market research your competition

What is a Competitive Analysis — and How Do You Conduct One?

Published: April 24, 2024

Every time I work with a new brand, my first order of business is to conduct a competitive analysis. 

A competitive analysis report helps me understand the brand’s position in the market, map competitors’ strengths/weaknesses, and discover growth opportunities. 

In this article, I’ll break down the exact steps I follow to conduct competitor analysis and identify ways to one-up top brands in the market. 

We’ll cover:

What is competitive analysis?

What is competitive market research, competitive analysis in marketing.

• How To Conduct Competitive Analysis in 5 Steps

How to Do a Competitive Analysis (the Extended Cut)

Competitive product analysis, competitive analysis example, competitive analysis templates.

• Competitive Analysis FAQs

Competitive analysis is the process of comparing your competitors against your brand to understand their core differentiators, strengths, and weaknesses. It’s an in-depth breakdown of each competitor’s market position, sales & marketing tactics, growth strategy, and other business-critical aspects to see what they’re doing right and find opportunities for your business.

Competitive analysis gives you a clearer picture of the market landscape to make informed decisions for your growth. 

That said, you have to remember that competitive analysis is an opportunity to learn from others. It isn’t:

• Copying successful competitors to the T.
• Trying to undercut others’ pricing.
• A one-and-done exercise.

Let’s look at how this exercise can help your business before breaking down my 5-step competitive analysis framework.

4 Reasons to Perform Competitive Analysis 

If you’re on the fence about investing time and effort in analyzing your competitors, know that it gives you a complete picture of the market and where you stand in it.

Here are four main reasons why I perform a competitive analysis exercise whenever working with a brand for the first time:

• Identify your differentiators. Think of competitor analysis as a chance to reflect on your own business and discover what sets you apart from the crowd. And if you’re only starting out, it helps you brainstorm the best opportunities to differentiate your business.
• Find competitors’ strengths. What are your competitors doing right to drive their growth? Analyzing the ins and outs of an industry leader will tell you what they did well to reach the top position in the market.
• Set benchmarks for success. A competitor analysis gives you a realistic idea of mapping your progress with success metrics. While every business has its own path to success, you can always look at a competitor’s trajectory to assess whether you’re on the right track.
• Get closer to your target audience. A good competitor analysis framework zooms in on your audience. It gives you a pulse of your customers by evaluating what they like, dislike, prefer, and complain about when reviewing competing brands.

The bottom line: Whether you’re starting a new business or revamping an existing one, a competitive analysis eliminates guesswork and gives you concrete information to build your business strategy.

10 Free Competitive Analysis Templates

Track and analyze your competitors with these ten free planning templates.

• SWOT Analysis
• Battle Cards
• Feature Comparison
• Strategic Overview

Download Free

All fields are required.

You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

Competitive market research is a vital exercise that goes beyond merely comparing products or services. It involves an in-depth analysis of the market metrics that distinguish your offerings from those of your competitors.

A thorough market research doesn't just highlight these differences but leverages them, laying a solid foundation for a sales and marketing strategy that truly differentiates your business in a bustling market.

In the next section, we’ll explore the nuts and bolts of conducting a detailed competitive analysis tailored to your brand.

10 Competitive Analysis Templates

Fill out the form to access the templates., essential aspects to cover in competitive analysis research .

Before we walk through our step-by-step process for conducting competitor analysis, let’s look at the main aspects to include for every competitor:

• Overview. A summary of the company — where it’s located, target market, and target audience.
• Primary offering. A breakdown of what they sell and how they compare against your brand.
• Pricing strategy. A comparison of their pricing for different products with your pricing.
• Positioning.  An analysis of their core messaging to see how they position themselves. Customer feedback: A curation of what customers have to say about the brand.

Now, it’s time to learn how to conduct a competitive analysis with an example to contextualize each step. 

Every brand can benefit from regular competitor analysis. By performing a competitor analysis, you'll be able to:

• Identify gaps in the market.
• Develop new products and services.
• Uncover market trends.
• Market and sell more effectively.

As you can see, learning any of these four components will lead your brand down the path of achievement.

Next, let's dive into some steps you can take to conduct a comprehensive competitive analysis.

How to Conduct Competitive Analysis in 5 Quick Steps

As a content marketer, I’ve performed a competitive analysis for several brands to improve their messaging, plan their marketing strategy, and explore new channels. Here are the five steps I follow to analyze competitors.

1. Identify and categorize all competitors.

The first step is a simple yet strategic one. You have to identify all possible competitors in your industry, even the lesser-known ones. The goal here is to be aware of all the players in the market instead of arbitrarily choosing to ignore a few.

As you find more and more competitors, categorize them into these buckets:

• Direct competitors. These brands offer the same product/service as you to the same target audience. People will often compare you to these brands when making a buying decision. For example, Arcade and Storylane are direct competitors in the demo automation category.
• Indirect competitors. These businesses solve the same problem but with a different solution. They present opportunities for you to expand your offering. For example, Scribe and Whatfix solve the problem of documentation + internal training, but in different ways.
• Legacy competitors. These are established companies operating in your industry for several years. They have a solid reputation in the market and are a trusted name among customers. For example, Ahrefs is a legacy competitor in the SEO industry.
• Emerging competitors. These are new players in the market with an innovative business model and unique value propositions that pose a threat to existing brands. For example, ChatGPT came in as a disruptor in the conversational AI space and outperformed several brands. 

Here’s a competitive matrix classifying brands in the community and housing space:

Testing It Out

To help you understand each step clearly, we’ll use the example of Trello and create a competitor analysis report using these steps.

Here’s a table of the main competitors for Trello:

able of the main competitors for Trello:

2. Determine each competitor’s market position.

Once you know all your competitors, start analyzing their position in the market. This step will help you understand where you currently stand in terms of market share and customer satisfaction. It’ll also reveal the big guns in your industry — the leading competitors to prioritize in your analysis report.

Plus, visualizing the market landscape will tell you what’s missing in the current state. You can find gaps and opportunities for your brand to thrive even in a saturated market.

To map competitors’ market positions, create a graph with two factors: market presence (Y-axis) and customer satisfaction (X-axis). Then, place competitors in each of these quadrants:

• Niche. These are brands with a low market share but rank high on customer satisfaction. They’re likely targeting a specific segment of the audience and doing it well.
• Contenders. These brands rank low on customer satisfaction but have a good market presence. They might be new entrants with a strong sales and marketing strategy.
• Leaders. These brands own a big market share and have highly satisfied customers. They’re the dominant players with a solid reputation among your audience.
• High performers. These are another category of new entrants scoring high on customer satisfaction but with a low market share. They’re a good alternative for people not looking to buy from big brands.

This visualization will tell you exactly how crowded the market is. But it’ll also highlight ways to gain momentum and compete with existing brands.

Here’s a market landscape grid by G2 documenting all of Trello’s competitors in the project management space. For a leading brand like Trello, the goal would be to look at top brands in two quadrants: “Leaders” and “High Performers.” 

Image Source

3. Extensively benchmark key competitors.

Step 2 will narrow down your focus from dozens of competitors to the few most important ones to target. Now, it’s time to examine each competitor thoroughly and prepare a benchmarking report.

Remember that this exercise isn’t meant to find shortcomings in every competitor. You have to objectively determine both the good and bad aspects of each brand.

Here are the core factors to consider when benchmarking competitors:

• Quality. Assess the quality of products/services for each competitor. You can compare product features to see what’s giving them an edge over you. You can also evaluate customer reviews to understand what users have to say about the quality of their offering.
• Price. Document the price points for every competitor to understand their pricing tactics. You can also interview their customers to find the value for money from users’ perspectives.
• Customer service. Check how they deliver support — through chat, phone, email, knowledge base, and more. You can also find customer ratings on different third-party platforms.
• Brand reputation. You should also compare each competitor’s reputation in the market to understand how people perceive the brand. Look out for anything critical people say about specific competitors.  
• Financial health. If possible, look for performance indicators to assess a brand's financial progress. You can find data on metrics like revenue growth and profit margins. 

This benchmarking exercise will involve a combination of primary and secondary research. Invest enough time in this step to ensure that your competitive analysis is completely airtight.

Check out this example of a competitor benchmarking report for workforce intelligence tools:

Here’s how I benchmarked Asana based on these criteria using the information I could find:

4. Deep dive into their marketing strategy.

While the first few steps will tell you what you can improve in your core product or service, you also need to find how competitors market their products.

You need to deep-dive into their marketing strategies to learn how they approach buyers. I analyze every marketing channel, then note my observations on how they speak to their audience and highlight their brand personality.

Here are a few key marketing channels to explore:

• Website. Analyze the website structure and copy to understand their positioning and brand voice.
• Email. Subscribe to emails to learn their cadence, copywriting style, content covered, and other aspects.
• Paid ads. Use tools like Ahrefs and Semrush to find if any competitor is running paid ads on search engines.
• Thought leadership. Follow a brand’s thought leadership efforts with content assets like podcasts, webinars, courses, and more.
• Digital PR. Explore whether a brand is investing in digital PR to build buzz around its business and analyze its strategy.
• Social media. See how actively brands use different social channels and what kind of content is working best for them.
• Partnerships. Analyze high-value partnerships to see if brands work closely with any companies and mutually benefit each other.

You can create a detailed document capturing every detail of a competitor’s marketing strategy. This will give you the right direction to plan your marketing efforts. 

5. Perform a SWOT analysis.

The final step in a competitive analysis exercise is creating a SWOT analysis matrix for each company. This means you‘ll take note of your competitor’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Think of it as the final step to consolidate all your research and answer these questions:

• What is your competitor doing well?
• Where do they have an advantage over your brand?
• What is the weakest area for your competitor?
• Where does your brand have the advantage over your competitor?
• In what areas would you consider this competitor a threat?
• Are there opportunities in the market that your competitor has identified?

You can use tools like Miro to visualize this data. Once you visually present this data, you’ll get a clearer idea of where you can outgrow each competitor. 

Here’s a SWOT analysis matrix I created for Asana as a competitor of Trello:

• Determine who your competitors are.
• Determine what products your competitors offer.
• Research your competitors' sales tactics and results.
• Take a look at your competitors' pricing, as well as any perks they offer.
• Ensure you're meeting competitive shipping costs.
• Analyze how your competitors market their products.
• Take note of your competition's content strategy.
• Learn what technology stack your competitors use.
• Analyze the level of engagement on your competitors' content.
• Observe how they promote marketing content.
• Look at their social media presence, strategies, and go-to platforms.
• Perform a SWOT Analysis to learn their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

To run a complete and effective competitive analysis, use these ten templates, which range in purpose from sales to marketing to product strategy.

Featured Resource: 10 Competitive Analysis Templates

1. Assess your current product pricing.

The first step in any product analysis is to assess current pricing.

Nintendo offers three models of its Switch console: The smaller lite version is priced at $199, the standard version is $299, and the new OLED version is $349.

Sony, meanwhile, offers two versions of its PlayStation 5 console: The standard edition costs $499, and the digital version, which doesn’t include a disc drive, is $399.

2. Compare key features.

Next is a comparison of key features. In the case of our console example, this means comparing features like processing power, memory, and hard drive space.

3. Pinpoint differentiators.

With basic features compared, it’s time to dive deeper with differentiators. While a glance at the chart above seems to indicate that the PS5 is outperforming its competition, this data only tells part of the story.

Here’s why: The big selling point of the standard and OLED Switch models is that they can be played as either handheld consoles or docked with a base station connected to a TV. What’s more, this “switching” happens seamlessly, allowing players to play whenever, wherever.

The Playstation offering, meanwhile, has leaned into market-exclusive games that are only available on its system to help differentiate them from their competitors.

4. Identify market gaps.

The last step in a competitive product analysis is looking for gaps in the market that could help your company get ahead.

When it comes to the console market, one potential opportunity gaining traction is the delivery of games via cloud-based services rather than physical hardware.

Companies like Nvidia and Google have already made inroads in this space, and if they can overcome issues with bandwidth and latency, it could change the market at scale.

How do you stack up against the competition? Where are you similar, and what sets you apart? This is the goal of competitive analysis.

By understanding where your brand and competitors overlap and diverge, you’re better positioned to make strategic decisions that can help grow your brand.

Of course, it’s one thing to understand the benefits of competitive analysis, and it’s another to actually carry out an analysis that yields actionable results. Don’t worry — we’ve got you covered with a quick example.

Sony vs. Nintendo: Not all fun and games.

Let’s take a look at popular gaming system companies Sony and Nintendo.

Sony’s newest offering — the Playstation 5 — recently hit the market but has been plagued by supply shortages.

Nintendo’s Switch console, meanwhile, has been around for several years but remains a consistent seller, especially among teens and children.

This scenario is familiar for many companies on both sides of the coin; some have introduced new products designed to compete with established market leaders, while others are looking to ensure that reliable sales don’t fall.

Using some of the steps listed above, here’s a quick competitive analysis example.

In our example, it’s Sony vs Nintendo, but it’s also worth considering Microsoft’s Xbox, which occupies the same general market vertical.

This is critical for effective analysis; even if you’re focused on specific competitors and how they compare, it’s worth considering other similar market offerings.

PlayStation offers two PS5 versions, digital and standard, at different price points, while Nintendo offers three versions of its console.

Both companies also sell peripherals — for example, Sony sells virtual reality (VR) add-ons, while Nintendo sells gaming peripherals such as steering wheels, tennis rackets, and differing controller configurations.

When it comes to sales tactics and marketing, Sony and Nintendo have very different approaches.

In part thanks to the recent semiconductor shortage, Sony has driven up demand via scarcity — very low volumes of PS5 consoles remain available. Nintendo, meanwhile, has adopted a broader approach by targeting families as its primary customer base.

This effort is bolstered by the Switch Lite product line, which is smaller and less expensive, making it a popular choice for children.

The numbers tell the tale : Through September 2021, Nintendo sold 14.3 million consoles, while Sony sold 7.8 million.

Sony has the higher price point: Their standard PS5 sells for $499, while Nintendo’s most expensive offering comes in at $349. Both offer robust digital marketplaces and the ability to easily download new games or services.

Here, the key differentiators are flexibility and fidelity. The Switch is flexible — users can dock it with their television and play it like a standard console or pick it up and take it anywhere as a handheld gaming system.

The PS5, meanwhile, has superior graphics hardware and processing power for gamers who want the highest-fidelity experience.

5. Analyze how your competitors market their products.

If you compare the marketing efforts of Nintendo and Sony, the difference is immediately apparent: Sony’s ads feature realistic in-game footage and speak to the exclusive nature of their game titles.

The company has managed to secure deals with several high-profile game developers for exclusive access to new and existing IPs.

Nintendo, meanwhile, uses brightly lit ads showing happy families playing together or children using their smaller Switches while traveling.

6. Analyze the level of engagement on your competitor's content.

Engagement helps drive sales and encourage repeat purchases.

While there are several ways to measure engagement, social media is one of the most straightforward: In general, more followers equates to more engagement and greater market impact.

When it comes to our example, Sony enjoys a significant lead over Nintendo: While the official Playstation Facebook page has 38 million followers, Nintendo has just 5 million.

Competitive analysis is complex, especially when you’re assessing multiple companies and products simultaneously.

To help streamline the process, we’ve created 10 free templates that make it possible to see how you stack up against the competition — and what you can do to increase market share.

Let’s break down our SWOT analysis template. Here’s what it looks like:

Don't forget to share this post!

Related articles.

26 Tools & Resources for Conducting Market Research

Market Research: A How-To Guide and Template

SWOT Analysis: How To Do One [With Template & Examples]

TAM SAM SOM: What Do They Mean & How Do You Calculate Them?

How to Run a Competitor Analysis [Free Guide]

5 Challenges Marketers Face in Understanding Audiences [New Data + Market Researcher Tips]

Causal Research: The Complete Guide

Total Addressable Market (TAM): What It Is & How You Can Calculate It

What Is Market Share & How Do You Calculate It?

3 Ways Data Privacy Changes Benefit Marketers [New Data]

10 free templates to help you understand and beat the competition.

Marketing software that helps you drive revenue, save time and resources, and measure and optimize your investments — all on one easy-to-use platform

• Product overview
• All features
• App integrations

CAPABILITIES

• project icon Project management
• Project views
• Custom fields
• Status updates
• goal icon Goals and reporting
• Reporting dashboards
• workflow icon Workflows and automation
• portfolio icon Resource management
• Time tracking
• my-task icon Admin and security
• Admin console
• asana-intelligence icon Asana AI
• list icon Personal
• premium icon Starter
• briefcase icon Advanced
• Goal management
• Organizational planning
• Campaign management
• Creative production
• Content calendars
• Marketing strategic planning
• Resource planning
• Project intake
• Product launches
• Employee onboarding
• View all uses arrow-right icon
• Project plans
• Team goals & objectives
• Team continuity
• Meeting agenda
• View all templates arrow-right icon
• Work management resources Discover best practices, watch webinars, get insights
• What's new Learn about the latest and greatest from Asana
• Customer stories See how the world's best organizations drive work innovation with Asana
• Help Center Get lots of tips, tricks, and advice to get the most from Asana
• Asana Academy Sign up for interactive courses and webinars to learn Asana
• Developers Learn more about building apps on the Asana platform
• Community programs Connect with and learn from Asana customers around the world
• Events Find out about upcoming events near you
• Partners Learn more about our partner programs
• Support Need help? Contact the Asana support team
• Asana for nonprofits Get more information on our nonprofit discount program, and apply.

Featured Reads

• Project planning |
• How to create a competitive analysis (w ...

How to create a competitive analysis (with examples)

Competitive analysis involves identifying your direct and indirect competitors using research to reveal their strengths and weaknesses in relation to your own. In this guide, we’ll outline how to do a competitive analysis and explain how you can use this marketing strategy to improve your business.

Whether you’re running a business or playing in a football game, understanding your competition is crucial for success. While you may not be scoring touchdowns in the office, your goal is to score business deals with clients or win customers with your products. The method of preparation for athletes and business owners is similar—once you understand your strengths and weaknesses versus your competitors’, you can level up. 

What is a competitive analysis?

Competitive analysis involves identifying your direct and indirect competitors using research to reveal their strengths and weaknesses in relation to your own. 

Direct competitors market the same product to the same audience as you, while indirect competitors market the same product to a different audience. After identifying your competitors, you can use the information you gather to see where you stand in the market landscape. 

What to include in a competitive analysis

The purpose of this type of analysis is to get a competitive advantage in the market and improve your business strategy. Without a competitive analysis, it’s difficult to know what others are doing to win clients or customers in your target market. A competitive analysis report may include:

A description of your company’s target market

Details about your product or service versus the competitors’

Current and projected market share, sales, and revenues

Pricing comparison

Marketing and social media strategy analysis

Differences in customer ratings

You’ll compare each detail of your product or service versus the competition to assess strategy efficacy. By comparing success metrics across companies, you can make data-driven decisions.

