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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.

See why Gong, Mastercard, and ZoomInfo trust Crayon to help them win more competitive deals.

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Top 10 Free Market Research Tools to Boost Your Business

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 for 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 for 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. 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.

8. 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.

9. 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 for 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.

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.

• Access to basic survey creation and targeting features for free.
• 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!

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Top 25 Free Tools For Conducting Market Research

A curated list of the top 25 Free Tools For Conducting Market Research. This collection of market research tools will help you conduct a proper market research, competitive analysis, content research & automation.

Conducting market research is an important part of any business.

Not many know that the best way to get a feel for an industry is through market research . You can gain valuable insights on your competitors, potential customer pain points and preferences, or any number of other aspects in order to make strategic decisions down the line.

Doing market research gives you vital information like demographics, detailed insights into competitor’s strategy (and strengths), consumer buying patterns & which companies are likely growing/shrinking over time.

This is why,

There are so many free and paid options available, but which ones will provide you with the most value for your business? We compiled a list of 25 must-have free tools that can help you conduct market research.

Please feel free to add your own thoughts and tools you recommend in the comment section below.

Table Of Content:

Web analytics tools for online marketing research:

Statistics:

• SiteProfiler
• Tableau Public
• Google Trends
• Google Analytics

Consumer Barometer

• Moody’s Analytics
• Pew Research Center
• Open Web Analytics
• Statcounter Global Stats

Content Research:

• Google Alerts

Survey Tools:

• SurveyMonkey

Social Insights:

• Facebook Analytics
• Linkedin Analytics
• Followerwonk
• Make My Persona
• Social Mention

Research Automation:

• Microsoft Flow

Bonus! A Free Guide For Conducting Market Research:

What is market research and why do I need it

Why should i conduct my own research using market research tools, how to conduct your own market research, tips for getting started with your own market research, here are my favorite market research & seo tools:, more of my favorite marketing tools:, #1 siteprofiler.

Its Features:

• Overview – shows all aggregated data about a certain domain from Domain Authority , Page Authority , Citation Flow , Trust Flow , Alexa Rank and more.
• Backlinks – shows you all backlinks directed to a site with top referring domains and anchor texts.
• Top Trending Content – shows you all of the top content the site have generated with a breakdown of where is their traffic coming from
• Audience – this tool breaks down this website audience by age, gender, location, interests and more.
• Competitors – shows you the competitive landscape of this website, with relevant keywords or subjects that might be competing with this website.

Data visualization: a lot of useful statistics and charts that are presented beautifully on the screen.

• Get access to insights on any website or niche through a url or a keyword
• SiteProfiler also has a Google Chrome extension. This extension allows you to find helpful information about any site while browsing.
• The biggest drawback to the SiteProfiler is that you can’t export to Google Sheets directly
• Almost none

Price: Free. Pro starts from $29.90/mo

#2 Tableau Public

Tableau provides you with the tools and data to make your business run more smoothly. With a collaborative environment in which people can explore their own discoveries, Tableau offers insightful analytics that are powerful enough for both individuals and big organizations alike.

It’s Features:

Connectivity: TDE, Access, Excel, Text File (you can not connect Tableau Public to any of the databases)

• Distribution: Cloud (you can not save Tableau Public workbooks locally)

• Account Space: Each account holder will be able to save up to 10 gigabytes (GB) of content to Tableau Public

Data visualization: lots of different options, including bar, scatter, pie, waterfall charts to explore relationships between variables, and to present findings/trends to different teams

• Integrates readily with limited, though different data sources: TXT, CSV, TDE, Access
• Exports reports for review of different dashboards: client-ready/team-ready, with a clean and tidy presentation in PDF format (or hardcopy)
• The biggest drawback to the Public version of Tableau is that any data used in the program is ‘public’ and therefore not secure: workbooks are saved to the cloud, rather than locally
• Tableau Public limits data ingestion to 10 million rows per source
• Limited connections – can’t connect to SQL databases to ingest data (must be through CSV, Access, TDE, or text files)

Price: Free

#3 Statista

Statista is a site that provides accurate statistics on the state of various businesses and industries. With easy access to data from around the world, Statista is an invaluable resource for anyone looking into their options before making any decisions about where they want to go in life!

Statisticians have long been looked at as people with numbers running through their veins but thanks to online sites like Statista, there’s no need to look back anymore because you can stay connected all day every day if you wanted!

• Has a large amount of charts and graphs in different markets and areas
• Is considered a go-to software for general insights and statistics
• You can use its search engine to find relative stats about your market
• It’s premium service has tons of tools and services to allow you to do a proper market research
• It’s a limited tool in its free version. For more features you’d have to have a premium account

Price: Free. Premium starts from $49/mo

#4 Google Trends

• Real-Time data on any given topic using Explore
• Point out the latest trends: by default it provides the latest trends from all around the globe on the homepage.
• Clean UI: Simple and Easy UI, easy to navigate.
• No Transparency on how the calculation happens at the back end and the numbers are arrived in Google Trends.

Price:   Free

#5 Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free, easy to use tool that helps you analyze traffic on your website. This system generates in-depth statistics about activity and can help paint the full picture of who visits your site and what they want.

• Excellent detail on who visitors to a web site are (broken down to web browser, and how long they are on the site).
• Information on which pages within our client’s site are the most trafficked (including time spent on the page, and previous page).
• A breakdown of where traffic is coming from (from which domain, and even which page within the domain).
• The sheer amount of data can be daunting to beginners.
• Organization of content could be made easier to handle.
• The mobile experience is lacking.

#6 Consumer Barometer

#7 Moody’s Analytics

Moody’s Analytics provides a home for capital markets and risk management professionals to find tools that offer unique insight into the marketplace. With decades of experience in areas such as credit analysis, economic research, and financial risk management, this company is an invaluable resource for any individual looking to make sense of their market or position themselves correctly within it.

Moody’s Actuarial Services helps individuals with understanding risky investments by providing them with information on how they could invest better next time around. Their services include advice on managing debt obligations through detailed reports outlining trends in borrowing levels over periods like 5-years and 10 years respectively; insights into various economies via Forecasts from Moody’s Global Macroeconomic Service (GMS) which are available quarterly

#8 Pew Research Center

Price:  Free

#9 Open Web Analytics

• You have 100% control of your own code, your own server setup and your own data (for newbies in web analytics this might be a disadvantage)
• Much faster interface than Google Analytics, which is extremely slow at least with big sites
• Session recordings and click heatmaps like clicktale (didn’t work for me, but I guess that tells me more about my technical skills than the application)
• No filter e.g. miss the option of excluding my own IP
• No data export from user interface. Data can of course be exported from your database but for non-savyy database user as myself, this is way to0 complicated.
• I indeed miss the possibility to combine different numbers (cross segmenting) from different reports. E.g. I’m not able to see what search terms were used to find a specific page. This is important for SEO-purposes.

#10 Statcounter Global Stats

StatCounter is a web analytics service that has installed their tracking code on more than 2 million sites and records billions of page views to these sites every month. Every time someone visits one of the thousands or millions of websites using StatCounter, they are able to determine where in the world it came from, what browser was used as well as screen resolution – even if you’re browsing with your phone! Plus for each page view recorded by Statcounter there’s an analysis about whether they were referred through search engine results (including Google) or social media sources like Facebook.

• It’s a free tool which is best to start with website visitor analysis.
• It gives detailed reports for location, browser and time.
• It’s really easy to set up and use. It may just take few moments to set up an account.
• They need to add a real-time visitor report option on the website. Else, it is a great tool.

Price: Free.

#11 Google Alerts

In short: when I look out into my daily life through a lens focused solely on keyword searches, everything becomes more fascinating

For example you can set an alert for:

• Information About the Business : To know whenever your company’s name is mentioned and by what site. It can be useful to include common misspellings as well.
• Information About the Product(s) : Stay aware of what is said about your company’s product(s), and by whom.
• Mentions of Company Executives : Executives’ reputations can affect the reputation of the organization so its good to know when new content mentions them.
• Awareness of Customer Activities : Using alerts to stay on top of developments at a customer helps a business be proactive in supporting the customer and avoiding surprises.
• Watching Competitors: Receive information about competitor activities and new developments.
• Following Influencers : What key figures in an a business’s field are saying is valuable for identifying trends early.
• Stay Up to Date on Industry Developments and Technologies : Keep an eye on what is new in the market and what technologies are evolving. Customers will appreciate a provider that maintains expertise in their field by knowing the latest developments.
• You get real-time alerts on any keyword or term
• Very simple and easy to use
• Sometimes it doesn’t work and have performence issues.

Quora is a question-and-answer website where questions are asked, answered, edited, and organized by its community of users in the form of opinions. Users can collaborate by editing questions and suggesting edits to answers that have been submitted by other users.

Beyond the simple ask-and-answer setup, there are some advanced parts of Quora, too, that might be good to know before jumping in.

• You can target your question  to specific Quora users, asking them specifically to weigh in with an answer along with others in the community
• You can publish content on Quora, just like LinkedIn’s publishing platform
• You can search for specific questions or topics related to your business and follow these to receive notifications of new questions
• You can spend credits to get your question in front of more people

For marketers, there are a handful of really great reasons why Quora might be worth considering:

• Gain exposure to Quora’s 700,000+ monthly visitors
• Build expertise and authority on your chosen topic
• Learn from others—users, customers, industry experts
• Answer questions about your product
• Find out the questions people are asking about your product or industry

Feedly offers an easy way to aggregate your information feeds in one place. Feed readers such as Feedly aggregate internet content into one convenient place, making it possible for you to quickly scan headlines and full stories at a glance from a variety of different providers. You don’t have to keep checking back to any particular site to see if it’s been updated; all you need to do is follow an information source, such as the Washington Post or Engaget, and then read the updates from those sites as they’re delivered to your feedly account.

• Easy transfer from Google Reader subs.
• All your Google Reader starred items are imported as well. They are now “saved” items.
• You can categorize blogs into folders.
• If you like a visual reader with access to your twitter and facebook feed on the home page, this is for you.
• You can customize the layout with the choices magazine, titles, mosaic, cards and full articles. (Titles looks the most like Google Reader.)
• When you have it in full articles mode you can scroll down and it will automatically mark the post as read. You can easily mark the post as “keep unread.”
• You can add tags.
• You can use keyboard shortcuts.
• You are given recommendations of other blogs you may like based on your subs. (This could also be a con for information overload.)
• More visually cluttered, although it can be reduced by using a different format.
• The home page has your list along with featured posts, ads, Twitter feeds and Facebooks feeds. (Although you do not have to log into Twitter or Facebook if you don’t want to use it.)
• The blogs are not listed in alphabetical order but in a random system I still can’t figure out. (That alone drives me nuts.)
• You have to mark subs as favorites so they are more likely to show up as featured posts.

Price:   Free. Pro plan starts from $5.00/mo

#14 Flipboard

Flipboard is like a smart magazine. Unlike traditional print magazines, it personalizes your content based on your interests, then displays relevant stories in a magazine-style layout that’s both pleasing to the eye and easy to interact with. In addition to articles, you’ll see other types of content including videos, podcasts, tweets, and more.

People can use Flipboard to create their own digital magazines to share with other users; as you read through its stories, you can easily add them to a new or existing magazine under your profile. It also lets you curate magazines based on a passion of yours, for specific sources, for sharing with your team or simply for creating a collection.

• It works cross-platform (website, tablets and mobile apps)
• You can do a Google Reader import
• You can easily discover stories based on topics
• Excessive ads with no way to remove them

Needs better organization of topics, tags, users followed

The default content is from low quality sources such as Mashable.

#15 Slideshare

SlideShare is a popular presentation and document sharing platform owned by LinkedIn. Since LinkedIn is a professional networking platform, SlideShare users tend to be focused on business.

SlideShare has a growing number of users. At the time this tutorial was written, SlideShare’s own statistics put the number of users at 80 million. There are 40 different categories and millions of slideshows have been downloaded. So, with such a large number of users, the potential to reach a large audience through SlideShare is definitely there.

Best of all, there’s no cost to upload, review, or download information published on SlideShare.

#16 SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey is an online survey software that helps you to create and run professional online surveys. It is very powerful and a well known online application.

It’s basically a tool that allows you to launch any kind of online survey project, be it for the purpose of market research, a quick poll, competitive analysis or customer or the employee feedback. This easy-to-use platform allows you to tailor your surveys according to your defined target audience.

• A strength for SurveyMonkey is that it is very user friendly. If one should become stuck in an area, the guides that are provided work nicely.
• Allowing for a large number of participants to be mailed at once is a huge plus.
• Being able to offer providers a link directly, being FB friendly, is a HUGE plus for businesses.
• It’s free plan is limited and for more features you’d need to have a premium account

Price:   Free. Premium ranging from $34.00 to $99.00 /mo

PickFu is a service that allows you to create polls and allow people to pick between two options.  For example, you may:

• present two images and ask which is more appealing
• ask if they would be willing to spend a certain amount for a product or service
• ask which sales copy version is more compelling
• ask which option they prefer A or B

Price: Free. Pro Starts from $15.00 /mo

#18 TypeForm

Typeform is an online program that makes very flexible, customized forms for every sort of situation. Things like business forms, surveys, quizzes, product feedback, contest, landing page, test, and payment forms are all possible with Typeform.

The customization available far exceed what’s available with Google Forms (but rivals SurveyMonkey, for example) and that may be too much for your needs. All your forms can be found on the dashboard when you sign in, so you can keep everything organized.

• It’s beautiful and simple. Can’t get any better
• Beautiful looking surveys, easy to setup, fantastic analysis tools.
• Survey looks and works great across all hardware/browsers. Ease of use. Value for money.
• Multiple uploads is a must have and that’s missing.
• Some of the features like logic use the paid tier, which is totally understandable.
• Customer support is not 24×7.
• You have to get the most expensive version to remove the typeform branding.

Price: Free. Pro starts from $30.00 /mo

#19 Survata

Survata is a new type of consumer insights service. It serves leading clients like Clorox, Disney, Microsoft, Samsung, and Hallmark. It finds targeted respondents to complete your clients’ surveys. They’re the fastest, most affordable way to conduct a quality online survey.

• Easy implementation of surveywalls for publishers
• Customizable options for hosting survey locked content.
• Survata’s customer service seems to be responsive and helpful.
• Some publishers may have superior options to lock content—see editors review.

Price: Starts from $200.00/one-time

Bonus: A Free Guide For Conducting Market Research

Market research is a general term that refers to the process of collecting and analyzing data about consumers, competitors, market demand, prices, etc. It’s used for many different purposes including marketing strategy planning, product development or improvement etc. You can conduct your own market research by keeping a few things in mind:

• What are you trying to find out?
• What kind of information is available?
• Where do you get the data from and how reliable it is.

Once you have collected your research, make sure to provide proper analysis in order to draw valid conclusions about market conditions and company performance etc.

Although conducting market research is very beneficial for companies especially when they are new or want to expand their business into a new market, there are a few issues that can arise.

Firstly, it is important to be honest when conducting research and avoid leading the respondent towards giving you desired answers.

Secondly, make sure your data collection techniques do not bias results by asking questions in different ways etc.

A lot of research can be conducted for very little money especially through the usage of online tools.

Most web-based companies will charge a monthly or annual fee which may present an issue in terms of cash flow and budgeting if you are only conducting one project etc.

Although it is important to consider all options when purchasing market research data, if you are on a tight budget and only need the information once or twice it may be beneficial to conduct your own research.

There is no point in paying for market research studies that present an overwhelming amount of information that would take ages to go through etc.

If you have very little money but still want quality results our list of 25 free tools for conducting market research will help you to get started, the services below are reputable and trustworthy etc.

Tools for conducting market research, including free and paid options

As we mentioned above, there are many tools to conduct market research, some of which are free or have a free option. To help you out we have put together this list that will guide you through the best options available on the market today. Click here to see our list.

The tools below are mostly used by businesses that want to get ahead of the competition, but what you will find is that most of these services provide a free option. That means if you conduct your own market research or simply need something done quickly then using one of these tools may be exactly what you are looking for. Here are a few steps to follow:

• Find out what your target market is looking for  – this is where tools like Google Keyword Planner and SEMrush come in handy. Find out how much they are willing to pay – again, a tool such as Priceonomics will help you find this information quickly.
• Conduct interviews and surveys to find out what they’re interested in  – UserTesting and Survey Monkey are two great tools for this. Find out what your audience thinks of your brand – Forrester is a fantastic tool to use in order to get the opinions of users about your product or service.
• Consider the competition and how you can stand out from them – Google Trends will help you to understand how your competitors are standing out.
• Compile all of that into a report with recommendations, statistics, and analysis on how to proceed – The biggest problem with this is that you need to spend a lot of time creating the report. Luckily, there are two products that allow you to create one automatically for your business – Qzzr and Balsamiq both help by allowing you to create professional-looking reports in minutes instead of hours or days!
• Present the findings at a meeting or conference to get feedback from colleagues and potential investors/clients – This is a great way to get feedback from people in your industry who might be able to give you insights or suggestions. You can also use it as an opportunity to pitch the product and receive input on whether this would even work for them, which could help with future research – A presentation will allow you to go into detail about why certain market research was conducted and the results received. This could be very helpful when forming a business plan or future product design to get input from your peers in the industry who might see things that you missed!
• Create a timeline and stick to it –  Setting goals for yourself can help keep you on track. For example, coming up with three different ideas in the first week is much more manageable than thinking often in one go. Once they’re all written down, brainstorming them will be easier as well.
• Use your network – If you’re just starting out, don’t be afraid to reach out to your friends and family! They’ll probably enjoy the opportunity to help you with something like this. Be open about what it is that you want them for (i.e., giving their opinions on market research ideas), make sure they know how important their input will be to you, and thank them effusively later.
• Analyzing your competition –  Getting an idea of what the market is like right now will be a great way to get started on your research project! If there have been other studies done in this area before, read through them – they’re sure to include some useful information that can benefit your research.
• Share your plans –  It’s hard to complete a market research project without the support and help of those around you, so make sure to let them know what it is that you need from them! When explaining your task (and why they should take part in it) be as clear and precise as possible; saying something like ‘could you just spend a few minutes filling out this questionnaire?’ is much more effective than ‘can I have your help please?!’.
• Make yourself heard –  This isn’t the time to be modest! It’s important that those around you know what it is that you’re doing and why, so don’t hold back when explaining. If you’re doing it yourself, don’t be afraid to tell people that you need their help; if you ask politely and explain the benefits of providing information they’ll most likely agree. If someone else is asking them for feedback then make sure to provide any useful information or insight that might come your way – after all, business should always be a two-way street.

The best thing to do before you start approaching people is to think about what it is that your market research project entails and then plan a strategy for how you’re going to go about conducting it. You’ll need to take into account the things we mentioned in this blog post such as: whether or not there are any legal issues involved, how much time you have, the cost of your project and what kind of information it is that you’re looking for.

Final thoughts

In conclusion, conducting your own market research is a great way to determine what customers are looking for. You can also use this information to help you create products that will sell better in the future. We hope our guide has helped you understand how important it is to conduct your own market research before jumping into an online store with no prior knowledge of what people want! If there’s anything else we can do for you, let us know and we’ll be happy to provide assistance.

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20+ Tools & Resources for Conducting Market Research

Published: September 15, 2023

Finding out if a product will be successful beyond the initial curiosity is just good business. With market research, you determine whether the opportunity exists, how to position the product or service, or what consumers' opinions are after the launch.

If you're sensitive to the high costs of failure and need to gather facts and opinions to predict whether your new product, feature, or location will be successful, start by investing in market research using these tools and resources.

