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20 Best Market Research Software Reviewed In 2024

Stephanie Hood is an experienced marketing professional and Editor of The CMO. With nearly a decade spent as Marketing Manager at Discover Holidays and Executive Editor at VIVA Lifestyle & Travel, she built her career leading editorial and marketing teams and strategies that turn six-figure budgets into seven-figure profits. She now enjoys connecting with the world's top executives to learn their secrets to business success, and shares those insights right here with her community of like-minded professionals. Curious what she’s uncovered? Be sure to sign up for The CMO newsletter.

Our reviewers evaluate software independently. Clicks may earn a commission, which supports testing. Learn how we stay transparent , read our review methodology , and tell us about any tools we missed.

I’ve reviewed and evaluated the most popular market research software and shortlisted the best ones to enhance data accuracy and improve decision-making processes.

10 Best Market Research Software Shortlist

Here's my pick of the 10 best software from the 20 tools reviewed.

• 1. BuzzSumo — Best for content insights
• 2. Qualaroo — Best for in-context surveys
• 3. Remesh — Best for AI-driven focus groups
• 4. XEBO.ai — Best for AI-powered insights
• 5. Zoho Survey — Best for extensive templates
• 6. Ubersuggest — Best for free keyword research
• 7. Attest — Best for continuous insights
• 8. SurveyJS — Best for customizable surveys
• 9. Dovetail — Best for qualitative data analysis
• 10. Alchemer — Best for comprehensive feedback

Our one-on-one guidance will help you find the perfect fit.

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Market research software is a valuable asset for any company. With the right software, teams can gain deep insights into customer behavior and make data-driven decisions. However, finding the right market research software can be challenging, especially with so many available options.

Using my extensive experience with marketing software, I tested and compared several of the top market research software available. From there, I compiled my results into in-depth reviews to help you find the best software for your unique needs. I’m confident you’ll discover your next market research software in the list below.

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Best Market Research Software Summary

We’ve investigated the pricing and availability of free trials and demo versions so you can make a much simpler side-by-side comparison.

Compare Software Specs Side by Side

Use our comparison chart to review and evaluate software specs side-by-side.

How To Choose Market Research Software

It’s easy to get bogged down in long feature lists and complex pricing structures. To help you stay focused as you work through your unique software selection process, here’s a checklist of factors to keep in mind.

Best Market Research Software Reviews

Best for content insights

• Free trial available
• From $159/month (billed annually)

BuzzSumo is a content research and media monitoring tool for marketers, PR professionals, and content creators. It helps users discover trending content, identify key influencers, and monitor online mentions.

Why I picked BuzzSumo: It offers content discovery tools that scan billions of articles and social posts, helping you find relevant and high-performing content ideas. You can track real-time trends and set up alerts for your brand mentions. Its influencer identification feature allows your team to connect with industry leaders. Additionally, the comprehensive media monitoring tools ensure you stay informed about competitor activities and industry updates.

Standout features & integrations:

Features include content analysis, trending feeds, question analysis, and custom alerts. You can also leverage its Chrome extension for on-the-go research and the API for automation.

Integrations include Slack, Zapier, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and TikTok.

• Check out BuzzSumo on their website

Pros and cons

• Influencer identification
• Real-time trend analysis
• Extensive content database
• No direct customer support for basic plans
• Steep learning curve

Best for in-context surveys

• Free plan available
• From $19.99/month

Qualaroo offers a user research and customer feedback platform for real-time insights through customizable surveys. It's used by businesses to enhance user experience and improve conversion rates through direct feedback from website or app visitors.

Why I picked Qualaroo: Qualaroo's Nudge™ technology enables targeted questioning without disrupting the user experience, allowing you to gather actionable insights effectively. Customizable surveys and advanced user targeting ensure you can tailor questions to specific user behaviors and demographics. AI-powered sentiment analysis helps your team quickly understand feedback trends. 

Features include customizable survey templates, advanced user targeting, and AI sentiment analysis powered by IBM Watson. You can also use Nudge™ technology for real-time feedback without being intrusive. Surveys can be easily embedded on websites or apps, enhancing user experience and conversion rates.

Integrations include Mailchimp, Salesforce, Google Analytics, and Google Tag Manager.

• Check out Qualaroo on their website
• Real-time insights
• Advanced user targeting
• Easy installation
• Limited offline support
• Requires learning curve

Best for AI-driven focus groups

• Free demo available
• Pricing upon request

Remesh is an end-to-end research platform designed to help organizations gain valuable audience insights for better decision-making. It facilitates research through well-crafted questions, anonymous feedback collection, and real-time data analysis.

Why I picked Remesh: The platform emphasizes equal participation, allowing diverse voices to contribute to discussions. Supporting over 30 languages, it meets high-security standards for data confidentiality. It's used for various market and employee research applications, including product development and advertising. Your team can request demos and access resources to enhance research strategies.

Features include well-crafted questions, anonymous feedback collection, and real-time data analysis. Your team can help to encourage equal participation and hear diverse voices in discussions. It supports multiple languages and adheres to high-security standards.

Integrations include popular tools like Slack, Microsoft Teams, Google Analytics, Salesforce, HubSpot, Marketo, Zoom, Tableau, and Zapier.