How to do a competitive analysis

Follow these five steps to create your competitive analysis report and get a broad view of where you fit in the market. This process can help you analyze a handful of competitors at one time and better approach your target customers.

1. Create a competitor overview

In step one, select between five and 10 competitors to compare against your company. The competitors you choose should have similar product or service offerings and a similar business model to you. You should also choose a mix of both direct and indirect competitors so you can see how new markets might affect your company. Choosing both startup and seasoned competitors will further diversify your analysis.

Tip: To find competitors in your industry, use Google or Amazon to search for your product or service. The top results that emerge are likely your competitors. If you’re a startup or you serve a niche market, you may need to dive deeper into the rankings to find your direct competitors.

2. Conduct market research

Once you know the competitors you want to analyze, you’ll begin in-depth market research. This will be a mixture of primary and secondary research. Primary research comes directly from customers or the product itself, while secondary research is information that’s already compiled. Then, keep track of the data you collect in a user research template .

Primary market research may include: 

Purchasing competitors’ products or services

Interviewing customers

Conducting online surveys of customers 

Holding in-person focus groups

Secondary market research may include:

Examining competitors’ websites

Assessing the current economic situation

Identifying technological developments 

Reading company records

Tip: Search engine analysis tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush can help you examine competitors’ websites and obtain crucial SEO information such as the keywords they’re targeting, the number of backlinks they have, and the overall health of their website. 

3. Compare product features

The next step in your analysis involves a comparison of your product to your competitors’ products. This comparison should break down the products feature by feature. While every product has its own unique features, most products will likely include:

Service offered

Age of audience served

Number of features

Style and design

Ease of use

Type and number of warranties

Customer support offered

Product quality

Tip: If your features table gets too long, abbreviate this step by listing the features you believe are of most importance to your analysis. Important features may include cost, product benefits, and ease of use.

4. Compare product marketing

The next step in your analysis will look similar to the one before, except you’ll compare the marketing efforts of your competitors instead of the product features. Unlike the product features matrix you created, you’ll need to go deeper to unveil each company’s marketing plan . 

Areas you’ll want to analyze include:

Social media

Website copy

Press releases

Product copy

As you analyze the above, ask questions to dig deeper into each company’s marketing strategies. The questions you should ask will vary by industry, but may include:

What story are they trying to tell?

What value do they bring to their customers?

What’s their company mission?

What’s their brand voice?

Tip: You can identify your competitors’ target demographic in this step by referencing their customer base, either from their website or from testimonials. This information can help you build customer personas. When you can picture who your competitor actively targets, you can better understand their marketing tactics. 

5. Use a SWOT analysis

Competitive intelligence will make up a significant part of your competitor analysis framework, but once you’ve gathered your information, you can turn the focus back to your company. A SWOT analysis helps you identify your company’s strengths and weaknesses. It also helps turn weaknesses into opportunities and assess threats you face based on your competition.

During a SWOT analysis, ask yourself:

What do we do well?

What could we improve?

Are there market gaps in our services?

What new market trends are on the horizon?

Tip: Your research from the previous steps in the competitive analysis will help you answer these questions and fill in your SWOT analysis. You can visually present your findings in a SWOT matrix, which is a four-box chart divided by category.

6. Identify your place in the market landscape

The last step in your competitive analysis is to understand where you stand in the market landscape. To do this, you’ll create a graph with an X and Y axis. The two axes should represent the most important factors for being competitive in your market. 

For example, the X-axis may represent customer satisfaction, while the Y-axis may represent presence in the market. You’ll then plot each competitor on the graph according to their (x,y) coordinates. You’ll also plot your company on this chart, which will give you an idea of where you stand in relation to your competitors. 

This graph is included for informational purposes and does not represent Asana’s market landscape or any specific industry’s market landscape. 

Tip: In this example, you’ll see three companies that have a greater market presence and greater customer satisfaction than yours, while two companies have a similar market presence but higher customer satisfaction. This data should jumpstart the problem-solving process because you now know which competitors are the biggest threats and you can see where you fall short. 

Competitive analysis example

Imagine you work at a marketing startup that provides SEO for dentists, which is a niche industry and only has a few competitors. You decide to conduct a market analysis for your business. To do so, you would:

Step 1: Use Google to compile a list of your competitors. 

Steps 2, 3, and 4: Use your competitors’ websites, as well as SEO analysis tools like Ahrefs, to deep-dive into the service offerings and marketing strategies of each company. 

Step 5: Focusing back on your own company, you conduct a SWOT analysis to assess your own strategic goals and get a visual of your strengths and weaknesses. 

Step 6: Finally, you create a graph of the market landscape and conclude that there are two companies beating your company in customer satisfaction and market presence. 

After compiling this information into a table like the one below, you consider a unique strategy. To beat out your competitors, you can use localization. Instead of marketing to dentists nationwide like your competitors are doing, you decide to focus your marketing strategy on one region, state, or city. Once you’ve become the known SEO company for dentists in that city, you’ll branch out. 

You won’t know what conclusions you can draw from your competitive analysis until you do the work and see the results. Whether you decide on a new pricing strategy, a way to level up your marketing, or a revamp of your product, understanding your competition can provide significant insight.

Drawbacks of competitive analysis

There are some drawbacks to competitive analysis you should consider before moving forward with your report. While these drawbacks are minor, understanding them can make you an even better manager or business owner. 

Don’t forget to take action

You don’t just want to gather the information from your competitive analysis—you also want to take action on that information. The data itself will only show you where you fit into the market landscape. The key to competitive analysis is using it to problem solve and improve your company’s strategic plan .

Be wary of confirmation bias

Confirmation bias means interpreting information based on the beliefs you already hold. This is bad because it can cause you to hold on to false beliefs. To avoid bias, you should rely on all the data available to back up your decisions. In the example above, the business owner may believe they’re the best in the SEO dental market at social media. Because of this belief, when they do market research for social media, they may only collect enough information to confirm their own bias—even if their competitors are statistically better at social media. However, if they were to rely on all the data available, they could eliminate this bias.

Update your analysis regularly

A competitive analysis report represents a snapshot of the market landscape as it currently stands. This report can help you gain enough information to make changes to your company, but you shouldn’t refer to the document again unless you update the information regularly. Market trends are always changing, and although it’s tedious to update your report, doing so will ensure you get accurate insight into your competitors at all times. 

Boost your marketing strategy with competitive analysis

Learning your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses will make you a better marketer. If you don’t know the competition you’re up against, you can’t beat them. Using competitive analysis can boost your marketing strategy and allow you to capture your target audience faster.

Competitive analysis must lead to action, which means following up on your findings with clear business goals and a strong business plan. Once you do your competitive analysis, you can use the templates below to put your plan into action.

Related resources

Cost control: How to monitor project spending to increase profitability

How to use a feasibility study in project management

How to track utilization rate and drive team profitability

How to accomplish big things with long-term goals

Everything that you need to know to start your own business. From business ideas to researching the competition.

Practical and real-world advice on how to run your business — from managing employees to keeping the books

Our best expert advice on how to grow your business — from attracting new customers to keeping existing customers happy and having the capital to do it.

Entrepreneurs and industry leaders share their best advice on how to take your company to the next level.

• Business Ideas
• Human Resources
• Business Financing
• Growth Studio
• Ask the Board

Looking for your local chamber?

Interested in partnering with us?

Start » strategy, sizing up the competition: how to conduct competitive research.

Competitive research can reveal trends in the marketplace and gaps in your own business plan.

Competitive research is a crucial part of any good marketing plan. This term may elicit some negative images but competitive research has nothing to do with spying. It has everything to do with paying attention to your competition and what they are doing.

Many people will lose out on business to competitors they have never even heard of simply because they’ve never taken the time to do competitive research. Understanding what your competition is doing will help you position yourself, and your product or service, within the market.

What is competitive research?

Competitive research involves identifying your competitors, evaluating their strengths and weaknesses and evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of their products and services. By looking at your biggest competitors, you can see how your own products and services stack up and what kind of threat they pose to your business. It also helps you identify industry trends you may have been missing.

Four benefits to doing competitive research are:

• Understanding your market . Competitive research can reveal trends in the marketplace that might have otherwise been missed. The ability to identify and predict trends is a huge asset for any business, helping to improve value proposition for customers. This is an important component of competitive research that you should constantly be doing.
• Improving your marketing . Your customers care about how your product or service is going to make their lives better. If they are leaving to go to one of your competitors, it’s probably because that company does a better job of explaining the benefits to the customer base, or does in fact provide a better product or service. Competitive research helps you understand why customers choose to buy from you or your competitors and how your competition is marketing their products. Over time, this can help you improve your own marketing programs.
• Identifying market gaps . When you do competitive research, you’re analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors. You’ll often find that, by looking at the data, there is a segment of the population that is being underserved. This could put your business in a unique position to reach those customers.
• Planning for the future . The most important byproduct of competitive research is that it will help you create a strategic plan for your business. This includes things like improving your product or service, using more strategic pricing strategies, and improving the promotion of your products.

Good competitive research could put your business in a unique position to reach customers who are being underserved.

6 steps to competitive research

It may sound obvious, but the first step is to simply identify who your top competitors are . There are two different types of competitors to identify: direct and indirect.

Direct competitors are targeting the same customer base you’re targeting. They are solving the same problem that you are trying to solve and sell a similar product or service.

Indirect competitors may sell something similar to your product or service but target a different audience, or they may target your same customer base but have a slightly different product or service.

It’s important to understand this segment of your market for two reasons: (1) it could provide you with growth opportunities for your own business, and (2) it could also highlight a threat to your business of which you would otherwise be unaware.

Here are six steps to getting started on competitive research:

Identify main competitors.

The most obvious way to do this is simply by searching your product or service category on the web and seeing what comes up. You can also check websites like Crunchbase or Product Hunt . You may find competitors that you might not have noticed before.

The goal is to cast a wide net and get an idea of who your main competitors are. Another good way to identify direct and indirect competitors is to ask your potential customers what services they are already using.

Analyze competitors' online presence

Once you’ve identified your main competitors, you want to look at their website, the type of content they are publishing, and their social media presence. Then, look for any blogs, white papers, and social media content being provided about their products and how to use them. Ask yourself these questions:

• What is the user experience like on their website?
• Is it easy to navigate?
• Do you clearly understand the products or services they offer?
• Is their website mobile-optimized?
• How often do they blog and most importantly, is the quality of their content good?
• What topics do they blog about most frequently?
• What social platforms are they actively using to talk about their products and services?
• Is this content engaging their target audience?

The answers to these questions show you opportunities where you can outperform your competitors. You will want to pay close attention to anything they are doing well that you aren’t doing. This will help give you a better understanding of where you should be focusing your attention and resources.

Gather information

The best way to gather information about your competitors is by acting like one of their customers. Sign up for their email list so you can get an idea of how they communicate.

Also, follow their blog and social media accounts and watch how they interact with their customers online. What kind of experience do customers have with your competitors?

You should consider shopping from them so you can see what their product looks like and what the experience is like from a customer perspective.

Track your findings

Make sure you track your competitors' findings on a spreadsheet; it will help with ongoing monitoring. This isn’t a complicated process, you just need to keep track of what they are doing over time so that you can see how they change everything from pricing to marketing and promotional activities.

You’ll start by dividing your competitors into direct and indirect customer columns. You’ll then track the following information:

• Company name
• Social media sites
• Unique features
• Pros and cons
• Screenshots and additional links

Check online reviews

Try to find as many reviews of your competitors as possible. Read their social media reviews, comments on their blogs, and case studies on their website. If they offer and present Google reviews, read them as well. It’s a good idea to understand not only the good things that your competitors may be doing, but the bad things as well. Include mentions with the Better Business Bureau about them in your research.

How customer-focused are they? This could be an opportunity for you to stand out. And, if they sell a product similar to yours, this will be a good way to find out if a lot of people are interested in it.

Any negative feedback will help you identify areas where you can improve your own product or service.

Identify areas for improvement

Now that you’ve taken note of some of the biggest differences between you and your competitors, it’s time to think about how you can use this information to improve your own business results.

Your competitive research should reveal at least one area your business can stand to improve in. This will help you learn how to engage better with your customers and online followers.

Keep in mind that competitive research is never a "one-and-done" event. Ongoing monitoring, such as observing how competitors evolve, is necessary to ensure that you are staying competitive in the marketplace.

Tools for competitive research

Software and technology now make it easier than ever to conduct competitive research. However, there are hundreds of competitive research tools on the market and narrowing down the right software can feel overwhelming.

This is why we’ve done the legwork and narrowed it down for you. Here are four tools you should consider using to conduct your competitive research:

SEMrush : This is one of the best competitive research tools on the market. It contains over 30 tools that can track things like SEO, PPC, keyword research, competitive research, and more. SEMrush will help you discover new competitors, find their best-used keywords, and analyze their ad copy. They have flexible pricing plans depending on your business needs.

SpyFu : This search analytics tool reveals the keywords websites buy on Google. So, once you’ve identified your biggest competitors, you can track every keyword they’ve bought. Plus, you can track every keyword they are ranking for and find the content and backlinks that helped them rank in the first place.

BuzzSumo : BuzzSumo lets you see how your content is matching up to your competitors’ content. You can see which content is shared more frequently on social media compared to others, and you can even schedule alerts on your competitors’ content which will make it easier to continue tracking them.

Owletter : Owletter tracks and analyzes emails sent from a website. This allows you to track your competitors’ email marketing and see what is and isn’t working for them. To get started, you’ll need to sign up to join your competitors’ email list. Then, every time you receive an email, Owletter will take a screenshot, analyze it, and alert you to any useful information.

Competitive research can seem daunting at first but it’s an essential part of running a successful business. When you incorporate the right tools into your research, you may find that it’s not as difficult as you imagined.

On some level, understanding your competitors is just as important as understanding your customers. Your competitors have valuable lessons to teach you and it’s important to regularly monitor their online activity. Doing so will strengthen your business and improve your own value for your customers.

CO— aims to bring you inspiration from leading respected experts. However, before making any business decision, you should consult a professional who can advise you based on your individual situation.

Applications are open for the CO—100! Now is your chance to join an exclusive group of outstanding small businesses. Share your story with us — apply today .

CO—is committed to helping you start, run and grow your small business. Learn more about the benefits of small business membership in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, here .

Apply for the CO—100!

The CO—100 is an exclusive list of the 100 best and brightest small and mid-sized businesses in America. Enter today to share your story and get recognized.

Subscribe to our newsletter, Midnight Oil

Expert business advice, news, and trends, delivered weekly

By signing up you agree to the CO— Privacy Policy. You can opt out anytime.

By continuing on our website, you agree to our use of cookies for statistical and personalisation purposes. Know More

Welcome to CO—

Designed for business owners, CO— is a site that connects like minds and delivers actionable insights for next-level growth.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce 1615 H Street, NW Washington, DC 20062

Social links

Looking for local chamber, stay in touch.

Business growth

Business tips

A step-by-step guide to competitive market analysis

I remember Blockbuster going bankrupt in 2010. As a 12-year-old, this news meant the end of walking down aisles with my family, looking for the perfect weekend flick. But to Netflix, this meant their competitive market analysis had paid off.

As much as I miss my three-day VHS and DVD rentals, video entertainment has improved significantly, thanks to innovation and competitive pressure. Your industry isn't immune to change either, which is why it's so important to get ahead.

Table of contents:

What is a competitive analysis?

Competitive market analysis is the process of determining who your competitors are, researching their strategies, and unpacking what they do well (and not so well).

From this process, you can learn a lot about your company's own strengths and weaknesses, as well as how to remain a strong competitor in your industry.

The importance of competitive analysis in marketing

Identify and fill crucial gaps in your business  .

The greats learn from the greats. Yes, you're trying to beat your competitors, but that doesn't mean you can't learn from them—especially if they've been around the block a few times. Seeing what works for your competitors will point toward gaps in your own strategies (as well as gaps in their strategies)—and ideally give you some inspiration on how to fill those gaps.

Spot trends and get ahead

Competitive market analysis isn't just about understanding specific competitors. It can also uncover the direction that an entire industry is moving. For example, Blockbuster didn't move with the industry, and we all know how that ended. Competitive analysis can help you avoid that same fate.

Recognize product value and pain point solutions

Set future objectives for growth.

By examining market leaders, you define bold markers for your growth, and you can emulate their tactics. You can also employ AI-driven tools like Google Analytics' predictive metrics, HubSpot's forecasting tools, or IBM Watson's analytics. These tools can decipher market patterns, anticipate future prospects, and help you set precise KPIs. With AI's assistance, you can unearth data-driven insights and opportunities even top-tier competitors might miss.

How to conduct competitive market analysis in 6 steps

Competitive market analysis isn't just a matter of making sure you have a unique selling point. Here's how to dig into the competition and figure out where you stand—and how to stand out.

1. List your competitors

Start by creating a comprehensive list of everyone operating in your industry. You can weed out the less relevant competitors later, but for now, jot down anyone that offers similar products or services.

If you're a small local business, your competitors are located nearby—you probably know a lot about them, but at the very least, you know they exist. But for something like an eCommerce store or online service, it's important to figure out who your competitors even are.

Start with basic keyword research. Google your product category a few different ways, maybe with words like "price," "cheap," or "sale" to reinforce the commercial nature of your query.

This will help you identify any competitors and can shed some light on how saturated your industry is.

Next, categorize the companies you identify into direct and indirect competitors.

Direct competitors provide similar products or services to a target market similar to yours. For example, Gucci and Prada both offer high-end clothing and accessories to fashion-conscious consumers with high disposable income.

Indirect competitors provide different products or services (though ones that land in the same category as yours) to a target market similar to yours. For example, gyms and companies producing at-home workout equipment can be considered indirect competitors.

As the name suggests, direct competitors tend to pose a more direct risk to your business. That said, indirect competitors can still attract customers and pull business away from you. You need to identify and analyze both to truly understand your competitive landscape.

2. Identify their target markets

For other companies, it isn't as obvious. To determine your competitors' target markets, try the following:

Study their mission statement: Sometimes, a company's mission statement will explicitly state who their products and/or services are designed for. And even when it isn't explicit, it will almost certainly provide a hint. Navigate to the "About" page on their website, and soak up whatever insight you can.

3. Unpack their 4 P's

Whenever possible, give your competitors' products a spin. Get a free trial or even buy or sign up for the real deal, if your budget allows. When using their products, try contacting their customer support for additional insight.