Here are 21 of the best tools for conducting market research, including a few recommendations directly from HubSpot market researchers. Let's dive in.

Featured Resource: Market Research Kit 

Download the Kit Now

Market Research Tools

• Think With Google Research Tools
• Census Bureau
• Make My Persona
• SurveyMonkey
• Upwave Instant Insights
• Claritas MyBestSegment
• Ubersuggest
• Pew Research Center
• BrandMentions
• Qualtrics Market Research Panels

Helpful Market Research Tools & Resources

For Max Iskiev , Market Research Analyst at HubSpot, one research tool stands out from the rest, and that's Glimpse .

He told me, "Glimpse is my favorite research tool. It's quick and easy to use, allowing me to design and launch short surveys for real-time insights on trending topics."

As a writer for the HubSpot Marketing Blog, I've also used Glimpse to run short, 100-person surveys for articles (case in point: Are Sales Reps Rushing Back to the Office? ).

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.

"Glimpse really shines when it comes to open-ended questions, using natural language processing and AI to analyze emotion and sentiment, saving time and offering invaluable insights," Iskiev shared.

Pricing : $1,000/month (Pro Account)

Free Market Research Kit

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

• SWOT Analysis Template
• Survey Template
• Focus Group Template

You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

2. Statista

Statista is a data visualization website that takes data from reputable reports across the web and makes them easy and digestible for researchers, marketers, and product creators just like you.

"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," Icee Griffin , Market Researcher at HubSpot, told me.

Are you planning on launching a new video game and want to know how many hours people spend playing video games? There’s a chart for that.

One neat aspect of using Statista is that the same chart is updated as the years pass. Say that you want to allude to the value of the beauty market in your proposal. If your investor accesses that same graph a year from now, it will reflect updated numbers, as Statista always finds the most recent research to update their visualizations. (Note that Statista doesn’t carry out original research.)

Pricing : Free; $39/month (billed yearly); $1,950 (one-time 30-day access)

3. Think With Google Research Tools

Wish you had information on your product’s likelihood of success? Think With Google's marketing research tools offer interesting insights on whether anyone is looking for your product ( Google Trends ), which markets to launch to ( Market Finder ), and what retail categories rise as the months and seasons pass ( Rising Retail Categories ).

If you’d like to market your product through YouTube, the Find My Audience tool allows you to investigate what your potential viewers are interested in and what you should discuss in your brand’s YouTube channel.

Pricing : Free

4. Census Bureau

The Census Bureau offers a free resource for searching U.S. census data. You can filter by age, income, year, and location. You can also use some of its shortcuts to access visualizations of the data, allowing you to see potential target markets across the country.

One of the best ways to use this tool is by finding the NAICS code for your business, then accessing the Tables tool, then clicking Filter on the sidebar and searching for your industry. Easily find out where your target industry is most popular — or where the market has been oversaturated. Another helpful tool is the Census Bureau Business and Economy data , where you can also target premade tables depending on your industry.

5. Make My Persona

HubSpot's Make My Persona tool allows you to create a buyer persona for your potential new product. In this tool, you pick a name for the persona, choose their age, identify their career characteristics, and identify their challenges, allowing you to pinpoint both demographic and psychographic information.

This tool is most suited for B2B product launches because you’ll be prompted to document your buyer persona’s career objectives and role-specific challenges. As such, your product would ideally solve a problem for them in the workplace or help their company achieve revenue goals.

Tableau is a business intelligence suite of products that allows you to “connect to virtually any data source.” But the data isn’t presented in unreadable tables. Rather, Tableau helps you visualize this data in a way that helps you glean insights, appeal to external stakeholders, and communicate the feasibility of your product to potential investors.

You can visualize data on anything from corn production in tropical climate zones to office product sales in North America. With Tableau’s tools, you can take as granular or as general a look you’d like into potential marketplaces and supplier regions. Tableau also integrates well with spreadsheets and databases so that you can export Tableau data to Excel , back up records in Amazon Redshift, and more.

Pricing : $12/user/month (Tableau Viewer); $35/user/month (Tableau Explorer); $70/user/month (Tableau Creator)

7. Paperform

A market research survey is an effective way to understand your target audience and their needs better by asking them directly. Since this step is integral to understanding your dream customer’s problems, you want to ensure the process is as interactive as possible and incites an objective and accurate response.  

With its free-text interface, Paperform is as simple as writing a word document. Make your survey stand out by customizing colors, fonts, layouts and themes, and create your unique look and feel. f you’re unsure where to start, you can use one of their expertly made questionnaires or market research survey templates to get you started. 

With Paperform, you can add conditional logic to show or hide questions or whole sections of content. Create fully personalized paths for different personas to create more interactive forms that lower drop-off rates and boost customer interaction. Or use any of the 27+ question fields, like the ranking, matrix, or scale fields, to create visually engaging ways to collect information.

Pricing: Free (14-day trial); Essentials ($20/month); Pro ($40/month); and Agency ($135/month)

GWI is an on-demand consumer research platform that makes audience research a breeze. Powered by the world’s largest study on the online consumer base, GWI provides insights into the lives of over 2.8 billion consumers, across 50+ markets. Everything you need to know about who they are, what’s on their minds, and what they're up to. With fresh insights at your fingertips in one user-friendly platform, it’s quick and easy to become an expert on your audience and get the answers you need to succeed. Compare markets and create customized, shareable charts and dashboards in seconds.

Pricing : Available upon request

9. SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey is a powerful tool for creating in-depth market research surveys that will help you understand your market and consumer preferences.

With this tool, you can create targeted, uber-specific surveys that help you collect answers that pertain specifically to your product. While using a data source can give you a general overview of your target audience and market, SurveyMonkey can help you get more granular insights from real consumers.

SurveyMonkey offers dedicated market research solutions and services , including a global survey panel, a survey translation service for international research, and a reporting dashboard option that allows you to easily parse through the results.

Pricing : Free, $32/month (Advantage Annual), $99/month (Premier Annual), $99/month (Standard Monthly) ; $25/user/month (Team Advantage, minimum 3 users), $75/user/month (Team Premier, minimum 3 users), Enterprise (Contact for pricing)

10. Typeform

Like SurveyMonkey, Typeform allows you to run research surveys to get direct answers from your target consumers. It’s an easy-to-use, mobile-optimized form-builder that's great for market research.

Typeform’s distinguishing factor is that it shows viewers one form field at a time. In its templates, it encourages a more conversational, casual approach (like in its market research survey template ). This makes it a better fit for product launches that target a younger demographic. If you’re targeting C-suite executives at established firms, consider a more formal option such as SurveyMonkey or keeping your tone more formal in your questions.

You can create a wide range of question types, including multiple choice questions, short-form questions, and rating scale questions. Other features include the ability to recall answers from previous questions and create logic jumps.

In a survey, you’d want to collect both demographic and psychographic information on your customer, seeking to understand their purchasing behaviors and the problems they encounter. The goal is to find out if your product is the solution to one of those problems — and whether, before launching, you should add more features or rethink your product positioning strategy .

Pricing : Free; $35/month (Essentials); $50/month (Professional); $70/month (Premium)

11. Upwave Instant Insights

Upwave Instant Insights is a consumer research tool that’s part of the Upwave brand marketing platform. While it isn’t advertised as a survey creation tool, it allows you to launch market research surveys specifically to get consumer insights.

Instant Insights allows you to target audiences on Upwave’s partner ecosystem and visualize the data for easy scanning by key stakeholders and investors. One pro of using this platform is that Upwave distributes your survey to real people — not just people taking surveys for the money, which could skew the results.

To create a survey, you sign up on the Upwave platform , click your name in the upper right-hand corner, and click “My Surveys,” where you can create as many surveys as you want. For the Basic option, you have a 6-question limit, while the Advanced option allows you to include unlimited questions.

Pricing : $2/study participant (Basic); $3/study participant (Extended); $4/study participant (Advanced)

12.  Claritas MyBestSegment

Claritas MyBestSegment provides product researchers with tools to understand an area's demographic information and the area’s inhabitants’ lifestyle habits. By finding out what a segment of the population does — without having to go out and survey them — you can find out which areas would be most receptive to a campaign or launch, which competitors are located nearby, and which lifestyle trends have shifted or are on the rise.

A snapshot of an audience segment gives you basic information on their household income, lifestyle traits, employment levels, and education levels. If you want more specific data relating to these topics, you’ll have to contact Claritas’ sales team to become a customer.

Pricing : Free; Pricing available on request

Loop11 is a user experience testing platform that allows you to test the usability of your website, study user intent, test the information architecture of your site, and examine how the user experience changes based on the device they’re using.

This tool is useful for market research because you can find out whether your target consumers find your site easy to navigate. You can also identify snags that prevent conversions.

Loop11 tests your site by making users perform tasks. They then complete a short question about how easy or difficult the task was to complete. Your product may be phenomenal, but unless consumers can buy it through your site, you won’t launch it successfully.

You can use Loop11’s participants or bring in your own.

Pricing : $63/month (Rapid Insights), $239/month (Pro), $399/month (Enterprise)

14. Userlytics

Like Loop11, Userlytics allows you to test the usability of your website, mobile app, and site prototype. You can target different devices, define a buyer persona, and disqualify participants based on screening questions.

Testing is based on tasks that your test-takers carry out. They then answer a simple question about the difficulty of the task. You can structure the question in various ways; you can leave it open-ended, provide multiple choices, or ask for a rating. Other formats you can use include System Usability Scale (SUS) questions, Net Promoter Score (NPS) questions, and Single Ease Questions (SEQ).

Userlytics performs both a webcam and a screen recording. You can compare the user’s answers with their reactions on video to understand how they feel when they’re interacting with your assets.

Pricing : $49/participant (Quick & Easy); $69/participant (Annual Enterprise); Custom pricing available on request

Sometimes you need a no-frills test to take the pulse of consumers. Temper allows you to create a question, grab a snippet of code, and pop it onto your website. The smiley face, "meh" face, and frown face make it easy for viewers to make a snap judgment.

One great way to use this tool is by adding the widget on a blog post announcing the launch of your new product. That way, you can find out general sentiment on the product before launching it. You can also add it to a product page, an email, or a landing page.

When you include the widget, you can change the question to something that’s tailored to your offerings.

Pricing : $12/month (Hobby), $49/month (Pro), $89/month (Business), $199/month (White Label )

16. NielsenIQ

NielsenIQ is a retail and consumer intelligence consultant that works with you to collect consumer insights, identify the best distribution channels for your product, and create a range of products that addresses the needs of your target buyers.

This service helps you look at your product launch from all angles and delivers forecasting data that predicts how your sales will perform upon launch. NielsenIQ can also run consumer insights surveys on their list of panelists and partners.

Because it operates like a consultant and not as a self-service software, NielsenIQ is a better option for established firms with a bigger product launch budget.

Pricing : Pricing available on request

17. Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest is a simple tool for doing keyword and content research. You can input a phrase, and it'll create a list of keyword suggestions. You can also see top performing articles and pages so that you get an initial understanding of the type of content that ranks for the keywords.

This tool is useful for market research because you can see who your top competitors are, how often your product is searched for, and whether there’s enough space in the market for the type of product you’re launching. You can also find out the questions your target audience asks in relation to the product. Each of these questions can be turned into a blog post that can inform your audience, increasing your brand authority and driving conversions.

Alternatives to Ubersuggest include Moz , Ahrefs , and SEMRush .

Pricing : Free; $29/month (Individual); $49/month (Business); $99/month (Enterprise / Agency)

18. Pew Research Center

From economic conditions, to political attitudes, to social media usage, the Pew Research Center website has a ton of free research that you can use to better understand your target market. Best of all, the site has interactive articles that allow you to filter and sift through the data for more granular, targeted insights.

Topics include U.S. politics, digital media, social trends, religion, science, and technology.

19. BrandMentions

BrandMentions is a social media monitoring platform that can help you understand what your prospective customers are buzzing about online. Search for a keyword, and BrandMentions will show you recent social posts that contain that keyword, along with the context of its usage. After subscribing to the platform, you can also get sentiment analysis on the keyword.

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 are mentioning the keyword).

You can use this tool for market research by finding out when people are looking for your product on social media sites. When you start announcing the new product, you can use insights from this tool to post about the launch at exactly the right time. It also allows you to find out how people are generally feeling about the type of product you’re launching. That way, you can better refine the tone of your campaigns.

Pricing : $99/month (Growing Business); $ 299/month (Company); $ 499/month (Enterprise/Agency)

20. Qualtrics Market Research Panels

Qualtrics takes the pain of finding respondents for your market research surveys through an online sample service. After identifying your target audience, you can go to Qualtrics for access to a representative sample. You can either use your chosen survey software or use Qualtrics’ built-in platform for insights and feedback.

21. Qualaroo

Qualaroo is an advanced user and market research tool that helps you understand your target market with targeted surveys. You can run surveys on over six channels at once (such as website, app, product, social media, and mail,) to get a 360-degree view of your existing and potential customers.

It comes packed with features like question branching, 12+ answer types, automatic survey language translation, in-depth audience targeting, pre-built survey templates, and an extensive repository of professionally designed questions.

You can create various market research surveys in minutes to collect data on the demographic, psychographic, and behavioral traits of your target audience. It can help you map customers' expectations and preferences, create customer personas, and perform audience segmentation.

Qualaroo also promotes quick feedback analysis. Its in-built AI-based sentiment analysis and text analytics engine automatically categorizes the responses based on user moods. It also highlights the key phrases and words in real-time, saving hours of manual work.

Pricing : $80/month billed annually (Essentials); $160/month billed annually (Premium)

Conduct Market Research for a Successful Product Launch

Conducting market research is essential to successfully launch a product to market. With the tools we’ve shared, you can find out who’s looking for your product, why they need it, and how you can better market it upon launch, ensuring that it’s a success.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in April 2016 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Don't forget to share this post!

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Free Guide & Templates to Help Your Market Research

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9 Excellent Free Market Research Tools

15 January 2015, Jonathan Saipe

There are now a plethora of online market research tools, many of which are free, or offer free and paid-for access. Whilst this isn’t an exhaustive list, we’ve suggested 9 great tools that publish market data, insight and intelligence – ideal if you’re a researcher, planner or marketer.

Whilst access to some of the data available on Statista.com is free, given the exclusivity and specificity of many statistics, a premium account is required to access much of the platform.

StatCounter Global Stats is provided by StatCounter – the free, online visitor stats tool. It publishes technical data, such as browser and operating system usage, and screen resolutions, for desktops, mobiles, tablets and consoles, across all countries.

Stats provided are based on aggregate data collected via more than 15 billion page views per month across the StatCounter network of more than 3 million websites.

Google’s Public Data explorer publishes animated charts and maps of public datasets including economic, social, health and population data. After a little getting used to, you will find data easy to explore and visualise. And as the charts animate over time, changes in world behaviour become easier to understand.

When setting up an ad campaign, you can segment your audience, at which point Facebook will publish the potential audience size, allowing you to evaluate marketing potential. This part of the process is free and you are not obliged to make your campaign(s) live.

LinkedIn’s ad programme allows marketers and researchers to access LinkedIn’s user data free of charge. With its focus on professionals, you will have access to a range of information including company categories, sizes or specific names, job titles or job categories by country or city. LinkedIn will publish your potential reach when you go through the process of setting up an ad campaign. As with Facebook, you are not obliged to make the ad campaign live at this point.

Worldometers is run by an international team of developers and researchers, publishing world statistics. It was voted as one of the best free reference websites by the American Library Association (ALA), and was chosen as content provider at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), BBC News, and the National Media Museum (UK) among others.

Whilst it doesn’t allow segmentation of data, its country specific data is a valuable resource. And the real-time data found of its home page is both fascinating and shocking! Go take a look.

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13 Market Research Tools: Best in Class for 2023

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.

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10 Free Market Research Tools You Should be Using

Market research is crucial because you can’t supply the best products or services to your customers without knowing what they need. As a business person, you should always try to solve your customers’ problems through your business’s products and services. Many of you have often invested countless hours tediously researching the market to no avail. Well, nowadays, there are various useful market research tools in the market.

But finding the best instrument from the abundance of online tools will possibly also result in a waste of your precious time. So, to save you time and money, today, we have listed the ten best free-market tools that are easy to use.

Before moving to the list of tools, let’s see why you should use market research tools for your business research. 

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Why are market research tools necessary?

Due to constant changes in the market, knowing what is essential to your audience can help you outsell your competitors and bring new customers to you. The right tool helps you analyze your business’s market and growth. So, let’s see why market research tools are vital. 

• Spotting business opportunities easily
• Lowering your business risks
• Producing relevant materials
• Finding where to advertise
• Outperforming competitors
• Setting a higher goal for your business
• Easily making a decision
• Identifying customer requirements
• Improving selling techniques

Now, let’s move on to the main topic of this article.

10 best market research tools

Here, we have categorized the list of market research tools as follows.

Tools for data visualization

Google Trends

Tableau public, google analytics, consumer barometer.

Market research tools for keyword research

• Google keyword planner

Ubersuggest

Content research tool

•   Google Alerts

Social insights research tools

Pew Research Center

Makemypersona.

Now, let’s see the detailed information about each tool.

Google Trends is one of the best free-market research tools which lets you look for specific keywords, subjects, and phrases that have been inquired over a particular period of time. The work is done by analyzing a portion of Google searches to calculate how many searches are done for the phrase entered in proportion to the total number of searches done on Google over the concurrent.

• Real-time data 
• Point out the latest trends
• Simple and easy UI
• Easy to navigate

It’s a free tool

Statista is one of the best market research tools for building online statistics in market research. It gives access to the data from market research institutions and their opinion. With this tool, you can even get an assessment from business organizations and government institutions in different languages. Researching various industries helps you to understand the nature of competition. Furthermore, using Statista lets you discover the relative size of the industries, their average expenditures, and individual company expenditures.

• Statistics portal
• Research and analysis
• Content and information design
• eCommerce insights for your business

You can use the basic plan of Statista for primary data and statistics for free. For the Premium account, you need to buy it for $59 per month, and for a Corporate account, you have to pay $700 per month.

Tableau Public is a free data visualization tool that lets you figure out market research data with analytics and business intelligence. Using this mechanism, you will get complex data visualization simply and intuitively. Moreover, you can create an interactive and distributed dashboard that trends with colorful charts and tables. It connects to your files to obtain and proceed data into graphs.

• Create interactive graphs and maps
• Build a dashboard in minutes
• Automated mobile layouts
• Automatically connect Tableau Public to Google Sheets
• Embedded visualization
• Highlight the analysis

Tableau Public is free of cost. Prices vary if you switch to Tableau Explorer, Tableau Viewer, or Tableau Creator. 

Though Google Analytics is not a broader tool for providing market research entirely, it can give feedback on how your customers are behaving when they are on your website. It will show you which of your products have more views and fewer sales or which social media channel is getting more responses from your clients. In a nutshell, Google Analytics helps you analyze your website’s traffic and give you a complete picture of your visitors and their requirements. 

• Reporting traffic
• Tracking conversion
• Keyword guidance
• Reference of third-parties
• Custom dashboard

You can use their free service if you are a small business that wants to avoid paying monthly fees. If you want to use many features, you can buy Google Analytics 360, which will cost $150,000 in a year. 

Google developed a free, collective tool called the “Consumer Barometer.” This tool aims to help you understand buyers’ internet usage habits worldwide. There are two different ways to use this service. One is to explore the primary data from the research, which comes up with an infographic format that sums up the key trends and statistics. This will help you to identify the consumers’ internet usage habits. 

The other way is to use the tool as a graph builder. In that way, you can access the full data from the report. Additionally, broken down into country grouping, you will be able to find out how buyers interact online.

