Business owners who want to understand their customers’ needs and outsmart competitors can gain insight with market research tools. These tools illuminate relevant demographic information, customer preferences, and social trends—all of which ultimately impact sales.
Processing this quantitative and qualitative data into a cohesive market research report can give you the business intelligence you need to make informed decisions about your business’s path forward.
6 steps of the market research process
Traditionally, the market research process is divided into six steps:
1. Research the industry. Compile stats and data on your industry at large and within your niche. If applicable, identify trends in the sector.2. Investigate the competition. List competing businesses and investigate why customers use their products.
3. Identify any market gaps. There are likely holes in the market your business can fill.
4. Define your target market. Who is your ideal customer? Define their age range, geographic location, values, and shopping habits.
5. Identify barriers to entry. Barriers often include startup costs, compliance issues, and legal requirements.
6. Create a sales forecast. Estimate future revenue and growth potential.
Tips for effectively using market research tools
- Start with affordable options
- Use industry reports for broad insights
- Gather customer feedback directly
Market research tools help you create a cohesive business strategy at any stage, whether you’re launching, pivoting, rebranding, or expanding. Choosing suitable tools can help you make business decisions, whether you’re a Fortune 500 company or a small business. Here are some tips for using them well:
Start with affordable options
When you’re just starting out, you can leverage free and inexpensive tools. Kat Kavner Woolf, co-founder of Heyday Canning Co., used free market research tools when launching her brand, including Google Forms for surveys and good old-fashioned spreadsheets for mapping out the competition.
Scores of websites offer free access to existing data, from the Pew Research Center for demographic research to Google Trends for assessing consumer interests. Many platforms like SurveyMonkey also have limited free basic plans.
Use industry reports for broad insights
For broad insights into the market, you can purchase reports compiled and written by experts, researchers, and consultants. Kat finds information compiled by Nielsen and SPINS to be some of the best market research on consumer purchasing habits. Petia Abdur-Razzaaq, the CEO of digital marketing firm The Stylista Group, uses McKinsey research as a foundation for understanding industry trends.
Gather customer feedback directly
As you build on your market knowledge, start talking to consumers within your niche. A survey creation tool can help you perform market research by asking consumers about their experiences, preferences, and interests. By sending out surveys, you gain awareness of consumer desires.
“It helps you gain a perspective of how the market is either meeting or not meeting the trends that are shaping consumer tastes,” Kat says.
If you want an even more detailed perspective on customers’ experiences, you can talk to them directly. Petia typically interviews clients’ customers through surveys; however, a handful tend to be so enthusiastic they’re willing to give feedback over Zoom. These calls can help reveal the likes and dislikes of the target audience most enthused about your brand.
Petia notes that it’s helpful to add an incentive—such as a chance to win a $100 gift card—when she creates surveys for clients’ customers.
“People tend to not want to do those things unless there’s something in it for them,” she says.
Practical market research tools for entrepreneurs
There are scores of market research tools to choose from when conducting market research at any stage of a business’s evolution. Here are some of the best market research tools to get you started:
Google Trends
Google Trends (along with the Google Keyword Planner) can help you gauge consumer interest in trending topics. It can also help attune your SEO strategy and marketing campaigns to align with your target market’s needs. Google Trendsprovides graphs using real-time Google search engine data to show rises and falls in a given topic’s search volume.
“This gives you real-time data in terms of what consumers are actually looking for online by search terms and by industry,” Petia says.
You can use Google Trends to compare search stats for terms relevant to your product. For example, a chocolate company might compare the terms “bean to bar” and “artisanal chocolate” to see which is more commonly used by consumers. The comparative keyword research tool tracks and compares multiple search terms in one graph, which provides market insights andconsumer insights about brand popularity.
Pricing: Free.