What's their pricing model? Subscription-style, one-time purchase, or a mix of both?

Do they seem to be using skim pricing or penetration pricing?

Does their pricing model seem to align with the rest of the industry?

There are many tools out there to help, as well as specialized tools for specific industries, like hotel room price monitoring.

Once you have a grip on your competitors' pricing strategies, here are your options:

Reduce your prices: If pricing is the only differentiator in your industry (meaning product, place, and promotion strategies are all pretty uniform), you may consider lowering your prices to snag a higher share of the market. But be wary about how this will impact customers' perceptions of your quality, as well as the risk of a price reduction competition, driving everyone's prices to unprofitable levels.

Raise your prices: If your business already leads the market by providing something unique or higher-quality products than the competition, you may consider raising your prices. Be mindful of the price elasticity of your product before pursuing this strategy, as a small price increase can lose customers in certain industries.

Match your competitors' pricing: It's much more challenging to sell products at the same price as competitors. This strategy works if your business has been in the market for a while and can make a unique or niche offer. In this case, the customer will decide to purchase based on personal preferences rather than the price.

Where are your competitors selling? Is everything online, or do they have brick-and-mortar stores?

Every industry trends differently here—shoe brands, for example, tend to have some in-person outlets since most people want to try on a pair of shoes before buying them. Furniture stores, on the other hand, don't always rely on brick-and-mortar locations. They can provide pictures, videos, and product details (such as dimensions and materials) to provide customers with a "good enough" idea of what they're getting.

Here's what you're looking for:

Long-running ads: If your competitor keeps running the same campaign for a long time, it definitely works for them. You can try to create something similar to replicate their success.

If most competitors rely on social media advertisements as opposed to TV or print ads, you should probably follow suit. Likewise, if they're putting their entire budget into advertising how crispy their chicken sandwich is, it's probably because chicken sandwich consumers really like their chicken crispy. Watch how your competitors allocate their advertising budget and use that information to inform your own strategy.

4. Get to know their SEO strategy

The Ahrefs screenshot below shows the highest-traffic-driving pages from Slack's blog. A competing communication platform could use this data to learn what's working for Slack and replicate their success. To really be successful, however, you need to one-up the competition, bringing something new to the table.

Pro tip: As you do this research, actually click into some of your competitors' high-ranking pages to see what exactly is attracting users (and Google). Data is crucial, but nothing can replace the human eye.

5. Make note of their most popular content

The goal is to identify which content types get the most traffic or engagement. You can use a marketing analytics tool to analyze both of those things:

Do the highest-performing pieces of content tend to all be one specific medium (video, infographic, written content, or something else)?

Do the titles of the most-shared articles all have numbers or other specific characters (like brackets or hyphens) in them?

Is the most-shared content all about a similar topic?

Let's say you run a travel blog and discover that your competitor's article called "How to save money for a trip" is super popular among their audience. You now have an opportunity to create content on a similar topic but make it even better. Maybe "The ultimate guide to traveling on a budget" or even a real story about "How 21-year-old Mike saved $10K for his epic adventure." 

Social media presents an opportunity to let your brand's voice and personality shine. Take Wendy's, for example. The brand publicly roasts its competitors on X (Twitter), and the internet loves it.

Not every brand can (or should) be quite as blunt and sassy as Wendy's, but showing some personality can pay off.

6. Conduct a final SWOT analysis

Strengths (S) and weaknesses (W) look internally at your company.

Opportunities (O) and threats (T) look externally to the industry and market.

While diving into your competitive market analysis, consider these factors:

Market share percentage: This metric reflects the proportion of sales a company has in the industry compared to its competitors. Tools like Statista or market research reports can offer insights into a brand's dominance or underperformance.

Competitive features: Understand the unique offerings that set a product or service apart from its rivals. Customer surveys and product comparison charts are useful methods to determine standout features.

Company culture: A company's values, work environment, and ethics can be a deciding factor for customers. Monitoring employer review sites like Glassdoor or observing a company's interactions on social media can provide insights.

Customer reviews: Customer reviews provide direct feedback on a product or service's quality and the company's reputation. Platforms like Yelp, Trustpilot, or Google Reviews offer a treasure trove of customer sentiments and concerns.

Geography (if applicable): Location can be pivotal in a company's success, especially for local businesses. Using tools like Google Trends can help identify where a product or brand is most popular geographically.

Let's be clear—this isn't going to shine a spotlight on the exact strategy you should pursue to beat your competitors. What it can do is provide a high-level look at your internal and external environment, making it easier to piece together your competitive strategy.

When promoting your brand, you're thinking about how to communicate your strengths. Conducting a SWOT analysis forces you to also view your brand with scrutiny. You may be working toward being "the best" at everything, but there will inevitably be things that other brands do better.

Competitive analysis example

Let's say you're the CEO of an automotive company conducting a competitive analysis. After doing a deep dive into your competition and your industry as a whole, organizing your notes and SWOT analyses in folders labeled by competitor, you notice a huge push toward electric vehicles.

In fact, you estimate that your closest competitor (who targets the same market as you) now allocates over half of its advertising budget to its newest electric vehicle release. But you only have one electric vehicle option, and you only allocate 15% of your advertising budget toward it. You reasonably guess that you're in trouble.

Additional research confirms your market is very interested in making the switch to electric. You decide to reallocate your budget toward researching, producing, and promoting electric vehicles. Five years pass, and you realize you would have been left in the dust had you failed to analyze the competition or ignored the warning signs.

Competitive market analysis can prevent wasted resources, inspire new opportunities, and help you stay one step ahead of the competition. Take these six steps to better understand your company's strengths and weaknesses—then identify where you need to improve and how to invest your resources to remain a strong competitor in your industry. 

Internal operations as a competitive advantage

Sometimes, a company's competitive advantage comes from its seamless internal operations. It can be hard to find out what's going on internally at another company, but you can be sure you streamline your own processes. Here are some tips to get started:

This article was originally published by Diana Ford in May 2021. The most recent update was in September 2023.

Get productivity tips delivered straight to your inbox

We’ll email you 1-3 times per week—and never share your information.

Luke Strauss

Based in sunny San Diego, Luke is a digital marketer with 3+ years of experience developing and executing content strategy for eCommerce startups and SaaS enterprises alike—Airtable, Zoom, and yes, Zapier—to name a few. When he isn’t diving into a keyword research rabbit hole, you can find him at a music festival, thrifting, or spending time with his friends and family.

• Small business

Related articles

What podcasting taught me about how to run a successful business

What podcasting taught me about how to run a...

17 key SaaS metrics your company should track (plus a cheat sheet)

17 key SaaS metrics your company should...

Enterprise AI: How companies can use AI across the organization

Enterprise AI: How companies can use AI...

How to start a successful side hustle

Improve your productivity automatically. Use Zapier to get your apps working together.

Need a hand creating engaging content? Try Buffer for free →

How to Perform a Best-in-Class Competitor Analysis (w/ Template)

Get a full competitive analysis framework that's been real-world tested, and learn the tips and tricks for capturing competitor data and conducting research

You will learn

• The value of running a competitor analysis and how to get your stakeholders on board
• Clear and actionable steps for figuring out who your competitors are
• An easy-to-follow playbook for creating a competitor analysis steeped in research and data

Competitor analysis can be hard .

It’s particularly hard (and confusing and incredibly time-consuming) if you’re relatively new in business . Most of the data is ridiculously difficult to get. Even if you manage to dig something up, you always seem to be left with more questions than answers.

How did they manage to get $10M in funding?

Did that absurdly expensive ad campaign pay off?

Did their CEO leave because things aren’t going well at the company?

What does it all mean?

At least that’s what I felt when I was just getting started with competitive analysis. Whether you’re facing a similar struggle or just aren’t sure where to start, I hope this article will help you navigate through every step of the process.

In this article, I will share the competitive analysis framework my team and I have developed (through weeks of research and dozens of iterations), and give you some tips on where to look for data that isn’t publicly available so you can have a competitive advantage .

But before we start…

What is competitor analysis?

Competitor analysis is the process of evaluating your direct competitors’ companies, products, and marketing strategies.

To make your analysis truly useful, it’s important to:

• Pick the right competitors to analyze
• Know which aspects of your competitors’ business are worth analyzing
• Know where to look for the data
• Understand how you can use the insights to improve your own business.

Which brings us to why competitor analysis is worth doing in the first place.

Who can benefit from an analysis framework?

This framework will work well for entrepreneurs , business owners , startup founders , product managers , creators , and marketers .

It covers business metrics, a product analysis, and a marketing assessment, with the marketing bit being a little more in-depth. Feel free to skip certain parts if you’re only interested in one aspect, or better yet, delegate some steps to respective teams if you can.

It doesn’t matter much what kind of product you’re selling or how mature your business is. To use this framework, you may already have a fully functional product, an MVP, or even just a product idea. I’ll be using certain analysis tools to facilitate and automate certain bits of the process. Most of them are either freemium or have a free trial available, so all that you’ll need to invest into the analysis is your own time.

Done properly, competitive analysis will give you plenty of quantitative and qualitative data to back your own business decisions and business strategy (and no, I’m not talking about cloning your competitors’ strategies to come up with a second best product, although this can sometimes work ).

Namely, it can help you:

• Develop (or validate) your Unique Value Proposition
• Prioritize your product development by focusing on the aspects of competitors’ products customers value the most
• Improve your product by capitalizing on competitors’ weaknesses customers complain about
• Find your competitors' strengths to get benchmarks to measure your growth against
• Uncover market segments that aren’t fully served by competitors
• Create a new product category by identifying gaps between what your competitors offer and what the customers need

Who even are your competitors?

I can sense you rolling your eyes at me, but hear me out.

If you’re serious about competitive analysis, it’s not enough to just evaluate the two Industry Leaders everyone’s talking about (that kind of analysis will likely get you depressed real quick).

The competitors you pick for the analysis determine the insights you’ll get at the end, and the decisions you’ll make, based in part on those insights. That’s why including different kinds of competitors (big and small, direct and indirect) into the analysis is critical if you want the results to be comprehensive.

Here’s a handy way to think about your competition that’s based off of Myk Pono’s classification :

It’s best to include at least one competitor from each category into your analysis to make it truly comprehensive.

Whether you can instantly think of over a dozen competitors or can barely recall five, it’s a good idea to turn to Google or a different a search engine ( DuckDuckGo , anyone?) and look up your product category. Examine the products within the top 50 results, along with the ads that are displayed in response to your query — more likely than not, you’ll come across companies you’ve forgotten about, or maybe even learn about a few newcomers.

To give you an example, I’m going to imagine I’m launching a vacation rental website — an alternative to AirBnB. Here’s what my list of competitors may look like broken down by categories:

Now that you have a comprehensive list of your competitors with similar products, it’s time to start the actual analysis.

As you go through the process, feel free to use this Google Sheets template I’ve created.

In the spreadsheet, I like to divide the factors into collapsable sections (yes, these do get pretty lengthy). I also tend to add comments under each aspect with details or links that provide more info. Depending on the stage you’re at with your business, you can also add in a column for your own product to quickly see how it compares to competitors.

What’s included in a competitor analysis framework

• Business & Company metrics 1.1. Company overview 1.2. Funding 1.3. Revenue & customers
• Product 2.1. Product features 2.2. Pricing 2.3. Perks 2.4. Technology
• Customers & awareness 3.1. Share of Voice 3.2. Sentiment 3.3. Key topics 3.4. Geography 3.5. Social media platforms
• Marketing 4.1. SEO 4.2. Social media 4.3. Advertising 4.4. Influencers and other partners 4.5. Content Marketing 4.6. Customer acquisition 4.7. Sales 4.8. Customer service 4.9. Unique strengths

I’ll go into depth about each section below, and again feel free to grab this competitor analysis template to follow along .

1. Business & Company metrics

1.1. company overview.

Your analysis should start with digging up the basic info about your competitors: things like the company’s founding year, the names of the CEO and other key people, locations of the company’s offices, how many employees work there, etc.

You’ll usually find bits of this information on competitors’ websites.

The company’s LinkedIn profile is often useful, particularly for employee counts.

And for info on key people, offices, and founding date, CrunchBase is a great resource.

Your competitors’ job openings can also be found on their websites, LinkedIn, and job search sites like Glassdoor and Indeed . Knowing who they are hiring and which teams they are expanding will give you an idea of what steps they’re about to take, both product- and marketing-wise. Are they about to hire their first sales rep or content marketer? Are they looking for a developer with a specific skill set? Combined with what you know about your industry, your competition’s job openings will tell you a lot about where they are going with their business.

You could also take things one step further and see if you can get an understanding of competitors’ corporate culture. The best place to dig through employee reviews is Glassdoor . There, you can find out what employees think about the culture, the team, the pay, the management – and those are often honest opinions because a lot of the feedback is anonymous.

1.2. Funding

Knowing when, how much, and from whom your competitors received funding can also be important, particularly if you plan on raising capital yourself. It will give you a solid idea on how much funding you can expect to get.

On top of that, venture capitalists (VCs) tend to invest in only one company in a given category so as not to cannibalize their own investments. If an VCs’ name is missing from your competitors’ funding history, they might be a good candidate for you: they missed out on the chance to work with a successful competitor, but now they have the opportunity to invest into a promising startup in the industry (you!).

1.3. Revenue & customers

Your competitors’ revenue and number of customers deserve a separate section in your spreadsheet. For some companies, you’ll be able to find estimates on Owler , but those will often be very rough. A Google search for the name of your competitor combined with the words “revenue,” “customers,” etc. might lead you to interviews or press releases where the companies share this information (because, well, everyone likes to brag).

That said, I bet you won’t be able to find every competitor’s revenue figures this way. To help you dig deeper, I have two hacks to share that go beyond a simple Google search:

Hack #1: Set up alerts for competitors’ interviews and conference presentations.

This one requires some time, but it’s very effective in the long run: you’ll be surprised at just how much your competitors give away at event presentations and in interviews, without being aware of you listening. All you need to do is sign up for Awario (there’s a free 14-day trial available), create an alert for the names of your competitors’ CEOs or other key figures (don’t forget to put the names in double quotes to search for an exact match), and select YouTube as the source for the search. And that’s it! You can now binge-watch those videos right in Awario, without having to leave the tool for a minute, noting your findings along the way.

Hack #2: Use this revenue formula

Jason Lemkin of SaaStr offers a simple formula you can use to calculate a competitor’s revenue estimate, provided you know how many people work there. Take the number of employees the company has listed on its LinkedIn profile and multiply that by $150,000 if well-funded ($200,000 if modestly funded). This should give you an estimate you can work with.

Employee count * $150,000 = Revenue estimate

These details, combined with company info like founding year and employee counts, are important so you can use them as a benchmark against your own growth. How much time did it take each of your competitors to get to the revenue figures they have today? Are you doing as well as a current market leader back when it was an early-stage business?

It’s time to evaluate your competitors’ products or services, the actual things they’re selling. What kind of technology are they using to build it? What is their core selling point? Are there any perks that come with the product: a freemium version, complementary free tools, or services?

2.1. Product features

Let’s get down to the core of your competitors’ business – their product and its key features. A word of caution: this will likely be the longest bit of your spreadsheet.

It’s a good idea to divide the features into groups of related ones to keep things organized.

2.2. Pricing

Assessing competitors’ pricing pages is another crucial step in your analysis (if pricing isn’t available on their website, try reaching out to their sales team).

Here are some questions to consider:

• Can you uncover a segment of the market that doesn’t seem to be fully served by competitors’ plans?
• Say, do they have an affordable plan for startups or small businesses? Discounts for students or non-profits?
• Are there data-heavy options available for agencies and big brands, with Enterprise features like an API or white-label options?

Another thing you can draw from competitors’ pricing strategies is great ideas for A/B testing . Do they offer monthly or annual plans? (If it’s both, what is the default option?) How many packages have they got? Identify the opportunities for your experiments, and prioritize the ones that are common for several competitors.

Dig through your competitors’ websites to see if they offer something complimentary with their product. Do they have a free trial or a freemium version? Are there any “free” tools their customers get access to, or perhaps a perks program in partnership with other tools?

2.4. Technology

Competitors’ technology is an important aspect to assess for tech companies. BuiltWith is a great (and free) tool to figure out the tech stack that a competitor uses. Just type in the URL, and you’ll be able to see what technology the website runs on, along with any third-party scripts and plugins it uses, everything from analytics systems, email marketing services, to A/B testing tools, and CRMs.

A lean alternative to BuiltWith is What Runs , which is a browser extension that analyzes any webpage you’re on.

On top of that, looking at competitors’ job postings (yes, again) is a great way to see what kind of technology stack they’re using by analyzing the skills they require from candidates. To look for job openings, check your competitors’ websites and job search sites like Glassdoor and Indeed .

3. Customers & awareness

Your next big step in analyzing the competition is looking at what their customers have to say about them. In this section, you’ll look at each brand’s Share of Voice, the sentiment behind their mentions, the key topics customers bring up when they talk about your competitors, and more. To measure these, you’ll need a social listening tool like Awario or Mention .

3.1. Share of Voice

Ideally, you’d want to measure the market share for each of your competitors. But alas, it’s nearly impossible. One substitute metric you could use is Share of Voice – the volume of mentions your competitors get on social media and the web compared to each other.

To measure share of voice , create an alert for each competitor’s brand in Awario, give the tool some time to collect the mentions, and jump to the Alert Comparison report to see how much each competitor is talked about on social and the web.

It’s a good idea to keep these alerts running for the long-term (as opposed to just looking at Share of Voice once). This way, you’ll be able to see spikes in their volume of mentions, track what their customers are saying, and see how their (and your own) Share of Voice evolves over time.

3.2. Sentiment

The caveat of measuring the level of awareness a competitor has is that awareness isn’t always a good thing. What if there’s been a data scandal one of the competitors is involved in? What if their customer service is horrible, causing an influx of negative mentions?

That’s not the only reason why measuring the sentiment behind the mentions of your competitors is important. It will also help you understand what these companies’ customers love and hate about their product the most.

On top of that, it can also serve as a benchmark when you analyze the sentiment behind the mentions of your own brand and product. Let’s say, 40% of your mentions are positive, 20% are negative, and the rest are neutral. How do you know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing without a benchmark?

3.3. Key topics

What do your customers focus on when they mention your competitors’ products or write customer reviews?

What do they love and hate the most?

Identifying the key topics within your competitors’ mentions will give quick answers to these questions so you don’t have to dig through mentions by hand. You can find these topic clouds in a social listening dashboard. From there, you can click on any topic to explore the mentions in-depth.

Interestingly, these topic clouds can also offer insight into various aspects of your competitors’ business – and they may help you fill the gaps in other sections in your competitor analysis spreadsheet. Here’s one example: those are the key topics for Loom, a screen recording app, from which you can learn a few useful things if you look closely.

