company increase revenue.
8. Tableau
You can connect Tableau to virtually any data source, but the data isn't presented in unreadable tables.
By visualizing the data, Tableau helps you gain insight, appeal to external stakeholders, and communicate the feasibility of your product to potential investors.
From corn production in tropical climate zones to office product sales in North America, you can visualize data. You can explore potential markets and suppliers as granularly or as broadly as you like with Tableau's tools.
A combination of visual information for humans and pure data for machines. Data from Tableau can be exported to Excel, backed up in Amazon Redshift, and more using Tableau's integration with spreadsheets and databases.
When billed annually, Tableau Viewer plans cost $14 per user per month. Monthly fees for Tableau Explorer plans are $42 per user. An annual Tableau Creator plan costs $75 per user per month.
9. Paperform
You can better understand your target audience and their needs by conducting a market research survey.
It is crucial that this step is interactive and gathers objective, accurate responses to understand your dream customers' problems.
Using Paperform is as easy as writing a Word document because it has a free-text interface. The look and feel of your survey can be customized by changing the colors, fonts, layouts, and themes.
Over 27 different types of question fields are available, including ranking, matrix, and scale fields. To gather more information and increase completion rates, use several surveys to create visually engaging surveys.
Use one of their expertly-made questionnaires or market research survey templates to get started if you don't know where to begin.
Paperform is best for: I have found it to be efficient at incorporating multiple customer personas in my experience. In order to create fully personalized paths, conditional logic is used to show or hide questions or sections of content.
Drop-off rates are reduced and customer interaction is increased with these interactive forms.
Monthly pricing for Essentials plans is $29 per month. The Pro plan costs $59 per month. The cost of a business plan is $199 per month. Contact Paperform's sales team for enterprise pricing.
10. SurveyMonkey
You can create in-depth market research surveys with SurveyMonkey to better understand your market and consumers.
Using this tool, you can create targeted, uber-specific surveys to collect answers specific to your product.
Data sources can give you a general overview of your target audience and market, but SurveyMonkey can give you more detailed information. Market research solutions and services offered by SurveyMonkey include a dashboard option for easy analysis of results.
It is nice to be able to explore markets beyond your borders with SurveyMonkey. Survey translation services are included for international research, as well as a global survey panel.
Pricing:
- Individual plans: Advantage annual plans cost $39 per month. Premier annual plans cost $119 a month. Monthly plans cost $99 per month.
- Team plans: Team advantage plans cost $29 per person each month. Team premier plans cost $75 per person each month.
- Enterprise pricing is available upon request.
11. Loop11
With Loop11, you can test your website's usability, study user intent, test the information architecture of your site, and see how the user experience changes depending on the device your visitors are using.
Loop11 tests your site on any device by requiring users to perform tasks. In the following question, they describe how easy or difficult it was to complete the task.
The best product in the world won't succeed unless consumers can buy it through your website.
Loop11's participants can be used for niche demographics, or you can bring in your own to discover more about your current customers.
The best use for this is: Market research for the development of your site. Identify snags that prevent conversions and whether your target consumers find your site easy to navigate.
Rapid Insights plans cost $199 monthly or $179 per month billed annually. A Pro plan costs $399 per month or $358 per month, billed annually. An enterprise plan costs $599 per month or $533 per month billed annually.
12. Userlytics
Like Loop11, Userlytics lets you test the usability of your website, mobile app, and site prototype. Different devices can be targeted, buyer personas can be defined, and screening questions can be used to disqualify participants.
The purpose of testing is to see how well your test-takers perform the tasks. Then they answer a simple question about the difficulty of the task. There are several ways to structure the question:
You can leave it open-ended, provide multiple options, or ask for a rating. You can also use System Usability Scale (SUS) questions, Net Promoter Score (NPS) questions, and Single Ease Questions (SEQ).
In addition to recording a webcam and a screen, Userlytics also runs a web server. By comparing the user's answers with their reactions on video, you can learn how they feel when interacting with your assets.
For more information, schedule a free demo.
13. Pew Research Center
You can use the Pew Research Center website to better understand your target market, from economic conditions to political attitudes, social media usage to food science.
Don't let your curiosity get the best of you, though. There's so much interesting information in there that it can drain your day away - but it is so rewarding.
The Pew Research Center integrates visual data directly into the text - not just an image or chart.
It has hundreds of interactive articles that make dense information easier to understand by filtering and sifting through the data. It's a great feature for creating compelling presentations. There are tags attached to the quotes, too, so you can sort them based on various concepts or groups.
Pricing: Free
14. SocialMention (Part of BrandMentions)
SocialMention is a part of BrandMentions focused on social media monitoring. With the platform, you can find out what your prospective customers are talking about online.
Using SocialMentions, you can search for a keyword and see recent social posts that contain it.
You'll also get other metrics such as Reach (how many people view the keyword per day), Performance (how many people engage with the keyword per day), and Mentions by Weekday (when people mention the keyword).
You can use this tool to find out what time of day or night people are searching for your product on social media.
Consider developing a sleeping aid app and learning through SocialMention that most people search for sleeping aid apps at 2:00 AM. Your post should be scheduled around 2:00 AM when you begin announcing your product.
The sentiment analysis tool on your keywords is another useful tool. In this way, you can find out how people feel about the type of product you're launching in general.
By doing so, you can refine the tone of your campaigns.
Pricing: Growing business plans cost $79 per month. Company plans cost $249 per month. Plans for enterprises and agencies cost $399 per month. Billing is done annually for all prices.
15. Qualtrics Market Research Panels
With Qualtrics, finding respondents for your market research surveys is easy. With their online sample service, you can access real, live human thoughts without managing any real people.
It’s an introverted marketer’s dream come true!
You can access a representative sample of your target audience via Qualtrics once you've identified your target audience.
Then you can use Qualtrics' built-in platform to gather insights and information from people whose pain points you might be able to alleviate.
Using Qualtrics' built-in platform or your own survey software is your choice. Qualtrics lets you choose the program that works best for you, whether you're already comfortable with one or need to hustle with one you know.
Ensure a successful product launch by conducting market research
A successful product launch requires market research.
By using the tools we've just described to you, you can find out who needs your product, why they need it, and how you can better market it.