• Check out Remesh on their website
• High-security standards
• Real-time analysis
• Supports 30+ languages
• Limited customization
• Learning curve

Best for AI-powered insights

• Free plan + demo available

XEBO.ai offers an AI-powered digital research product to enhance customer and employee experiences. It serves a diverse user base across industries like banking, healthcare, and FMCG, focusing on gathering and analyzing feedback.

Why I picked XEBO.ai: XEBO.ai provides customizable surveys with over 20 question types, enabling your team to gather detailed feedback. The platform's sentiment and predictive analysis tools help you understand and anticipate customer needs. Local data hosting and on-premise setup options ensure your data is secure and compliant with local regulations. Additionally, the 24/7 localized support means your team can get help when required.

Features include customizable surveys, sentiment analysis, and predictive analysis. You can measure customer satisfaction and loyalty with Net Promoter Score and customer journey benchmarking tools. The platform also offers local data hosting and on-premise setups for better data control.

Integrations include popular CRM and ERP systems, enhancing your team’s ability to automate tasks and improve efficiency.

• Check out XEBO.ai on their website
• Strong security certifications
• 24/7 localized support
• On-premise setup option
• Can be resource-intensive
• Limited customization in some areas

Zoho Survey

Best for extensive templates

• From $7.42/month (billed annually)

Zoho Survey is an online survey and questionnaire tool for individuals and businesses to collect feedback and insights from their target audience. It primarily serves marketers, researchers, and HR teams by facilitating survey creation, distribution, and analysis. 

Why I picked Zoho Survey: It offers an intuitive drag-and-drop interface that makes survey creation easy for your team. With real-time reporting, you can quickly analyze responses and gain insights. Customizable templates help you build surveys that fit your specific needs. Additionally, advanced features like skip logic and piping ensure that your surveys are dynamic and engaging.

Features include customizable templates, real-time reporting, and advanced survey logic like skip logic and piping. You can easily create and distribute surveys with its drag-and-drop interface. The platform also supports multiple languages, making it versatile for global teams.

Integrations include Asana, Dropbox, Google Drive, Google Sheets, Mailchimp, Microsoft Teams, Salesforce, Slack, Trello, and Zoho Projects.

• Check out Zoho Survey on their website
• Easy drag-and-drop interface
• Multiple language support
• Advanced survey logic
• Requires internet connection
• Limited customer support

Ubersuggest

Best for free keyword research

• From $12/user/month

Ubersuggest is a free SEO and keyword research tool created for digital marketers, SEO professionals, content creators, and small to medium-sized businesses. It provides key research functions such as competitor analysis, keyword suggestions, content ideas, backlink data, and performance tracking.

Why I picked Ubersuggest: You can perform extensive keyword analysis and get detailed SEO optimization tips. The tool offers market research insights into your competitors' strategies, helping you develop more effective content marketing plans. It also tracks your website's performance, providing actionable data to boost your search engine rankings and drive organic traffic.

Features include keyword suggestions, site audits, and backlink data. Your team can use these features to enhance SEO strategies, generate content ideas, and track website performance. The tool also provides competitor analysis to help you stay ahead in the market.

Integrations include Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and Google Ads.

• Check out Ubersuggest on their website
• Performance tracking
• Competitor analysis
• Detailed site audits
• Learning curve for beginners

Best for continuous insights

Attest is a consumer research platform that simplifies the research process for marketers and insights professionals. It provides access to a global audience and offers tools for brand tracking, consumer profiling, creative testing, market analysis, and new product development.

Why I picked Attest: The platform features an intuitive survey builder that delivers quick results, supported by strong data quality measures. You can easily track trends, compare responses, and gain actionable insights through its interactive dashboard. Attest also provides expert advice and templates to help you conduct effective research and make informed decisions.

Features include customizable user permissions, transparent pricing, and dedicated expert support. You can conduct multi-market and multi-wave research in 70 languages, ensuring localized insights. The platform also emphasizes speed to insights through secure AI and high-quality data methods.

Integrations include Tableau and Google Data Studio, and Zapier.

• Check out Attest on their website
• Customizable surveys
• Strong customer support
• Easy to export data
• Limited to large enterprises
• Complexity in setup

Best for customizable surveys

• From $555/user/year

SurveyJS is a suite of open-source JavaScript libraries for creating surveys and forms, primarily catering to industries like healthcare, human resources, education, and market research. It provides tools for survey creation, data collection, and analysis, emphasizing data security and customization.

Why I picked SurveyJS: You can create customizable surveys with tools like the Form Library and the no-code Survey Creator. The platform supports self-hosting, giving you control over data storage and ensuring compliance with laws like HIPAA and GDPR. Its extensive documentation and support resources make it accessible to technical and non-technical users. You can also integrate it with popular frameworks like React and Angular for enhanced functionality.

Features include a Form Library for dynamic surveys, a no-code Survey Creator for easy form building, a Dashboard for data visualization, and a PDF Generator for automating workflows. Self-hosting options ensure compliance with data protection laws, and extensive customization options allow for branding and design flexibility.

Integrations include Azure, React, Angular, Vue, Knockout, jQuery, Bootstrap, Material, and Foundation.