Looks like the company a) has just raised some money, b) offers remote jobs, and c) has just announced a new feature they’re building. And you discovered all that at a glance! Of course, you can further explore any topic by clicking on it to see all the mentions that contain the word/phrase.

3.4. Geography

Looking at the geography and demographics of your competitors’ mentions will let you figure out which markets they are focusing on the most (and, with any luck, find an area that isn’t too saturated yet). You’ll find a map of each brand’s mentions in Awario’s dashboard and reports, along with the breakdown of mentions by language.

Try adjusting the date range in the report to see if there’s been any changes in languages/countries recently. This could mean that your competitors are focusing on a new emerging market – an opportunity you might be interested to explore.

3.5. Social media platforms

Just like with geography, this one will give you an idea on where your competitors’ audience hangs out so you can use these findings in your own marketing strategy and social media strategy. On top of that, if you see platforms that appear to be heavily underused (but do look relevant), those may also be worth experimenting with. Just like with the previous factors, you can compare the platforms side-by-side using Awario’s Alert Comparison report.

4. Marketing

From the SEO perspective, there are two most important things about competition you should focus on: the keywords they rank for and the backlinks they’ve got. The former will give you a solid idea on what type of search terms bring them traffic and sales (so you can shape your own keyword strategy), and the latter will show what authoritative websites in your niche link to them (those will likely be relevant to your website too).

For both tasks, you can use SEO PowerSuite (you can get the free version here ). The toolkit includes 4 apps for different aspects of SEO, but we’ll only need 2 of those to analyze competitors.

Rank Tracker will help you with the keywords. Navigate to the tool’s Ranking Keywords module and type in a competitor’s URL. You’ll see a list of terms they rank for, along with the search volume for each term in your country of choice. It’s a good idea to move the most popular terms to Target Keywords right away so you can keep them for your records. Repeat the process for every competitor, noting their estimated search traffic and top keywords they rank for.

For backlink analysis, you’ll need SEO SpyGlass. Launch the tool and create a project for one of your competitors. Next, jump to Domain Comparison . One by one, specify your competitors’ websites and take a look at how they compare.

Next, jump to Link Intersection – a module that shows you the domains that link to more than one of your competitors. You can sort them by InLink Rank to see the most authoritative websites on your list. Those are likely relevant industry websites that will make a great addition to your backlink profile – make sure to save them so you can reach out and see if you can get a backlink from there.

4.2. Social media

The next step is analyzing what, when, and how your competitors are doing on social media. Rival IQ is a useful tool for this task, and they have a 14-day free trial available. Once you’ve signed up for the tool, specify your competitors’ websites, and the platform will automatically pull their social media profiles.

From there, you’ll be able to see which social networks they’re active on, how many followers they have, how much engagement their posts get, etc. Those insights will be handy to benchmark your own strategy against. The tool will also show you the best times and days of the week to post, based on the engagement competitors’ posts get.

On top of that, it may be a good idea to research if your competitors have a community on social media – a Facebook group or a subreddit dedicated to their product. How big is the community? Are the users engaged?

4.3. Advertising

To get an idea of your competitors’ ad strategy, SimilarWeb is a great (and free) starting point. Enter the URL of a competitor’s website and navigate to the Search section – it will show you if your competitors have any search ads running, and, if they do, what their target keywords are.

The Display section below will show you whether a competitor is running any display ads, and, if they are, which platforms bring them the most traffic.

For Facebook ads, simply open a competitor’s Facebook page and click on Info and ads .

Alternatively, you can use Facebook’s Ad Library to search for your competitors’ ads. Unfortunately, these tools won’t reveal targeting rules your competitors use, but you’ll still get a solid idea of how many ads they’re running, and perhaps get inspiration for your own advertising efforts.

If native ads or other kinds of paid content are a thing in your niche, you can also try searching for “sponsored by [competitor]”, “author” “[competitor]”, etc. in a search engine of your choice (the quotes will make sure you’re looking for an exact match, and all of the words in the query are taken into account). Take note of authoritative platforms you come across and try reaching out to them to inquire about sponsored posts.

4.4. Influencers and other partners

At this point, we’re interested in exploring the partnerships your competitors have that help spread the word about their products. We’ll look at influencers endorsing your competition, publishers they work with, and media platforms they guest blog on, if any.

For the analysis, you’ll need the same social media monitoring alerts for your competitors’ brand you’ve already created in Awario. In your feed, make sure to group the mentions by Authors and sort them by Reach to see the most influential posts first (Reach is calculated based on the number of followers and engagements on social media, and based on the site’s estimated traffic for results from news, blogs, and the web).

This will let you see the most influential posts that mention your competition, including social media posts and blog articles from around the web. Take note of the influencers or publishers they work with – chances are they will be happy to work with you as well.

On top of that, you can also turn to SimilarWeb to see what referral sources are bringing the most visits to your competitors’ websites. Chances are you’ll also find a bunch of blogs and media platforms that generate substantial traffic to their sites.

4.5. Content Marketing

If content is part of your competitors’ strategy, it’s important that you analyze their blog and what they tend to write about. Are the readers engaged? Do the posts get shared around social media a lot? Does the competitor accept guest posts?

BuzzSumo is a great tool to help you out. It will show you the most shared posts on any blog within the past year, so you can get inspiration for your own posts and a better idea of what kind of content resonates with your target audience the best.

4.6. Customer acquisition

I know, a lot of the points above were actually customer acquisition techniques; but this section is reserved for the ones that weren’t outlined before. Do your competitors have a referral strategy? Do they have an affiliate program? Do they sponsor or exhibit at industry conferences? Do they acquire customers in any other creative way?

If applicable, it’s also important to analyze your competitors’ sales strategy. Do they do product demos? What does contacting a rep look like? Is there a phone number you can call?

The best thing to do is try and book a demo (or a call) with every company yourself, taking careful note of every step. Do they require filling out dozens of fields for you to talk to sales? Will they refuse to hold a demo just because your company is “too small”? Is their time zone convenient? How long does it take them to reply?

All of this will help you spot strengths and weaknesses in your competitors’ sales strategy to help you shape your own.

4.8. Customer service

Does every competitor offer Customer Support for all customers, or does it start with a particular plan? What channels do they provide support on: is it email, live chat, phone, social media, or all of the above? What is their response time? Do they offer Account Management for Enterprise customers?

Analyzing your competitors’ customer service will help you improve your own. The truth is, in large companies, customer care is often almost non-existent; for a new business in the industry, that’s a great area to capitalize on. If that’s true in your case, make sure to highlight the quality of your customer service on your website.

4.9. Unique strengths

Is there anything else that gives a competitor on your list an unfair advantage over everyone else? For example, is their CEO or somebody else on the team an industry influencer? Does the company publish amazing books that are also free? Have the founders launched successful products before? Make note of each competitor’s unique strengths that are hard to emulate.

What’s next?

Once you’re done with every step of competitive analysis, I’m sure you’ve got a clear understanding of the market and more than a handful of ideas on how to improve your own product. While the research is still fresh in your mind, one bonus step I’d highly recommend to everyone performing the analysis is to map your competitors on a Strategy Canvas (from the book Blue Ocean Strategy ).

A Strategy Canvas is a chart that breaks down your competitors by various aspects of their businesses and products (the pricing and other aspects specific to your product category).

The easiest way to plot this is a line chart, with each factor assigned a score depending on how well it is executed.

Here’s an example from the book: a Strategy Canvas for Southwest, one of the first low-cost airlines in the US, compared to the 2 categories that could be considered its competitors: air travel at the time and car travel.

Source: Blue Ocean Strategy

Depending on the kind of competitors you’ve analyzed, you’ll likely see that most of them follow one or two distinct patterns: those will be the major categories you’re competing with (though they may not be as different as cars and airplanes). It’s time to plot your own product on the canvas and see how it compares to the competitors.

Finally, think of ways to make your product stand out. From your research, recall the things your audience needs more and less of. Blue Ocean Strategy offers a nice way to think about the factors on the canvas in terms of applying them to your own product, called the Eliminate-Reduce-Raise-Create Grid.

• Think of features you could eliminate to lower the cost of your solution : the ones that seem superfluous, are rarely mentioned by customers, and are particularly costly. For Southwest vs. traditional airlines, those were seating class choices and hub connectivity.
• Think of the factors you can reduce way below the industry standard : the ones that need to be there, but can be leveled down significantly. It’s great if price is going to be one of them! For Southwest, those were the prices, meals, and lounges.
• Time to think about the aspects you’ll raise well above the industry standard , especially if they won’t cost you a fortune. What do customers wish they’d get more of? For Southwest, that was the friendliness of the service and the speed of travel.
• Lastly, try and create new features that your closest competitors don’t offer (or borrow them from another product category). With Southwest, it was the frequent departures that traditional airlines didn’t have – but car travel did.

Remember: the idea of a competitive analysis isn’t to steal what they’re doing, it is to understand where your business falls in the market and find new opportunities to make your product stand out.

Eventually, focusing on your customers and gaps between supply and demand will serve you much better than focusing on the competition. And that’s what competitor analysis is for – finding ways to serve the customer better.

Did you find this article helpful? You might also like our all-you-need social media toolkit.

The all-you-need social media toolkit

Publish Flawlessly. Analyze Effortlessly. Engage Authentically.

Buffer is the all-you-need social media toolkit that lets you focus on doing what you love for your business.

Related Articles:

How to Make Money on TikTok in 2024

TikTok is a great tool for discovery that also has the potential to create a new source of revenue or income. Here’s how you or your business can make money on TikTok....

Power Words: 150+ Words to Drive More Clicks and Conversions on Social Media

Power words can change the trajectory of your social media posts. Here’s why they work and a list of 150+ words you can start to use immediately....

How to Create Your Own Social Media Calendar in 7 Simple Steps

A step-by-step guide to creating your own social media content calendar, expert guidance on why you need a social media calendar, plus the system we use in our marketing team at Buffer....

23 Top Social Media Sites to Consider for Your Brand in 2024

Find out the most popular social media sites today. Some will be familiar, others may not. Discover some that might be great for your brand but that you have yet to explore....

140,000+ small businesses like yours use Buffer to build their brand on social media every month

• No credit card required
• Cancel anytime

May we suggest

Picked for you.

How to Do Market Research: The Complete Guide

Learn how to do market research with this step-by-step guide, complete with templates, tools and real-world examples.

Access best-in-class company data

Get trusted first-party funding data, revenue data and firmographics

What are your customers’ needs? How does your product compare to the competition? What are the emerging trends and opportunities in your industry? If these questions keep you up at night, it’s time to conduct market research.

Market research plays a pivotal role in your ability to stay competitive and relevant, helping you anticipate shifts in consumer behavior and industry dynamics. It involves gathering these insights using a wide range of techniques, from surveys and interviews to data analysis and observational studies.

In this guide, we’ll explore why market research is crucial, the various types of market research, the methods used in data collection, and how to effectively conduct market research to drive informed decision-making and success.

What is market research?

Market research is the systematic process of gathering, analyzing and interpreting information about a specific market or industry. The purpose of market research is to offer valuable insight into the preferences and behaviors of your target audience, and anticipate shifts in market trends and the competitive landscape. This information helps you make data-driven decisions, develop effective strategies for your business, and maximize your chances of long-term growth.

Why is market research important? 

By understanding the significance of market research, you can make sure you’re asking the right questions and using the process to your advantage. Some of the benefits of market research include:

• Informed decision-making: Market research provides you with the data and insights you need to make smart decisions for your business. It helps you identify opportunities, assess risks and tailor your strategies to meet the demands of the market. Without market research, decisions are often based on assumptions or guesswork, leading to costly mistakes.
• Customer-centric approach: A cornerstone of market research involves developing a deep understanding of customer needs and preferences. This gives you valuable insights into your target audience, helping you develop products, services and marketing campaigns that resonate with your customers.
• Competitive advantage: By conducting market research, you’ll gain a competitive edge. You’ll be able to identify gaps in the market, analyze competitor strengths and weaknesses, and position your business strategically. This enables you to create unique value propositions, differentiate yourself from competitors, and seize opportunities that others may overlook.
• Risk mitigation: Market research helps you anticipate market shifts and potential challenges. By identifying threats early, you can proactively adjust their strategies to mitigate risks and respond effectively to changing circumstances. This proactive approach is particularly valuable in volatile industries.
• Resource optimization: Conducting market research allows organizations to allocate their time, money and resources more efficiently. It ensures that investments are made in areas with the highest potential return on investment, reducing wasted resources and improving overall business performance.
• Adaptation to market trends: Markets evolve rapidly, driven by technological advancements, cultural shifts and changing consumer attitudes. Market research ensures that you stay ahead of these trends and adapt your offerings accordingly so you can avoid becoming obsolete. 

As you can see, market research empowers businesses to make data-driven decisions, cater to customer needs, outperform competitors, mitigate risks, optimize resources and stay agile in a dynamic marketplace. These benefits make it a huge industry; the global market research services market is expected to grow from $76.37 billion in 2021 to $108.57 billion in 2026 . Now, let’s dig into the different types of market research that can help you achieve these benefits.

Types of market research 

• Qualitative research
• Quantitative research
• Exploratory research
• Descriptive research
• Causal research
• Cross-sectional research
• Longitudinal research

Despite its advantages, 23% of organizations don’t have a clear market research strategy. Part of developing a strategy involves choosing the right type of market research for your business goals. The most commonly used approaches include:

1. Qualitative research

Qualitative research focuses on understanding the underlying motivations, attitudes and perceptions of individuals or groups. It is typically conducted through techniques like in-depth interviews, focus groups and content analysis — methods we’ll discuss further in the sections below. Qualitative research provides rich, nuanced insights that can inform product development, marketing strategies and brand positioning.

2. Quantitative research

Quantitative research, in contrast to qualitative research, involves the collection and analysis of numerical data, often through surveys, experiments and structured questionnaires. This approach allows for statistical analysis and the measurement of trends, making it suitable for large-scale market studies and hypothesis testing. While it’s worthwhile using a mix of qualitative and quantitative research, most businesses prioritize the latter because it is scientific, measurable and easily replicated across different experiments.

3. Exploratory research

Whether you’re conducting qualitative or quantitative research or a mix of both, exploratory research is often the first step. Its primary goal is to help you understand a market or problem so you can gain insights and identify potential issues or opportunities. This type of market research is less structured and is typically conducted through open-ended interviews, focus groups or secondary data analysis. Exploratory research is valuable when entering new markets or exploring new product ideas.

4. Descriptive research

As its name implies, descriptive research seeks to describe a market, population or phenomenon in detail. It involves collecting and summarizing data to answer questions about audience demographics and behaviors, market size, and current trends. Surveys, observational studies and content analysis are common methods used in descriptive research. 

5. Causal research

Causal research aims to establish cause-and-effect relationships between variables. It investigates whether changes in one variable result in changes in another. Experimental designs, A/B testing and regression analysis are common causal research methods. This sheds light on how specific marketing strategies or product changes impact consumer behavior.

6. Cross-sectional research

Cross-sectional market research involves collecting data from a sample of the population at a single point in time. It is used to analyze differences, relationships or trends among various groups within a population. Cross-sectional studies are helpful for market segmentation, identifying target audiences and assessing market trends at a specific moment.

7. Longitudinal research

Longitudinal research, in contrast to cross-sectional research, collects data from the same subjects over an extended period. This allows for the analysis of trends, changes and developments over time. Longitudinal studies are useful for tracking long-term developments in consumer preferences, brand loyalty and market dynamics.

Each type of market research has its strengths and weaknesses, and the method you choose depends on your specific research goals and the depth of understanding you’re aiming to achieve. In the following sections, we’ll delve into primary and secondary research approaches and specific research methods.

Primary vs. secondary market research

Market research of all types can be broadly categorized into two main approaches: primary research and secondary research. By understanding the differences between these approaches, you can better determine the most appropriate research method for your specific goals.

Primary market research 

Primary research involves the collection of original data straight from the source. Typically, this involves communicating directly with your target audience — through surveys, interviews, focus groups and more — to gather information. Here are some key attributes of primary market research:

• Customized data: Primary research provides data that is tailored to your research needs. You design a custom research study and gather information specific to your goals.
• Up-to-date insights: Because primary research involves communicating with customers, the data you collect reflects the most current market conditions and consumer behaviors.
• Time-consuming and resource-intensive: Despite its advantages, primary research can be labor-intensive and costly, especially when dealing with large sample sizes or complex study designs. Whether you hire a market research consultant, agency or use an in-house team, primary research studies consume a large amount of resources and time.

Secondary market research 

Secondary research, on the other hand, involves analyzing data that has already been compiled by third-party sources, such as online research tools, databases, news sites, industry reports and academic studies.

Here are the main characteristics of secondary market research:

• Cost-effective: Secondary research is generally more cost-effective than primary research since it doesn’t require building a research plan from scratch. You and your team can look at databases, websites and publications on an ongoing basis, without needing to design a custom experiment or hire a consultant. 
• Leverages multiple sources: Data tools and software extract data from multiple places across the web, and then consolidate that information within a single platform. This means you’ll get a greater amount of data and a wider scope from secondary research.
• Quick to access: You can access a wide range of information rapidly — often in seconds — if you’re using online research tools and databases. Because of this, you can act on insights sooner, rather than taking the time to develop an experiment. 

So, when should you use primary vs. secondary research? In practice, many market research projects incorporate both primary and secondary research to take advantage of the strengths of each approach.

One rule of thumb is to focus on secondary research to obtain background information, market trends or industry benchmarks. It is especially valuable for conducting preliminary research, competitor analysis, or when time and budget constraints are tight. Then, if you still have knowledge gaps or need to answer specific questions unique to your business model, use primary research to create a custom experiment. 

Market research methods

• Surveys and questionnaires
• Focus groups
• Observational research
• Online research tools
• Experiments
• Content analysis
• Ethnographic research

How do primary and secondary research approaches translate into specific research methods? Let’s take a look at the different ways you can gather data: 

1. Surveys and questionnaires

Surveys and questionnaires are popular methods for collecting structured data from a large number of respondents. They involve a set of predetermined questions that participants answer. Surveys can be conducted through various channels, including online tools, telephone interviews and in-person or online questionnaires. They are useful for gathering quantitative data and assessing customer demographics, opinions, preferences and needs. On average, customer surveys have a 33% response rate , so keep that in mind as you consider your sample size.

2. Interviews

Interviews are in-depth conversations with individuals or groups to gather qualitative insights. They can be structured (with predefined questions) or unstructured (with open-ended discussions). Interviews are valuable for exploring complex topics, uncovering motivations and obtaining detailed feedback. 