• Graph builder
• Digital trended data
• Explore audience stories
• Discover buyers curated insights

Consumer Barometer is a free tool.

Google Keyword Planner

Google Keyword Planner is a fantastic market research tool for basic keyword research. You can free create an account on Google Adwords to use the Google Keyword Planner. The main task of the tool is looking for phrases or keywords that are related to your business. In brief, Google Keyword Planner allows you to find new keywords and get a detailed idea of how your audiences search for information within your market. 

• Research keywords
• Suggestions for daily budget
• Monthly search details
• Column for new competition
• Add new keywords to existing campaigns

Google Keyword Planner is one of the free market research tools. 

Ubersuggest is a simple tool for doing market research on keywords and content. You have to input a phrase, and it will come out with a long list of additional keywords. In version 6.0, you can log in to the dashboard of Ubersuggest for free and can trace the ranking of your competitors’ websites. 

• Overview of domain
• Top SEO pages
• Keyword ideas
• Content suggestions
• Backlink data

This tool is also free.

Google Alerts

Google Alerts is one of the best free-market research tools you should use. You can set email alerts to get notified for each new result in Google that matches your needs, such as web pages, blogs, scientific research, or newspaper articles. The tool lets you put the frequency, search terms, and many more to get the best results. Besides, you can take appropriate measures to get potential clients and expand your business. 

• Free notification service
• Real-time alerts on keywords
• Track your competitors
• Create links
• Easy to use

You can use the tool for free.

Pew Research Center is a fair fact tank that informs people about the issues, points of view, and trends shaping the world. They conduct demographic research, content analysis, public opinion polling, and other data-controlled social research. The website has a massive database of free inquiries on various fields, such as marketing statistics to social media usage, and political issues to economic situations. So, this is one of the robust market research tools that will help you better understand your target audience and trace the beneficial market trends.

• Smooth user interface
• Interactive charts
• Research center
• Huge database

You can use the tool free through their website.

MakeMyPersona is one of the market research tools from HubSpot. It allows you to create buyer personas by answering a series of questions based on existing market research. Using this tool, you can definitely find out more about your market. Moreover, MakeMyPersona will help you to understand your ideal users and give them a better user experience. 

• Easily create personas
• Fantastic form layouts
• Essential question series to understand users
• Downloadable word document

This tool is free.

Final thoughts

Here, we tried to give some basic ideas on ten free market research tools. Applying one or all of them will significantly help you to know about your online business market. You should take time and look for the best ones from the list. 

Conversely, you can also consider other analytics and feature-rich paid tools, such as Ahrefs, Moz, and SEMRush, for your online business.

Hello, This is Prema. I work as a marketing strategist for Fluent Forms at WPManageNinja. When I am not playing with words, I go to explore nature.

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As a woman engaged in the business world, I am very surprised to see your mistake of singling out “businessmen” in the lead paragraph of this article. If you would like to bring more women into your circle of influence and generally be more aware of inclusionary practices, PLEASE correct that oversight to at least read “businessperson”.

If a woman made this mistake what could we say?? (Hint: this article is written by a woman.)

Jokes apart, this is an honest mistake. Prema is a talented writer on our team. I believe, she wrote it unintentionally.

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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.

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The 19 Best Market Research Tools Of 2023

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 $39/month with unlimited surveys and questions, and up to 15,000 responses per year.
• Team plans start at $25/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 $159/month billed yearly for Content Creation (individual) plan, $239/month billed yearly for PR & Comms plan, $399/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 $16/month for Basic, $36/month for Professional, and $149/month for Team (billed annually).

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 $83/month for Lite, $166/month for Standard, $333/month for Advanced, and $833/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 $71/month for Standard, $159/month for the Growth tier, and $439/month for Pro (billed annually).
• Agency plans start at $167/month for Standard, $343/month for Growth, and $687/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 $249/month for Standard, $399/month for Professional, and $499/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 $490/month for Personal (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 $29/month for Starter and $49/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 $108.33/month for Pro, $208.33/month for Guru, and $416.66/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/month for Rapid Insights, $358/month for Pro, and $533/month for Enterprise (billed 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 ...

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

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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.

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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.

15 Top Market Research Tools & Software (2024)

In this guide we'll cover the best 15 free and paid market research tools in 2024. 

We'll also cover their key features, pricing and specific use cases that each tool is best used for. 

1. Statista

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

To quickly find relevant reports, just type in a keyword (like "beverages"), and Statista will show you a list of these reports.

This information makes it easy to gauge an industry's market cap, trend direction, consumer behavior, and other critical signals to help you decide whether to invest in that market.

Statista's data comes from three primary sources:

• 49% comes from original research (it employs over 100 data analysts)
• 16% comes from publicly accessible data sources
• 35% from unique data partnerships like market research institutions

Statista offers accounts for small businesses that start at $39 per month and personal accounts with more forecasts and industry reports starting at $490 per month.

2. Exploding Topics

Knowing about a trend before it takes off is the holy grail of market research.

However, most trend analysis is highly subjective and based on someone's best guess about what my take off in the future. So we built  Exploding Topics to help identify 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.

You'll also see a graph of each keyword's historical search volume growth trend, which you can use to gauge a topic's popularity and stability.

And notably, you can see our projected forecast of the trend's growth over the next year:

How does Exploding Topics find trending topics?

We realize you're probably making important decisions based on our trend data, so data quality is a top priority for us. With that, here's an overview of how we identify and qualify trends:

In addition to the Trends Database, Exploding Topics has a handful of other helpful tools to help you conduct market research more efficiently. Here are a few of those features:

• Trend Search : While the Trends Database is great for discovering new trends, Trends Search is great if you already know about a trend and just want to see the data behind it. This feature is similar to Google Trends. 
• Meta Trends : To help you find the products and brands riding a wave, we created the Meta Trends feature.
• Trending Startups : If you're focused on identifying trending startups, you can use this feature to sort by category and quickly find the fastest growing startups.
• Trending Products : Similar to the trending startups feature, this shows you a list of physical products seeing rapid growth. 

Exploding Topics has three pricing tiers at $39, $99, and $249 per month (all billed annually). All pricing tiers give users full access to all premium trends, Meta Trends, and the ability to view trending products. 

3. Market Finder

Market Finder is Google's free tool that makes it easy to discover international markets ideal for expansion. So rather than uncovering specific trends, it's best to identify new geographies and demographics with the potential for future growth.

It has two main tools:

• Dive into new markets : This walks you through a quick quiz that identifies your industry and other specifications about your company. Then, it shows you which countries would be ideal for expansion based on data from Google Ads, search volume, and household income.
• Test export readiness : Enter your website URL, and it analyzes your business's readiness for expansion by various categories like marketing performance (international traffic, ecommerce capabilities, etc.), operational abilities (payment fit, localization capabilities, etc.), and competitive position (like category demand).

If you have Google Analytics set up, it can pull data directly from the Google Analytics dashboard for a more accurate report.

It's completely free.

4. Census Business Builder – Best For Brick and Mortar Location Research

The Census Business Builder is an excellent tool for retailers researching geographic markets. You can search by zip code, town, or state and see specific metrics like population, average household income, and education level.

It also has more advanced filters that can provide more detailed valuable insights depending on the business you're launching.

For example, if you're launching a fast casual restaurant, you can use the "Consumer Spending" filter and see how much people spend on alcoholic beverages and dining out in that selected area.

This can help you identify the best locations to open a new location.

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.

Their 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 more personalized assistance.

They offer plenty of marketing reports for free, though access to premium research reports site-wide starts at $10,500.

SpyFu is an SEO (search engine optimization) tool that allows you to do basic tasks like keyword research and backlink analysis. However, it really shines as a competitive analytics tool that makes it easy to discover the marketing strategies that other top players in a particular market are using.

Just type in any URL, and you'll be able to find SEO metrics like total traffic, search term rankings, and backlink analysis. It also shows some PPC metrics like Google Ads they're running, paid keywords, and ad history.

This makes it possible to estimate how much search traffic exists in that market.

Spyfu has three different pricing tiers at $16, $36, and $149 per month (billed annually). The main difference between each pricing tier is the number of searches, data exports, and domain overview PDFs.

7. Crunchbase

Crunchbase is a database of startups that makes it easy for users to find data like money raised to date and information on key players in the company (investors, founders etc.).

It also has many other metrics like acquisition status and employee headcount, but its primary focus is on funding data.

To use the database, just type in a niche (e.g., "AI") and filter by other relevant information like total amount raised, location, and more.

From there, Crunchbase will give you a list of companies that meet the defined criteria.

The their Pro plan starts at $49 per month.

Awario is a social mention and brand tracking tool that also doubles as a market research tool.

Specifically, the tool allows you to track various keywords across social media platforms, like brand names, product keywords, industry influencers, and more. For example, if you're considering building or investing in a mobile app for sleep tracking, you can easily track brand names like Oura Ring or keywords like "sleep tracker."

This makes it easy to see key industry conversations to better understand your ideal buyer persona and identify potential gaps in the market.

Awario also tracks sentiment analysis to see how people feel about various competitors in the space.

Awario has three pricing tiers at $24, $74, and $249 per month (billed annually). The difference between each pricing tier is mainly the number of topics, new mentions, and stored mentions that you’re monitoring.

G2 is one of the most popular software review websites. Which makes it a great tool to quickly find qualitative and quantitative customer data on virtually any software market.

First, you can view reviewer details, like title, industry, business size, and region, which is useful for accurately identifying the market's target demographic. You can also filter reviews by any of those categories.

The G2 review structure is also quite 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 quickly identify gaps in the market and understand key pain points customers are trying to solve.

G2 also provides a list of competitors for each product so that you can easily find other related companies to research.

Finally, G2 makes an effort to ensure that the customer feedback is legitimate by allowing users to verify themselves and even marking incentivized reviews.

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

10. Prisync

If you're launching a new ecommerce product, Prisync is an excellent tool for competitor price tracking, as it identifies price changes in real-time.

In fact, it can dynamically adjust your store's prices according to the rules you set and the competitive data it gathers.

While Prisync is usually best for ecommerce 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.

It has three pricing tiers at $99, $199, and $399 per month. Pricing tiers are differentiated by the number of products it tracks (up to 100, 1,000, and 5,000 products at each pricing tier) and it locks premium features behind different pricing tiers, like dynamic pricing, daily email notifications, price history, and API access.

11. SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey makes is designed to help you create user-friendly online surveys. You can choose from multiple different survey templates (NPS, product testing, customer satisfaction, etc.) and question types (multiple choice, matrix, open-ended, rating scale, image, etc.).

If you don't have an audience, you can use Surveymonkey's audience panel tool, which runs your survey to a specific demographic for you.

Just specify your target market (i.e., mons with a household income of at least $50,000), and SurveyMonkey takes care of the rest.

If you're interested in learning more about how SurveyMonkey ensures you receive high-quality responses, here's a resource on their approach to quality control .

The survey tool starts at $39 per month, but pricing for the Audience Panel starts at $1 per response, and requires a minimum of 200 responses. So you can expect pricing to start at $200 per survey.

12. Respondent

Having a live conversation with your ideal target audience is one of the best ways to learn about a market and the audience's needs.

The problem is that it can be difficult to find people to interview and then get them to agree to talk to you.

Respondent solves this problem.

It allows you to submit a request detailing who you want to talk to (e.g., title, company size, industry, etc.), and then it finds people for you.

So if you want to talk to CFOs at healthcare companies, Respondent can help connect you with those people.

If you don't want to get on a call and prefer to just survey an audience, Respondent can run your survey to a specified audience.

You choose the incentive that you want to pay respondents, so pricing varies depending on the price you set. Then, Respondent charges 50% of the incentive fee as their service fee.

Attest is another audience survey tool.

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.

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 specific 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.

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.

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.

This wraps up our list of some of the best tools for conducting market research in 2024.

If you're in the market research space, you may want to check out our report on the biggest trends in market research happening right now. 

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5 Best Free Stock Analysis Tools for Investors

A tremendous amount of free stock research and analysis tools are available online.

Best Free Stock Analysis and Research

Getty Images | iStockphoto

It's best to do your homework before you pull the trigger on a stock option.

The U.S. stock market is off to a great start in 2024. Through Feb. 23, both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq-100 are up more than 7% year to date (YTD). The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up nicely as well, though not as dramatically. That well-known index has gained just over 3% YTD.

You may be thinking about taking money off the sidelines and investing in this red-hot market. If you have a long-term time horizon, that's probably a good idea. The equities markets go up and down, but historically, good quality stocks tend to appreciate over time.

Before you pull the trigger on that stock you've got your eye on, you need to do a little homework first. It's smart to review past performance, become familiar with company fundamentals , learn about management and get an independent, third-party opinion before you place a buy order.

The problem is, high-quality stock analysis tools and professional research can be very expensive. Where can a retail investor go for high-level stock research and helpful analysis tools without breaking the bank?

Thankfully, there are plenty of investing resources that any investor can access for free. Here are some of the best places to conduct your equity research at no cost to you:

• Your online broker.
• TradingView.
• Morningstar at the public library.
• S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Your Online Broker

Most brokerage platforms provide their clients with reasonable access to their proprietary equity research as well as valuable analysis tools such as charting and backtesting utilities. Generally, the larger and more established the broker, the better the research. You can expect excellent quality research, tools and advice to be included on platforms like E*Trade, which is owned by Morgan Stanley (ticker: MS ), TD Ameritrade, owned by Charles Schwab Corp. ( SCHW ) and Merrill Edge, owned by Bank of America Corp. ( BAC ), and the online brokerage of Charles Schwab Corp. ( SCHW ), which includes features from the recently acquired TD Ameritrade. Popular online and app-based brokers like Interactive Brokers Group Inc. ( IBKR ) and Robinhood Markets Inc. ( HOOD ) get high marks in this department as well.

Broker-provided research reports are usually only one or two pages long and are well worth reading. You'll also find easy-to-access tools like stock screeners and news feeds as well.

Just log on to your account and look for a tab or button that says "research." Most systems are designed to be highly intuitive and user-friendly. If you run into difficulty accessing their tools or research, just contact customer service via chat, email or phone.

Did you know that a public company's financial filings and virtually all other government-mandated reports are public information and can be accessed by anyone, at any time free of charge? It's true. And it makes the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) an excellent free resources for stock research.

The SEC doesn't publish research reports or give opinions on stocks, but through its Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis and Retrieval System, called EDGAR for short, it does catalog and provide free access to every document a public company files with that regulatory agency.

Want to know a stock's revenue, profit, expenses or cash flow for the latest quarter or for the last few decades? Are you curious about the CEO's compensation? It's all on EDGAR for you to download and view, and it's very easy to find. Just navigate over to the SEC's website and click on the "filings" tab. From there, page down to the EDGAR - Search and Access . There you can navigate to a search that works for you, and an incredible wealth of information is available with a few clicks of your mouse.

TradingView

There is a category of investment analysis websites broadly called charting platforms. That name, however, is insufficient in light of all they offer and all the free investing tools they provide. With more than 50 million users, TradingView is among the most popular charting and investing platforms on the internet.

TradingView is a comprehensive combination of charting, analysis and research tools. All members have access to breaking news, historical investment data and the site's social network. It offers premium subscriptions for a reasonable fee, but investors can conduct a surprising amount of in-depth research with basic access which is available for free.

You can view customizable charts with multiple layers of pricing, volume and trend data , you can screen stocks by market capitalization, stock market sector and other criteria, and you can develop your own strategies and ideas and test them in various hypothetical situations. Beyond the research capabilities, TradingView offers an opportunity to communicate and learn from other investors on the platform.

It will ask you to open an account by registering with an email and password, but access isn't temporary or on a trial basis. You can use the many free tools for as long as you want and upgrade to premium only when you're ready.

Morningstar at the Public Library

A standard library card can be your key to an incredible amount of free market research. Many public libraries around the country maintain a premium subscription to Morningstar as well as other professional investment research outlets. Like almost all public library resources, Morningstar equity research is free to registered members.

Check with your local or state library system to see if it has Morningstar. While you're at it, look for other subscription-based research companies like CFRA or Zacks. Chances are they will have one or more. Once you've confirmed it has what you're looking for, dust off your old library card – or apply for a new one for free – and start browsing the catalog of investment resources.

In most cases, you won't even have to visit a physical library branch. Modern libraries offer members access to Morningstar online at no additional cost. You can download detailed financial and analyst reports, use the available portfolio and stock screening tools, and benefit from the educational resources Morningstar produces, all for free.

S&P Global Market Intelligence

S&P Global is one of the most respected research firms in the world. Institutional investors pay tens of thousands of dollars a year for premium access to its S&P Capital IQ research and trading platform. Those exorbitant price levels are out of reach for most retail investors but, thankfully, S&P offers many market insights and research online for free.

The Research & Insights page of S&P's website is loaded with articles, posts, notes and news that can be an invaluable resource to the small investor. Some information requires you have an account, but you can create one for free to access those reports. The site is updated several times a week so the data and information is always current.

You'll find sophisticated but accessible market intelligence on sectors from tech to health care and everything in between. The page has a search bar in the upper right corner so you can quickly find exactly what you're looking for.

Click on the "subscribe now" button and you'll be directed to the S&P newsletter subscription hub. There you can sign up for any of dozens of professional quality investment industry newsletters on a wide variety of subjects. Free research will be delivered to your email inbox on a monthly basis at no cost and with no obligation.

Best Long-Term Stocks to Buy Now

Glenn Fydenkevez Feb. 12, 2024

Tags: investing , stock market , money , financial literacy , Morgan Stanley , TD Ameritrade , Charles Schwab , Bank of America , Interactive Brokers Group

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The 13 Best Market Research Tools

Jan 3, 2024

9 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 ) 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.

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:

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Published on December 8, 2023

Top 21 Market Research Tools (Free & Paid)

When it comes to business growth, every tiny advantage helps. Be it understanding your target audience better or gaining a better understanding of the competitive landscape of your industry. Market research tools are powerful data platforms that can help you get a 20/20 vision of everything that is likely to affect your business, its survival, and its continued success.

In this guide, we curate over 21 of the best market research tools to help you make more data-driven decisions and grow faster in 2024.

21 Top Market Research Tools & Software

Whether you’re trying to understand market trends, seeking to outperform competitors , or striving to make sense of your customers’ evolving needs, the right market research software tools can make it easier.

In no particular order, here are the online market research tools that caught our attention and held it:

• SurveyMonkey
• Google Trends
• Answer the Public
• Zoho Survey
• Zonka Feedback

UXtweak is a comprehensive user experience research and optimization platform that helps you uncover usability issues, fine-tune user journeys, and validate design decisions with real-world testing data.

With advanced features such as session recordings and surveys, you can organize content, compare designs, collect feedback, and more for your website, apps, and prototypes. UXtweak is a great tool for conducting market research through surveys, testing competitors’ products and improving your own!

Key Features

• Competitive Usability Testing
• Session Recording ;
• Card Sorting;
• Tree Testing;
• Website, Mobile & Prototype Testing

Try Competitive Usability Testing✅

Try Survey in Action✅

• Free Plan : free forever plan with 30 self-sourced responses/mo, 5 recordings/mo, 1 active study, and 1 month access to results;
• Paid Plans : Start from $59/mo that includes 200 self-sourced responses/mo, unlimited studies (5 active at a time), and 12-month data retention.

When it comes to optimizing business growth through a superior user experience, UXtweak’s free plan is a great way to get started, and with the paid plans being so affordable, there really is no excuse not to take advantage of this powerful tool.

Conduct Market Research with UXtweak!

The only UX research tool you need to understand your competitors and upgrade your own product

2. Similarweb

Similarweb is an intelligence platform that gives businesses insights into their competitors’ traffic and marketing strategies.