• Check out SurveyJS on their website
• Excellent customer support
• Self-hosting capabilities
• Extensive documentation
• No native mobile app
• Requires technical knowledge

Best for qualitative data analysis

• From $30/month

Dovetail is a customer insights platform to help product managers, designers, researchers, sales teams, and customer success professionals centralize and analyze customer knowledge. It quickly transforms user feedback, calls, and documents into actionable insights, enabling data-driven decision-making.

Why I picked Dovetail: The platform offers features that help you organize and analyze customer insights efficiently. Its AI-powered insights can convert vast amounts of feedback into meaningful data. Dovetail also provides data privacy protection and integration with other tools, ensuring your insights are secure. Its ability to standardize research processes across teams makes it a valuable asset for fostering a customer-centric culture in your organization.

Features include AI-driven insights, fast analysis of customer data, and data privacy protection. Your team can also benefit from tools for organizing insights and integrating with other platforms. These features help centralize the process of transforming feedback into actionable insights.

Integrations include Workday, SAP SuccessFactors, ADP, Oracle HCM, BambooHR, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Google Workspace, and Slack.

• Check out Dovetail on their website
• Standardizes research processes
• AI-powered insights
• Fast data analysis
• Initial setup complexity
• Limited offline access

Best for comprehensive feedback

Alchemer is an online survey software for collecting customer feedback and enhancing engagement. It caters to a wide range of users across sectors such as government, education, non-profit, financial services, and food & beverage, converting feedback into actionable insights. 

Why I picked Alchemer: Alchemer allows you to create unlimited surveys and questions, free from response fees. It offers over 40 diverse question types and advanced logic and branching options to improve response quality. Flexible reporting options let your team customize analysis and export data efficiently. High-security standards protect your data and comply with ISO 27001 and GDPR. 

Features include unlimited surveys and questions, over 40 question types, and advanced logic and branching options. Flexible reporting options allow for customizable analysis and data export capabilities. High-security standards ensure compliance with regulations like ISO 27001 and GDPR.

Integrations include Asana, BigCommerce, Braze, Greenhouse, and Jira.

• Check out Alchemer on their website
• Flexible reporting
• Complex setup for some features
• Response time variability

Other Market Research Software

Here are some additional market research software options that didn’t make it onto my shortlist, but are still worth checking out.

Best for real-time brand monitoring

Best for engaging surveys

Best all-in-one marketing toolkit

Best AI-driven media intelligence

Best customizable survey solutions

Best data-driven UX testing

Best AI-enhanced experience management

Best real-time search data insights

Best consumer and shopper insights

Best cross-platform audience insights

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Market Research Software Selection Criteria

When selecting the best market research software to include in this list, I considered common buyer needs and pain points like data accuracy and ease of use. I also used the following framework to keep my evaluation structured and fair.

Core Functionality (25% of total weighting score) To be considered for inclusion in this list, each solution had to fulfill these common use cases:

• Conduct research via survey tools and polls
• Analyze market trends
• Generate competitor analysis
• Identify target demographics
• Collect data and create reports

Additional Standout Features (25% of total weighting score) To help further narrow down the competition, I also looked for unique features, such as:

• Predictive market research platform analytics
• AI-driven metrics and insights
• Integration with social media platforms
• Customizable dashboards
• Mobile app availability

Usability (10% of total weighting score) To get a sense of the usability of each system, I considered the following:

• Intuitive interface design
• Availability of templates
• Mobile compatibility
• Ease of navigation
• Speed of task execution

Onboarding (10% of total weighting score) To evaluate the onboarding experience for each platform, I considered the following:

• Availability of training videos
• Interactive product tours
• Chatbot assistance
• Webinars for new users
• Pre-built templates

Customer Support (10% of total weighting score) To assess each software provider’s customer experience support services, I considered the following:

• Live chat support
• Availability of a help center
• Response time for inquiries
• 24/7 support availability
• Community forums

Value For Money (10% of total weighting score) To evaluate the value for money of each platform, I considered the following:

• Cost of entry-level plans
• Range of features included
• Value of additional services
• Discount for annual payment
• Free trial availability

Customer Reviews (10% of total weighting score) To get a sense of overall customer satisfaction, I considered the following when reading customer reviews:

• User satisfaction rating
• Ease of use feedback
• Feature reliability
• Customer service experience
• Likelihood to recommend

Trends In Market Research Software

In my research, I sourced countless product updates, press releases, and release logs from different market research software vendors. Here are some of the emerging trends I’m keeping an eye on.

• Artificial Intelligence: AI is becoming integral in market research tools, offering advanced data analysis, predictive analytics, and automation of routine tasks. Companies incorporate AI to provide deeper insights and more accurate forecasting.
• Social Listening: Platforms are increasingly integrating social listening to capture real-time consumer sentiments from social media. This helps businesses stay ahead of trends and respond swiftly to market changes. 
• Video Feedback: Collecting video responses is gaining popularity, as it provides richer, more nuanced data than traditional surveys. Vendors utilize this method to offer more in-depth consumer insights.
• Personalization: Tailored user experiences are becoming the norm, with software offering more customizable surveys and reports. This trend is driven by the need for more relevant and actionable insights. 
• Enhanced Data Quality: There’s a growing focus on improving data validity and reliability through sophisticated validation techniques and better respondent vetting processes.

What Is Market Research Software?