3. Focus groups

The most common primary research methods are in-depth webcam interviews and focus groups. Focus groups are a small gathering of participants who discuss a specific topic or product under the guidance of a moderator. These discussions are valuable for primary market research because they reveal insights into consumer attitudes, perceptions and emotions. Focus groups are especially useful for idea generation, concept testing and understanding group dynamics within your target audience.

4. Observational research

Observational research involves observing and recording participant behavior in a natural setting. This method is particularly valuable when studying consumer behavior in physical spaces, such as retail stores or public places. In some types of observational research, participants are aware you’re watching them; in other cases, you discreetly watch consumers without their knowledge, as they use your product. Either way, observational research provides firsthand insights into how people interact with products or environments.

5. Online research tools

You and your team can do your own secondary market research using online tools. These tools include data prospecting platforms and databases, as well as online surveys, social media listening, web analytics and sentiment analysis platforms. They help you gather data from online sources, monitor industry trends, track competitors, understand consumer preferences and keep tabs on online behavior. We’ll talk more about choosing the right market research tools in the sections that follow.

6. Experiments

Market research experiments are controlled tests of variables to determine causal relationships. While experiments are often associated with scientific research, they are also used in market research to assess the impact of specific marketing strategies, product features, or pricing and packaging changes.

7. Content analysis

Content analysis involves the systematic examination of textual, visual or audio content to identify patterns, themes and trends. It’s commonly applied to customer reviews, social media posts and other forms of online content to analyze consumer opinions and sentiments.

8. Ethnographic research

Ethnographic research immerses researchers into the daily lives of consumers to understand their behavior and culture. This method is particularly valuable when studying niche markets or exploring the cultural context of consumer choices.

How to do market research

• Set clear objectives
• Identify your target audience
• Choose your research methods
• Use the right market research tools
• Collect data
• Analyze data 
• Interpret your findings
• Identify opportunities and challenges
• Make informed business decisions
• Monitor and adapt

Now that you have gained insights into the various market research methods at your disposal, let’s delve into the practical aspects of how to conduct market research effectively. Here’s a quick step-by-step overview, from defining objectives to monitoring market shifts.

1. Set clear objectives

When you set clear and specific goals, you’re essentially creating a compass to guide your research questions and methodology. Start by precisely defining what you want to achieve. Are you launching a new product and want to understand its viability in the market? Are you evaluating customer satisfaction with a product redesign? 

Start by creating SMART goals — objectives that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. Not only will this clarify your research focus from the outset, but it will also help you track progress and benchmark your success throughout the process. 

You should also consult with key stakeholders and team members to ensure alignment on your research objectives before diving into data collecting. This will help you gain diverse perspectives and insights that will shape your research approach.

2. Identify your target audience

Next, you’ll need to pinpoint your target audience to determine who should be included in your research. Begin by creating detailed buyer personas or stakeholder profiles. Consider demographic factors like age, gender, income and location, but also delve into psychographics, such as interests, values and pain points.

The more specific your target audience, the more accurate and actionable your research will be. Additionally, segment your audience if your research objectives involve studying different groups, such as current customers and potential leads.

If you already have existing customers, you can also hold conversations with them to better understand your target market. From there, you can refine your buyer personas and tailor your research methods accordingly.

3. Choose your research methods

Selecting the right research methods is crucial for gathering high-quality data. Start by considering the nature of your research objectives. If you’re exploring consumer preferences, surveys and interviews can provide valuable insights. For in-depth understanding, focus groups or observational research might be suitable. Consider using a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods to gain a well-rounded perspective. 

You’ll also need to consider your budget. Think about what you can realistically achieve using the time and resources available to you. If you have a fairly generous budget, you may want to try a mix of primary and secondary research approaches. If you’re doing market research for a startup , on the other hand, chances are your budget is somewhat limited. If that’s the case, try addressing your goals with secondary research tools before investing time and effort in a primary research study. 

4. Use the right market research tools

Whether you’re conducting primary or secondary research, you’ll need to choose the right tools. These can help you do anything from sending surveys to customers to monitoring trends and analyzing data. Here are some examples of popular market research tools:

• Market research software: Crunchbase is a platform that provides best-in-class company data, making it valuable for market research on growing companies and industries. You can use Crunchbase to access trusted, first-party funding data, revenue data, news and firmographics, enabling you to monitor industry trends and understand customer needs.

• Survey and questionnaire tools: SurveyMonkey is a widely used online survey platform that allows you to create, distribute and analyze surveys. Google Forms is a free tool that lets you create surveys and collect responses through Google Drive.
• Data analysis software: Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets are useful for conducting statistical analyses. SPSS is a powerful statistical analysis software used for data processing, analysis and reporting.
• Social listening tools: Brandwatch is a social listening and analytics platform that helps you monitor social media conversations, track sentiment and analyze trends. Mention is a media monitoring tool that allows you to track mentions of your brand, competitors and keywords across various online sources.
• Data visualization platforms: Tableau is a data visualization tool that helps you create interactive and shareable dashboards and reports. Power BI by Microsoft is a business analytics tool for creating interactive visualizations and reports.

5. Collect data

There’s an infinite amount of data you could be collecting using these tools, so you’ll need to be intentional about going after the data that aligns with your research goals. Implement your chosen research methods, whether it’s distributing surveys, conducting interviews or pulling from secondary research platforms. Pay close attention to data quality and accuracy, and stick to a standardized process to streamline data capture and reduce errors. 

6. Analyze data

Once data is collected, you’ll need to analyze it systematically. Use statistical software or analysis tools to identify patterns, trends and correlations. For qualitative data, employ thematic analysis to extract common themes and insights. Visualize your findings with charts, graphs and tables to make complex data more understandable.

If you’re not proficient in data analysis, consider outsourcing or collaborating with a data analyst who can assist in processing and interpreting your data accurately.

7. Interpret your findings

Interpreting your market research findings involves understanding what the data means in the context of your objectives. Are there significant trends that uncover the answers to your initial research questions? Consider the implications of your findings on your business strategy. It’s essential to move beyond raw data and extract actionable insights that inform decision-making.

Hold a cross-functional meeting or workshop with relevant team members to collectively interpret the findings. Different perspectives can lead to more comprehensive insights and innovative solutions.

8. Identify opportunities and challenges

Use your research findings to identify potential growth opportunities and challenges within your market. What segments of your audience are underserved or overlooked? Are there emerging trends you can capitalize on? Conversely, what obstacles or competitors could hinder your progress?

Lay out this information in a clear and organized way by conducting a SWOT analysis, which stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Jot down notes for each of these areas to provide a structured overview of gaps and hurdles in the market.

9. Make informed business decisions

Market research is only valuable if it leads to informed decisions for your company. Based on your insights, devise actionable strategies and initiatives that align with your research objectives. Whether it’s refining your product, targeting new customer segments or adjusting pricing, ensure your decisions are rooted in the data.

At this point, it’s also crucial to keep your team aligned and accountable. Create an action plan that outlines specific steps, responsibilities and timelines for implementing the recommendations derived from your research. 

10. Monitor and adapt

Market research isn’t a one-time activity; it’s an ongoing process. Continuously monitor market conditions, customer behaviors and industry trends. Set up mechanisms to collect real-time data and feedback. As you gather new information, be prepared to adapt your strategies and tactics accordingly. Regularly revisiting your research ensures your business remains agile and reflects changing market dynamics and consumer preferences.

Online market research sources

As you go through the steps above, you’ll want to turn to trusted, reputable sources to gather your data. Here’s a list to get you started:

• Crunchbase: As mentioned above, Crunchbase is an online platform with an extensive dataset, allowing you to access in-depth insights on market trends, consumer behavior and competitive analysis. You can also customize your search options to tailor your research to specific industries, geographic regions or customer personas.

• Academic databases: Academic databases, such as ProQuest and JSTOR , are treasure troves of scholarly research papers, studies and academic journals. They offer in-depth analyses of various subjects, including market trends, consumer preferences and industry-specific insights. Researchers can access a wealth of peer-reviewed publications to gain a deeper understanding of their research topics.
• Government and NGO databases: Government agencies, nongovernmental organizations and other institutions frequently maintain databases containing valuable economic, demographic and industry-related data. These sources offer credible statistics and reports on a wide range of topics, making them essential for market researchers. Examples include the U.S. Census Bureau , the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Pew Research Center .
• Industry reports: Industry reports and market studies are comprehensive documents prepared by research firms, industry associations and consulting companies. They provide in-depth insights into specific markets, including market size, trends, competitive analysis and consumer behavior. You can find this information by looking at relevant industry association databases; examples include the American Marketing Association and the National Retail Federation .
• Social media and online communities: Social media platforms like LinkedIn or Twitter (X) , forums such as Reddit and Quora , and review platforms such as G2 can provide real-time insights into consumer sentiment, opinions and trends. 

Market research examples

At this point, you have market research tools and data sources — but how do you act on the data you gather? Let’s go over some real-world examples that illustrate the practical application of market research across various industries. These examples showcase how market research can lead to smart decision-making and successful business decisions.

Example 1: Apple’s iPhone launch

Apple ’s iconic iPhone launch in 2007 serves as a prime example of market research driving product innovation in tech. Before the iPhone’s release, Apple conducted extensive market research to understand consumer preferences, pain points and unmet needs in the mobile phone industry. This research led to the development of a touchscreen smartphone with a user-friendly interface, addressing consumer demands for a more intuitive and versatile device. The result was a revolutionary product that disrupted the market and redefined the smartphone industry.

Example 2: McDonald’s global expansion

McDonald’s successful global expansion strategy demonstrates the importance of market research when expanding into new territories. Before entering a new market, McDonald’s conducts thorough research to understand local tastes, preferences and cultural nuances. This research informs menu customization, marketing strategies and store design. For instance, in India, McDonald’s offers a menu tailored to local preferences, including vegetarian options. This market-specific approach has enabled McDonald’s to adapt and thrive in diverse global markets.

Example 3: Organic and sustainable farming

The shift toward organic and sustainable farming practices in the food industry is driven by market research that indicates increased consumer demand for healthier and environmentally friendly food options. As a result, food producers and retailers invest in sustainable sourcing and organic product lines — such as with these sustainable seafood startups — to align with this shift in consumer values. 

The bottom line? Market research has multiple use cases and is a critical practice for any industry. Whether it’s launching groundbreaking products, entering new markets or responding to changing consumer preferences, you can use market research to shape successful strategies and outcomes.

Market research templates

You finally have a strong understanding of how to do market research and apply it in the real world. Before we wrap up, here are some market research templates that you can use as a starting point for your projects:

• Smartsheet competitive analysis templates : These spreadsheets can serve as a framework for gathering information about the competitive landscape and obtaining valuable lessons to apply to your business strategy.
• SurveyMonkey product survey template : Customize the questions on this survey based on what you want to learn from your target customers.
• HubSpot templates : HubSpot offers a wide range of free templates you can use for market research, business planning and more.
• SCORE templates : SCORE is a nonprofit organization that provides templates for business plans, market analysis and financial projections.
• SBA.gov : The U.S. Small Business Administration offers templates for every aspect of your business, including market research, and is particularly valuable for new startups. 

Strengthen your business with market research

When conducted effectively, market research is like a guiding star. Equipped with the right tools and techniques, you can uncover valuable insights, stay competitive, foster innovation and navigate the complexities of your industry.

Throughout this guide, we’ve discussed the definition of market research, different research methods, and how to conduct it effectively. We’ve also explored various types of market research and shared practical insights and templates for getting started. 

Now, it’s time to start the research process. Trust in data, listen to the market and make informed decisions that guide your company toward lasting success.

Related Articles

• Entrepreneurs
• 15 min read

What Is Competitive Analysis and How to Do It Effectively

Rebecca Strehlow, Copywriter at Crunchbase

17 Best Sales Intelligence Tools for 2024

• Market research
• 10 min read

How to Do Market Research for a Startup: Tips for Success

Jaclyn Robinson, Senior Manager of Content Marketing at Crunchbase

Search less. Close more.

Grow your revenue with Crunchbase, the all-in-one prospecting solution. Start your free trial.

In accordance with international sanctions, the Semrush platform is no longer accessible to businesses registered or based in Russia. We’re sorry for the inconvenience and if you believe there is a mistake, please send us an email to [email protected] so our team can review.

7 steps to conduct a competitive market analysis

The term “competitive market analysis” may sound like something reserved for the C-suite of Fortune 500 companies, but it can be incredibly valuable to any business.

Because no matter what industry you’re in, you’ll always deal with competition.

To stand out, you must identify what your competitors are doing and compare your current practices against theirs. This is exactly what a competitive market analysis is most often used for.

By performing a competitive market analysis, you can identify opportunity gaps, differentiators, and competitive advantages to grow your business.

Today, we’ll cover what a competitive analysis is and provide you with helpful tips and tricks so that you can use it in your organization.

Let’s start with the basics.

Try Miro’s Competitive Analysis Template

• What is a competitive analysis?

A competitive market analysis, also known as “competitor research,” is the process of comparing the different strategies of your competitors to find strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

Competitive research also analyzes current and future trends, potential obstacles, how to overcome these potential obstacles, and any consumer pain points that may exist.

This type of analysis is useful to identify trends and pitfalls in your industry.

It’s not always easy to know if you’re on track compared to your competitors. Competitive analysis provides valuable insights into where you can focus your efforts.

Just keep in mind — doing an accurate competitive analysis takes time and expertise. You don’t want to cheap out or take shortcuts, as low-quality work could lead to poor decisions later down the line.

We’ll cover what goes into a competitive analysis a bit later, but first, let’s answer a crucial question:

What are the benefits of a competitive market analysis?

First, a competitive market analysis allows you to identify your strengths and weaknesses in comparison to your competition. This provides you with an in-depth understanding of your business’s position within its market.

Second, this type of research also helps you discover new opportunities that might not have been apparent without detailed analysis.

Some other benefits might include:

• Improve your products and services: Analyze what your competitors are doing right and wrong, and use that information to improve your own products and services.
• Identify competitive advantages: Understand what makes you different from your competitors and capitalize on it.
• Spot threats and opportunities: Identify potential threats to avoid and opportunities to tap into.
• Better understand your market: The more you know about what’s going on in your market, the better equipped you are to make decisions.
• Forecast the economic climate: Learn more about which companies are going to face more or less demand and how the market might evolve.
• Create an organized, more efficient marketing team: Having a good grasp of what’s going on in your market can make you better able to create a plan focused on your specific strengths.
• Competitive market analysis best practices

Before we dive into the actual process of running a competitive analysis, let’s explore a few of the best practices to help you start off on the right foot.

Identify both direct and indirect competitors

A common mistake is to limit your analysis to direct, easily identifiable competitors. But this can lead to overlooking critical information.

For example, let’s say that you own a chewing gum brand in the U.S. and want to learn more about your competition.

In this case, the dental floss market could be an indirect competitor.

Chewing gum is often used as a substitute or alternative to flossing teeth, so brands of chewing gum could be considered indirect competitors of flossing businesses.

If you’re a competitive intelligence company, one of your indirect competitors could be any market research agency.

Both organizations help clients gain insight into their competitive environments.

Competitive intelligence helps clients understand how they stand in relation to current competitors, while market research helps them understand how their customers feel about them.

The point is that you should expand your analysis beyond direct competition and identify indirect competitors as well.

Here are a few ideas:

• Group similar businesses: Use business categorization tools to group similar business types together. For example, you could consider all online stores as a group of businesses that compete for buyers’ attention.
• Define the market: Consider which products and services you provide and what your customers’ needs are (i.e., the job they’re trying to get done). Then ask yourself, “What other products and services do customers use as an alternative?”
• Consider related product and service categories: Use the information you generated in step two to look at other businesses that offer similar products or services (e.g., chewing gum vs. dental floss).

Analyze industry trends

Take time to review how your industry has changed over time and evaluate any overarching changes. Also, look into new technologies that could potentially threaten or enhance your business model.

For example, if you’re a bar owner, you might want to look into the growth of microbreweries.

If you’re looking to boost sales of your line of salads, make sure you know which ingredients are trending. For example, imagine that black tilefish is predicted to surpass wild salmon as the most popular fish this year. By adding black tilefish to your dishes, you could make your menu more competitive.

This is a simple example, of course. The point is that you should identify what is changing in your competitive environment and adjust your strategy accordingly.

Here are some places you can look:

• Google Trends: Google Trends provides a snapshot of current industry trends. Use it to find out what people are searching for and identify which topics are trending up or down.
• Industry forums: Sign up for industry forums and mailing lists to stay on top of market changes over time. Other companies involved in your industry may be doing new things.
• Social media: Look for announcements on social media, press releases, and relevant websites, such as trade groups and government agencies.

Write a SWOT analysis

Writing a SWOT analysis is a must-have when performing competitive research. SWOT is a competitive analysis matrix that helps you understand your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

With our SWOT analysis template , you can get started in minutes.

You can edit this template to collaborate with your team and use your findings to pinpoint areas for improvement within your organization. You can also use sticky notes to visualize ideas and track them over time without limiting yourself to lines.

Additionally, you can attach files and share them with any relevant team member, which allows your entire team to have access to the key competitive analysis results. Feel free to expand concepts with mind maps or other frameworks.

You can also develop strategies based on changes outside of your control and highlight risks posed by unfavorable factors.

Within each SWOT category, rank each element using both objective data points, as well as estimates and opinions. This will allow you to weigh each threat or opportunity accordingly instead of taking everything at face value.

Remember that competitive research isn’t a one-off exercise

Your goal isn’t to deliver an amazing report that gets put on a shelf. It’s critical that you keep up with your competitors and be aware of any changes in their business strategy.

That way, you can adjust your own business strategy accordingly, giving yourself an edge over all your other competitors.

Some ideas to stay on top of competitors include:

• Google News: Set up alerts on Google News to stay updated on your competitive market analysis.
• LinkedIn: Use LinkedIn search to find out who works at your competitors and follow their activities.
• Blogs and publications: Read industry-relevant publications to learn about new acquisitions, ventures, or product developments that could change the competitive landscape.

Doing this will help you anticipate trends in your industry, uncover insights on what competitors are doing right or wrong, and make more effective business decisions.

• How to write a competitive market analysis

Now that you understand the best practices for conducting a competitive analysis, the question becomes, how can you actually implement one in your organization?

Here’s how to do a competitive analysis in seven easy steps:

1. Use the right template

The right template can help you standardize your analysis and collaborate with your team more effectively. By creating an SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) for your analysis, you’re able to save time and ensure that the company is taking a systemic view of what’s going on in the market.

With our competitive analysis template, you can jumpstart your market intelligence and brainstorm with your team in real-time.