From estimating your competitor’s website traffic and analyzing their audience demographics to understanding their traffic sources and leveraging untapped growth opportunities, Similarweb helps you learn your competitive landscape better.

• Company Research;
• Benchmarking;
• Competitive Analysis;
• Audience Analysis;
• App Intelligence.
• Free Plan: No free plans, only a free 7-day trial;
• Paid Plan: Starts from $125/user/mo and includes 100 websites results per report, 1,000 keyword results per report, 3 months of historical data, and more.

If you are looking for competitive marketing intelligence, Similarweb is well and truly worth it. What’s more, you don’t even have to sign up to be able to take Similarweb for a test drive. You can check high-level data for your competitor’s website from inside its home page to get a taste.

3. forms.app

forms.app is an online form builder tool that enables you to create forms, surveys, and quizzes without any coding knowledge. It offers more than 4000 ready-made templates and an AI form generator, which helps you create anything in less than a minute. You can automate your workflow and gather data easily with direct integrations.

• Avoid unnecessary questions with conditional logic;
• Various sharing options;
• Access your forms from anywhere and anytime with a mobile application;
• More than 25 form fields;
• Advanced analytics.
• Free Plan: A forever plan that includes almost all advanced features.
• Paid Plan: Three paid subscription plans are available, with the basic plan starting at 25 USD per month. The Pro plan starts at 35 USD, and the Premium plan starts at 99 USD.

4. Typeform

With Typeform, businesses can collect data and develop insights through highly interactive forms and surveys.

To start collecting data quickly, Typeform offers a wide selection of customizable templates and a drag-and-drop form builder. 

With eye-catching templates, intuitive designs, and an extremely smooth user experience, the process of collecting data is more conversational than transactional, boosting form fills and response rates.

• High-quality Templates & Premium Themes;
• Question branching & Logic Jumps;
• Personalization with Hidden Fields;
• Advanced Analytics;
• File Uploads.
• Free plan: 7-day free trial only;
• Paid plans: Start from $129/mo that includes 5 projects, 500 keywords tracked, 10,000 results per report, and more.

The Hotjar platform helps businesses understand how visitors interact with their websites to improve user experience.

Heatmaps help you see how users move, click, scroll, and engage on your web pages so you can reduce friction and boost conversions while session recordings help you optimize customer journeys faster by helping you see everything they do.

Drive your business growth using simple yet powerful mechanisms to collect feedback from your visitors through surveys, interviews data from your hosting, for instance. If you use Windows VPS hosting , you can access and use more data, as this type of hosting is Windows-based and allows you to do everything with ease. In addition to using Hotjar, this can help you optimize your user experience a lot.

• Recordings;
• Interviews.
• Free Plan: Includes up to 35 recordings/ day, 20 feedback responses/mo, 60 interviews/ year, unlimited heatmaps, and more;
• Paid Plan: Depending on the module you need paid plans start from $32/mo for 100 daily recordings, $48/mo for 250 responses/mo, $280/mo for 180 interviews/year.

6. SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey is an online survey solution that helps businesses create, share, and analyze surveys with their prospects and customers.

Its user-friendly interface and dozens of customizable survey templates enable you to conduct easy-to-complete surveys to gain insights into key customer issues.

With a variety of question types, skip logic, audience targeting, and detailed analytical dashboards, collecting the right data to drive your business growth is easy and fast.

• Pop-up Online Surveys;
• Expert, Pre-written Survey Templates;
• Best Worst Scale;
• Question & Page Skip Logic;
• Advanced Survey Logic.
• Free Plan: Includes unlimited forms, 10 questions per survey, and view up to 25 responses/ survey;
• Paid Plan: Starts from $28/mo for unlimited forms, unlimited questions per survey, and up to 2,500 responses/year.

If conducting regular surveys is the core of your business strategy, SurveyMonkey is an extremely affordable and no-hassle way to go about doing it.

7. Qualaroo

Qualaroo provides actionable insights for digital product teams through user feedback.

Solicit real-time feedback from LIVE user over website, apps and email media, or run exit surveys to truly understand why potential customers aren’t converting.

The AI-powered sentiment analysis feature helps you interpret and summarize user emotions from the feedback, helping identify issues and overall brand perception.

If you’re worried about disrupting the user experience, don’t worry, for the Nudge™ feature presents survey requests in a user-friendly manner that maximizes response rates.

• Survey Templates;
• AI Sentiment Analysis;
• Nudge for Prototypes;
• Confirmation Page Surveys;
• Exit Intent Surveys.
• Free Plan: 15-day FREE trial only;
• Paid Plan: Starts from $79/mo and includes website, app and email surveys , and more.

Among Qualaroo’s packages include one for websites and apps, one for email only, and a third one that includes all of them. The pricing varies accordingly. Regardless, Qualaroo is a reliable and cost-effective way to build better digital products through real-time feedback from online traffic.

8. Buzzsumo

Buzzsumo is a robust content research and discovery platform that helps businesses identify and create a high-performance content strategy.

Use it to discover trending topics, identify top content creators, monitor brand mentions and analyze best performing content, to be able to craft content that truly resonates with your target audience.

• Content Discovery;
• Content Ideas Generator;
• Content Research;
• Media Database of Journalists & Online Influencers;
• Monitoring of Media Mentions.
• Free Plan: 30-day free trial only;
• Paid Plan: Starts from $199/mo for basic content creation features and includes unlimited searches.

Higher-level plans include all PR (Press Release) and communications requirements and the entire suite, including content creation.

As you can see, Buzzsumo is expensive, but if content marketing is key to driving your business metrics and growth, it also happens to be a great source to find out what’s working right now.

Reddit is one of the most popular social media and online community forum platforms where close to 1 billion users engage and discuss topics that are dear to them across specialized, niche-specific “subreddits”.

Among other market research tools , the biggest value in using Reddit is the ability to gauge public sentiment, gather feedback, browse micro and macro trends, and even directly engage with passionate groups of super users who are highly active and vocal about what matters to them.

• Powerful Search;
• Communities & Feeds;
• Messages, PMs, Inboxes;
• Chat Channels;
• Reddit Premium (ad-free experience).
• Free Plan: Powerful free account that enables you to do just about everything;
• Premium Plan: $5.99/mo (or $49.99/year) and includes ad-free browsing, exclusive avatar gear, and more.

Understanding your audience is key to successful marketing and sales. And it is likely that there is a related subreddit that can help you greatly benefit from the perspectives of your target audience no matter what your business represents.

Spyfu is a competitive intelligence research tool that helps businesses optimize their SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and PPC (Pay-per-click) strategies for optimum results.

It features a host of research capabilities, including competitor analysis, keyword research, traffic analysis, domain comparison, and more, to benefit from both organic and paid aspects of search engine marketing.

• SERP Analysis;
• Competitor Traffic Analysis;
• PPC Competition Analyzer;
• Organic Keywords Research;
• Custom reporting.
• Free Plan: 30-day money-back guarantee only;
• Paid Plan: Starts from $16/mo and includes 10K row search results, 10K row data exports, 100 domain overview PDFs, 6 months historical data, and more.

If you’re looking for B2B market research tools that strongly focus on all aspects of search engine optimization, including paid ones, then Spyfu’s 30-day money-back guarantee is more than enough reassurance for you to try it out.

11. Claritas

Claritas is an online data platform that helps businesses hyper-target their ideal customers with precision with the help of insights on consumer demographics, behaviors, and preferences.

Using audience segmentation, deep market research, and omnichannel marketing analytics features, your business can identify the most valuable customer segments, deliver customized messaging, and maximize your marketing ROI (return on investment).

• Syndicated Audiences;
• Custom Audience;
• Anonymous Website Visitors;
• Multichannel Marketing Execution, Measurement & Attribution;
• Podcast Attribution & Audience Identification.
• Free Plan: None;
• Paid Plan: Pay as you go at $89 to $179 per report. Alternatively, pay $1495/ yr to unlock 8 demographic and 2 market power reports.

Claritas is not a cheap audience insights platform, but that’s because it comes with nearly 2,500 syndicated audience sets built from over 20,000 demographic and behavioral attributes. Your investment will likely be worthwhile if that sounds good to you.

12. Google Trends

Google Trends is a free online research platform that reveals how popular certain search terms and keywords have been over time. Specifically, it analyzes Google’s organic search data to provide insights into how frequently a term has been searched compared to its peak over various periods.

By comparing different search phrases, observing seasonal fluctuations, and identifying emerging trends, you can gauge market interest and spot potential opportunities to launch, grow, and scale your business.

• Interest Over Time;
• Interest by Subregion;
• Compare Search Terms;
• Related Topics;
• Related Queries.
• Free Plan: Google Trends is a free service provided by Google;
• Paid Plan: None.

If you’re looking to launch your product or service, or maybe even looking to scale them, Google Trends can provide you with up-to-date data on market trends and interests to support data-driven decisions. What’s more, it is 100% free for you to try out and keep using.

13. Pollfish

There are dozens of tools to do market research , but Pollfish is different. It stands out because it provides real-time insights from 500+ million real consumers from 160+ countries who’ve legitimately opted-in to take mobile surveys.

With Pollfish you can reach a vast audience set in a highly targeted manner based on demographics, behavior, or location and obtain timely and actionable consumer insights.

Among Pollfish’s 120K+ partnered apps, Pollfish rewards users with relevant in-app rewards, reducing the need for money spent on responses and making surveys more authentic as well as cheaper.

• Net Promoter Score (NPS) Calculator;
• Single & Multiple Selection Screening Questions;
• Shuffle Answers;
• Skip Question Logic;
• A/B Testing.
• Paid Plan: Starts at $0.95 per complete.

With Pollfish, you can target real customers by demographics, behavior, and location. In addition, the platform charges you based on how many completes you get. The cost per completed action is less than $1, which is extremely cost-effective.

14. Answer the Public

AnswerThePublic is a search listening and content idea generator that helps you uncover the most commonly asked questions on Google to help you derive insights from real-time search data.

Your keyword data is presented in the form of visually engaging charts as well as alphabetically sorted images both of which can be easily downloaded. 

With the search listening feature, you get weekly email updates showing you changes in the search behavior for tracked keywords. 

Using target market research tools like AnswerThePublic is a great way to strategize your content marketing strategy to help produce more relevant, targeted, and useful content for your specific niche.

• Search Data Visualization & Export;
• Search Listening Alerts;
• Keyword Search Data;
• CPC (Cost Per Click) Data;
• Data Comparison Over Time.
• Free Plan: Up to 3 free searches per day with free signup;
• Paid Plan: Starts from $5/mo for up to 100 searches/day and 1 search listening alert.

AnswerThePublic is a great way to use real-time search data to inform your content marketing efforts and drive its ROI, especially when it comes in such an affordable package.

15. Statista

With over 22,500 sources, Statista is a leading data and statistics portal that helps aggregate statistics, forecasts, and other forms of quantitative data on markets, industries, consumer behavior, and trends.

Save valuable research time and ensure data accuracy with Statista’s exhaustive database, which includes ready-to-use statistics, detailed analytics, and infographics.

• Industry Insights;
• Infographics, Reports & Studies;
• Forecasts & Analysis;
• Regional and Country Data.
• Free Plan: Access to free statistics;
• Paid Plan: Starts from $199/mo for access of up to 1m+ statistics.

If being able to access quantitative data about your consumers and market is crucial to your business strategy, Statista is a reliable and authoritative solution to get started with. 

16. Tableau  

Owned by Salesforce, Tableau is one of those market research data analysis tools that helps transform raw data into actionable insights with the help of visual analytics and data storytelling.

Tableau allows you to blend data from multiple sources with the help of an easy to use drag and drop interface, to create visually engaging reports and real-time interactive dashboards. This simplifies data analysis, provides near-instant business insights, and accelerates data-driven decision making.

• Create, Edit, Publish & Schedule Data Flows;
• Users & Permissions Management;
• Interactive Visualizations & Dashboards;
• Data-quality Warnings;
• Data-driven Alerts.
• Paid Plan: A Tableau Creator license costs $75/user/month and is a must, while optionals include Tableau Viewer and Tableau Explorer licenses costing $15/user/month and $42.00/user/month respectively.

Looking for a transformative approach to growth that involves being driven by data? Tableau is one of these market research analysis tools that helps make it actionable and more importantly, visual. If your business could benefit from such a representation, the cost could be well worth it.

17. Paperform

Paperform is an all-in-one platform that helps businesses create dynamic and engaging surveys, questionnaires, and feedback forms to help you collect data that matters to your business.

Combine the power of prebuilt templates with an easy to use, no code editor to create powerful online surveys, polls, quizzes and more easily and quickly. Use conditional logic, answer piping and more, to create personalized journeys for your survey respondents to hold their interest longer, minimize dropoffs and get maximum completions.

• Drag-and-drop, Zero-code Interface;
• 700+ Editable, Responsive Survey Templates;
• Smart Forms with Question Logic;
• Quiz, Poll, Survey Maker Forms;
• Plug-and-play Integration with Other Apps.
• Free Plan: 14-day, fully-featured trial only;
• Paid Plan: Starts from $20/mo for 10,000 form views and 1,000 form submissions monthly.

In addition to being extremely affordable, thanks to its vast library of ready-to-use templates and user-friendliness, Paperform is one of those market research tools for small business that can also help save time in collecting insights.

18. Stravito

Stravito is a centralized data platform that helps streamline and optimize competitive intelligence and knowledge management for your business.

In addition to simplifying data storage and categorization, it also provides powerful, generative-AI search to help you make sense of the data you already have.

By using Stravito, you’ll spend less time analyzing the data you already have and more time making better decisions.

• Generative-AI Driven Search;
• AI-powered Content Recommendations;
• Collections;
• Insight Radar.
• Paid Plan: No fixed plans. Only custom quotes are available upon request.

If your business handles a lot of data that it constantly struggles with handling and accessing, an AI-powered enterprise-level solution like Stravito is what you likely need.

19. Zoho Survey

Zoho Survey is an easily accessible yet robust online survey tool that you can use for your market research requirements.

Use 25+ question types and over 250 pre-optimized survey templates to design effective surveys fast. By using custom variables, piping, and custom end pages, you can personalize the respondent’s experience and make it memorable. 

Lastly, use web links and custom domain links to share these surveys with your target audience over emails and social media easily.

• Question types;
• Drag-and-drop Questions
• In-mail Surveys;
• 200+ Customizable Survey Templates;
• Personalization.
• Free Plan: Includes unlimited surveys, 10 questions/survey, 100 responses/survey;
• Paid Plan: Starts from $7/mo and includes unlimited questions & responses, advanced logic, and more.

Looking for mature market research survey tools that just work? 

Zoho Survey doesn’t just work but it also comes highly recommended and affordable, making it the go-to category of market research tools for startups and entrepreneurs on tight budgets.

Attest is a market research platform that gets your businesses up close and personal with 125 million+ real consumers across 59 countries for real-time insights.

Create custom surveys to meet specific research needs and target them on niche audience segments based on a number of demographic factors. A visual dashboard powered by built-in analytics presents instant and live data in an engaging and intuitive way.

The biggest benefit of using market research tools like Attest is the ability to test and iterate on campaigns in real time with a streamlined and data-driven approach that takes both consumer needs as well as market shifts into account.

• Question Routing;
• Sample Size Calculator;
• Behavior Reports;
• Automated Text Analysis;
• Interactive Results Dashboard.
• Paid Plan: All three paid plan tiers are available with custom pricing upon request.

Attest emphasizes delivering real-time, actionable insights derived from real customers. If that’s what your company needs to stay competitive, then it’s well worth the cost.

21. Zonka Feedback

Zonka Feedback is a powerful market research tool that helps businesses capture useful customer insights. It offers a range of survey questions and question types for conducting market research. Its in-depth reporting and analytics offer businesses key insights to make data-driven business decisions.

• Easy-to-use survey builder with 100+ ready-to-use templates
• Multi-channel survey distribution via emails, website, SMS, in-app/in-product, offline, kiosks, etc.
• 30+ question types
• Survey skip & branching logic
• Workflow automation
• Seamless integration with other business applications
• 14-day free trial
• Paid plan starts at $49 per month.
• Professional plan with feedback management & workflow automation at $99 per month
• Growth plan with advanced CX automation at $199 per month
• Customer plans for enterprises

Free Market Research Tools

Maybe you’ve never used market research tools before and are looking to get started. If you are at this point, then a market research tool with a generous free plan might be the best choice for you. 

Among the 21 market research tools we curated above, the following are the ones with the best free forever plans:

• Survey Monkey
• Answer the public

Not only are the above solutions a great way to get started with market research, but they are also affordable, making these key to startups and other budget-conscious businesses.

Why Are Market Research Tools Important?

Our market research tools aren’t just loved because they are powerful, but they offer a wide range of advantages. Here is what a great market research stack can do for your business:

• Drive data-driven choices: Make informed decisions based on tangible insights from real-time, authentic data;
• Deepen audience insights: Gain a clearer view of customer preferences, behavior, desires, frustrations, and problems;
• Bolster competitive analysis: Strengthen understanding of competitors and their strategies;
• Mitigate risks : Identify potential niche, business, market, or product pitfalls early to navigate challenges;
• Discover market opportunities : Spot untapped areas for growth and expansion;
• Adapt to emerging trends: Stay ahead by aligning with current market demands and shifts in real-time;
• Amplify engagement: Supercharge interactions with target audiences because of a laser-targeted and hyper-personalized approach.

Regardless of the exact reason you are excited about market research, know that there’s always a market research tool out there that likely meets your needs.

Did Any of These Market Research Online Tools Interest You?

Choosing the best tools for market research can be hard, so we’ve tried to make it easy for you in this guide.

Whether you’re looking to optimize your website for better user experiences or looking to empathize with users to be able to serve them better, UXtweak can be a great way to get started. And if its generous free plan doesn’t win you over, we’re sure its user-friendliness will.

Create your UXtweak account and start conducting market research today!

FAQ: Market Research Tools

Market research tools are platforms that help your business understand its target audience’s wants and needs better. This helps you identify market trends, uncover opportunities, avoid pitfalls, and establish a product-market fit.

Primary research is the research that you conduct by interacting with prospects and customers directly. The most common primary market research methods include:

• Interviews;
• Questionnaires;
• Focus groups;
• Physical visits to competitors’ places.

Regards of the market research tools and techniques you end up using, your market research will always center around four foundational pillars:

• Ideal Customer: Who benefits the most from your product or service?
• Market : What’s the overall demand, size, and growth potential of the niche you are operating in?
• Competition: Which other businesses are selling similar products or services to the same audience?
• Competitive Ranking : Where does your business stand in terms of market share, positioning, and more, with respect to your competitors?

Daria Krasovskaya is the Head of Content at UXtweak. Since content quality is her responsibility, she works closely with our UX researchers, UX/UI designers and content writers to ensure that we publish high-quality, informative, and engaging content on our blog and guides. During her studies for a degree in Marketing communication, she discovered her interest in user experience and design. Daria is not only a key member of the UXtweak team but also contributes to other websites and UX publications. Her articles can be found on well-known sites like UX Booth, where she shares her insights on UX topics.

UXtweak is buzzing with expert UX research, making thousands of products more user friendly every day

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15 Best market research tools in 2024

Last updated

3 April 2024

Reviewed by

Whether you're launching a new product or service, looking to increase customer engagement, or boosting brand loyalty, it’s always necessary to turn to data and insights to understand what’s going on. This research can give a picture of current and potential customers in the marketplace and help validate an action you want to take to increase sales.

Fortunately, we’ve done the hard work to find some of the best research tools to use in 2023. Let’s explore!