Market research software is a tool used to collect, analyze, and interpret data about markets, competitors, and consumers. Marketing professionals, business analysts, and product managers use these tools to gain insights and make informed decisions. 

Features like data collection, survey creation, and analytical reporting help gather valuable market insights, understand consumer behavior, and identify market trends. These tools help users make data-driven decisions that can improve business strategies. 

Features Of Market Research Software

When selecting market research software, keep an eye out for the following key features.

• Data collection and aggregation: Gathers and consolidates data from various sources, allowing for comprehensive analysis.
• Survey creation and distribution: Facilitates the design and deployment of surveys to capture customer insights and feedback efficiently.
• Data analysis tools: Provides analytical tools to interpret and visualize data and to identify trends and patterns. 
• Reporting and dashboards : Generates detailed reports and interactive dashboards to present findings in an easily digestible format.
• Integration capabilities: Connects with other software tools to enhance functionality and streamline workflows.
• Mobile accessibility: Ensures that users can access the software and its features from mobile devices, providing flexibility and convenience.
• Customer segmentation : Allows categorization of customers into distinct groups based on various criteria, aiding targeted marketing efforts.
• Real-time data updates: Offers real-time updates to ensure that the data being analyzed is current and relevant.
• Collaboration features: Enables team members to work together within the platform, enhancing productivity and communication.
• Customizable templates : Provides pre-built templates that can be tailored to specific research needs, saving time and effort in setup.

Benefits Of Market Research Software

Implementing market research software provides several positives for your team and your business. Here are a few benefits you can look forward to.

• Improved data accuracy: Automated data collection ensures more accurate and reliable data, reducing human error and bias.
• Faster insights: Advanced analytics tools allow quicker data processing, giving you timely insights to make informed decisions.
• Enhanced customer understanding: Gain deeper insights into customer preferences and behaviors, helping tailor your products and marketing strategies.
• Cost efficiency: Streamline research processes and reduce the need for external research agencies, lowering overall costs.
• Better strategic planning: Access to comprehensive data enables more effective strategic planning and forecasting.
• Risk reduction: Identify potential market risks and opportunities early, allowing for proactive measures.
• Competitive advantage: Stay ahead of competitors with up-to-date market trends and consumer insights.

Costs And Pricing Of Market Research Software

Selecting market research software requires understanding the various pricing models and plans available. Costs vary based on features, team size, add-ons, and more. The table below summarizes common plans, their average prices, and typical features included in market research software solutions.

Plan Comparison Table for Market Research Software

Market research software faqs.

Here are some answers to common questions about market research software:

How do you go about conducting SaaS research with market research software?

To conduct market research for SaaS, start by setting your research objectives. Identify a pain point that needs a better solution and pinpoint your potential customers. Analyze your niche, market size, and competitors. Finally, speak directly to potential customers to gather insights.

What are three common mistakes made when using market research software?

Common mistakes in market research include not knowing what you’re looking for, using poor reference materials, and researching the wrong group. It’s also a mistake to rely on one data set and choose a subjective focus group. Avoid these by being clear about your objectives and using diverse, reliable data sources.

How do you ensure the accuracy of your market research software data?

To ensure accuracy, use multiple data sources and cross-verify the information. Employ both qualitative and quantitative research methods. Regularly update your data and use reputable tools for data collection and analysis. This reduces the risk of biases and errors.

Can market research software integrate with other business tools?

Yes, many market research software solutions offer integrations with other business tools. These can include CRM systems, data visualization tools, and project management software. Integration helps streamline data flow and enhances the efficiency of your research processes. Always check the compatibility with your existing tools before choosing software.

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15 Top Market Research Tools & Software (2024)

In this guide, we’ll cover the 17 best free and paid market research software tools that you can use right now. 

From data collection to conducting one-on-one interviews with key members of your audience, these tools can make the market research process more effective and efficient.

1. Statista

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

To quickly find relevant reports, type in a keyword (like “beverages”) and Statista will produce a list of results.

The information you can get from Statista makes it easy to gauge an industry’s:

• Trend direction
• Consumer behavior

These critical signals can help you decide whether or not to invest or expand into that market.

Statista data comes from three primary sources:

• 49% of the data comes from Statista’s original research (the company employs over 100 data analysts)
• 16% comes from publicly accessible data sources
• 35% is obtained through unique data partnerships, such as with market research institutions

You can even opt to talk to one of Statista’s professional researchers to get further help and insights during your market research process.

It is important to note, though, that the quality of data you find on Statista may vary. This is because a number of the reports—particularly the free ones—are based on public data.

Who Should Use Statista?

Statista is useful for investors seeking their next opportunity, as well as business leaders who want to better understand the competitive landscape.

How Much Does Statista Cost?

Much of Statista’s data is available for free. For advanced insights and reports, you can purchase a paid plan. Options start at $199 per month; you can also purchase single, comprehensive reports for $495.

2. Exploding Topics

Exploding Topics is a trend spotting tool. 

Knowing about a trend before it takes off is the holy grail of market research. The problem, though, is that most trend analysis is highly subjective and based on someone’s best guess about what may take off in the future. 

We built Exploding Topics to solve this problem by identifying 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. 