This template is fully customizable and you can adapt it to your exact needs in minutes. For example, you can edit fields by double-clicking on them, add sticky notes to highlight important areas, and remove fields that you don’t need.

You can also import relevant files and make them available to team members.

Additionally, you can share this template with any relevant people in your organization, including peers, clients, and stakeholders. This way, you can collaborate and get your analysis done faster and more effectively.

In essence, you can use this template to hold collaborative sessions where everyone adds their ideas and insights at once, using a single, unified dashboard.

2. Make a list of the competitors you want to analyze

Once you’ve established a standard operating procedure for your research, it’s time to create a list of the competitors you want to analyze.

You don’t have to include every competitor in the market, though. Just choose those competitors that seem most relevant to your business.

How can you find competitors?

Here’s a simple method:

Head over to Google and type in the product or service you’re offering. Look at the results that pop up and see if any companies that provide a similar service. If they do, add them to your list and keep going through this process until you think you’ve found them all.

If you’re having trouble finding direct competitors, look for companies that offer complementary solutions. If you’re an email marketing company, look for businesses that provide, say, web design. And in turn, if you’re a web design company, look for companies that offer marketing services. This will help you to get a full view of the competitive landscape.

3. Analyze your competitors’ strategy

Now that you have identified your competitors, it’s time to dissect their strategies. This includes everything from their pricing to where they are getting their leads and even their sales process.

The more details you can learn about each of your competitors, the better off you’ll be at formulating your own marketing strategy .

Read any whitepapers, blog posts, and case studies produced by your competition, and try to identify patterns that you could use to your advantage. While we don’t recommend stealing tactics, there’s no harm in taking inspiration and incorporating what works into your own plan.

Use tools like Google Alerts or Mention to monitor your competitors and track their marketing activities. You can also use social media platforms, like Twitter and LinkedIn, to find out when your competitors are running promotions, attending industry events, and hiring new employees.

And don’t forget to look for other sources of valuable intel, including:

• Career pages: Keep an eye out for job postings, which could indicate that they are hiring new staff to support their growth.
• Public media: Look at the publicly available information, such as press releases and SEC filings.
• Product pages: This is where you can find out more about the types of services they offer and who their target market is. You can also get an idea of what kind of language they use, which you can emulate in your own copy.
• Social media comments: Read the comments they get on social media to understand what people are saying about their products.

4. Analyze your competitors’ products and services

Your competitive analysis should not only reveal where your competitors are strong but also where they are weak.

Look at your competitors’ prices, product features, and specialties. Then, you can figure out how you can be unique in comparison.

At this stage, try to answer these questions:

• What products and services do they offer?
• What is their pricing?
• What features do they offer?
• Are there any features they provide for free?
• What problems do they solve?
• What does their buyer persona look like?
• Which products are more popular or have a higher price point?
• Do they have any weaknesses that you can take advantage of?
• What channels do they use to reach their target market?

A thorough evaluation of your competitors will give you an idea of how much room there is for improvement and help you create more compelling messaging.

5. Take note of your competitor’s positioning

Analyzing your competitors’ product, pricing strategy, and which channels they use to reach customers will start to reveal your competitors’ positioning in the market.

You’ll also want to consider how they promote themselves. That is, the message they’re “writing” in the minds of the target audience.

What kind of materials are they using? Landing pages? Press releases? Social media marketing campaigns? Analyze those pieces and determine how they’re positioned toward a certain audience.

During your analysis, ask yourself:

• What kind of language do they use to describe themselves?
• Where do they position themselves in relation to other companies?
• Are they the best? Are they the cheapest?
• How do their messages compare to yours?
• What can you learn from them about your own messaging and marketing strategies?
• Who are they targeting, and how does their messaging and imagery appeal to their audience?
• What kind of language is used in their product descriptions?
• How can you adapt your own messaging to appeal to the same kind of people?

Understanding where your competitor is aiming their message can help you better define who your target market should be. This information can also support any rebranding efforts .

6. Learn what technology your competitors are using

Do your competitors use any special technology to achieve their goals? For example, are they using industry-specific software or hardware?

Look at what software and hardware your competitors use and create a list.

• Are they using any open-source tools? If so, could you build off their work and use the same tools to save time and money?
• If they use certain software that you can’t afford, can you find alternative solutions that might be cheaper?
• What about off-the-shelf software packages? Are there any that you can use to outsource certain tasks and save money?

Create a purchase list of the technology your competitors use, and add any tools you would like to buy later on. Even if you don’t end up buying everything immediately, it can be useful to keep a list for future reference.

7. Monitor the competition

It’s important to monitor how your competitors are doing business over time and cross-reference your findings. This will help give you a better continuous picture of your competitive market.

Here are the main areas that you should constantly be monitoring:

• Business growth: How many new locations has your competitor opened? What deals and collaborations has the company announced recently?
• Mergers and acquisitions: Has your competitor been bought, sold, or partnered with another business? How will this change the company’s position in the market?
• Financial health: Is your competitor expanding or cutting back? Are they profitable or in debt?
• Investments: Keep an eye out for new investments like this that competitors are making. They may indicate a big shift in strategy.
• Funding: Has your competitor raised money recently? How much did they raise, and from whom?
• Products and services: Are your competitors coming out with new products or services?
• Business strategies: Is your competitor changing their pricing model, promotional strategy, or branding?

Answering these questions will help you create a thorough competitive market analysis and guide your business decisions.

It will also help you determine if it’s time to hire new talent, expand into a new market, or launch a new product.

• The bottom line?

With the increasing level of competition modern organizations deal with, performing a competitive analysis is no longer just an option — it’s a must.

A competitive analysis can help organizations stay ahead of the curve by providing insights into their competitor’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

You can increase your chances of success by using the right tools, asking the right questions, and organizing your data in a way that makes sense.

Hopefully, now you have enough information to implement a competitive analysis and get valuable insights to improve your brand.

Stay ahead of the curve. Try our Competitive Analysis Template .

Miro is your team's visual platform to connect, collaborate, and create — together.

Join millions of users that collaborate from all over the planet using Miro.

Keep reading

How to facilitate an okr planning workshop.

The hybrid collaboration field guide

How to hold a strategic planning meeting: A simple, step-by-step guide for facilitators

Send us an email

How to do market research: The complete guide for your brand

Written by by Jacqueline Zote

Published on  April 13, 2023

Reading time  10 minutes

Blindly putting out content or products and hoping for the best is a thing of the past. Not only is it a waste of time and energy, but you’re wasting valuable marketing dollars in the process. Now you have a wealth of tools and data at your disposal, allowing you to develop data-driven marketing strategies . That’s where market research comes in, allowing you to uncover valuable insights to inform your business decisions.

Conducting market research not only helps you better understand how to sell to customers but also stand out from your competition. In this guide, we break down everything you need to know about market research and how doing your homework can help you grow your business.

Table of contents:

What is market research?

Why is market research important, types of market research, where to conduct market research.

• Steps for conducting market research
• Tools to use for market research

Market research is the process of gathering information surrounding your business opportunities. It identifies key information to better understand your audience. This includes insights related to customer personas and even trends shaping your industry.

Taking time out of your schedule to conduct research is crucial for your brand health. Here are some of the key benefits of market research:

Understand your customers’ motivations and pain points

Most marketers are out of touch with what their customers want. Moreover, these marketers are missing key information on what products their audience wants to buy.

Simply put, you can’t run a business if you don’t know what motivates your customers.

And spoiler alert: Your customers’ wants and needs change. Your customers’ behaviors today might be night and day from what they were a few years ago.

Market research holds the key to understanding your customers better. It helps you uncover their key pain points and motivations and understand how they shape their interests and behavior.

Figure out how to position your brand

Positioning is becoming increasingly important as more and more brands enter the marketplace. Market research enables you to spot opportunities to define yourself against your competitors.

Maybe you’re able to emphasize a lower price point. Perhaps your product has a feature that’s one of a kind. Finding those opportunities goes hand in hand with researching your market.

Maintain a strong pulse on your industry at large

Today’s marketing world evolves at a rate that’s difficult to keep up with.

Fresh products. Up-and-coming brands. New marketing tools. Consumers get bombarded with sales messages from all angles. This can be confusing and overwhelming.

By monitoring market trends, you can figure out the best tactics for reaching your target audience.

Not everyone conducts market research for the same reason. While some may want to understand their audience better, others may want to see how their competitors are doing. As such, there are different types of market research you can conduct depending on your goal.

Interview-based market research allows for one-on-one interactions. This helps the conversation to flow naturally, making it easier to add context. Whether this takes place in person or virtually, it enables you to gather more in-depth qualitative data.

Buyer persona research

Buyer persona research lets you take a closer look at the people who make up your target audience. You can discover the needs, challenges and pain points of each buyer persona to understand what they need from your business. This will then allow you to craft products or campaigns to resonate better with each persona.

Pricing research

In this type of research, brands compare similar products or services with a particular focus on pricing. They look at how much those products or services typically sell for so they can get more competitive with their pricing strategy.

Competitive analysis research

Competitor analysis gives you a realistic understanding of where you stand in the market and how your competitors are doing. You can use this analysis to find out what’s working in your industry and which competitors to watch out for. It even gives you an idea of how well those competitors are meeting consumer needs.

Depending on the competitor analysis tool you use, you can get as granular as you need with your research. For instance, Sprout Social lets you analyze your competitors’ social strategies. You can see what types of content they’re posting and even benchmark your growth against theirs.

Brand awareness research

Conducting brand awareness research allows you to assess your brand’s standing in the market. It tells you how well-known your brand is among your target audience and what they associate with it. This can help you gauge people’s sentiments toward your brand and whether you need to rebrand or reposition.

If you don’t know where to start with your research, you’re in the right place.

There’s no shortage of market research methods out there. In this section, we’ve highlighted research channels for small and big businesses alike.

Considering that Google sees a staggering 8.5 billion searches each day, there’s perhaps no better place to start.

A quick Google search is a potential goldmine for all sorts of questions to kick off your market research. Who’s ranking for keywords related to your industry? Which products and pieces of content are the hottest right now? Who’s running ads related to your business?

For example, Google Product Listing Ads can help highlight all of the above for B2C brands.

The same applies to B2B brands looking to keep tabs on who’s running industry-related ads and ranking for keyword terms too.

There’s no denying that email represents both an aggressive and effective marketing channel for marketers today. Case in point, 44% of online shoppers consider email as the most influential channel in their buying decisions.

Looking through industry and competitor emails is a brilliant way to learn more about your market. For example, what types of offers and deals are your competitors running? How often are they sending emails?

Email is also invaluable for gathering information directly from your customers. This survey message from Asana is a great example of how to pick your customers’ brains to figure out how you can improve your quality of service.

Industry journals, reports and blogs

Don’t neglect the importance of big-picture market research when it comes to tactics and marketing channels to explore. Look to marketing resources such as reports and blogs as well as industry journals

Keeping your ear to the ground on new trends and technologies is a smart move for any business. Sites such as Statista, Marketing Charts, AdWeek and Emarketer are treasure troves of up-to-date data and news for marketers.

And of course, there’s the  Sprout Insights blog . And invaluable resources like The Sprout Social Index™  can keep you updated on the latest social trends.

Social media

If you want to learn more about your target market, look no further than social media. Social offers a place to discover what your customers want to see in future products or which brands are killin’ it. In fact, social media is become more important for businesses than ever with the level of data available.

It represents a massive repository of real-time data and insights that are instantly accessible. Brand monitoring and social listening are effective ways to conduct social media research . You can even be more direct with your approach. Ask questions directly or even poll your audience to understand their needs and preferences.

The 5 steps for how to do market research

Now that we’ve covered the why and where, it’s time to get into the practical aspects of market research. Here are five essential steps on how to do market research effectively.

Step 1: Identify your research topic

First off, what are you researching about? What do you want to find out? Narrow down on a specific research topic so you can start with a clear idea of what to look for.

For example, you may want to learn more about how well your product features are satisfying the needs of existing users. This might potentially lead to feature updates and improvements. Or it might even result in new feature introductions.

Similarly, your research topic may be related to your product or service launch or customer experience. Or you may want to conduct research for an upcoming marketing campaign.

Step 2: Choose a buyer persona to engage

If you’re planning to focus your research on a specific type of audience, decide which buyer persona you want to engage. This persona group will serve as a representative sample of your target audience.

Engaging a specific group of audience lets you streamline your research efforts. As such, it can be a much more effective and organized approach than researching thousands (if not millions) of individuals.

You may be directing your research toward existing users of your product. To get even more granular, you may want to focus on users who have been familiar with the product for at least a year, for example.

Step 3: Start collecting data

The next step is one of the most critical as it involves collecting the data you need for your research. Before you begin, make sure you’ve chosen the right research methods that will uncover the type of data you need. This largely depends on your research topic and goals.

Remember that you don’t necessarily have to stick to one research method. You may use a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches. So for example, you could use interviews to supplement the data from your surveys. Or you may stick to insights from your social listening efforts.

To keep things consistent, let’s look at this in the context of the example from earlier. Perhaps you can send out a survey to your existing users asking them a bunch of questions. This might include questions like which features they use the most and how often they use them. You can get them to choose an answer from one to five and collect quantitative data.

Plus, for qualitative insights, you could even include a few open-ended questions with the option to write their answers. For instance, you might ask them if there’s any improvement they wish to see in your product.

Step 4: Analyze results

Once you have all the data you need, it’s time to analyze it keeping your research topic in mind. This involves trying to interpret the data to look for a wider meaning, particularly in relation to your research goal.

So let’s say a large percentage of responses were four or five in the satisfaction rating. This means your existing users are mostly satisfied with your current product features. On the other hand, if the responses were mostly ones and twos, you may look for opportunities to improve. The responses to your open-ended questions can give you further context as to why people are disappointed.

Step 5: Make decisions for your business

Now it’s time to take your findings and turn them into actionable insights for your business. In this final step, you need to decide how you want to move forward with your new market insight.

What did you find in your research that would require action? How can you put those findings to good use?

The market research tools you should be using

To wrap things up, let’s talk about the various tools available to conduct speedy, in-depth market research. These tools are essential for conducting market research faster and more efficiently.

Social listening and analytics

Social analytics tools like Sprout can help you keep track of engagement across social media. This goes beyond your own engagement data but also includes that of your competitors. Considering how quickly social media moves, using a third-party analytics tool is ideal. It allows you to make sense of your social data at a glance and ensure that you’re never missing out on important trends.

Email marketing research tools

Keeping track of brand emails is a good idea for any brand looking to stand out in its audience’s inbox.

Tools such as MailCharts ,  Really Good Emails  and  Milled  can show you how different brands run their email campaigns.

Meanwhile, tools like  Owletter  allow you to monitor metrics such as frequency and send-timing. These metrics can help you understand email marketing strategies among competing brands.

Content marketing research

If you’re looking to conduct research on content marketing, tools such as  BuzzSumo  can be of great help. This tool shows you the top-performing industry content based on keywords. Here you can see relevant industry sites and influencers as well as which brands in your industry are scoring the most buzz. It shows you exactly which pieces of content are ranking well in terms of engagements and shares and on which social networks.

SEO and keyword tracking

Monitoring industry keywords is a great way to uncover competitors. It can also help you discover opportunities to advertise your products via organic search. Tools such as  Ahrefs  provide a comprehensive keyword report to help you see how your search efforts stack up against the competition.

Competitor comparison template

For the sake of organizing your market research, consider creating a competitive matrix. The idea is to highlight how you stack up side-by-side against others in your market. Use a  social media competitive analysis template  to track your competitors’ social presence. That way, you can easily compare tactics, messaging and performance. Once you understand your strengths and weaknesses next to your competitors, you’ll find opportunities as well.

Customer persona creator

Finally, customer personas represent a place where all of your market research comes together. You’d need to create a profile of your ideal customer that you can easily refer to. Tools like  Xtensio  can help in outlining your customer motivations and demographics as you zero in on your target market.

Build a solid market research strategy

Having a deeper understanding of the market gives you leverage in a sea of competitors. Use the steps and market research tools we shared above to build an effective market research strategy.

But keep in mind that the accuracy of your research findings depends on the quality of data collected. Turn to Sprout’s social media analytics tools to uncover heaps of high-quality data across social networks.

• Marketing Disciplines
• Team Collaboration

How to build a marketing tech stack that scales your business

• Customer Experience

Brand trust: What it is and why it matters

• Leveling Up

The 43 best marketing resources we recommend in 2024

Executing a successful demand generation strategy [with examples]

• Now on slide

Build and grow stronger relationships on social

Sprout Social helps you understand and reach your audience, engage your community and measure performance with the only all-in-one social media management platform built for connection.

• Start free trial

Start selling with Shopify today

Start your free trial with Shopify today—then use these resources to guide you through every step of the process.

What Is a Competitive Analysis? (How-To Guide)

A competitive analysis helps businesses discover strengths and weaknesses of companies in their industry. Create a competitive analysis with this free template.

A competitive analysis tells business owners what their competitors are doing and identifies opportunities to outperform them.

Running a competitive analysis is about finding the strengths and weaknesses of the companies in your industry. By researching competitors’ products, sales, and marketing, you can decide how to move forward with your business strategy.

Competitive analyses are valuable at any stage of a business. But how do you make one? This post explains how to run a competitive analysis to meet your goals.

There’s also a free competitor analysis template to make the process easier.

Free competitor research template

Find a strategic angle to achieve sales success, uncover your product-market fit, and stand out from the competition with our free template.

What is a competitive analysis?

Competitive analysis is a type of  market research . It’s the process of evaluating and understanding the strengths and weaknesses of competitors in your market. It involves gathering and analyzing data on competitors’ products, pricing, marketing strategies, distribution channels, and customer base.

Doing a competitive analysis helps you find potential advantages and barriers within your target market or products. It allows brands to monitor how direct and indirect competitors handle marketing, pricing, and distribution.

Competitor analysis example: what does one look like?

There’s no single way to do a competitive analysis. How it looks will vary depending on what you’re trying to learn about your competitors.

You might do a competitor analysis on a specific part of your competitors’ operations—like their website—or you might do a complete analysis of their entire marketing and sales team. The goal is to help you understand your competitors’ actions and how your business should respond.

There’s more than one way to structure a competitive analysis. Here are some types of information often included:

For a broad competitive analysis, you might look at your competitors’:

• Target customers
• Unique value add  or what sets their products apart
• Sales pitch
• Price points  for products
• Shipping  Policy

High-level information can help you understand the fundamental differences between your competitors. For a more specific analysis, try looking at your competitors’: 

• Website features (design, content)
• Customer experience (checkout flow, customer support)
• Marketing content (product descriptions, blog posts)
• Social media (post frequency, engagement rates)
• Promotions (sales, discounts)
• Communications (abandoned cart emails, newsletters)
• Reviews (customer feedback, complaints)

What’s included in a competitive analysis is up to you. Use your research to answer specific questions that will help your business take action for future growth.