Market analysis template

Save time, highlight crucial insights, and drive strategic decision-making

• What are market research tools?

Market research tools are designed to simplify the process of gathering, storing, and understanding data and information.

They can help a team to clearly identify a market for their product or service, as well as gain key feedback from current and potential customers.

A broad range of market research tools is useful at various stages of the research process. Some tools help speed up the process of gathering data. Others are helpful once you’ve collected data, as they allow you to easily view and manage information and then draw valuable insights.

Ultimately, market research tools can help make the research process easier and more straightforward.

• Why are market research tools important for business?

The right market research tools in a business can streamline the research phases while helping to ensure a new product or service succeeds. 

There are a range of ways market research tools can help businesses. These include: 

Reducing manual processes . Manual research tasks can be highly time-consuming for teams. Tools can reduce the time it takes to complete research tasks, helping move projects forwards.

Increased accuracy . With large amounts of data, it’s easy for people to make mistakes. The wrong insights, after all, can prove highly damaging for a business. However, the right tool can improve the accuracy of data collected, ensuring that you base your decision-making on facts.

Removes bias . When teams rely too heavily on assumptions, they miss the chance to discover what users are really thinking and feeling. By relying more on market research tools, you reduce bias from team members and gain clarity on what the research is showing.

Faster data collection . Collecting data can take a long time and involve multiple team members. With the use of tools, there’s the chance to automate many tasks, making the process much faster and simpler.

Better accessibility . Outsourcing market research to independent firms can be time-consuming and costly. However, a business might not have the resources to conduct, collate, and draw meaningful insights from research. Market research tools better enable businesses to conduct research without person power—making the process accessible even to a small business.

• Types of market research tools

Market research tools are becoming increasingly common. Choosing the right tool(s) will depend largely on your needs, goals, and overall business strategy.

Before deciding, it’s helpful to consider the different types of tools and how they might help your research.

The most common types of research tools include:

Customer relationship management (CRM) software

CRM tools record key customer data to help build a picture of customer engagement and loyalty. This is very useful as a deep understanding of your customers is essential when releasing new products, services, and features.

Survey tools

Surveys are one of the most common research techniques, as they help a business team deeply understand what customers want and need. Survey tools can hasten the process of gathering data, increase the chances of completion, and improve accuracy.

Data analysis software

Data tools can help you efficiently collect and store data. They’re also helpful for analyzing that data and quickly gaining valuable insights from a vast range of sources.

Social media monitoring

Social tools help businesses to draw insights about social campaigns and statistics to drive interest online. They can also analyze trends and allows teams to understand their current and potential customers better.

Competitive intelligence tools

Competitor tools help a team to understand what their competitors are doing. By analyzing competitors' profits, sales, trends, and customers, you gain a better chance to understand market needs and wants, giving you the opportunity to offer something new and innovative.

Business intelligence tools

To help businesses plan more accurately, business intelligence tools help with forecasting, goal setting, and business strategies. 

• The best market research platforms and tools for accurate analysis

Below are some of the best market research tools in 2023.

Accurate market and consumer data should drive business decisions—not assumptions made by teams.

That’s where Statista can help. Statista is an online platform focused on consumer and market data. With access to data from 150+ countries and regions, their market insights help stakeholders to forecast growth, revenue, sales, and more. 

You can also find trending statistics, current popular topics, and expert research, which can all build a deep understanding of your market. 

Statista offers their starter plan at $39 per month, though they do have a free introduction plan to allow users to get to know the platform first. 

SurveyMonkey

Surveys are an important market research tool. They give your customers, or potential customers, a chance to make their voices heard. Those insights are ones a business can act upon to make improvements and release better products or services. 

SurveyMonkey enables business teams to quickly create and send surveys, quizzes, and polls through email, web links, or embedded forms. From there, they can receive responses from key people, gain insights, and take action on feedback. 

The platform has hundreds of templates to choose from, meaning that you don’t have to build a survey from scratch or need any design nous to get started. 

SurveyMonkey also offers a free option, which caps surveys at ten questions. This is an attractive option for small businesses and teams wanting to start conducting surveys. 

Google Trends

Curious about what people are or aren’t interested in at the moment? Jumping on trends and creating things that are wanted now is one important way to secure market share. 

Google Trends is a tool that anyone from a journalist to a business founder or UX Specialist can benefit from. It visualizes what search terms people are using on the internet, almost in real time.

The tool has featured insights, a search engine option to see what’s currently popular, and the chance to dive deeper into data. You can also compare one topic to another to see the interest over time—with information dating back to 2004. 

Regardless of what you’re developing, Google Trends is a tool every team releasing new products can benefit from. Even better, it’s a free tool, making it accessible to all. 

Marketing revenue engine SpyFu helps businesses to understand and take the guesswork out of search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) marketing. 

Through competitor analysis, rank tracking, and keyword research, SpyFu helps companies create content with better SEO. And with a Google Ads analyzer, ad templates, and competitor analysis, they can also boost success with marketed ads. 

SpyFu also has competitor software that allows customers to see ranks, ads, backlinks, and keywords to better understand the competition. To help stakeholders to track and improve success, they also provide detailed reporting tools. 

Basic plans for SpyFu start at $16 per month with options to upgrade for greater access. 

Designed with public relations professionals and content marketers in mind, BuzzSumo enables users to see what’s in the news, find trends, track company mentions, and gain ideas for new content. 

The tool helps people to discover popular content, uncover top stories from competitors, and see what their customers are interested in. It also allows stakeholders to quickly react to negative mentions, competitors' comments, or industry announcements. 

With a huge library of data and content, BuzzSumo is a powerful tool popular with creatives and marketers alike. 

The tool does come at a price, with a single-user plan costing ​​$119 per month. 

Think With Google

Think With Google provides key data and insight to help businesses understand shifts in beliefs, behaviors, and needs in geographic regions. 

These consumer insights and market trends can provide interesting perspectives for the forecasting and planning of marketing strategies.  

Using Think With Google can boost business ideas, drive business decisions, and help marketers succeed in a competitive marketplace. And similar to Google Trends, Think With Google is a free tool. 

Completing a survey isn’t always a fun or desirable activity for a busy potential or current customer. Surveys take time to fill out, and many customers would prefer to get on with their day. 

With that in mind, Typeform created people-friendly surveys, forms, and quizzes that are enjoyable to complete. 

With dedicated designs that aren’t only aesthetically pleasing but simple to use, stakeholders can create something unique and appealing for consumers without the need for design work. 

Typeform also has a video feature to allow more in-depth questions—something that can be very useful for some projects. 

A basic plan with Typeform starts at $25 per month. 

Semrush helps companies improve their SEO, PPC, competitor research, and content marketing. 

It does this by offering SEO audits, actionable tips, traffic analysis, and a keyword research tool to drive successful marketing. It’s also a social media scheduling tool with post analysis to boost successful social marketing. 

When it comes to competitor research, Semrush also provides competitor analysis through tracking and assessing other websites, visibility on competitor promotion strategies, and access to keyword and backlink gaps, which you can use to grow market share. 

Semrush’s base plans start at $119.95 per month. 

US Census Bureau

When developing new products and services, you want to get as much information about your target market as possible. What better way than looking at the Census Bureau data? 

The Census data gives accurate and detailed information about the American public and economy, which is critical to understanding the potential market for a product or service. This sort of data gives you the ‘big picture’ of your customer base and is often the backbone or initial supporting data for your market research project. Participation in the US Census is mandatory, ensuring that you have access to a huge dataset of accurate information. 

It does have some limitations. Given the Census is only taken every ten years, the information can become outdated quickly. Also, it may not be specific or detailed enough to relate to your particular project. 

But given it’s free for all to access, it’s a great starting point for general research. 

Competitor analysis is an essential part of any successful market research journey. Similarweb allows users to analyze any website or app to understand how competitors are positioning themselves in the market by measuring their digital traffic. 

Insights include total visits, global rank, country rank, pages per visit, and bounce rate. Within the platform, you can also easily find similarly ranked sites to compare and contrast to your own. 

Importantly, Similarweb provides traffic and engagement analysis with demographic information, other visited websites, and audience interests. This provides a vast amount of information to accurately compare your website and app with competitors, giving you a much clearer picture of what your customers are interested in and where you stand in the marketplace.

Similarweb offers plenty of free tools and business quotes for those interested in paid plans. 

Business intelligence tool, Tableau, is designed to help companies gain helpful insights from data. Those insights can drive business decisions, generate accurate planning, and improve forecasting. 

A visual analytics platform, the tool is useful for data management, visual storytelling, and collaboration between team members. 

With a dedicated dashboard, providing a range of key analytics, discovering how your business is performing (and where it could do better) is straightforward. They also offer end-to-end data for a complete picture. 

Individual plans with Tableau start at $70 per month. 

Facebook Audience Insights

For some businesses, Facebook advertising drives campaigns, boosts sales, and grows customer engagement. 

Facebook Audience Insights help business owners discover more than just what their competitors are doing. The tool provides aggregated information to show data from those who are already connected to the business and another set to provide information about those generally on Facebook. This key information can drive awareness of new customers and increase the chances of boosting interest and growing a customer base.

Specifically, Facebook Audience Insights provides demographic information, key interests, and lifestyle data to build a picture of your current and potential customers. Even better, the tool is free to use. 

Question and answer platform, Quora, isn’t technically a research tool. Because it holds an incredible amount of information, it can help content marketers and product developers uncover key topics of interest. 

This platform is also free for everyone to use. 

BrandMentions

When wanting to increase brand loyalty and engagement—not only do you need an accurate tool to track that data—you also need to understand who’s talking about your business and where. 

BrandMentions does just that. The tool helps businesses manage their brand reputation, acquire new customers, and retain current ones, all while engaging with customers and key influencers.

With BrandMentions, it’s simpler to accurately measure the success of campaigns, track social media mentions and performance, measure brand performance, and monitor hashtags.

Plans with BrandMentions start at $99 per month.

The list wouldn’t be complete without mentioning Dovetail. Dovetail ensures that you can store customer research, feedback, and insights in one streamlined place—all to empower your team with accurate decision-making.

Regardless of whether the user data came through a survey, a focus group, usability testing, or product feedback, Dovetail also enables you to analyze your market research data and generate insights that can help you understand your customer and competition.

The platform also has templates for anything from analyzing competitors to gaining feedback or running an employee engagement survey. Dovetail can help you complete research that’ll have a real impact.

Get started today

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8 Best Market Research Tools [Free & Paid Options]

• What is market research?
• 4 Benefits of market research
• 5 Free market research tool
• 3 Paid market research tool

Helping to find the best market research tools. Are you looking for free or paid options? We got you covered.

What Is Market Research?

Market research is the process of collecting and analyzing information about customers, competitors, and the overall market to make informed business decisions.

It helps companies understand their target audience, identify market trends, assess demand for products or services, and evaluate the effectiveness of marketing strategies.

Market research provides valuable insights that enable businesses to minimize risks, maximize opportunities, and stay competitive in the marketplace.

4 Benefits of Market Research

The market research industry has experienced substantial growth. This growth can be attributed to the numerous benefits that market research offers.

Businesses aiming to enhance their products or launch successful marketing campaigns would face significant disadvantages without conducting market research.

Before delving into the best market research tools, it is essential to understand the importance of market research.

1. Understanding the Needs of the Target Audience

By conducting market research, you ensure that your target audience remains the focal point of every decision you make. Understanding their needs and desires allows you to customize your products, marketing strategies, and customer experiences accordingly.

This approach helps minimize negative customer experiences, as just one or two can prompt 64% of customers to switch to a competitor.

2. Identify New Opportunities

Market research tools also aid in identifying new business opportunities and potential threats. Engaging with customers and comprehending their behavior often reveals untapped prospects.

Similarly, by monitoring competitors, you can identify any potential risks that may pose a threat to your business if not addressed promptly.

3. Help You to Create Customer Personas

Moreover, market research assists in creating customer personas, which greatly enhance the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. Customer personas are fictional representations of your ideal consumers, detailing their characteristics and buying motivations.

With well-defined customer personas, you can ensure that every product and marketing decision is tailored to appeal to at least one customer persona. This approach enables you to develop marketing campaigns that cater specifically to each persona.

4. Help You to Stay Competitive

Ultimately, leveraging market research is crucial to staying competitive. Statistics indicate that 6 out of 10 marketers utilize consumer research to drive their decision-making processes.

Making well-informed decisions based on market research often leads to more effective marketing campaigns. Therefore, without market research, there is a genuine risk of your company falling behind competitors.

5 Best Free Market Research Tools

1. google trends.

Google Trends is a powerful and popular tool provided by Google that allows users to explore and analyze the popularity and interest in specific search terms over time. It provides valuable insights into the search behavior of users, offering a wealth of information for market research, content creation, and understanding trends.

Introduced in 2006, it tracks the popularity of search topics on Google over time and by location. For instance, it allows you to observe the precise number of people who searched for WordPress in the United States this year or how searches related to Wix.

The most common use of Google Trends is to track changes in the popularity of a search term over time. By simply entering a term of interest, Google Trends presents you with a line graph showcasing the term’s popularity. It assigns it a score ranging from 0 to 100.

Additionally, you have the option to compare different terms to gain further insights and make meaningful comparisons.

2. Think with Google

Think With Google is a lesser-known tool from the search giant, but its power and usefulness are not diminished by its relative obscurity. It serves as a free resource library filled with facts, figures, and insights . All this is based on Google’s own data and other research, providing a significant boost to your marketing efforts.

If you’re seeking a comprehensive understanding of the marketing landscape, Think With Google serves as an excellent starting point. By exploring the platform, you can discover marketing trends, gain insights into the latest consumer behavior, and find the information necessary to drive your marketing strategy.

The website is divided into four main sections: Consumer Insights, Marketing Strategies, Future of Marketing, and Tools. Each section offers valuable resources tailored to different aspects of your brand.

The first three sections are self-explanatory, providing insights and information related to consumer behavior, marketing strategies, and future marketing trends, respectively. The Tools section serves as a digital marketing toolbox, consolidating various research tools offered by Google. Such as Find My Audience and Market Finder, in a single location for easy access.

By leveraging Think With Google, you can tap into a wealth of knowledge and gain valuable insights. It can enhance your marketing efforts and inform your strategic decisions.

3. U.S. Census Bureau

The U.S. Census Bureau is a government agency responsible for collecting, analyzing, and disseminating data about the United States population, economy, and geography. It operates under the U.S. Department of Commerce and conducts various surveys and censuses to gather information that informs public policy, business decisions, and research.

The U.S. Census Bureau website is a valuable resource for market research, offering free access to U.S. census data. With over 130 surveys conducted annually by the Bureau of the Census, the website provides a comprehensive and reliable source of information. It is used by the government to allocate billions of dollars in federal funds.

The website allows you to search and explore the data by applying various filters, such as age, location, and income.

Additionally, it offers data visualization tools that present some of the datasets in a visually appealing format.

One interesting application of this data is to filter the results using your business’s NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) code. It helps to identify the geographical areas and demographics where your industry is most popular. This can be a valuable strategy to uncover new target markets if your business operates in a specific region of the country.

The U.S. Census Bureau plays a critical role in providing comprehensive and reliable data about the U.S. population, economy, and geography. Its data is essential for policymakers, businesses, researchers, and individuals to understand demographic trends, make informed decisions, and plan for the future.

When it comes to free market research tools, Reddit stands out as one of the best options available. Reddit boasts a massive user base and offers valuable insights. tool for market research.

With over 57 million daily active users spread across more than 200 countries, it’s highly likely that a portion of your target audience can be found on the platform. Reddit provides a free and accessible platform centered around communities known as subreddits. This is where like-minded individuals engage in discussions about shared interests.

To locate your specific audience on Reddit, you can utilize the subreddit search tool. By entering relevant keywords related to your industry or niche, such as “WordPress”, you can generate a list of relevant subreddits dedicated to that particular topic.

Engaging with these subreddits allows you to observe discussions, gather insights, and understand the perspectives and needs of your target audience. It can serve as a valuable resource for market research, as you can identify trends, challenges, and preferences within your industry.

By leveraging Reddit as a market research tool, you can tap into a vast online community, gain valuable insights, and inform your marketing strategies based on the discussions and sentiments found within relevant subreddits.

Quora serves as an excellent free market research tool for gaining insights into your audience’s pain points and finding effective solutions can be achieved by understanding the questions they ask.

If you’re unfamiliar, Quora is a worldwide platform where users can ask questions on a wide range of topics. Other users, often providing their credentials, contribute answers to these questions.

It functions as a platform where individuals seek answers to their queries, and a diverse range of users, including experts and content creators, provide valuable responses.

To leverage Quora for market research, utilize its search tool to look for keywords relevant to your industry. By doing so, you can find discussions and questions related to your area of interest. This allows you to gain insights into the topics that resonate with your target audience, understand their concerns, and discover potential pain points they experience.

Engaging with Quora enables you to access a wealth of knowledge and perspectives from various experts and individuals in your industry. By monitoring and participating in relevant discussions, you can gather valuable insights that can inform your marketing strategies, content creation, and product development.

By utilizing Quora’s search functionality, you can tap into a vast repository of user-generated content and leverage it as a powerful market research tool to better understand your audience and address their needs effectively.

3 of the Best Market Research Tools – Paid Options

1. surveymonkey.

SurveyMonkey stands out as one of the top survey tools available, renowned for its popularity and effectiveness. Each day, the platform facilitates the answering of over 20 million questions, highlighting its widespread usage and trust among users.

The company offers an enterprise-grade platform that simplifies the process of creating, distributing, and analyzing surveys. With a collection of more than 200 customizable templates, users have a diverse range of options to start a survey.

Surveys can be conveniently shared through various channels, including links, emails, social media platforms, and embedded web pages. Once responses are collected, users can explore individual answers in detail or take advantage of SurveyMonkey’s custom reports. It creates charts to visualize the data effectively.

With its user-friendly interface, robust features, and extensive options for customization, SurveyMonkey proves to be a valuable tool for businesses and individuals. It helps in gathering feedback, conducting market research, and deriving meaningful insights from survey data.

2. Qualtrics

Qualtrics stands out as a comprehensive market research tool, offering a wide range of features that cover the entire research process.

With Qualtrics, you can seamlessly create advanced surveys, segment markets, and analyze data, all within a single platform. Whether you want to design a new survey or upload an existing dataset, Qualtrics provides the necessary tools to collect and analyze data effectively.

The platform offers statistical tests and visualizations to derive meaningful insights from your research.

One notable advantage of Qualtrics is its ability to assist with finding respondents for your surveys. Instead of spending time searching for participants, Qualtrics enables you to access a representative sample of your target audience directly through the platform. This streamlines the research process and ensures you gather data from the desired demographic.

To help users make the most of the platform’s capabilities, Qualtrics offers on-demand training resources. These resources provide guidance and support. Allowing users to optimize their research projects and leverage the full potential of the Qualtrics platform.

With its comprehensive suite of features, respondent recruitment capabilities, and accessible training resources, Qualtrics is a valuable tool for businesses and researchers seeking to conduct in-depth market research and gain valuable insights from their target audience.

3. Typeform

Typeform presents itself as an alternative to SurveyMonkey. It is offering a survey-based market research tool with a user-friendly design and a plethora of ready-made templates.

This platform simplifies the creation of forms and online surveys, allowing you to easily gather customer feedback. With over 500 million digital interactions annually, Typeform has established itself as a popular choice. It can seamlessly integrate with numerous other applications.

When using Typeform, you have the flexibility to format your questions in various ways, including multiple-choice, scale ratings, and open-ended responses. This versatility enables you to collect both quantitative and qualitative data effectively.