When you view a trend in our database, you’ll see a graph of the trend’s historical search volume. This can help you gauge a topic’s popularity and stability. Users on our Investor and Business plans can also see a forecast of the trend’s projected growth: 

We source our data through social listening—tracking what’s being discussed on:

• Social media
• Business websites
• News media sites

By using a mix of artificial intelligence and human data analysis, we rapidly gather this trend data and qualify it to identify the most popular topics.

We update our database with this information every day, so you’re always getting the most up-to-date trend data.

Exploding Topics also offers a handful of other helpful tools that you can use for market research, too. These include our:

• Trend Search : While our core database is great for discovering new trends, the search feature is useful if you already know what you want to see data about. It’s a good alternative to Google Trends.
• Meta Trends : If you want to see the products and brands that are currently riding a trend wave, you can do so by using our Meta Trends feature.
• Trending Startups : Investors can use the Trending Startups list to identify new and rapidly growing companies in any category.
• Trending Products : When you’re interested in expanding your reach or offerings, the Trending Products feature helps you identify hot products that are currently seeing rapid growth.

Who Should Use Exploding Topics?

Exploding Topics is great for investors, entrepreneurs, marketers, and business leaders who need to understand what the competition looks like right now —and how it might change in the near future.

How Much Does Exploding Topics Cost?

You can view much of our basic trend data for free right now. To unlock all our data, as well as extra features like our lists of trending products and startups, you’ll need a paid plan.

Options start at $39 per month (billed annually), and you can get a two-week trial of any paid plan for just $1.

3. Market Finder

Market Finder is a free Google tool that makes it easy to discover international markets that are ripe for expansion. 

Rather than uncovering specific trends, Market Finder shows you new regions and demographics with strong potential for future growth.

It has two primary tools:

• Dive into new markets : This feature walks you through a quick quiz that identifies your industry and collects some specifications about your company. Then, it shows you which companies would be ideal for expansion based on data from Google Ads, search volume, and household income.
• Test export readiness : Enter your URL in this tool; it’ll analyze your readiness for expansion based on marketing performance (international traffic, e-commerce capabilities, etc.), operational abilities (payment fit, localization capabilities, etc.) and competitive position (category demand).

If you have Google Analytics set up, then Market Explorer can pull data directly from the Google Analytics dashboard for increased accuracy.

Who Should Use Market Explorer?

If you’d like to expand your business and find marketing opportunities in new regions, then Market Explorer is a useful tool. It’s also a good choice for investors who would like to identify new regions in which they can seek potential investment opportunities.

How Much Does Market Explorer Cost?

Market Explorer is free to use.

4. Census Business Builder

The Census Business Builder is a tool that allows brick-and-mortar business owners to explore new geographic markets.

You can use the tool to search by zip code, town, or state and see metrics like:

• Average household income
• Typical education level

The Census Business Builder also has advanced filters that can provide valuable, detailed insights based on the type of business you’re launching.

For example, if you’re opening a fast casual restaurant, you can use the “Consumer Spending” filter and see how much people spend on alcoholic beverages and dining out in a selected region.

You’ll still need to turn Census Business Builder data into actionable insights, though. Once you do, it can be a valuable tool for deciding where to open a new retail establishment.

Who Should Use The Census Business Builder?

Retailers and restaurateurs interested in expanding to new markets can use this tool to find a hot spot. It’s also a useful tool for investors who would like to identify markets for potential investment opportunities.

How Much Does The Census Business Builder Cost?

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.

Grand View's 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 personalized assistance.

Who Should Use Grand View Research?

The company’s reports and services are useful for entrepreneurs who want to launch a business, existing business leaders interested in finding new opportunities, and investors looking for high-growth markets.

How Much Does Grand View Research Cost?

You can access limited data about many of Grand View Research’s reports for free; licensing a full report can cost over $3,000. You can also opt to use the company’s self-service market research portal, Horizon Databook , and get additional data points for free.

SpyFu is a search engine optimization (SEO) tool for keyword research and competitive analysis. 

The platform’s various features make it easy to discover the marketing strategies used by top players in your market or industry. Type in any URL, and you’ll be able to find metrics like:

• Total search traffic
• Search rankings
• Current Google Ads
• Pay per click (PPC) ads history
• Paid keywords

You can then use this data to learn more about one of your top competitors or look at several companies in order to better understand a new market.

Who Should Use SpyFu?

Marketers and business leaders can use SpyFu to better understand who their competitors are—and how much they need to spend on marketing in order to be competitive.

Investors can also use SpyFu to research how potential investment targets are investing in marketing (and what kind of growth they’re seeing as a result.)

How Much Does SpyFu Cost?

You can see a limited amount of SpyFu data for free. Paid plans, which give you access to more features, start at $33 per month when billed annually.

7. Crunchbase

The platform makes it easy to find data like how much money a startup has raised to date, who’s investing in a growing business, or who founded a key industry player.

You can also see other data points through Crunchbase, including acquisition and employee headcount.

To use Crunchbase for market research, just type in an industry and filter results by the type of data you’re seeking. Crunchbase will show you a list of companies that meet the defined criteria.

You can also type in a specific company or competitor name and locate data that way, too.

Who Should Use Crunchbase?

Crunchbase is a valuable tool for nearly everyone involved in business management and funding.

• Entrepreneurs can use the tool to explore new markets and find potential investors.
• Business leaders can keep tabs on competitor growth and relevant industry acquisitions.
• VC firms and investors can monitor how others are investing in growing companies, or explore the investment potential in a new market.