Need an example? Here’s what a simple competitor analysis might look like:

Read more:  What Is Product Development? Learn The 7-Step Framework Helping Businesses Get to Market, Faster and Easier .

Why competitor analysis matters for ecommerce

It’s easier to compete when you understand the competition. Knowing what your competitors are doing helps you plan a response, whether that’s adjusting your pricing strategy, tailoring your target audience, or copying a good practice.

A wider view of your ecommerce space can also help you see what sets your business apart. 

If you’re  starting an ecommerce business , an analysis of competitors will help you:

• Make informed marketing decisions
• Identify industry trends
• Benchmark against competitors
• Find your unique value proposition
• Determine pricing
• Unearth new ways of speaking to customers
• Find gaps in your marketing or product line

A competitive analysis is a living document that should be updated as a company grows.

As you develop new products, update your marketing strategy, or expand into new areas, a current competitive analysis document is a powerful resource.

It can reveal opportunities to gain leverage on your competitors, while highlighting areas where competition is intense. 

When to do a competitive analysis

When building a business, a thorough competitive analysis is a great way to deepen your understanding of market factors.

As you grow, repeat your competitive analysis to stay in the loop with the industry’s latest products, features, and marketing tactics. Running regular reports will also help you compare how your business responds to broader trends.

Refresh your competitive analysis any time your business or industry changes significantly. A sudden surge in product demand or a Google algorithm update are both good reasons to review what your competitors are doing.

When deciding how often to revisit your competitor analysis, consider how fast-paced your industry is. Will your data be outdated in a month, quarter, or year? If a new competitor enters your market, remember they’ll likely analyze your activities, too.

How to do a competitive analysis

Keep your competitor research organized by following these seven steps:

1. Select 7–10 competitors 

If you don’t know your competitors, step into a customer’s shoes and search for your products or services on Google, Amazon, or marketplaces relevant to your business. Identify competitors that:

• Sell similar products
• Have a similar philosophy or mission
• Market to your audience
• Are new to the marketplace
• Are established in the marketplace 

A diverse list of competitors will provide insight into how different companies are responding to challenges within your market.

2. Create a spreadsheet

As you collect competitor data, keep it organized in a table or spreadsheet—bonus points if your table design allows for easy updates over time.

Within your document, build sections for comparing competitors based on your research objectives, such as: 

• Price range
• Product offerings
• Social media engagement
• Lead generation strategy
• First-time visitor offers

3. Choose direct competitors and indirect competitors

Categorize each business in your spreadsheet as a direct, indirect, or tertiary competitor. This will help you determine how they relate to you.

• Direct competitors  sell a similar product or service to a similar audience. Nike and Adidas are primary competitors.
• Indirect competitors  offer a high- or low-end version of a product to different audiences. Victoria’s Secret and Walmart are secondary competitors.
• Tertiary competitors  are brands that market to your audience but don’t sell similar products or directly compete with you. They represent potential partners or future competitors—think Gatorade and Under Armour.

4. Identify your competitors’ positioning

Positioning  is a business’s most persuasive marketing tool. Good positioning connects you with a target audience and informs your messaging and values. 

Understanding your competitors’ positioning is essential. You can learn how other companies talk to your customers and find a unique, relevant voice for your brand. 

Analyze these channels to see how competitors position themselves:

• Social media
• Press releases
• Website copy
• Product copy

When identifying your competitors’ positioning, ask yourself:

• What story is being told?
• How are products described? 
• How is the company described? 
• What is the unique  value proposition ? 

Understand how competitors interact with their followers, customers, and other stakeholders. If you can pinpoint their communication framework, you’ll be able to clearly position yourself within the market.

5. Determine competitive advantage and offerings

Most successful companies sell unique products or offer distinctive experiences. It could be an innovative feature, a secret recipe, or unparalleled customer service.

Think of these offerings as a company’s competitive advantage or  unique selling proposition (USP) .

A fashion retailer’s competitive advantage might be high-quality products sold with expedited shipping. An online educator’s USP could be their 20 years of experience.

Look at your competitors’ goods and services and decide where their advantage lies. Their brand will likely be closely tied to their unique offering.

Read customer reviews to see why your target audience shops with competing companies. They may like lower price points, premium materials, or sustainable practices.

Learning about the competitive advantages in your space will help you figure out where you should and shouldn’t try to compete.

6. Understand how your competitors market their products

Successful ecommerce stores often outpace the competition through marketing, not with their products alone.

But don’t assume you need to compete across all marketing channels to stay in front of customers.

Instead, use your competitive analysis to find out how your competitors are reaching customers and where they focus their marketing resources. 

Maybe your competitors are all about targeting customers through Instagram or capturing traffic with helpful blog posts.

Use software tools (listed below) to collect marketing data. Then, assume the role of a customer for a first-hand experience of competitor marketing.

You can try:

• Signing up for newsletters
• Subscribing to blogs
• Following competitors on social media
• Abandoning products in a shopping cart
• Purchasing a product

As you study competitors’ marketing and document your findings, you can decide whether to compete in popular marketing channels or reach your customers through less-used avenues.

The insights gathered during this stage will be helpful for sales and marketing teams. 

7. Conduct a SWOT analysis

Consider  conducting a SWOT analysis  to accompany the data you collect. 

SWOT is a competitive analysis framework that lists your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. SWOT leans into your competitors’ strengths and compares them to your business to find areas for improvement. 

Strengths and weaknesses are elements of your business that you control and change over time, including:

• Product offering
• Partnerships
• Intellectual property
• Number of employees
• Market share

Opportunities and threats are outside your control. You can plan for changes but can’t influence these elements. They include:

• Competitor products
• The economy
• Consumer trends
• Market size
• Market demand

Aim to run a SWOT analysis annually. It helps inform your break-even analysis and keeps tabs on the competitive landscape. You’ll want to include an updated SWOT analysis in your  business plan  if you seek funding.

🎯 TIP:  If you’re interested in writing a business plan but don’t know where to start, here’s a sample  business plan template . Thousands of people have used this template to create their own plans (and it’s completely free to use).

Collect data with these competitive analysis tools

Once you know which competitors to study, it’s time to research and collect data for your competitive analysis. The good news is that many tools and software are available to make data collection easier.

Let’s look at a few resources that can help you gather insights into your  competition’s keywords ,  content marketing , social media strategy, and more.

SEO Analysis

• Ahrefs : See your competitors’ top-performing keywords and estimated traffic.
• SE Ranking : Find out your competitors’ paid and organic search performance.

PPC/keyword performance

• SimilarWeb : Get insights into estimated monthly visits and traffic to gauge your competitors’ market share.
• SpyFu : Download your competition’s most profitable keywords from their PPC campaigns.
• iSpionage : See which keywords your competitors target on Google Ads, plus their projected monthly budget.
• SEMrush : Run audits on competing sites and analyze their backlinks.

Social media performance

• RivalIQ : See how often competitors post on social media, their average engagement rates, and their most successful content.
• Followerwonk : Get Twitter (now X) insights about follower demographics, key influencers, and performance metrics.
• Sprout Social : Measure competitors’ performance across social channels.

Email marketing

• Owletter : Analyze changes and spot trends in your competitors’ email strategy.
• MailCharts : Aggregate emails to get insights into email frequency, subject line tactics, and more.

Content marketing performance

• BuzzSumo : See the top-performing content for general topics and specific competitors.
• Monitor Backlinks : Monitor backlinks and get notified each time someone references your or your competitors’ content.

Use resources like these to gather data and drop it into your competitive analysis spreadsheet to store your findings in a single, organized space.

A competitive analysis template

If you’re unsure how to start your competitor analysis, here’s an example template to get the ball rolling. 

Let’s say you sell makeup brushes. To compare competitor approaches and identify where you can stand out, you might develop a table like this:

Add as many sections as needed to your template, but remember to keep the group of primary and secondary competitors below 10, so things stay relevant.

Want a simple competitive analysis template to speed up the process? 

6 pitfalls of competitive analysis in marketing 

Now that you know how to create a competitive assessment, let’s go over some of the pitfalls that may affect the insights you’ve gathered.

1. Competitive analysis is not a one-and-done exercise

Never updating your data can create a false picture, which leads to poor decision-making. Businesses are constantly evolving, so it’s important to consider competitor analysis as an ongoing process.

2. Confirmation bias is real

We all have a tendency to favor our initial assumptions. This is called  confirmation bias . As you work through your analysis, try to challenge preconceived ideas about your competitors. Let the data build an objective picture of your competitor landscape.

3. Data without action is useless

If you’re putting in the work to do a competitor analysis, don’t let your findings gather virtual dust. Make a strategic plan to respond to your competitors’ activities with your own updates.

4. Working harder instead of smarter

Don’t reinvent the wheel and do things the hard way: leverage the latest data collection tools to provide the right information without the legwork.

Many of today’s tools significantly speed up competitor research and provide bespoke insights and data points.

5. Starting without a direction

If you’re directionless while creating your competitive analysis, finding actionable takeaways will be more challenging. Before diving into research, define your goals and what you hope to learn about your competition.

6. Not accounting for market timing

When looking at competitor data, study how companies have grown and progressed over time, rather than examining their approach at a single fixed point.

Sometimes, information about how your competitors have evolved can be more valuable than knowing what they’re doing now. Understanding how similar companies have successfully navigated your industry will help you make better decisions.

Competitive analysis: your business edge

Competitive intelligence  is vital when  starting a business . By doing market competition analysis on an ongoing basis, you can stay on top of your competition. You’ll be able to break into new markets, launch new products, and keep tabs on your competitors’ customers—giving you a cutting-edge approach that keeps your business or startup agile. 

• How This Data Scientist Used Market Research to Launch A Successful Fertility Business
• The 9 Best Dropshipping Websites for Your Online Store
• How to Do a SWOT Analysis + Examples and Template
• How To Write the Perfect Business Plan in 9 Steps (2024)
• What To Sell on Shopify: Top 12 Things To Sell (2024)
• Product Research in 2024 - How to Find Product Ideas
• How To Source Products To Sell Online
• How to Start a Dropshipping Business- A Complete Playbook for 2024
• How to Get a Business License- A State-by-State Guide
• Trimming It Down- How to Create a Lean Business Plan

Competitive Analysis FAQ

What's inside a competitive analysis.

• A competitor’s target customers
• Their market share
• Their major competitive advantages
• Key product features
• Product price points across marketplaces
• Shipping policies
• If competitors received funding or venture capital.

How do you write a competitive analysis?

• Choose seven to 10 competitors.
• Create a spreadsheet to track your data.
• Determine competitor types.
• Identifying positioning.
• Determine competitive advantage and offering.
• Understand how your competition markets themselves.
• Conduct a SWOT analysis.

Is SWOT a competitive analysis?

Keep up with the latest from Shopify

Get free ecommerce tips, inspiration, and resources delivered directly to your inbox.

By entering your email, you agree to receive marketing emails from Shopify.

popular posts

The point of sale for every sale.

Subscribe to our blog and get free ecommerce tips, inspiration, and resources delivered directly to your inbox.

Unsubscribe anytime. By entering your email, you agree to receive marketing emails from Shopify.

Latest from Shopify

Jun 9, 2024

Jun 8, 2024

Jun 7, 2024

Learn on the go. Try Shopify for free, and explore all the tools you need to start, run, and grow your business.

Try Shopify for free, no credit card required.

Competitive market analysis: what it is and how to do it right

Keeping your eye on the competition is vital. Find out how you can use competitive market analysis to stay one step ahead of your rivals.

What is competitor analysis?

How often should you carry out competitor analysis, how to do competitor analysis in 10 steps.

Competitive market analysis is one of the most overlooked aspects of marketing. All too often, brands are so focused on what they’re doing, they aren’t paying attention to what their competitors are up to.

Keeping your eye on the ball when it comes to your competition is incredibly important to make sure you don’t get blindsided. And it’s not just your closest rivals you need to monitor, it’s the wider marketplace and your consumers. Otherwise, you might be taken by surprise by a plucky newcomer! 

Thankfully, there is a reliable way to make sure this doesn’t happen, and that’s what we’re going to look at in this guide.

First things first…

Competitor analysis is a type of market research where you gather insights into how your competitors are performing, how they compare to your brand and what consumers think about you and your competitors.

And competitive analysis?

Competitive analysis is a form of market intelligence . The process involves gathering a wide range of information on your competitors. You’ll look at their product range and value propositions, their business model and brand and marketing strategies , their sales performance, and the amount of brand equity they have. 

This will allow you to assess each competing brand and put them on a scale to understand how much of a threat they represent. You’ll examine what they’re doing right and what they’re doing wrong. With this knowledge, you’ll be able to devise strategies that will help you get ahead of your closest competitors. It will also enable you to spot marketing opportunities to take market share from competitors who are underperforming. 

Competitive market analysis is a hugely valuable process for both business leaders and marketers alike. Finding the right tool is crucial, so we’ve narrowed them down to the top competitor analysis tools to help you.

Competitive research is usually carried out as part of a market analysis when companies are putting together a business plan for a new product or venture. But just because your business is up and running, it doesn’t mean you should take your eye off the ball when it comes to your competitors.

In fact, you should continuously monitor your competition—through things like competition mapping —and keep collaborative files on each one of your competitors that your team can feed into. Having this information to hand when you need it will give your brand a competitive advantage. There are a number of tools for market analysis you can use to stay up-to-date on your competitor’s movements without much effort:

• Google Alerts – set up an alert for when your competitor’s name appears in articles, blogs and research.
• Companies House alerts – get notified when your competitors file accounts or make changes to their board of directors.
• STAT – get alerts every time your competitor moves up or down the SERPs (search engine results pages).
• Attest – schedule a brand tracker survey every six months to see if your competitor’s NPS has changed.

The competitive intelligence you receive through these channels should flag up anything that needs to be investigated further. But don’t forget to periodically repeat step one to make sure you’re monitoring all the competitors you need to be, and that there aren’t any new competitors gaining ground. The competitive landscape can change at any time and an indirect competitor can easily become a direct competitor by adding a new product line. 

You can also carry out a competitor analysis any time you need to reassess your own position in the marketplace. The process gives you an unbeatable perspective on how you’re performing, what your unique value proposition is, and any areas for improvement within your business.

Doing a comprehensive competitive market trend analysis might seem a little overwhelming. It’s true that a lot goes into it but, thankfully, the process can be broken down into much more manageable chunks. Here are the 10 steps to effective competitor analysis and the analysis tools you can use to help you:

• Identify your competitors
• Analyse your competitors’ product offering
• Investigate competitors’ market share
• Calculate your competitors’ market reach
• Find out how satisfied your competitors’ customers are
• Study your competitors’ marketing strategy
• Examine the strength of competitors’ content and social media
• Investigate your competitors’ tech stack
• Test the customer experience 
• Carry out a SWOT analysis

How are your competitors doing??

Yes—you can totally run consumer research into how your competitors are performing and compare that with insights about your brand

1. Identify your competitors

You can’t research your competitors’ businesses if you don’t know who they are. While you’re bound to have an idea of the companies operating in your space – and which ones are the biggest – you might not know which ones are most likely to be considered by your target market.

For example, let’s say you’re a men’s shoe brand targeting affluent hipsters – that’s quite a niche audience . What you actually need to know is which shoe brands have the most share-of-mind amongst that specific demographic.

The most efficient way to find that out is by asking the consumers in question. Using a consumer research platform like Attest , you can get answers from people in your target market. You might ask them:

• What brands come to mind when they think about your product or service (unprompted recall)
• What brands they’re aware of from a list you provide (prompted recall)
• The last time they purchased your product or service
• Which brand they bought from
• Brands they’ve bought from in the past
• Brands they plan to buy from in the future (purchase intent)

By getting respondents to answer in their own words, you gain a true picture of the brands you’re competing against. This might surface brands you’d not considered as direct competitors, or it could show you that a brand you thought was dominant actually isn’t in the eyes of your market. 

2. Analyse your competitors’ product offering

Now you know which brands are on your target audience’s radar, you can start researching them . You’ll want to get familiar with their product range – what do they offer that you don’t (or vice versa)? What price range are they in and how does your pricing compare ? Now, look at the quality of the products – are they better/worse/the same? How slick is their website? Be objective about it; it’s important not to look at your own brand through rose-tinted glasses!

You should also try to ascertain each competitor’s value proposition. In other words, what the brand tells people it stands for and why they should shop with them. Look at the messaging on its website – what are the key themes? Maybe it trades on being environmentally friendly or having the best prices? It’s important to understand how your competitors are appealing to their customers. 

Try drawing up a market map. Market mapping involves arranging competing brands/products on an axis according to their positioning. For example, whether they are high or low cost or whether they are complex or basic. 

Finally, what is your competitor’s business model? And which distribution channels do they use? For example, do they sell through third-party retailers or only direct-to-consumer? Do they list on marketplaces? Do they franchise or licence their products, or sell by subscription? Do they have a freemium offering? This process can highlight the potential to innovate your own business model . 

3. Investigate competitors’ market share

Digging into your competitors’ finances can tell you a lot about how well they’re doing. For UK companies, you can find accounts filed at Companies House. Meanwhile, publicly held companies in the US will publish trading reports on their corporate websites. You can use this information to calculate a company’s market share.

You can determine a company’s market share by dividing its total sales or revenues by the industry’s total sales over a fiscal period (Most industries have formal associations which compile and track industry sales data and have information on overall market size ). Use this measure to get a general idea of the size of a company relative to the industry. 

You can also see if the company’s market share is growing. A company that is maintaining its market share is growing revenues at the same rate as the total market. But a company that is growing its market share will be growing its revenues faster than its competitors.

You’ll also be able to find out other valuable information about a competitor by searching trade publications and other online sources. Look for:

• Funding the company has received
• Investment the company has made 
• Plans to expand or enter into new markets
• Notable new hires, vacancies and current number of staff
• Or anything that signals a downturn, like redundancies or store closures

4. Calculate your competitors’ market reach

As well as understanding competitors’ market share, it’s also worth understanding their market reach, meaning how many customers can they access (or access them)? For brands with physical stores, how many do they have and where are they located? 

For those selling online, what are their logistics like? Can they deliver to all parts of the country? Do they ship internationally? If they do, is shipping priced competitively? These factors will affect the number of people who are able to shop with the brand. 

You should also review the company’s delivery terms in general – do they offer free delivery? How long does delivery take? How do they handle returns? These are all areas where you might be able to offer your customers something better.