Additionally, the platform offers conditional logic, allowing you to dynamically adjust the survey structure based on respondents’ answers.

One standout feature of Typeform is the unique respondent experience it provides. Unlike traditional survey tools, Typeform presents respondents with one question at a time, creating a user-friendly and less overwhelming interface. This approach enhances the user experience and has the potential to increase survey completion rates.

With its intuitive design, diverse question formatting options, and interactive respondent experience, Typeform offers a compelling solution for conducting market research and collecting valuable insights from your target audience. Its extensive integration capabilities further enhance its versatility and usefulness in the realm of survey-based market research.

In conclusion, market research tools are essential for businesses seeking to gather valuable insights and make informed decisions in today’s competitive landscape. These tools enable businesses to understand their target audience, identify market trends, analyze competitors, and optimize their marketing strategies.

Whether you’re a small startup or a large enterprise, leveraging market research tools can provide a competitive advantage and drive business growth.

When it comes to free market research tools, Google Trends and Think With Google are highly recommended.

Google Trends offers real-time search data and trend analysis, while Think With Google provides valuable industry insights and consumer behavior trends based on Google’s data. Both tools are accessible, user-friendly, and can provide valuable information to inform your marketing efforts.

For paid options, SurveyMonkey and Qualtrics are widely recognized and popular choices.

SurveyMonkey offers powerful survey creation and data analysis features, allowing businesses to gather customer feedback and conduct market research. Qualtrics, on the other hand, provides a comprehensive platform for advanced survey research, customer experience management, and market insights.

Ultimately, the best market research tools for your business will depend on your specific needs, budget, and industry. It’s recommended to assess your research objectives, explore different options, and choose the tools that align with your goals and provide the most relevant and actionable insights.

By leveraging the power of market research tools, businesses can gain a deeper understanding of their target market. You can make data-driven decisions, and stay ahead in a rapidly evolving business landscape.

If you are about to start your website make sure to check this article , where we compared some of the biggest hosting providers and their prices.

A market research tool is a software or online platform that helps businesses collect, analyze, and interpret data to gain insights about their target market, consumer behavior, industry trends, and competitors.

Market research tools are important because they provide businesses with valuable data-driven insights that help them make informed decisions, develop effective marketing strategies, identify opportunities, mitigate risks, and stay ahead of the competition.

Some popular market research tools include Google Trends, Think With Google, SurveyMonkey, Qualtrics, SEMrush, Google Analytics, social media listening tools like Hootsuite or Sprout Social, and customer feedback platforms like UserTesting or Hotjar.

Market research tools can help identify target audiences by providing demographic data, psychographic information, and consumer behavior insights. They allow businesses to segment and analyze their customer base, identify key characteristics of their target audience, and tailor their marketing efforts accordingly.

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Figuring out who your audience is and what they want is business 101. You need to know who you’re selling to if you want to make money. 

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That’s where Optimo’s AI-powered market research tool can help. It’ll tell you who your audience is, their demographic, and how you can learn more about them in seconds . What’s more, it’s totally free . Get unlimited use today. 

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Small Business Trends

55 free marketing tools for any small business to use.

Marketing is crucial for small businesses, but tight budgets can be a challenge. That’s where free marketing tools come in. They level the playing field, giving small businesses powerful resources to boost their visibility. In this article, we’ll reveal 55 invaluable tools that can really make a difference for your business. 

Table of Contents

The Need for Free Marketing Tools in Today’s Business Landscape

Small businesses face a real struggle with their marketing budgets. It can seriously limit their reach and growth potential. That’s where free marketing tools step in. They offer a cost-effective way to compete effectively without straining resources. These tools are a game-changer, leveling the playing field for small businesses. With them, businesses can fine-tune their marketing strategies, boost their online presence, and achieve sustainable growth without breaking the bank.

Marketing Strategy Budgets in Small Businesses

For small businesses, financial resources are often limited, directly influencing their marketing endeavors. With every dollar allocated for advertising and promotions, careful consideration is paramount. This entails a perpetual balancing act, ensuring that each investment yields the maximum return. The challenge lies in making the most out of the available resources and orchestrating a strategic approach that maximizes impact while operating within the constraints of a modest budget.

Bridging the Gap with Free Marketing Tools

Free marketing tools act as a great equalizer. They give smaller businesses the tools they need to achieve results that can rival those of larger companies with bigger budgets. By using these tools, businesses can enhance their visibility and competitiveness without straining their finances.

From Content Creation to Analysis: The Range of Free Marketing Tools

Free marketing tools offer a plethora of benefits and functionalities tailored to support small businesses in their marketing efforts. These tools are designed to provide end-to-end solutions, ensuring that even with limited resources, businesses can compete effectively in the market. Here’s a more in-depth look at the wide range of capabilities offered by these free marketing tools:

• Tools like Canva allow businesses to create captivating visuals without the need for a professional graphic designer.
• Platforms such as HubSpot provide resources for content management, enabling seamless scheduling and distribution.
• Google Analytics helps businesses understand website traffic and user behavior, providing invaluable insights for strategy refinement.
• Ahrefs Keyword Generator can aid in keyword research, ensuring content is optimized for search engines.
• Email marketing platforms like Mailchimp and Aweber enable businesses to maintain regular contact with their customer base, fostering loyalty and repeat business.
• SurveyMonkey allows businesses to gather feedback, helping in refining product offerings or service quality.
• Tools like Buffer and Hootsuite enable businesses to schedule, monitor, and analyze their social media content, maximizing engagement and reach.
• RankMath and Google Keyword Planner can help businesses optimize their content for search engines, driving organic traffic.
• Slack offers real-time communication channels for teams, ensuring everyone stays on the same page.
• Trello and Asana assist in project and task management, streamlining workflows, and enhancing productivity.
• Platforms like Google Trends provide insights into market trends, ensuring businesses remain relevant and up-to-date.
• Microsoft Power BI offers detailed analytics, allowing businesses to make data-driven decisions.

These tools, and many others, serve as a testament to the plethora of resources available for free that can significantly amplify a small business’s marketing efforts. By leveraging these solutions, businesses can ensure that they remain competitive, efficient, and responsive to the ever-evolving demands of the market.

Balancing Quality and Cost: Do Free Marketing Tools Compromise on Features?

When utilizing free marketing tools, a common concern revolves around potential compromises in quality to save costs. The ability to scrutinize the offerings of these tools can be among the top traits of successful marketers . Ensuring they deliver genuine value without hidden fees is paramount in maintaining a successful, sustainable marketing strategy. Striking the right balance between quality and cost is key to steering your marketing endeavors toward long-term success and avoiding any unforeseen expenses that might derail your efforts.

Delving Deep: 55 Best Free Marketing Tools for Small Businesses

Discover a treasure trove of 55 exceptional free marketing tools that can transform your small business’s marketing efforts.

Top Free Marketing Tools for Content Marketing and Design

Tap into your creative potential with these top-notch free marketing tools tailor-made for crafting compelling content and breathtaking design.

HubSpot offers a comprehensive suite of marketing tools, including CRM, email marketing, and analytics. It’s a versatile platform for businesses looking to streamline their marketing efforts.

Canva simplifies graphic design with an intuitive interface and a vast library of templates. This free tool is ideal for creating eye-catching visuals for social media, presentations, and more.

3. Grammarly

Grammarly is a writing assistant that checks and improves grammar, spelling, and style in real-time. It’s a must-have for anyone looking to enhance their writing.

4. Unsplash

Unsplash is a treasure trove of high-quality, royalty-free images for all your visual content needs.

5. Write Behind

Write Behind is a mobile app that allows you to add text to your photos creatively. Perfect for enhancing your social media posts.

6. Adobe Express

Adobe Express offers quick and easy photo editing tools for those on the go. Edit and enhance your images with ease.

InVideo is an online video editing platform that simplifies video creation. It’s perfect for businesses looking to create engaging video content.

8. Photopea Image Editor

Photopea Image Editor is a free online image editor with capabilities similar to Adobe Photoshop. It’s a handy tool for graphic design and photo editing.

9. SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey is a versatile online survey tool for collecting feedback and data from your audience.

10. Evernote Skitch

Evernote Skitch is a note-taking app that allows you to annotate and sketch on images and PDFs. Great for visual communication and collaboration.

Social Media Marketing Tools

Navigate the social media landscape with ease using these free marketing tools designed to enhance your social presence.

Buffer simplifies social media management, allowing you to schedule and analyze posts across multiple platforms. An excellent choice for marketers.

12. Hootsuite

Hootsuite offers a comprehensive social media management suite. It helps you monitor, schedule, and analyze content, perfect for bustling social media professionals managing multiple social media accounts.

13. Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a versatile tool for social media management. It streamlines content scheduling and provides in-depth analytics, making it ideal for the bustling marketer.

Later specializes in Instagram scheduling, allowing users to plan and automate posts efficiently, saving time in their hectic schedules.

15. Linktree

Linktree is a handy tool for individuals and businesses looking to optimize their Instagram bio. It simplifies sharing multiple links in one place.

16. Crowdfire

Crowdfire streamlines social media management with features like post-scheduling and content curation. It’s a valuable asset for social media marketers.

17. CoSchedule Marketing Calendar

CoSchedule Marketing Calendar offers a centralized hub for organizing and scheduling marketing campaigns, perfect for the bustling marketing team.

18. AdsReport

AdsReport is a robust ad reporting tool within Agorapulse. It helps marketers efficiently manage and analyze their ad campaigns in a busy marketing landscape.

19. Tailwind

Tailwind is a go-to for Pinterest and Instagram scheduling. It’s a time-saving solution for marketers looking to streamline visual content.

20. Friends+Me

Friends+Me is a social media scheduling tool that helps professionals plan and automate posts across various platforms, easing their marketing workload.

SEO and Website Optimization Tools

Enhance your online presence and improve your website’s performance using these free marketing tools designed specifically for SEO and optimization.

21. Google Keyword Planner

Google Keyword Planner is a robust tool for researching and analyzing keywords, essential in the bustling world of online marketing and SEO.

22. Google Search Console

Google Search Console provides valuable insights into your website’s performance in search results, an invaluable asset for SEO professionals.

23. SERP Snippet Optimizer Tool

SERP Snippet Optimizer Tool helps optimize your page’s meta description, ensuring it stands out in the competitive search results landscape.

24. Ahrefs Keyword Generator

Ahrefs Keyword Generator simplifies the keyword research process for marketers. It provides a list of relevant and high-performing keywords to target.

25. Ahrefs Webmaster Tools

Ahrefs Webmaster Tools offers essential insights into your website’s health and performance, making it a must-have for webmasters and SEO experts.

26. RankMath

RankMath is a powerful SEO plugin for WordPress, streamlining on-page SEO efforts in the fast-paced world of content creation and website management.

27. Help a Reporter Out (HARO)

Help a Reporter Out (HARO) connects journalists with sources, offering opportunities for experts to contribute to news stories and gain exposure.

28. GTmetrix

GTmetrix provides detailed insights into your website’s performance, crucial for webmasters and developers striving for optimal loading speeds and user experience.

29. AlsoAsked

AlsoAsked is a tool that visually maps out related questions from Google’s “People Also Ask” section. It’s a time-saver for content creators seeking inspiration.

30. Answer the Public

Answer the Public generates content ideas based on user queries, a go-to for content creators aiming to meet their audience’s informational needs.

Email Marketing and List Management Tools

Master email marketing and streamline your contact lists with these free marketing tools built for effective communication.

Aweber is an email marketing platform for businesses looking to create and automate email campaigns, a marketer’s essential tool.

32. GetResponse

GetResponse simplifies email marketing with features like automation and landing pages, perfect for small business owners aiming to boost their email outreach.

33. Mailchimp

Mailchimp offers a user-friendly email marketing solution, suitable for individuals seeking an easy way to engage with their audience.

34. MailerLite

MailerLite provides a user-friendly platform for creating and automating email campaigns, an essential tool for marketers and business owners.

35. Zoho Campaigns

Zoho Campaigns streamlines email marketing with features like automation and analytics, essential for professionals looking to drive engagement.

36. Benchmark Email

Benchmark Email offers an array of features for creating and managing effective email campaigns.

Brevo is a comprehensive marketing platform, including email marketing, making it an excellent choice for professionals seeking an all-in-one solution.

Sender offers a robust email marketing platform with automation and analytics features, ideal for busy marketers aiming to optimize their email campaigns.

39. SendPulse

SendPulse includes email marketing features like automation and personalization, a valuable asset for professionals looking to engage their audience.

40. Omnisend

Omnisend is an email marketing automation platform perfect for e-commerce professionals seeking to enhance their email outreach and conversions.

Analytics and Data Visualization Digital Marketing Tools

Leverage the potential of data with these free marketing tools that provide valuable insights and impressive data visualization.

41. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a powerful tool for analyzing website traffic and user behavior. It’s essential for digital marketers aiming to refine their strategies.

42. Google Trends

Google Trends offers insights into trending searches, a valuable resource for content creators and marketers seeking to stay relevant and engaging.

43. Microsoft Power BI

Microsoft Power BI is a business analytics tool that provides insights into data. It’s a must-have for professionals aiming to make data-driven decisions.

44. Qlik Sense

Qlik Sense offers intuitive data visualization and analysis. It’s an indispensable tool for analysts and data-driven decision-makers.

45. Zoho Analytics

Zoho Analytics simplifies data analysis and reporting. It’s a go-to for professionals seeking to extract valuable insights from their data.

Domo offers a comprehensive business intelligence platform. It’s an invaluable asset for busy executives and decision-makers striving for data-driven strategies.

47. Tableau

Tableau provides powerful data visualization and analytics capabilities. It’s an essential tool for professionals seeking to make sense of complex data sets.

48. Amplitude Analytics

Amplitude Analytics focuses on user behavior analytics, a critical resource for product managers and marketers aiming to optimize user experiences.

Looker is a powerful business intelligence and data exploration platform. It’s indispensable for professionals seeking to derive actionable insights from their data.

50. Klipfolio

Klipfolio streamlines real-time dashboard creation and reporting. It’s a time-saving solution for professionals seeking to monitor key metrics efficiently.

Free Marketing Tools for Collaboration and Project Management

Maximize collaboration and efficiency within your team by using these free marketing tools specially crafted to streamline project management.

Slack is a popular team collaboration tool that simplifies communication. It’s indispensable for teams aiming to stay connected and productive.

52. Google Drive

Google Drive offers cloud storage and collaboration tools. It’s a must-have for professionals looking to store, share, and edit documents seamlessly.

Trello is a versatile project management tool. It’s a go-to for individuals and teams aiming to streamline tasks and projects effectively.

Asana simplifies project and task management. It’s essential for professionals looking to organize work and track progress efficiently.

Zoom is a widely used video conferencing tool. It’s indispensable for business owners and professionals looking to host remote meetings and collaborate with teams across distances.

How to Choose the Right Free Marketing Tool for Your Needs

When it comes to picking the perfect free marketing tool, start by assessing your business needs. Consider what tasks need tackling and what goals you’re aiming for. This will ensure the tool aligns with your specific needs, setting you up for success.

Understanding Your Marketing Goals

Before immersing yourself in the wide range of marketing tools available, it’s important to gain a crystal-clear understanding of your marketing objectives. Whether your aim is to enhance website traffic, elevate your social media visibility, or pursue other specific goals, this clarity serves as a compass, directing you toward the most suitable and effective tool for the task at hand. By aligning your tool selection with your precise goals, you can maximize the impact of your marketing efforts and move closer to achieving your desired outcomes.

Trusting Reviews and Recommendations

Don’t go it alone – lean on the experiences of others. User reviews, expert advice, and community feedback are invaluable in gauging a tool’s effectiveness. They provide real-world insights that can help you make an informed choice, steering you towards a tool that truly delivers.

FAQs: Free Marketing Tools

Are free marketing tools really free.

Free marketing tools may seem like a cost-saving solution, but they often come with hidden expenses. While they don’t require upfront payments, these tools may lack advanced features and support. Businesses might spend valuable time navigating limitations or dealing with ads. Ultimately, the true cost of “free” tools can be measured in missed opportunities and reduced efficiency. It’s essential to weigh the pros and cons before committing to these seemingly cost-free options.

Do free marketing tools have as many features as paid ones?

Free marketing tools tend to come up short in the features department when you compare them to their paid counterparts. The paid options usually pack a bigger punch with a wider range of tools and more advanced functionalities. They give businesses more flexibility and better results in their marketing efforts. While free tools can be a good starting point, it’s worth thinking about your specific needs and maybe considering investing in the paid versions to get a broader set of capabilities.

Can a business rely solely on free marketing tools?

While free marketing tools offer a budget-friendly start, relying solely on them might limit a business’s growth. These tools often lack the robustness needed for comprehensive marketing strategies. Investing in paid options can provide advanced features, analytics, and support, enhancing a business’s marketing efforts. Balancing free tools for basic needs and paid ones for scalability is a prudent approach to achieving a more well-rounded and effective marketing strategy. Additional investments, like social media marketing courses or outsourcing, can also help businesses scale, but are not absolutely essential.

Are free marketing tools suitable for both beginners and professionals?

Both beginners and professionals can find value in free marketing tools, but their suitability depends on specific needs. Beginners benefit from user-friendly interfaces and cost savings. However, professionals often require more advanced features and support, which paid tools offer. It’s crucial to assess individual requirements and weigh the benefits against limitations to determine the best fit for a successful marketing strategy. Study your strategy, marketing and advertising statistics , and the features of available options to make the best decision for your business.

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Grow » marketing, 9 ai tools to improve your business’s marketing.

AI-powered tools and software can help streamline your business’s marketing efforts. Here are nine AI tools you can leverage to improve your marketing.

With the proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI), many businesses are using AI-powered tools and software to streamline their operations and gain valuable market insights. AI technologies can help companies brainstorm and create content, automate workflows, analyze customer insights, and more.

Here are nine AI tools you can leverage to take your small business’s marketing to the next level.

Social media monitoring tool Brand24 helps businesses track customer feedback and sentiment in real time. It scours the web to aggregate brand mentions across various online sources, using AI to flag both positive and negative posts within contexts. Monthly pricing begins at $99 for individual accounts and $179 for team accounts.

DeepBrain AI

DeepBrain AI converts written text into engaging videos via its AI Studios tool. Simply input your desired text to create a voiceover and subtitles. Then, use existing text or work on the platform using the ChatGPT integration. Next, select your AI avatar to convey the voiceover, complete with naturalistic speech and movements for a more realistic feel.

The Starter plan costs $30 per month, while the Pro plan runs $225 per month. Custom pricing is available for Enterprise plans.

[Read more: What's the Difference Between Traditional and Generative AI? ]

HubSpot AI Marketing Hub

HubSpot AI offers a range of AI-powered capabilities throughout its platform to help businesses automate processes and make informed business decisions. Among these is the Marketing Hub , which includes AI-based features such as automated campaign development and tracking.

You can access several features, including email marketing, in the free version. Additional tools are available with paid plans, starting at $18 per month.

If you’re looking to get a stronger return on investment for your social media marketing efforts, Sprout Social can help.

Influencity

For businesses looking to leverage influencer marketing, Influencity offers a comprehensive platform to connect with influencers, work together on campaigns, and track campaign performance. The AI-powered tool helps companies find best-fit influencers across various social networks, optimize campaign workflows, and analyze key statistics to improve return on investment.

Pricing begins at $168 for a basic account with up to four users, going up to $698 monthly for a business account with unlimited users.