How Much Does Crunchbase Cost?

You can see limited information for free; full Crunchbase access starts at $49 per month (billed annually).

Awario is a social media monitoring and brand tracking tool. 

You can use Awario for market research by tracking specific terms on social media. These can include:

• Brand names
• Product keywords
• Industry influencers’ names

For example, if you’re considering building or investing in a mobile app for sleep tracking, you can easily monitor brand names like Oura or keywords like “sleep tracker”.

This makes it easy to see key industry conversations and glean valuable insights about your ideal buyer persona. You can also identify potential gaps in the market.

Awario even tracks sentiment analysis to see how people feel about various competitors in your target industry.

Who Should Use Awario?

Awario is useful for marketers who want to understand their audience’s frustrations or needs, as well as entrepreneurs and product developers interested in using customer data to improve business offerings.

How Much Does Awario cost?

Awario access starts at $29 per month, billed annually.

G2 is a popular software review website. 

It’s a great resource for quickly finding quantitative and qualitative data about virtually any software market.

The G2 review structure is 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 spot gaps in a market and understand key pain points that customers are trying to solve.

Plus, G2 provides a list of competitors for each product—useful for identifying related companies to research.

When browsing G2, you can see details about each reviewer including their:

• Business size

This is all useful for accurately identifying your market’s target demographic. You can also filter a product’s reviews by any of those categories.

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

Who Should Use G2?

G2 is useful for entrepreneurs and product marketers who want to identify and fill gaps in a market. It’s also a good tool for investors who want to learn more about how real users feel about a potential investment target.

The platform only contains software reviews, though. If you’re looking for reviews of other products and companies, you’ll need to find an alternate source (such as Amazon reviews for consumer goods).

How Much Does G2 Cost?

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

10. Prisync

Prisync is a competitor price tracking tool. 

Its automated features make Prisync a great choice for e-commerce entrepreneurs. Use it to:

• Track competitor product pricing and fluctuations
• Estimate customer demand for certain products
• Get price change updates multiple times a day
• Automatically apply dynamic pricing to your own e-commerce storefront

While Prisync is usually best for e-commerce 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.

Who Should Use Pricsync?

Prisync is most useful for e-commerce startups that want to stay up-to-date with the latest pricing and product trends.

How Much Does Prisync Cost?

Prisync plans start at $99 per month, and pricing depends on the number of products you track. Some features are restricted to higher price tiers, including dynamic pricing, daily email notifications, and API access.

11. Respondent

Respondent is a market research platform for recruiting audience panels.

You can use the Respondent service to find vetted audience members that match your ideal target. Submit a request detailing who you want to talk to—such as CFOs and healthcare companies—and Respondent will find people for you.

You can opt to either talk to these people on one-to-one calls (ideal for getting real-time insights) or run group surveys through Respondent.

Who Should Use Respondent?

Respondent is useful for business leaders and entrepreneurs trying to find the right product-market fit for both B2B and B2C audiences. Investors can use Respondent too—it can be a way to research a particular target market before making an investment.

How Much Does Respondent Cost?

Respondent pricing is based on credits. One credit equals one participant in your interview or survey.

Pricing starts at $24 per B2C credit or $40 per B2B credit. These prices vary based on the total number of credits you purchase. However, you’ll also need to factor in separate incentive payments to respondents. Respondent’s incentive calculator can help you estimate this amount.

12. SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey is a user-friendly tool for building market research surveys 

You can choose from multiple survey templates and question types, including:

• NPS surveys
• Product testing surveys
• Customer satisfaction surveys
• Matrix questions
• Open-ended questions
• Rating scales
• Multiple choice questions

If you don’t have an audience to survey, you can use SurveyMonkey’s audience panel service that distributes your survey to a specific demographic.

To use these audience panels, you’ll need to know a few details about your target market—such as “stay-at-home moms with a household income of at least $50,000.” SurveyMonkey will take care of the rest.

It’s important to note, though, that these audiences are fairly broad, such as “college graduates” or “smartphone owners” who meet a few other demographic criteria. If you need highly specific audience curation, you may want to work with a market research firm .

No matter what distribution method you choose, you’ll get to use SurveyMonkey’s drag-and-drop builder to put together questions in your preferred order.

Who Should Use SurveyMonkey?

SurveyMonkey is great for market researchers that want to learn more about a target audience group, as well as business owners and marketing professionals seeking feedback from their existing customers.

How Much Does SurveyMonkey Cost?

You can build limited surveys for free, though they’ll include SurveyMonkey branding. To unlock additional features, you’ll need a paid plan.

SurveyMonkey’s paid plans start at $39 per month, billed annually. You can also request audience responses for $1 each, with a minimum of 200 responses per survey.

Attest is another online survey software option. 

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.

Who Should Use Attest?

Attest is useful for business leaders or marketers who want to get audience insights or user feedback—without an existing customer base to survey.

Investors could also use Attest to learn more about consumer preferences and habits in a market.

How Much Does Attest Cost?

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 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.

The company doesn’t provide audiences for you, though, so you’ll need to have a group that you can survey. If not, you’ll be better served by a tool like Attest or Respondent.

Who Should Use Qualaroo?

