When I was working in a marketing agency a few years ago, I was assigned the task of conducting market research.
I was told to conduct a survey to learn what small business owners think about search engine optimization.
I didn’t get much out of the survey other than learning a few things about Typeform.
Mostly because the vast majority of them were disinterested in participating.
Now, I take a completely different approach to market research.
Data-driven marketing is something I rely on because it gives you a clear picture of the market you’re about to enter.
To conduct market research for a new business, one should utilize market research tools such as Google Trends, Google Keyword Planner, Social Mention, Statista, etc.
In this blog, I’ll explain what the above-mentioned tools are and how they can be used to conduct market research.
Google keyword planner
Google’s Keyword Tool is a great way to get started with market research. It’s a free tool that helps you find keywords and their corresponding search volume.
You might be thinking ” What am I supposed to do with keywords?”
Well, these keywords are queries being typed by your target market. For instance, let’s say your new business is a shoe store. Now you need to know what kind of shoes are in demand. You can find that out using the Google Keyword Planner.
I just got the above information by typing the search term “shoes”. You can dig deeper if you want and find more information.
The above data was generated by the Keyword Everywhere extension. It is a cool tool that automatically detects the keywords that are being searched in Google, Bing, YouTube, and other search engines.
This extension allows you to get more insight into what people are searching for and how they are searching for it. It also helps you to find out what keywords your competitors rank for in Google searches.
Learn more about Google search traffic: What is organic traffic in marketing ( is it different from direct traffic?)
Social Mention
Social mention is a great way to get insights into what people are talking about in the industry. You can find out which topics are trending and what people think about them.
This information is crucial for market research because it reveals what your target audience cares about and how they feel about certain things.
I personally used Social mention to determine how many sales managers and reps were discussing the World At Work sales compensation event. I must say, It was quite useful.
Many influencers and thought leaders in the SPM industry were discussing it. This aided us in networking with them.
Social mentions can be measured in two ways: by volume or by sentiment. Volume is how many times the content has been shared, liked, or commented on within a given time period.
Sentiment measures the emotional response to the content and is usually measured using emoticons like happy faces, sad faces, and angry faces.
Statista
Statista is a market research company that provides data, statistics, and market research to help businesses make better decisions.
The company is based in Germany and has over 500 employees.
Statista’s databases cover more than 100 industries from all over the world. They are updated on a daily basis with information from leading providers such as Bloomberg Businessweek, Euromonitor International, Forbes Magazine, and many others. This means that users can make use of the latest data in the industry.
The tool’s user interface is fairly straightforward. You go to the site, type in any relevant topic or keyword for which you want stats, and the tool does the rest. All of the data is presented in blue-colored data charts that are simple to understand.
Market research data can be obtained here for the purposes of developing buyer personas, creating online questionnaires, and even content marketing. In short, Statista is the platform to use if you’re a marketer looking for reliable statistics backed up by research.
Similar Web
Similar Web is a great tool for market research. It provides information about the website’s traffic, ranking, and other statistics.
It can provide data on the number of visits, the number of visitors from different countries, the percentage of visitors from search engines and referrals, as well as the bounce rate. Most importantly, this information can be used by you to learn more about your competition
For instance, I googled the search term “Toronto shoe store” and the company Browns Shoes showed up in the first position. This means my target market is familiar with this brand and has probably purchased some of its products.
Analyze this website on Similar Web. You’ll get to discover all your competitors. Explore all these sites and get ideas. Reverse engineer what they are doing and add your own angle to it.
Speaking of competitor analysis, I want to talk about another great tool that lets you do more.
Ubersuggest
Ubersuggest is an SEO tool that can be used to spy on the search queries that your target market is using to find the competitor’s site. It is a gold mine of information that can be used to sell in-demand products.
Furthermore, you will learn which pages are receiving the most traffic. You can reverse-engineer the entire process if you are planning to start an e-commerce store.
If you have a large enough budget. I recommend that you invest in a better tool, such as SemRush. Though Ubersuggest is useful, SemRush’s data is far superior.
Google Trends
Google Trends helps you find out what kind of seasonality occurs in your industry
Assume you sell winter boots (since you own a shoe store). Boots are more popular in the winter and less popular in the spring and summer, according to common sense. Let’s check Google Trends to see if our interpretation is true.
Step 1: Start typing your search term. Make sure you don’t choose a topic, because topics and search terms are not measured the same way.
Step 2: Analyze the results and modify variables as needed.
For instance, if we look at the popularity of the search term “boots” over the last 12 months, we might want to see if the same trends have been present for a longer period of time.
As you can (expectably) see, the data from Google Trends confirmed our hypothesis.
Conclusion
The above tools can help you get the information you need to start a new business. You can decide the location, the items you are going to sell, your marketing strategy, the pain points of your target audience, and a lot more.
If you want to give surveys a try, you can go ahead. Just because it didn’t work for me doesn’t mean it won’t work out for you. Ultimately, it comes down to knowing your audience no matter what market research technique you use. It is crucial to know to who you are trying to sell your products or services in order to be successful in business.
Hope you found this blog informational.