Statista
How many social media users were there worldwide from 2017 to 2025? What were the busiest New York City subway stations in 2023? Statista is a platform that aggregates data into graphics and publishes reports on 170 industries across the globe. Stats on specific companies, like TikTok or Amazon, might offer valuable insights, as might reports on artificial intelligence (AI), sustainable fashion, or online food delivery. Statista’s specialized reports contain industry analysis on a wide range of topics, from luxury fashion to beauty to tech industry trends—all of which can help you identify gaps in the market and relevant trends.
Pricing: A free basic plan has limited access. The starter plan costs $199 per month with access to two million statistics. The personal plan costs $549 and adds reports prepared by Statista’s analysts. The professional plan costs $959 and adds analysis and forecasting tools.
Pew Research Center
Pew Research Center is an incomparable resource and a great starting point for those who want to understand opinions and trends around social or political issues. The nonprofit’s public opinion polling and research aren’t geared toward market research needs, but Pew’s data analysis can illuminate why consumers shift habits—for example, due to changing technology, social developments, or other cultural phenomena.
Pricing: Free.
SurveyMonkey
SurveyMonkey is a useful market research survey platform. Conduct online market research surveys or use the tool to gain consumer feedback on events, user experience, and satisfaction. Use pre-built survey templates or customize survey content and design.
All paid plans offer an unlimited number of surveys per year and questions per survey. The more expensive plans have increased survey capabilities, like 24/7 customer support via email, multilingual options, and data visualization.
Pricing: The basic plan, which is limited to surveys of 10 questions, is free. For individuals, paid plans with additional functionality start at $39 per month. For teams (of three or more users), plans start at $30 per user per month.
Qualtrics XM
Experience management platform Qualtrics XM provides a suite of strategy and research tools, offering market assessment, pricing studies, message testing, sentiment analysis, and more. These are all accessible via a centralized data hub equipped with an AI tool to help distill insights. You can also use it to process customer feedback and even enable video-based qualitative surveys, gaining actionable insights for your business.
Pricing: Qualitrics XM offers a free basic online survey tool. For Qualtrics XM Strategy & Research plans, contact the company for a quote.
Qualaroo
Qualarooimproves customer feedback collection by prompting ecommerce shoppers to answer questions when they’re most likely to have good responses top of mind. What does this look like in practice? Rather than sending out a post-purchase survey (which could easily get lost in a customer’s inbox), Qualaroo can collect feedback during the checkout process. For instance, if a shopper is perusing your pricing page, a small Qualaroo feedback box might appear and ask if the pricing seems fair. Or, if a customer is about to leave your site, a pop-up might ask them to quickly explain why they didn’t make a purchase.
Qualaroo is easy to use, making it popular with small businesses. Its pop-up menus prompt customers to participate in a simple rating system, providing useful audience insights. You can use this survey data to easily assess what makes your customers happy or frustrated.
Pricing: A free basic plan for startups and small businesses includes limited feedback collection functionality; the more comprehensive business plan is $40 per month and includes unlimited feedback collection and other features.
Tableau
It’s typically easier for humans to visualize data via charts and graphs rather than a list of numbers. Tableau lets you create beautiful visualizations from your market research data, from colorful pie charts and bar graphs to Venn diagrams.
Pricing: Tableau plans start at $35 per month.
BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is a research and analytics tool that helps you monitor your online mentions, find influencers your target audience cares about, track industry trends, and more. Its content research tool indexes billions of articles and posts, providing audience insights and research reports to help you connect with your target market.
Pricing: Plans start at $199 per month for unlimited search capabilities, with higher tiers offering additional users, alerts, and other features.
Market research tools FAQ
What are the primary types of market research methods?
Market research is conducted in the field and online. Interviews, focus groups, and surveys are all part of market research, as are quantifying competitors’ social media mentions and studying new market trends and social consumer behavior.
How do market research tools work?
There are scores of market research tools that process consumer data. The common throughline is that each research tool helps businesses learn about their industry, competitors, and customers, both quantitatively and qualitatively.
How will AI change market research?
Many market research platforms already use AI. Qualtrics XM’s research platform, for instance, provides an AI assistant that can help you distill insights from the data you’ve gathered on customers and competitors.