Any business leader or entrepreneur in need of audience data can use Qualaroo to get feedback from real customers and leads, build out audience surveys, plan marketing campaigns, and more.

How Much Does Qualaroo Cost?

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, too.

All generative AI tools do carry a risk of inaccuracies, though, so you’ll want to make sure to double-check ChatGPT’s outputs before using them or feeding information back into another market research tool.

Who Should Use ChatGPT?

ChatGPT can be a useful tool for anyone conducting market research manually, whether that involves sorting through data, writing questions, or segmenting audiences to survey.

How Much Does ChatGPT Cost?

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.

16. Optimal Workshop

Optimal Workshop is a user experience (UX) research tool.

The platform facilitates research, data collection, and data visualization through:

• Card sort tests
• First click tests

Card sort tests are the most useful for teams interested in gathering market research data. By presenting a sample audience with examples of products and categories—and then asking them to group and rank each item—you can get a sense of:

• What your target audience is and is not interested in
• How your potential customers think about products and categories of items
• Whether certain colors, terms, and images are more appealing than others

You could run these card sort tests with actual products that you sell or with ones you’re considering creating or adding to your inventory.

Who Should Use Optimal Workshop?

Marketers and business leaders can use Optimal Workshop’s card sort tests to evaluate how members of a new market or audience think about products—and what their preferences are.

How Much Does Optimal Workshop Cost?

Optimal Workshop plans start at $191 per user, per month (billed annually), with a minimum of three users. Because of this, it’s best suited for organizations that plan to conduct UX research after moving through market research and card testing.

17. AlsoAsked

AlsoAsked is a tool that produces frequently asked questions on any topic.

The way it works is simple—type in a phrase, set your language and location, and see related questions that people are typing into search engines.

Questions display in tree format, so you can see how different queries relate to each other. One click on any group of questions opens up a new tree, so you can dig down even further into related subtopics.

Who Should Use AlsoAsked?

AlsoAsked is useful for anyone who’s conducting preliminary market research. Because you can adjust results by location and language, you can use AlsoAsked to get a feel for:

• What people want to know about a topic, product, or service
• Whether their questions increase, decrease, or change based on location
• How a market’s concerns, interests, and queries change along with language

You won’t be able to do all of your market research in AlsoAsked, but it can give you ideas for survey questions to ask, industry trends to track, and more.

How Much Does AlsoAsked Cost?

AlsoAsked is free to use, though you’re limited to three searches per day. To raise usage limits, bring up increasingly detailed results, and unlock multiple export formats, you’ll need a paid plan. Options start at $12 per month when billed annually.

If you’re new to the market research process, then these tools will help you set benchmarks, get key consumer insights, and collect data for decision making. But even the best market research tool can only go so far—you also need to have a solid understanding of the research process and key industry shifts.

To make sure that you’re getting the most out of your preferred research solution, check out our guide to conducting research for new product development —and look at the biggest trends in market research happening right now.

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A Beginner’s Guide to Market Research

Business creates goods or services and delivers them to a market that buys or uses them for a fee. Everyone’s happy! That’s the way it’s supposed to work, but anyone who has tried to make a living in the real world has experienced the complexities inherent in such a simple formula. There are many variables to consider in marketing , but let’s just focus on the marketplace and the research required to understand it.

The market can be a small or vastly large group of people who need goods and services. They’ve got money in their pockets and businesses are looking to have them use it to purchase their product or service. But that’s a very general sketch of a process that requires a lot more specifics.

How does a business gather the data they need to understand the needs and wants of the market, and who they should be targeting when developing ideas, advertising and marketing projects ? That’s not so easy—especially from the perspective of a cubicle.

There’s a world outside the office and businesses need to know it intimately if they’re to offer something that the world wants. Whether it’s a delicious meal or a product people don’t even know that they want yet, this process starts with market research.

What Is Market Research?

Market research is shorthand for talking about an organized effort to gather information about customers. It’s a way to profile and target people to know what they desire or what they need, so businesses can exploit that and produce it to their satisfaction. Market research is a relatively young discipline. It began to be conceptualized and practiced in the 1930s, and it grew out of the boom in radio in the United States at that time. Advertisers learned that listener demographics were crucial to companies that sponsored different programs.

Market research is a cornerstone on which a business strategy is built, market research being about specific markets while the larger business strategy is about the process of marketing. Market research is fundamental to keeping businesses competitive as it analyzes the needs, size and competitors in the marketplace, so companies can make strategic decisions.

Related: 10 Marketing Tips for Small Businesses That Cost $0

Types of Market Research

There are various techniques to market research. Some are qualitative and use focus groups, in-depth interviews and ethnography, while others are quantitative, which involve customer surveys and analysis of secondary data.

Primary research is when the effectiveness of sales, existing business practices, quality of service and communications are monitored and reported on. This helps the business understand the competition and evaluate a strategic business plan to take advantage of the market.

Secondary research uses data that has already been published and is collected in a new database to help with situation analysis. From this, businesses can develop strategies for benchmarking and targeting specific market segments.

Why Market Research Is Important

Market research is important for the obvious reason that without it, a company is firing blindly into the void. You can create a great product or service, but without knowing who to sell it to it will whither on the vine and die.

