15 Must-Have Market Research Tools

Market research data is an integral part of a successful brand. It is essential that you have a good knowledge of the industry and can assess what is happening around you. Without this, you are unable to see who your main competitors are or find your niche and ways to stand out in the current market.

By having in-depth market data and information about your competitors, your brand has the edge. Markets continuously change and without up-to-date market research, it is impossible to keep your customers happy while being one step ahead of your competitors. There are various ways that your company can do market research, and many of the necessary tools are free and easy to access. Below we list 15 of the must-have market research tools that you need to start using.

Doing Market Research

Market research is a general term that involves the collection of any data. There are many ways that you can go about collecting market research for various verticals of your business.

For example, customer surveys are one of the most popular forms of market research. This is one of the most effective ways to get insights into your customers’ experience and how satisfied they are with your company. Customer surveys are a great way to find out where to focus your company’s efforts and to establish what changes need to be made.

Market research is also a great way to gather data and keywords to help develop an SEO strategy. The best way to implement SEO strategies is by using key search words that are certain to be linked to your brand/company.

Tools Every Great Market Research Analyst Must Have

There are various market research tools that are available to digital marketing research analysts. Some of these are paid for tools, but most are free. Combine these tools tools to get insights into various aspects of market research, depending on what information you are trying to find out.

Due to the availability of the different tools, it is easier than ever before to conduct free or low-cost market research. Here are a few of the different tools every market research analyst must have, no matter what their budget.

1. Wappalyzer

Wappalyzer is a multi-platform utility that uncovers various technologies that are being used on websites. It can be added as an extension to your internet browser and provides valuable insights into software that is used by competitors. To make this add-on even more appealing, it is free!

• BuiltWith

This tool is useful for any competitive analyses you may undertake as it identifies key market aspects that your brand may be missing. It will track online data for your market industry and will find usage trends, such as if a technology is losing or gaining market share. This tool acts as your business intelligence and can help you make informed decisions on where to go next with your brand.

• Octoparse

Octoparse is a free web scraper tool which extracts nearly all different forms of data that you may require from a website. This tool allows you collect all the text from a website and download all the content to a more structured format for you to save, such as Excel or HTML. It also has a built-in tool that allows for data collection on websites with tough data blocks.

• Tableau

This tool is often described as the leading data visualization software which is reflected in its customer base of 57,000+. It is simple and easy to use, and its unique qualities allows you to create graphics and visualizations which are the most effective way to review and gain insights from any data collected.

• Hotjar

This is an innovative tool that reveals online behavior as it visually represents clicks, taps and scrolling behavior by creating heat maps. Heatmaps are an important market research tool as they inform you how to improve the overall performance and experience of a website by understanding what visitors want.

• CrazyEgg

CrazyEgg is another tool that tracks and analyzes user behavior on websites and tracks which aspects of a page users are interacting with. It creates heat map visualization of this behavior and can reveal at what point in your website’s scroll a visitor loses interest.

• SimilarWeb

This competitive analysis tool is a great way for you to monitor your surrounding industry and what your competitors are doing, and helps reveal what online strategies competitors are using. SimilarWeb helps analyze competitors as it collects data and organizes it by using machine learning algorithms and provides you with statistics that are easy to understand.

• Ahrefs

This SEO tool allows you to get data that you need such as keywords used, and brand management implemented by competitors. This tool can help your SEO strategies as the data collected shows why your competitors are ranking high and what you need to do to list higher than them. This is a great way to find out how to target your SEO strategies based on what content you are missing.

• Moz

Moz can be a helpful guide when trying to assess other websites (such as competitors). It has developed an open site explorer that allows you to assess the quality of the site when you enter a URL. It helps you to master some of the best SEO tactics and boosts your inbound marketing strategy.

• SemRush

This all-in-one digital marketing suite covers SEO, keyword research, social media content, PPC and competitive analysis, to name but a few of the areas it can collect information for. You can tailor your use of SemRush by building your own toolkit for a specific project.

• Google Webmaster Tools

This service provided by Google allows webmasters to improve the visibility of websites. It is great tool to use for keyword research as you can search for the most common words using the Google search console. This is a free service, which can help you get an idea of the kind of keywords competitors are using to improve their SEO strategy.

• BuzzSumo

It is essential that some market research is concentrated on social media, and by using BuzzSumo, you can find out what’s peaking the interest of audiences and develop it. A lot of our time spent on the internet is spent on social media, so it is essential to know what is currently on trend.

• Simplymeasured

This is another social media analytics tool that simplifies the social network of users. It assesses whether activities are paid, owned or earned and gains insights on which influencers exist within your audience and people who help to attract extra traffic.  

• SurveyMonkey

Surveymonkey is a great tool that allows you to create in-depth surveys that will help you understand your market and consumer preferences. Customer surveys are a traditional feature of market research but can help you to perform analyses by outright asking your customers direct questions.

• Typeform

This tool is an innovative way to gather market research through online forms. However, it presents them in an interesting and conversational technique that helps to boost completion rates.

As you can see, there are various market research tools that are all useful in different ways. Be sure to use a mixture of these tools to get the most out of any market research you do.