Formerly known as Conversion.ai, Jasper “the AI copilot” can generate marketing assets, including social media posts, sales emails, blog content, and website copy. The generative AI tool allows you to upload information about your business, ensuring the content it creates is both factually accurate and in the correct tone. Jasper also comes with search engine optimization (SEO) features and integrates with several third-party SEO and customer relationship management tools.

Plans for Jasper start at $49 per month per seat, with custom features and pricing available to businesses upon request.

[Read more: AI Tools That Can Help You Start, Run, and Grow Your Small Business ]

Seventh Sense

Hubspot and Marketo users can enhance their email marketing campaigns with Seventh Sense . The tool’s AI algorithms analyze each customer’s unique engagement patterns to increase email open rates and interactions. Seventh Sense also offers audience segmentation based on engagement levels, allowing you to tailor your approach and content accordingly.

For Marketo users, pricing begins at $450 per month with a minimum of 50,000 leads; HubSpot user pricing begins at $80 per month with a minimum of 5,000 marketing contacts.

Sprout Social

If you’re looking to get a stronger return on investment (ROI) for your social media marketing efforts, Sprout Social can help. The all-in-one social media management platform uses AI to understand audience behavior and make suggestions accordingly — for example, determining the best time to post, suggesting content themes, and finding potential brand advocates and influencers.

Sprout Social has four paid plans with varying degrees of features and support that start at $249 per month (plus an extra $199 per month for each additional seat).

E-commerce stores can turn to Trellis to optimize their ad campaigns and overall ROI. Trellis’s AI can suggest and regularly update keyword bids, provide advanced analytics and insights, and adjust campaigns based on identified patterns and trends. Amazon sellers can also benefit from the AI-powered pricing tool, which tests various product prices to help businesses develop optimal strategies.

Pricing for monthly plans (based on annual revenue) ranges from $299 to $1,499.

Zapier empowers teams to create customized, cross-system workflows to automate repetitive tasks, working with over 3,000 integrations to streamline various processes. One of the platform’s most promising tools for marketing is the ability to create a custom AI-powered chatbot. Zapier offers templates for both internal use (such as creating press releases or clarifying complex information) and for customer-facing chat-based interactions.

Zapier users can begin building a chatbot with limited features for free; premium plans cost $20 per month and allow the chatbot to be trained on one knowledge source.

[Read more: Getting Started With AI: Artificial Intelligence Applications for Small Businesses ]

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Top 7 Social Media Analytics Tools [Best Rated 2024]

April 4, 2024   •   15 min read

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In today’s social media world, basic analytics tools no longer suffice. As we step into 2024, what we really need are AI tools that do the heavy lifting for us. These aren't your everyday tools — they offer deep dives into data, revealing patterns and predicting trends that traditional tools might miss. They empower you with the ability to not only track your brand's journey but also anticipate the needs and behaviors of your audience, ensuring every post and campaign is both timely and relevant. 

In this listicle, we move beyond surface-level analytics to explore cutting-edge AI-powered social media analytics tools that are transforming social media analysis. With these tools, it's not just about posting and hoping for the best. It's about posting with a plan and really connecting with your audience. 

Let's jump right into the top 7 social media analytics tools that promise to transform the way you navigate the vast sea of posts and likes.  

What is a social media analytics tool? 

7 best social media analytics tools to track every metric , how to identify the best social media analytics tool .

Social media analytics tool is a software designed to monitor, evaluate and improve social media performance. These tools tap into social media metrics, ranging from likes and shares to comments and clicks. Their role is to translate this data into meaningful insights, providing a clear picture of what's working, what's not and where your brand stands in the digital landscape.  

No need to drown in spreadsheets or decode complex algorithms. Social media analytics software simplify data analysis, presenting clear visuals and actionable reports.  

They help answer crucial questions like: 

Who are your followers and what are their preferences? 

Which posts are popular and which need a boost? 

When should you hit that "post" button for maximum impact? 

In a nutshell, these tools simplify social media management by strategically overseeing your brand’s performance across all pertinent platforms and arming you with actionable insights. 

While this compilation isn't an all-encompassing list, we dedicated substantial time to research and gathered input from paying customers. First-hand feedback and authentic user reviews have shaped this list of social media analytics tools. Go ahead, compare the tools objectively and select the tool that meets your social media analytics needs. 

⚠️ Important Note for Readers:  

The below tools are in no particular order of ranking or popularity. Still, they are independent picks by Sprinklr’s editorial team based on our research and publicly available information in the review sites. It is crucial to note that software or platforms may evolve over time, and the company may address some of these concerns in newer updates or versions. 

Sprinklr dominates social media analytics software with a seamless blend of AI-driven insights and data integration from 30+ channels. Boasting an extensive library of over 7,500 pre-built queries, it ensures rapid results and minimal setup efforts.  

The platform accelerates insights across diverse verticals, creating a competitive edge for users. Additionally, it unifies earned and owned data in a holistic 360° view, driving unprecedented value with advanced analytics. Sprinklr transforms 500M daily digital conversations into actionable insights, providing a comprehensive view of brand, customers and competition for faster, more informed decision-making. 

🚀 Top 5 features:  

Real-time visual reports: Stay on top with instantaneous reports on trending customer conversations across 30+ digital channels. 

Integration capability: By integrating with 30+ channels, including Facebook, X, LinkedIn, Instagram and various web and mobile apps, the tool provides comprehensive insights for cross-channel campaign optimization. 

Automated reporting and custom dashboards: Save time with Sprinklr's automated reporting and cultivate a data-driven culture using custom dashboards, widgets and AI-powered reports for seamless collaboration and swift insights. 

Sprinklr AI+ (powered by Sprinklr AI, Google Cloud’s Vertex AI and OpenAI’s GPT models): Effortlessly receive key insights and actionable recommendations using Sprinklr AI+ . Skip the long message streams — drill down for concise summaries. Get clear, actionable tips to boost metrics like user experience scores and star ratings, making insights quicker and more accessible. 

Multilingual insight translation: Capture the global customer voice with the ability to translate insights into 100+ languages, ensuring a unified understanding across the globe. 

Overall verdict  

Sprinklr excels as one of the best social media analytics tools also offering robust features for scheduling, publishing, content creation and bulk publishing — in the form of Sprinklr Social . Its centralized management capabilities, advanced analytics, and customization options make it an invaluable asset for large-scale brands seeking a unified approach to social media. The platform's ability to seamlessly integrate data and provide actionable insights contributes to its standing as a powerful tool for optimizing brand performance across various digital channels.

Customer testimonial  

💪 Strengths  

“I love how customizable Sprinklr is. You can develop your own dashboards, reports and even custom metrics that help you measure your brand yearly, monthly, weekly and daily. It's incredibly helpful to have customization options for our KPI reporting.”  

💡 What could be better  

“It's a great tool, but the platform has a learning curve, and it isn't as intuitive as one might think. I often use the search function because I can't always remember when something I need is "buried" within the platform.”   Source  

Trusted by: Cisco, Prada, McDonald’s, Honda, Diageo, L'Oréal 

Price: USD 299/seat/month Check full pricing here  

Trial: Available for 30 days 

Sprout Social

Sprout Social's analytics tools provide deep insights to understand your customers' preferences and spot market trends. This empowers your brand to strategically leverage social media — enhancing its impact on future business outcomes. Trusted by mid-size companies, it stands out as a robust and user-friendly social media management platform. It allows you to derive tangible business value, secure your market position and swiftly drive revenue. With a suite of features, including analytics, reporting and advanced management tools, Sprout Social is instrumental in optimizing your brand’s social media presence. 

🚀 Top 4 features:  

Advanced analytics: Sprout Social provides in-depth analysis of social media performance, enabling you to make data-driven decisions and prove the ROI of your social efforts. 

Customizable reporting: You can create tailored reports that align with your business needs, ensuring that key stakeholders receive relevant and actionable insights. 

Integrations: It integrates with leading platforms like Instagram, X and LinkedIn, making it easy to work within your current processes. 

Team and task reports: It offers reports that help track individual user performance and task management, allowing your teams to identify areas for improvement and optimize your social media management. 

Sprout Social excels in providing comprehensive insights through advanced reporting and efficient management tools, earning praise for its real-time performance tracking and collaboration features. Users appreciate the robust analytics focus and all-in-one solution, but some feedback suggests opportunities for improvement.  

The platform's limitation in creating custom reports tailored to specific metrics or goals is noted. While its social listening feature is helpful, users desire a more comprehensive approach to capture a wider range of mentions, which tools like Sprinklr provide. Despite these considerations, Sprout Social stands out for its overall excellence in analytics and user-friendly interface.   

Cut to the chase: SPRINKLR vs. SPROUT SOCIAL   

“I love the reporting capabilities. I frequently get asked about overall social media performance and before Sprout, I spent a LOT of time compiling analytics from each platform's analytics database into a cumulative report. Now, I can easily send performance weekly with one click!”  

“Pricing for various features is steep, including premium analytics, listening and employee advocacy. This also applies to profile and user limits. Marketing teams will need to budget a hefty amount to get the full power of Sprout Social, especially when it comes to working across teams. As far as features, the team chat is quite clunky and unreliable. The platform sometimes feels a bit dated, with no major upgrades to the UI years. Additional integrations with CRMs would be ideal as well.”   Source

Price: USD 199/seat/month (billed annually)    

Trial: Available for 30 days   

Hootsuite's social media analytics platform is designed to give businesses a complete picture of their online performance. With features like an all-in-one dashboard, it brings together different social networks for easy monitoring. Advanced reporting removes the guesswork, providing clear insights to help businesses grow on social media.  

The tool lets users compare their performance with industry peers for valuable competitive analysis. Additionally, it suggests the best times to post based on when the audience is most active, aligning with business and social media goals . 

🆓 Get a free social performance report in 30 seconds! Compare and benchmark your social performance with peers for FREE : 

Total engagements & average engagements 

Brand activity trend by day and time 

Channel-wise performance & activity 

Top performing posts 

And more... 

  🚀 Top 4 features:  

Advanced analytics for ROI: Effortlessly demonstrate social media's value, tailor metrics to your goals, analyze web traffic impact and compare paid and organic posts. 

Optimal posting times: Boost social media engagement by posting at the perfect moment, guided by insights on audience activity patterns. 

OwlyWriter AI: Repurpose successful posts instantly with Hootsuite's AI, providing adaptability and efficiency in social media content strategy . 

Unified reporting across networks: Simplify data tracking across all social networks, with Advanced Analytics facilitating tracking customer journeys from social media to your website. 

Hootsuite's social media analytics tool stands out for its user-friendly design and comprehensive insights, allowing businesses to streamline their online presence. The all-in-one dashboard simplifies monitoring across various platforms, while advanced reporting aids strategic growth. Positive aspects include strategic posting recommendations and competitive analysis.  

❗Please note: Unlike Sprinklr, Hootsuite doesn't provide AI-driven smart insights across a wide range of verticals, a feature contributing to Sprinklr's distinctive strengths.  

“Hootsuite is very user-friendly and connects to various social media. All the reports/analytics that I need are available, and I can also customize the reports that I need. I can monitor the performance of all the agents and the messages that were handled.”   

“It can occasionally drop out of connections with the social platforms, which is a little annoying. I would also like to see more analytics for LinkedIn and less for Instagram. It suggests mostly Instagram post times which is not my main lead generation” Source  

Price: Starting from USD 99/month    

Meltwater's social media analytics tool is a comprehensive solution, analyzing both earned and owned social media data to provide actionable insights across diverse business areas such as marketing, product development, customer service , supply chain, employer branding and investor relations.  

As part of Meltwater's social media management suite, this analytics platform offers real-time data from major social networks, blogs, forums, review sites, podcasts and online news media. Standout features include benchmarking against competitors , trend analysis, sentiment tracking, emotional analysis, identification of top channels and sources, influencer analysis and audience affinities.

Competitor Analysis: The Secret Hack to Do It like a Pro  

Unlock the power of SWOT for competitor analysis and get ahead. This approach breaks down into examining your brand's strengths and weaknesses internally, while also scouting external opportunities and threats. 

🔍 Strengths (S): Identify what you do best. Maybe you're leading in follower count or engagement. 

🛠️ Weaknesses (W): Spot areas for improvement. Where do you lag behind your competitors? 

🌟 Opportunities (O):  Explore where you can outdo your competitors or tap into new trends. 

⚠️ Threats (T): Watch out for external challenges, like fast-growing competitors. 

Explore competitor insights: Benchmark your performance against competitors by analyzing brand mentions, sentiment and marketing metrics to refine your strategy. 

Audience profiling: Leverage sophisticated algorithms to conduct a detailed audience analysis , revealing demographic details, media consumption habits, brand preferences and influencer followings. 

Customized dashboard and reporting: Enjoy flexibility with custom dashboards, on-demand historical research and exportable insights via API, tailoring your analytics to unique business needs.  

Advanced trend analysis: Utilize trendlines and word clouds to track the popularity and underlying topic themes over time, gaining a deeper understanding of market dynamics. 

Learn More: 11 Social Media Trends in 2024 [+ 7 Actionable Tips]   

Meltwater impresses with its comprehensive social listening capabilities, offering global insights and competitor analysis. While providing valuable customization options for cross-departmental collaboration, there are some concerns about the learning curve and interface.  

Notably, it lacks the vast pre-built query library featured in Sprinklr, potentially impacting efficiency. However, Meltwater's emphasis on press release distribution and its powerful sentiment tracking and post scheduling features are distinctive strengths, setting it apart in certain functionalities.   

“Meltwater is truly the extra marketing team member our lean team needed. We start every Monday by looking at our dashboards, analytics and custom-made searches to gauge how our brand is doing. Meltwater's capabilities are a regular feature at cross-departmental meetings so we can look at what our competitors are doing and understand how our brand is being discussed across many channels.   Honestly, the customization of the entire platform to suit our company needs and goals makes this software exactly what we need and levels us up as an organization.”  

“It possesses the limitation of being unable to retain data coverage over extended periods of time, thus impeding its capability to archive historical data effectively. This constraint is further exacerbated by its inherent restriction, permitting capturing and storing a mere 15 instances of historical data. Consequently, the system's capacity to preserve and reflect upon a comprehensive historical context remains restricted, largely due to its incapacity to accumulate and maintain a broader scope of historical information.”   Source  

Price: From USD 8,000/year (annual contract)    

Trial: Information available on request  

Zoho Social

Elevate your brand's online impact with Zoho Analytics — an all-in-one social media analytics tool designed to track, analyze and visualize your social media activities seamlessly. It includes features like activity analysis for peak engagement times, ad analysis for better advertising ROI, engagement analysis for audience insights and competitive analysis to stay ahead.  

It simplifies the process with social media dashboards, offering profile analytics for a detailed profile overview and follower insights to understand your audience better. You can gain insights into audience preferences, evaluate post and ad performance, and effortlessly monitor competitors. You can also draft dynamic social media dashboards to get a complete picture of your social media performance.  

Collaborative analytics: Foster teamwork by analyzing social media data collectively with your marketing team, facilitating shared insights. 

Pre-built visualizations: Expedite your analytics journey with over 75 pre-built reports and dashboards, offering instant performance insights. 

Email, export and print reports: Ensure accessibility by exporting or printing reports, with the option to schedule automatic email deliveries. 

Smart analytical assistant: Leverage Zia, the AI-powered assistant, to obtain answers through intuitive reports and KPI widgets by simply typing out your questions. 

Zoho Social's social media analytics tool is lauded for its user-friendly interface, seamless integrations and competitive pricing, catering to businesses of all sizes. Users appreciate time-saving features such as post scheduling across multiple networks and the ability to manage brand profiles efficiently.  

However, feedback indicates a need for improvements in content creation, real-time notifications and certain limitations in Instagram support. Unlike Sprinklr, Zoho Social lacks AI-powered analytics tool with extensive pre-built queries and quick insights across various verticals — potentially limiting quick insights and anomaly identification.   

“Zoho Social is a great platform where we can link all our brand social media accounts and start posting and managing all activities from a single window. We can also respond to messages and comments using Zoho Social on all social accounts. The robust dashboard has all the analytics related to brand growth.”  

"It does not integrate with all social media platforms whose content is based on images only such as Pinterest."   Source

Price: USD 7.25/month/brand/team member (billed annually)    

Trial: Available for 15 days  

SOCi is an all-in-one social media management platform that provides tools to visualize and analyze data. The platform offers a range of features to help businesses manage their social media presence, including social media analytics software, chatbots software and social media management software.  

SOCi's reporting suite enables users to monitor and gain insight into their organic social media campaigns — providing valuable data across each of their Google Business Profile, Instagram and X accounts. The platform also offers customizable and white-label options for reporting, allowing users to create impressive-looking reports for their clients or team.  

Additionally, SOCi's insights and reporting suite provides actionable, real-time insights across all solutions, enabling users to analyze data at the account, group and location levels. 

SOCi listening: Centralize conversations, manage social media crises and leverage user-generated content (UGC) for authentic strategies. 

Online presence management: Protect brand reputation on social media, connect with customers through user-generated content and enhance marketing with real-time insights. 

Insights and reporting suite: Access actionable, real-time insights across all solutions, with customizable and white-label reporting options for a visually impressive and informative presentation. 

Competitive analysis and industry trends: Centralize insights on competitors and industry trends, benchmark strategies and optimize social approaches based on current market dynamics. 

SOCi's social media analytics tool emerges as a comprehensive solution for multi-location businesses, streamlining content deployment and ensuring brand consistency. The platform's listening feature provides valuable insights into customer conversations and industry trends, enhancing brand oversight. User feedback highlights its effectiveness in managing social media for both national and local teams. 

While praised for user-friendly implementation and intuitive interfaces, occasional disconnections and a learning curve are noted challenges.   

“I manage 10 franchises' social and Google business pages. This allows me to cut my time in half when responding to reviews and posting on our social pages. What used to take me hours takes me minutes!”  

“No real downsides, but on "sentiment" it shows some positive words as neutral or negative. It would be helpful if it didn't automatically mark them and/or allow us to review.” Source  

Price: Contact sales/vendor for information  

Trial: Information available on request

Semrush Social

Semrush's social media analytics tool provides a comprehensive solution for businesses to track, analyze, and optimize their social media presence. With Semrush Social, businesses can track their competitors' accounts, monitor their niche's top social media accounts, and compare their KPIs to gain a 360-degree view of their brand's impact. The tool also allows businesses to create and share engaging content on all their social profiles, streamline community management , and hone their social strategy with analytical insights. 

Competitor insights: Track competitors' social strategies, frequency of posts, follower growth and identify high-engagement content and hashtags. 

Automated reports: Receive automated reports directly to your inbox, offering comprehensive data visualizations and KPIs to streamline performance evaluation. 

Cross-network analysis: Gain a 360-degree view of your brand's social impact by comparing key performance indicators across social networks. 

Performance monitoring: Analyze your social media performance, including engagement metrics, follower trends and the impact of specific hashtags on audience interaction. 

🚫 3 Mistakes to Avoid in Social Media Analytics   

Ignoring context: Don't take numbers at face value. Remember, a spike in engagement isn't always good news. Always ask, "What's the story behind this data?" 

Overlooking negative feedback: Negative comments? Don't just scroll past. Use them as a chance to improve and connect with your audience. 

Chasing vanity metrics: Likes are nice, but do they mean business? Dig into metrics that matter, like click-throughs and conversions. 

Escape these traps and learn more of the best practices for social media analytics .

Semrush social media analytics offers a comprehensive solution for elevating social media strategies, featuring cross-network publishing, competitive insights and automated reports. Users appreciate its intuitive interface and in-depth performance monitoring, enabling effective content curation and strategy optimization.  

While feedback notes the tool's learning curve and pricing concerns, Semrush excels in providing actionable insights for informed decision-making. 

