10 Best Sites & Tools for Market Research

It is not enough as a brand or business to be intimately familiar with your products and services. If you want to achieve the highest level of success, you must also be intimately familiar with your industry and customers. There are market research sites that can provide a deeper look at your business and uncover ways to win over your audience to assist you in gaining these insights.

What Is Market Research and Why Is It Important?

Market research is the act of gathering and analyzing data about a product’s or service’s market position. It examines data on current customer interest and potential growth.

Market research also collects information about people who are or may be interested in a product or service. It interprets data pertaining to customer spending habits, geographical locations, industry competitors, and economic conditions.

These insights will assist you in determining:

• Who your customers are
• How many people are likely to become your customers
• How they buy
• Why they buy
• Why they buy from you
• How much they buy
• Why do they purchase from a competitor
• Where there might be opportunities for niche marketing

There are many market research sites that can help you uncover insights about your customers and industry to find answers to these questions.

The Best Sites for Market Research

The following tools, platforms, and research methods are among the best sites for market research. Use these free marketing research websites to learn more about your industry, customer base, and growth potential.

U.S. Census Data Tools

Determine your market size, or the potential reach of your products or services, is an important part of marketing research. Investigate how many people you can reasonably expect to become customers. There are data tools available from the United States Census Bureau for this type of research. More than a dozen online market research tools and free industry research reports are available on the site, allowing you to gain insight into the demographics and geographic locations of populations who may be interested in your offerings.

SBA’s Office of Entrepreneurship Education Resources

The U.S. Small Business Administration website is another excellent resource for market research in terms of customer demographics and economic statistics. Their Office of Entrepreneurship Education has a variety of market research analysis tools, resources, and reports that can be used to learn about customer statistics, product production, economic factors, and data for marketing intelligence.

Pew Research Center

Search the Pew Research Center for additional reports and datasets to use in your market research. The firm conducts “public opinion polling, demographic research, content analysis, and other data-driven social science research,” all of which provide information about social, industry, and media trends. The diverse and in-depth reports provide businesses with a data-driven perspective on the issues shaping industries and geographical areas.

Statista

Statista is another excellent site for market research when it comes to researching data and statistics. The website contains datasets on topics spanning over 600 industries. Statista provides hard data as well as numerous supporting charts and infographics that make the data easy to consume, understand, and apply in market analysis.

SurveyMonkey

Obtaining information from people who meet the criteria of your ideal customer is beneficial, as is gathering data from those who do business with you. Surveying your current customers should be included as part of your market research to gain insight into their purchasing decision process and information that can help you create buyer personas. To conduct this type of research, use SurveyMonkey to create surveys that you can send to your current customer list.

Google Surveys

Asking questions is one of the most effective ways to learn about your target market. You can gain direct insight into the minds of your target customers by creating surveys and distributing them to people who match the characteristics of your ideal audience. Google Surveys is one of the best sites for this type of market research. You create a survey, describe who you want to take it, and Google gathers people who meet your criteria and returns the results to you.

Google Trends

Google Trends is yet another excellent resource for market research. It provides insight into the minds of consumers and audiences. By displaying reports on the top, most searched for terms, the tool allows you to see what topics and stories are popular. To gain more insight into the areas that are most relevant to your audience and industry, you can use filter functions to see trending stories based on region and category.

City Town Info

Use City Town Info to get more detailed demographic information about careers and geographic areas. The site allows you to search by region and learn more about the types of jobs and college experience that people in that area have. The data enables businesses to get to know the people who live in specific areas across the United States and gain insights into what they do, how much they earn, how much education they have, and other factors.

Social Mention

Social Mention is another tool that can help you keep an eye on industry trends and hot topics. The tool collects social posts that mention a specific search term. It also provides information about the search term, such as audience sentiment (how users perceive the term) and reach (how much influence the term has). To gain insight into your company or industry, search for both your brand name and related terms to see how audiences feel about the subject.

Answer the Public

Using a simple keyword search function, you can “discover what people are asking about.” Even on its own, it can help you quickly fill out a content plan while also assisting you in discovering questions, topics, and keywords that your audience is interested in. When you enter your specific topic on the search page, you will see a list of questions, common search terms, topics, and related subjects that can help power your campaign.

Using these questions and search terms can help you ensure you’re catering to the right people.

You will find your customers through search, and once they arrive at your website, you will have the opportunity to convert a prospect into a loyal customer.

Begin your market research now

When it comes to understanding and gaining new customers, don’t rely on educated guesses, estimates, or gut feelings. Gather the facts. Using these market research sites, conduct a detailed competitive analysis of your industry to discover new growth potential for your business and the path you need to take to get there.