Related: How to Plan a Successful Product Launch

There might have been a time when market research wasn’t as necessary when there was less competition and so customers could find your product or service. But that time has long since passed. The more knowledge a company has about the market and the customer’s needs within that market, the more likely it’ll have success.

There are many reasons why businesses should conduct market research. It helps to identify problem areas in your business. You can’t resolve a problem until you first know what it is.

Customer Satisfaction

It’s not just about selling products and services. Market research is also important in that it helps increase customer satisfaction. That means businesses retain more customers and their brand is less likely to be tarnished by false steps and miscalculations. By using tools like surveys for customer feedback , you’re also going to understand the needs of your existing customer base. It’ll help you to know why they’ve chosen your company over your competitors, which will allow you to better serve them.

Campaign Effectiveness

Using market research is one way to help marketing campaigns be more effective. It identifies new business opportunities and then designs the best marketing push to capture the target audience. This is a sure-fire method of increasing sales, which is the backbone of business success.

Knowledge of Competitors

There’s also the benefit of having a bead on what your competitors are up to in the marketplace. It can be used to evaluate your progress but also what your competitors are up to and how they are expanding or not in the market. Knowing what your competitors are up to will offer insight into how you want to strategically place yourself in the market to stay ahead of them.

Market research is also a way to reduce and often avoid loss. If you know the landscape well before you launch a product or service, you will be aware of hurdles to clear and problems to avoid. You’ll also have a better idea of the risks involved in bringing something to market and therefore be able to work on solutions for those risks if they in fact arise.

Related: Free Risk Tracking Template

Business Opportunities Revealed

Then there are the business opportunities that arise from market research. These are new areas that a business might have been ignorant of before and now can exploit for greater market penetration and profits. It will also highlight areas where the business can expand and increase its customer base. New customers can also be discovered through market research, further expanding the company’s reach. Gap analysis is one method that can be used to evaluate how well a service is performing versus its potential.

Set Targets for Growth

Another reason for businesses to conduct market research is that it allows them to set achievable targets for growth, sales and product development. It provides businesses with information that helps with the decision-making process about services and effective product development strategies.

How to Conduct Market Research

There are many ways to get the data you need for market research. Some of them include starting with a business’ own employees. They’re in the front with customers and can offer valuable insight.

Customers can be tapped with comment cards that ask basic questions. Talking to your existing customer base through the web, email, snail mail, telephone surveys or in-person with focus groups is one of the best ways to know what they want and need. You can also track what customers are buying and not buying from you through documentation and records. Be sure to get a firm grasp of your fundamental digital marketing metrics .

In terms of secondary sources, there are resources such as the census bureau, the local chamber of commerce, the department of commerce, libraries, trade and professional organizations and publications.

The process of conducting market research follows these six steps.

1. Define Your Buyer

Before you can sell something, you must know who you’re selling to. What’s their age, gender, location, what do they do for a living, how big is their family, what’s their income, etc? The more data you can get, the better targeted your marketing campaign will be.

Now that you have a profile, you want to find a representative sample of those targeted customers to understand their characteristics, challenges and buying habits through focus groups, surveys, phone interviews, etc.

Related: The Importance of Customer Development for Startups

2. Choose Which Buyers to Survey

When gathering customers for your surveys, you’ll want to get a group that represents each buyer persona you have come up with. It’s good to have a mix of people but you can choose one person if you think that’s best.

Make sure whoever you choose is someone who has recently interacted with you and your competitor and even those who are not interested in purchasing from either. This widens the lens and gives you a more accurate view of the marketplace.

3. Engage the Participants

For the data collected to be accurate and usable, you must engage the participants, whether they’re the ideal panel or not. Try to get a list of customers who made recent purchases.

There are also those customers who purchased from competitors or were close to choosing your product or service but didn’t. You can reach out to participants on social media, leverage your existing network or create an incentive to participate.

4. Prepare Questions

Once you have a group, you must do your due diligence and have targeted questions that have been worked on to get the most out of the audience and help you with the problem at hand, otherwise, you’re wasting everyone’s time.

You want the discussion to be natural and conversational, not scripted. However, it should include a short backgrounder, followed by a short response from the audience on their opinion or problems with the product or service. Then, take a deep dive into buyer researched potential solutions (make this interactive, following up and interjecting more specific queries). Wind down with decisions from the group, and close by opening up for questions and thanking the people there.

5. Know Your Competitors

They’re doing the same thing as you, so the more you understand them and how they act, the better you can respond and exploit areas that they’re not exploring. Also, competition is complicated. It can be a whole company or a division within that you’re competing with. But you must list the competitors and always be aware of them.

6. Summarize Your Findings

Now comes the time to crunch the numbers and look for common threads that run through the data you collected. It can be overwhelming at first, all that information, which is why it’s wise to boil the work down to the essential findings. These make actionable points.

Break your final report into sections: background, participants, executive summary for the main points, awareness of the common questions, consideration for the themes you uncovered, how the group came to decide, and finally an action plan on how to move forward with the information you gathered.

Market research is a project, and projects need tools to manage them. ProjectManager is a cloud-based project management software that has a robust dashboard that can collect, crunch and deliver the market research you gather in easy-to-read and share charts and graphs. Plus it features task management tools like Kanban boards and task lists to keep the project moving forward. See how it can help you make sense of your market research today by taking this free 30-day trial.

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