“The best thing is that we can find every aspect of competitive analysis, take from keyword analysis, ads analysis, competitors' strategy and all the competition available in the market”  

“I use it to send out PDF reports and I do not like the fact that the reports aren't more customizable.”   Source  

Price: USD 129.95/month  

Selecting the right social media analytics tool is crucial for unlocking valuable insights and driving growth. Here are mission-critical features and capabilities to prioritize during tool selection: 

1. Unified platform: Avoid the pitfall of using siloed tools by opting for a unified social media management platform, like Sprinklr does. Many companies opt for separate tools to manage different aspects of social media, leading to fragmentated data and insights that hinder sustained growth.  

Need help? Check out our buying guide on the best social media management tools for 2024. 

2. Comprehensive analytics: Ensure the tool provides a wide range of analytics, covering engagement, audience demographics and content performance across different social platforms. 

3. Real-time monitoring: Look for tools that offer real-time monitoring capabilities, allowing you to stay updated on trending topics, brand mentions and audience sentiments as they happen.  

4. Competitor analysis: A good tool should enable thorough competitor analysis, helping you understand industry trends, benchmark your performance and identify areas for improvement. 

5. Customizable reporting: Choose a tool with customizable reporting features to tailor insights according to your business goals. This flexibility ensures relevant and actionable data for your team. 

6. Integration capabilities: Opt for tools seamlessly integrating with other marketing and analytics platforms. This ensures a unified view of your overall digital strategy. 

7. AI-powered insights: Tools like Sprinklr AI+ , equipped with artificial intelligence can provide advanced insights, predictive analytics and anomaly detection, enhancing the depth and accuracy of your data-driven decision-making. 

8. Ease of use: User-friendly interfaces and intuitive dashboards contribute to the tool's efficiency. This is especially important for teams with varying levels of technical expertise. 

9. Collaboration features: Opt for tools that facilitate collaboration among team members, allowing seamless communication, task assignment and workflow management within the platform.

By prioritizing these features, businesses can identify a social media analytics tool that not only meets their current needs but also lays the foundation for sustained growth and success in the dynamic world of social media. 

Need inspiration? 

Look no further than Wells Fargo. The California-based multinational bank wanted to unify data from disparate social media activities and generate holistic reports to minimize friction for its high-performing teams. To that end, Wells partnered with Sprinklr, utilizing the unified social media analytics tool to replace four-point solutions that were hindering the company’s growth with siloed data.  

The result? Sprinklr’s granular, comprehensive insights enabled the company to take data-driven decisions based on real-time analytics and actionable reports. It also saved millions of dollars by moving from four tools to one. 

Final Thoughts  

We've taken a rollercoaster ride through social media analytics, exploring tools like the Avengers of the digital world.   

Now, in the fast-paced arena of social media, having the right analytics tool is crucial.  

But how do you even pick the right one? 

From a basket full of social analytics tools, Sprinklr stands out — uniting and bringing order to the chaos. By providing a unified platform covering everything from audience engagement to analytics, Sprinklr could be your go-to, making social media analysis effective and preventing the dreaded fragmentation many fall victim to.  

Analytics just got interesting, isn’t it? Peek at these top 7 picks and find your match. Fancy a test drive with Sprinklr? 

👉 Give It a Go!  

Frequently Asked Questions

Social media analytics is a process of tracking, measuring and interpreting data from social media platforms, providing insights for optimizing strategies. 

To choose the best social media analytics tool, consider specific needs, look for comprehensive features, check for integration capabilities, read user reviews and utilize trial periods for evaluation. 

Yes, there are many free social media analytics tools. Options include Google Analytics, Facebook Insights and Twitter Analytics — offering basic analytics for monitoring social media performance. 

The best social media analytics tool often depends on the specific needs of a business. For large businesses and enterprises, tools like Sprinklr, which offers integration across 30+ channels and Hootsuite, known for its comprehensive analytics capabilities, are highly recommended. These platforms provide deep insights and a broad overview of social media performance, essential for making informed strategic decisions at scale

Social media analytics helps improve marketing strategies by providing insights into audience behavior, content engagement and campaign performance, enabling you to make data-driven decisions. 

Native analytics provided by social platforms offer basic metrics and insights directly within the platform — ideal for quick overviews and immediate data. Third-party analytics tools, on the other hand, provide more detailed insights, advanced reporting features, automation and the ability to integrate data from multiple platforms for comprehensive analysis. 

Yes, social media analytics tools can track competitor performance. They allow you to benchmark your social media metrics against competitors, analyze strategies and gain insights into what content performs well in your industry. 

In 2024, the key features to look for in a social media analytics tool include: 

Advanced data insights: For deep dives into audience behavior and campaign performance. 

Real-time monitoring: To track trends and engagement as they happen. 

Predictive analytics: To forecast future trends and behaviors. 

Comprehensive reporting: For detailed analyses and actionable insights. 

Integration capabilities: To consolidate data across various platforms. 

User-friendly interface: Ensuring ease of use for all team members. 

Automation and AI: To streamline processes and uncover insights more efficiently. 

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Article Author

Aishwarya Suresh

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2024 March Market Study: State of Generative AI

Some technology is about more than uncovering a few new efficiencies or optimizing some antiquated user interfaces. Some technology is about transforming everything you know and feel about customer contact. Over the past few years, leaders have been eyeing generative AI as an example of the latter. They believe it can revolutionize self-service, transform customer journeys, increase personalization, strengthen our understanding of customers, and unlock unprecedented employee happiness and performance. But what is the surest pathway to these results? What can we do to ensure generative AI lives up to this hype? What strategic changes must brands make to capitalize on their new tech? The product of CCW Digital’s exclusive, in-depth research, this Market Study has the answers.

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The best AI image generators to try right now

If you've ever searched Google high and low to find an image you needed to no avail, artificial intelligence (AI) may be able to help. 

With AI image generators, you can type in a prompt as detailed or vague as you'd like to fit an array of purposes and have the image you were thinking of instantly pop up on your screen. These tools can help with branding, social media content creation, and making invitations, flyers, business cards, and more.

Also: ChatGPT no longer requires a login, but you might want one anyway. Here's why

Even if you have no professional use for AI, don't worry -- the process is so fun that anyone can (and should) try it out.

OpenAI's DALL-E 2 made a huge splash because of its advanced capabilities as the first mainstream AI image generator. However, since its initial launch, there have been many developments. Other companies have released models that rival DALL-E 2, and OpenAI even released a more advanced model known as DALL-E 3 , discontinuing its predecessor. 

To help you discover which models are the best for different tasks, I put the image generators to the test by giving each tool the same prompt: "Two Yorkies sitting on a beach that is covered in snow". I also included screenshots to help you decide which is best. 

Also: DALL-E adds new ways to edit and create AI-generated images. Learn how to use it

While I found the best overall AI image generator is Image Creator from Microsoft Designer , due to its free-of-charge, high-quality results, other AI image generators perform better for specific needs. For the full roundup of the best AI image generators, keep reading. 

The best AI image generators of 2024

Image creator from microsoft designer (formerly bing image creator), best ai image generator overall.

• Powered by DALL-E 3
• Convenient to access
• Need a Microsoft account
• In preview stage

Image Creator from Microsoft Designer is powered by DALL-E 3, OpenAI's most advanced image-generating model. As a result, it produces the same quality results as DALL-E while remaining free to use as opposed to the $20 per month fee to use DALL-E. 

All you need to do to access the image generator is visit the Image Creator website and sign in with a Microsoft account. 

Another major perk about this AI generator is that you can also access it in the same place where you can access Microsoft's AI chatbot, Copilot (formerly Bing Chat) . 

This capability means that in addition to visiting Image Creator on its standalone site, you can ask it to generate images for you in Copilot. To render an image, all you have to do is conversationally ask Copilot to draw you any image you'd like. 

Also:   How to use Image Creator from Microsoft Designer (formerly Bing Image Creator)

This feature is so convenient because you can satisfy all your image-generating and AI-chatting needs in the same place for free. This combination facilitates tasks that could benefit from image and text generation, such as party planning, as you can ask the chatbot to generate themes for your party and then ask it to create images that follow the theme.

Image Creator from Microsoft Designer f eatures:  Powered by:  DALL-E 3 |  Access via:  Copilot, browser, mobile |  Output:  4 images per prompt |  P rice:  Free 

DALL-E 3 by OpenAI

Best ai image generator if you want to experience the inspiration.

• Not copyrighted
• Accurate depictions
• Confusing credits

OpenAI, the AI research company behind ChatGPT, launched DALL-E 2 in November 2022. The tool quickly became the most popular AI image generator on the market. However, after launching its most advanced image generator, DALL-E 3, OpenAI discontinued DALL-E 2. 

DALL-E 3 is even more capable than the original model, but this ability comes at a cost. To access DALL-E 3 you must be a ChatGPT Plus subscriber, and the membership costs $20 per month per user. You can access DALL-E 3 via ChatGPT or the ChatGPT app.

Using DALL-E 3 is very intuitive. Type in whatever prompt you'd like, specifying as much detail as necessary to bring your vision to life, and then DALL-E 3 will generate four images from your prompt. As you can see in the image at the top of the article, the renditions are high quality and very realistic.

OpenAI even recently added new ways to edit an image generated by the chatbot, including easy conversational text prompts and the ability to click on parts of the image you want to edit. 

Like with Copilot, you can chat and render your images on the same platform, making it convenient to work on projects that depend on image and text generation. If you don't want to shell out the money,  Image Creator by Designer  is a great alternative since it's free, uses DALL-E 3, and can be accessed via Copilot.

DALL-E 3 features: Powered by:  DALL-E 3 by OpenAI |  Access via:  ChatGPT website and app |  Output:  4 images per credit |  Price:  ChatGPT Plus subscription, $20 per month

ImageFX by Google

The best ai image generator for beginners.

• Easy-to-use
• High-quality results
• Expressive chips
• Need a Google account
• Strict guardrails can be limiting

Google's ImageFX was a dark horse, entering the AI image generator space much later than its competition, over a year after DALL-E 2 launched. However, the generator's performance seems to have been worth the wait. The image generator can produce high-quality, realistic outputs, even objects that are difficult to render, such as hands. 

Also: I just tried Google's ImageFX AI image generator, and I'm shocked at how good it is

The tool boasts a unique feature, expressive chips, that make it easier to refine your prompts or generate new ones via dropdowns, which highlight parts of your prompt and suggest different word changes to modify your output.

ImageFX also includes suggestions for the style you'd like your image rendered in, such as photorealistic, 35mm film, minimal, sketch, handmade, and more. This combination of features makes ImageFX the perfect for beginners who want to experiment. 

ImageFX from Google: Powered by:  Imagen 2  | Access via:  Website |  Output:  4 images |  Price:  free 

DreamStudio by Stability AI

Best ai image generator for customization.

• Accepts specific instruction
• Open source
• More entries for customization
• Paid credits
• Need to create an account

Stability AI created the massively popular, open-sourced, text-to-image generator, Stable Diffusion. Users can download the tool and use it at no cost. However, using this tool typically requires technical skill. 

Also :  How to use Stable Diffusion AI to create amazing images

To make the technology readily accessible to everyone (regardless of skill level), Stability AI created DreamStudio, which incorporates Stable Diffusion in a UI that is easy to understand and use. 

One of the standouts of the platform is that it includes many different entries for customization, including a "negative prompt" where you can delineate the specifics of what you'd like to avoid in the final image. You can also easily change the image ratio -- that's a key feature, as most AI image generators automatically deliver 1:1. 

DreamStudio features: Powered by:  SDXL 1.0 by Stability AI  | Access via:  Website |  Output:  1 image per 2 credits |  Price:  $1 per 100 credits |  Credits:  25 free credits when you open an account; buy purchase once you run out

Dream by WOMBO

Best ai image generator for your phone.

• Remix your own images
• Multiple templates
• One image per prompt
• Subscription cost for full access

This app took the first-place spot for the best overall app in Google Play's 2022 awards , and it has five stars on Apple's App Store with 141.6K ratings. With the app, you can create art and images with the simple input of a quick prompt. 

An added plus is this AI image generator allows you to pick different design styles such as realistic, expressionist, comic, abstract, fanatical, ink, and more. 

Also :  How to use Dream by WOMBO to generate artwork in any style

In addition to the app, the tool has a free desktop mobile version that is simple to use. If you want to take your use of the app to the next level, you can pay $90 per year or $10 per month.

Dream by WOMBO f eatures: Powered by:  WOMBO AI's machine-learning algorithm |  Access via:  Mobile and desktop versions |  Output:  1 image with a free version, 4 with a paid plan |  Price:  Free limited access

Best no-frills AI image generator

• Unlimited access
• Simple to use
• Longer wait
• Inconsistent images

Despite originally being named DALL-E mini, this AI image generator is NOT affiliated with OpenAI or DALL-E 2. Rather, it is an open-source alternative. However, the name DALL-E 2 mini is somewhat fitting as the tool does everything DALL-E 2 does, just with less precise renditions. 

Also :  How to use Craiyon AI (formerly known as DALL-E mini)

Unlike DALL-E 2, the outputs from Craiyon lack quality and take longer to render (approximately a minute). However, because you have unlimited prompts, you can continue to tweak the prompt until you get your exact vision. The site is also simple to use, making it perfect for someone wanting to experiment with AI image generators. It also generates six images, more than any other chatbot listed. 

Craiyon f eatures: Powered by:  Their model |  Access via :  Craiyon website  |  Output:  6 images per prompt |  Price:  Free, unlimited prompts 

Best AI image generator for highest quality photos

• Very high-quality outputs
• Discord community
• Monthly cost
• Confusing to set up

I often play around with AI image generators because they make it fun and easy to create digital artwork. Despite all my experiences with different AI generators, nothing could have prepared me for Midjourney -- in the best way. 

The output of the image was so crystal clear that I had a hard time believing it wasn't an actual picture that someone took of my prompt. This software is so good that it has produced award-winning art .

However, I think Midjourney isn't user-friendly and it confuses me. If you also need extra direction, check out our step-by-step how-to here: How to use Midjourney to generate amazing images and art .

Another problem with the tool is that you may not access it for free. When I tried to render images, I got this error message: "Due to extreme demand, we can't provide a free trial right now. Please subscribe to create images with Midjourney."

To show you the quality of renditions, I've included a close-up below from a previous time I tested the generator. The prompt was: "A baby Yorkie sitting on a comfy couch in front of the NYC skyline." 

Midjourney f eatures: Powered by:  Midjourney; utilizes Discord |  Access via:  Discord |  Output:  4 images per prompt |  Price:  Starts at $10/month

Adobe Firefly

Best ai image generator if you have a reference photo.

• Structure and Style Reference
• Commercial-safe
• Longer lag than other generators
• More specific prompts required

Adobe has been a leader in developing creative tools for creative and working professionals for decades. As a result, it's no surprise that its image generator is impressive. Accessing the generator is easy. Just visit the website and type the prompt of the image you'd like generated. 

Also: This new AI tool from Adobe makes generating the images you need even simpler

As you can see above, the images rendered of the Yorkies are high-quality, realistic, and detailed. Additionally, the biggest standout features of this chatbot are its Structure Reference and Style Reference features. 

Structure Reference lets users input an image they want the AI model to use as a template. The model then uses this structure to create a new image with the same layout and composition. Style Reference uses an image as a reference to generate a new image in the same style. 

These features are useful if you have an image you'd like the new, generated image to resemble, for example, a quick sketch you drew or even a business logo or style you'd like to keep consistent. 

Another perk is that Adobe Firefly was trained on Adobe Stock images, openly licensed content, and public domain content, making all the images generated safe for commercial use and addressing the ethics issue of image generators. 

Adobe Firefly f eatures:  Powered by:  Firefly Image 2 |  Access via:  Website |  Output:  4 images per prompt |  P rice:  Free 

Generative AI by Getty Images

Best ai image generator for businesses.

• Commercially safe
• Contributor compensation program
• Personalized stock photos
• Not clear about pricing
• Not individual-friendly

One of the biggest issues with AI image generators is that they typically train their generators on content from the entirety of the internet, which means the generators use aspects of creators' art without compensation. This approach also puts businesses that use generators at risk of copyright infringement. 

Generative AI by Getty Images tackles that issue by generating images with content solely from Getty Images' vast creative library with full indemnification for commercial use. The generated images will have Getty Images' standard royalty-free license, assuring customers that their content is fair to use without fearing legal repercussions.

Another pro is that contributors whose content was used to train the models will be compensated for their inclusion in the training set. This is a great solution for businesses that want stock photos that match their creative vision but do not want to deal with copyright-related issues. 

ZDNET's Tiernan Ray went hands-on with the AI image generator. Although the tool did not generate the most vivid images, especially compared to DALL-E, it did create accurate, reliable, and useable stock images. 

Generative AI by Getty Images f eatures:  Powered by:  NVIDIA Picasso |  Access via:  Website |  Output:  4 images per prompt |  P rice:  Paid (price undisclosed, have to contact the team)

What is the best AI image generator?

Image Creator from Microsoft Designer is the best overall AI image generator. Like DALL-E 3, Image Creator from Microsoft Designer combines accuracy, speed, and cost-effectiveness, and can generate high-quality images in seconds. However, unlike DALL-E 3, this Microsoft version is entirely free.

Whether you want to generate images of animals, objects, or even abstract concepts, Image Creator from Microsoft Designer can produce accurate depictions that meet your expectations. It is highly efficient, user-friendly, and cost-effective.

Note: Prices and features are subject to change.

Which is the right AI image generator for you?

Although I crowned Image Creator from Microsoft Designer the best AI image generator overall, other AI image generators perform better for specific needs. For example, suppose you are a professional using AI image generation for your business. In that case, you may need a tool like Generative AI by Getty Images which renders images safe for commercial use. 

On the other hand, if you want to play with AI art generating for entertainment purposes, Craiyon might be the best option because it's free, unlimited, and easy to use. 

How did I choose these AI image generators?

To find the best AI image generators, I tested each generator listed and compared their performance. The factors that went into testing performance included UI/UX, image results, cost, speed, and availability. Each AI image generator had different strengths and weaknesses, making each one the ideal fit for individuals as listed next to my picks. 

What is an AI image generator?

An AI image generator is software that uses AI to create images from user text inputs, usually within seconds. The images vary in style depending on the capabilities of the software, but can typically render an image in any style you want, including 3D, 2D, cinematic, modern, Renaissance, and more. 

How do AI image generators work?

Like any other AI model, AI image generators work on learned data they are trained with. Typically, these models are trained on billions of images, which they analyze for characteristics. These insights are then used by the models to create new images.

Are there ethical implications with AI image generators?

AI image generators are trained on billions of images found throughout the internet. These images are often artworks that belong to specific artists, which are then reimagined and repurposed by AI to generate your image. Although the output is not the same image, the new image has elements of the artist's original work not credited to them. 

Are there DALL-E 3 alternatives worth considering?

Contrary to what you might think, there are many AI image generators other than DALL-E 3. Some tools produce even better results than OpenAI's software. If you want to try something different, check out one of our alternatives above or the three additional options below. 

Nightcafe is a multi-purpose AI image generator. The tool is worth trying because it allows users to create unique and original artwork using different inputs and styles, including abstract, impressionism, expressionism, and more.

Canva is a versatile and powerful AI image generator that offers a wide range of options within its design platform. It allows users to create professional-looking designs for different marketing channels, including social media posts, ads, flyers, brochures, and more. 

Artificial Intelligence

Google and mit launch a free generative ai course for teachers, google photos users will soon get the best ai editing tools on pixel devices for free, dall-e adds new ways to edit and create ai-generated images. learn how to use it.