5. Find out how satisfied your competitors’ customers are

Hard financial figures don’t tell the full story. A major consideration when conducting competitive market analysis is how happy a brand’s customers are. Looking at feedback from real customers can tell you so much. It can help you understand why people shop with a competitor, what they like about them, what they don’t like about them.

There are a number of sources to obtain this information. Social media is a good place to start. You can use social listening tools to assess the levels of positive vs negative sentiment towards a brand. But it’s also worth spending some time actually reading comments and posts to get a feel for the things people love… or what they’re frustrated with.

You should also read reviews posted to Amazon or the brand’s own site because it will show up in detail any areas of weakness that your competitor’s product has. Maybe lots of people are complaining about faulty products, or slow delivery or poor customer service. Whatever it is, you will have identified a chink in their armour. 

Market research is another great resource for competitor intelligence. You can obtain a Net Promoter Score (NPS) for your competitors, by asking consumers how likely they are to recommend the brand to a friend or colleague. It gives you an instant snapshot of the general sentiment towards the brand and is a metric you can benchmark against. Meanwhile, combining NPS with purchase intent data allows you to measure overall brand equity as part of benchmarking research .

17 brand preference survey questions (including NPS)

Looking for examples of brand preference survey questions? Our in-house team of research experts have put together this essential list (including Net Promoter Score)

Other questions you can ask through consumer surveys to get a complete picture of how people feel about particular competitors are:

• Which of the following qualities do you associate with brand x?
• Why do/don’t you buy brand x?
• How would you describe brand x to friends?
• Why did you stop buying brand x?
• What could brand x do better?

6. Study your competitors’ marketing strategy

You’ve looked at the messaging your competitors are putting out, now look at the methods they use to convey that messaging. Try to find out which marketing channels they’re leveraging. These might include:

• Owned media – blog, newsletter, podcast, downloadable content or in-house magazine
• Paid social – ads on Facebook and Instagram etc.
• Organic social – which social media platforms do they use?
• Paid search – what keywords are they targeting for PPC/AdWords?
• Organic SEO – where do they appear in organic search results and what optimization techniques are they using? 
• Display advertising – banner ads on third-party websites
• Native advertising – promoted content like articles or videos on third-party websites
• Affiliate advertising – do they have an affiliate marketing scheme?
• Print media – adverts or advertorials in newspapers or magazines
• Broadcast media  – radio or TV ads
• Sponsorships and partnerships – are they linked to any other brands?
• Out of home – billboards, ads in stations, on buses/taxis etc. 
• Sales collateral – leaflets, brochures, direct mail 
• Event marketing – hosting or participating in online or offline events
• Influencer marketing – do they have brand ambassadors? 
• PR – do they issue press releases or stage PR stunts?

This process will give you a good idea of where your competitors are spending their marketing budgets. You might find that they’re under-utilizing certain channels which could represent a potential opportunity for your brand.

Start compiling examples of each type of marketing your competitor uses. Study how each piece expresses their brand identity and compels consumers to take action. What could you imitate? What could you do better? 

7. Examine the strength of competitors’ content and social media   

Just because a brand is present on lots of platforms, it doesn’t mean they’re really using them to their best advantage. As part of your analysis, you should look at how many followers they have on each social media platform and what level of engagement they enjoy. Observe how often they post, and how many likes, comments and shares they typically get. 

Which platform are they strongest on? What type of content do their followers engage with most? Are they making use of all the features on a platform, such as Facebook Live, Instagram Stories or Instagram TV? Do they sell directly through social media via services like Instagram Shopping?

Now, look at the content your competitor publishes on their own website. How often do they post to their blog? Do they produce downloadable guides or whitepapers? You can use a tool like BuzzSumo to see how successful their content marketing is. Just enter your rival’s URL to see their top content and the number of shares and engagements achieved across Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. You can even see who is sharing their content, helping you identify their most important influencers and develop your own content strategy. 

8. Investigate your competitors’ tech stack

What technology and tools are your competitors using to give them an edge? You can often find market research case studies on provider’s websites detailing how they work with different brands and this can provide you with lots of insight. 

For example, you can find out exactly how brands like Gymshark , Bloom & Wild , Little Dish , World Remit and Bought By Many work with Attest to gather consumer insight and use it to grow their businesses. 

You can also take a peek at the mechanics behind a competitor’s website with a tool like Built With. Just type in the company’s URL and you’ll be able to see what technology your competitors’ site runs on, including any third-party plugins and widgets they’re using.

9. Test the customer experience 

There’s no better way to understand the customer experience your competitor offers than by experiencing it yourself. So, pose as a customer and buy something. If they have physical stores, go to one. Make detailed notes about your experience:

• How appealing does the shop look from the outside? What’s the window display like? What offers are being promoted?
• How are things displayed in the shop? How tidy is it? What sort of welcome did you get?
• What’s the range like? Is everything in stock? Are the staff helpful? Is there any cool tech?
• Is there a big queue for checkout? What payment methods are accepted? Are your purchases packaged up nicely?

If you’re buying online, use a screen recorder to make a recording of the experience and narrate as you go. How easy is it to navigate the site and find what you want? What’s the checkout process like? Pay attention to all the follow-up communications too and look at how they try to nurture you as a new customer. 

10. Carry out a SWOT analysis

The final step in carrying out a competitive market analysis is taking everything you’ve learned and using it to do a SWOT analysis. SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Consider all aspects of your competitor’s business, from their proposition and marketing to their infrastructure and financial standing. Here’s how to break the analysis down:

Strengths – What does your competitor do really well? What sets them apart from others in the market? How robust is their business financially and operationally?

Weaknesses – Where is your competitor failing? What could have been better about the experience you had when you shopped with them? What resource limitations do they have?

Opportunities – What’s missing from their offering? What product features are lacking? Are there any markets they’re underserving? Are they failing to use some marketing channels? 

Threats – What are they doing that presents a threat to your business? Are their prices more competitive than yours? Are they planning new retail outlets near yours?

This process will help you understand your competitor’s strengths, who you’re able to compete against, and the best ways to do it. You should also carry out a SWOT analysis for your own brand.

Run competitive market research today with Attest

Many brands run research into what consumers think about their brand, but not many gather insights into what people think about their competitors.

This research is super important as it gives context to your position in the market and tells you how you can increase your market share.

Learn what people think about you and your competitors

Running market analysis helps you understand what consumers think about you and other brands in your category. Reach 125 million people in 59 markets with Attest

Nikos Nikolaidis

Senior Customer Research Manager 

Nikos joined Attest in 2019, with a strong background in psychology and market research. As part of Customer Research Team, Nikos focuses on helping brands uncover insights to achieve their objectives and open new opportunities for growth.

Related articles

Brits are shopping online more regularly than six months ago, direct-to-consumer, top 13 market research firms in new york city for real consumer insights, how to use consumer research to survive a downturn, subscribe to our newsletter.

Fill in your email and we’ll drop fresh insights and events info into your inbox each week.

* I agree to receive communications from Attest. Privacy Policy .

You're now subscribed to our mailing list to receive exciting news, reports, and other updates!

• Skip to main content
• Skip to primary sidebar
• Skip to footer
• QuestionPro

• Solutions Industries Gaming Automotive Sports and events Education Government Travel & Hospitality Financial Services Healthcare Cannabis Technology Use Case NPS+ Communities Audience Contactless surveys Mobile LivePolls Member Experience GDPR Positive People Science 360 Feedback Surveys
• Resources Blog eBooks Survey Templates Case Studies Training Help center

Home Market Research

Competitor Research: What it is + How to conduct one

Having the feeling that your company is falling behind the competition is frustrating, right? Competitor research is one efficient strategy for staying one step ahead of the game. You can learn about your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, gain valuable insights into their strategies, and ultimately improve your own business through competitive analysis.

In this post, I’ll discuss competitor research in detail and give you actionable tips on how to conduct it effectively. So brace yourself to overcome the competition.

What is Competitor Research?

Competitor research is the process of identifying your competitors, finding out what their strengths and weaknesses are, and evaluating their products or services. It helps you understand the market and find ways to differentiate your business.

You may learn a lot about the target market and the competition by analyzing the products and services of your big competitors. It also assists in identifying previously unnoticed industry trends in the business world.

LEARN ABOUT:  Market Evaluation

Why is Competitor Research Important?

Competitor research is an important aspect of business strategy because it allows companies to learn about their competitors’ strengths and weaknesses. Businesses can identify opportunities for improvement and areas where they can gain a competitive advantage by conducting a competitive analysis of their product or service, pricing, and marketing strategies.

Businesses may adapt their strategy to better serve their potential customers and position themselves to succeed in their industries by keeping up to date with what their competitors are doing. Following are some reasons for the importance of competitor analysis:

• To Understand the Market: Competitive market research helps to find market trends, consumer preferences, and other important elements that have an impact on their industry by researching their competitors.
• To Identify Opportunities: Businesses can identify market gaps where they can gain a competitive advantage by researching their competitors. For instance, they might identify market opportunities or brand-new customer groups to focus on.
• To Develop Better Strategies: By conducting a comprehensive competitive analysis, you can better understand why customers choose to buy from you vs. your competitors. Businesses may identify what works and what doesn’t by analyzing what their major competitors are doing and then modifying their marketing strategy accordingly.

LEARN ABOUT: market research trends

Is competitor research qualitative or quantitative?

Competitor research can use both qualitative and quantitative methods based on the particular research objective and the data that needs to be collected.

• Qualitative research collects non-numerical data and is frequently employed to better understand customer behavior, attitudes, and opinions. Conducting customer interviews, evaluating interactions on social media, and reviewing online reviews are examples of qualitative research methods.
• Quantitative research contains the collection of numerical data and is frequently used to measure market trends and the behavior of customers. Quantitative research approaches include conducting surveys or questionnaires, evaluating sales data, or making use of web analytics tools to measure website traffic

The appropriate strategy will depend on the goals of the research, the resources available, and the exact information you want to learn from the research.

Both qualitative and quantitative research approaches have their advantages and disadvantages. In many cases, a mix of qualitative and quantitative research methods can offer a complete picture of the competitive market.

LEARN ABOUT: Qualitative Interview

What should be included in competitor research?

A comprehensive competitor analysis or research should include some key elements to provide a complete picture of the market environment. Here are a few important things to consider:

Identify competitors

Analyzing the online presence of competitors.

• Website Design and Layout: It covers your competitor’s website’s layout, design, user-friendliness, and mobile responsiveness.
• Content Quality: It involves the accuracy, relevancy, and audience-usefulness of the content on your competitor’s website.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO): It analyzes the on-page and off-page SEO tactics used by your competitors, including how they make use of keywords, meta descriptions, headings, URL structures, domain authority, and link-building strategies.
• Traffic Analysis: Find out how much organic and sponsored traffic your competitor’s website gets, including their use of calls-to-action, landing pages, and forms.
• Social Media Integration: Check out how your competitors use social networking symbols and widgets on their websites.
• Lead Generation: Check your competitor’s website for pop-ups, lead magnets, and other lead collection methods.

Competitive analysis of Products or Services

• Identify the gaps: Product or service that your competitors provide but you do not.
• Differentiators: Product or service that you provide but not by your competitors.

Pricing research

Marketing audit.

• Sponsored Ad Campaigns
• Social media advertisements
• Newsletters

SWOT analysis

Gathering information and tracking your findings.

• Business name
• Social media
• Special features
• Pros and cons
• additional details

Improvements and conclusions

Competitive research is a continuous process. For you to remain competitive in the market, ongoing monitoring is required, such as watching how competitors change. Creating a competitor analysis template will make future market research easier for you.

LEARN ABOUT:  Market research industry

Dumpster Diving vs. Value Driving: Which would you pick?

Instead of spending all of our time and money figuring out what the competition is doing — shouldn’t we just give our customers what they want?

Yeah. It was getting ridiculous. That little sentence almost got me fired. But, I had honestly had enough.

I was the 1-woman competitive intelligence department for a large pharmaceutical packaging company who had suddenly had a reality check moment when they saw bits and pieces of their multi-million dollar business start vanishing before their eyes.

Suddenly, I realized that other companies were providing the same products, and they went from one extreme to the other.

Over the next year or so, I did phone interviews, customer interviews, and even some dumpster diving, all for competitor analysis and with the intent of trying to figure out what was going on.

This was all in the days before the internet, so there was a lot of hands-on, feet-on-the-ground, kind of competitor analysis that I did. And my conclusion-customer satisfaction was a way better investment of time and money. But that doesn’t mean that you should ignore the competition and not do competitor analysis; no way.

How to begin the competitor research process

Figure out what do you want to know and why.

When I first started doing competitive intelligence, it was a knee-jerk reaction to seeing sales and profits dwindle.

• Where did the money go?
• Why aren’t they ordering the same number of parts as last year?
• Who took my business?

And ultimately, the most important questions underlying all of these were “WHY were our customers leaving us?” and “What are we going to do about it?”

This was a good place to start our competitive analysis and competitive intelligence journey. The first step is knowing that you have competitors (duh! EVERYONE has competitors) and then understanding exactly what was important to our customers that we weren’t fulfilling on and our competitors were.

What’s your competitive dilemma?

• Do you see a competitor getting more of your ideal customer than you are?
• Do you see customers spending more on your type of product or service with someone else?
• Do you see customers “doing it themselves” when you can do it better?

Get as specific as you can about exactly what you want to know and why.

What decisions are you going to make, and what information do you need to make them?

This is a sister question to the first and will often come only after you understand exactly what’s going on in your competitive landscape. But it’s a critical piece of information to have in your competitor’s research because it will drive your time, money, and resources for a good amount of time.

So, the clearer you are on what decisions you’re going to make and what information you need to make them, the faster the process will go and the more effective you’re going to be.

What is it about this “competitive situation” that have you stumped?

• Are you trying to launch a new product and not sure if customers would switch from a competitor to you?
• Are you considering getting into a new market and wondering how to position yourself against an entrenched competitor?
• How many customers would you need to be successful?

Imagine that competition was NOT an issue; what would you need to know to be successful? This will help you identify and focus on very specific questions that will move your story and strategy forward and keep you from getting mired in “nice to know” information.

Decide on who your actual competition is in your competitor research

You probably believe that your greatest competitor is the person who lives next door, lives across the country, or offers the same service as you do. Is that right? Your competitors are any other possibilities that your customer may have to get the result that you promise. That is how I would define it. Keep reading to find out.

Types of Competition

As you can see, there are three categories of competition:

Direct competitors

Indirect competitors, secondary competitors.

Take a moment to list some of your direct and indirect competitors, as well as secondary competitors, now. This will really help you get some context around your competitor research.

Here are some Cool Tools That Will Help You Track Your Competition . Meanwhile, you can use some of our product survey templates and find out where your competitive advantage lies.

What tools can I use to do competitor analysis?

Competitive analysis is now more accessible than ever because of developments in software and technology. With so many options available, choosing the best tool for conducting market research might be difficult.

Because of this, I’ve done the research and narrowed it down for you. Let’s take a look:

• Google Alerts: Set up a Google Alert to be notified whenever your competitor’s name, product, or brand name, or maybe even their management team, is mentioned.
• Social Media Tracking: Use HootSuite to keep an eye on your competitors. I like this platform because it’s free, and you can make separate tabs for whatever you’re doing. So, make a tab that searches for the most important hashtags in your industry. Then, make another tab that searches for your competitors’ names and brand names.
• Email Promotions: If your competitors use email marketing, SIGN UP to get their emails. Sure, they can take you off the list, but you’ll still get information in your inbox.
• BuzzSumo: I started using BuzzSumo to come up with ideas for blog posts, but I’ve since learned that it’s also a great tool for figuring out how your competitors are doing. Just look up the name or brand of a competitor and see how many social shares they have.
• HubSpot’s Marketing Grader: This was originally made as a way to get people to sign up for your email list and show you how to make your website better. But why not use it to rate the website of your competitor instead? It’s a simple way to see where they can’t reach customers (oh, and you can use it for your own site for the same thing).
• Market research, Academic research, capturing qualitative and quantitative insights, and social media sentiment analysis .
• Analyze pricing research data to determine market factors, including competition intelligence, purchase behavior, and pricing sensitivity.
• A/B testing across questions, segments, and ideas.

Competitor Analysis FAQ

Is competitor analysis the same as swot analysis, why do we do competitor analysis, what are the types of competitor analysis, what are the objectives of competitor research.

LEARN ABOUT:  Test Market Demand

Final Words

Competitor research can be difficult initially, but it’s crucial to successful business management. It might not be as difficult as you thought when using the appropriate research tools.

QuestionPro is a set of research tools that let researchers make surveys, polls, online focus groups, and even mobile surveys. The platform has an easy-to-use interface and advanced customization options that let researchers make their surveys fit their specific research needs while collecting accurate data.

QuestionPro also has powerful tools for analyzing data, such as data visualization and real-time reporting , which make it easy for researchers to understand and present their findings. The automation features of the platform also make it easy for researchers to collect and look at data.

FREE TRIAL         LEARN MORE

MORE LIKE THIS

Life@QuestionPro: The Journey of Kristie Lawrence

Jun 7, 2024

How Can I Help You? — Tuesday CX Thoughts

Jun 5, 2024

Why Multilingual 360 Feedback Surveys Provide Better Insights

Jun 3, 2024

Raked Weighting: A Key Tool for Accurate Survey Results

May 31, 2024

Other categories

• Academic Research
• Artificial Intelligence
• Assessments
• Brand Awareness
• Case Studies
• Communities
• Consumer Insights
• Customer effort score
• Customer Engagement
• Customer Experience
• Customer Loyalty
• Customer Research
• Customer Satisfaction
• Employee Benefits
• Employee Engagement
• Employee Retention
• Friday Five
• General Data Protection Regulation
• Insights Hub
• Life@QuestionPro
• Market Research
• Mobile diaries
• Mobile Surveys
• New Features
• Online Communities
• Question Types
• Questionnaire
• QuestionPro Products
• Release Notes
• Research Tools and Apps
• Revenue at Risk
• Survey Templates
• Training Tips
• Uncategorized
• Video Learning Series
• What’s Coming Up
• Workforce Intelligence

Root out friction in every digital experience, super-charge conversion rates, and optimize digital self-service

Uncover insights from any interaction, deliver AI-powered agent coaching, and reduce cost to serve

Increase revenue and loyalty with real-time insights and recommendations delivered to teams on the ground

Know how your people feel and empower managers to improve employee engagement, productivity, and retention

Take action in the moments that matter most along the employee journey and drive bottom line growth

Whatever they’re are saying, wherever they’re saying it, know exactly what’s going on with your people

Get faster, richer insights with qual and quant tools that make powerful market research available to everyone

Run concept tests, pricing studies, prototyping + more with fast, powerful studies designed by UX research experts

Track your brand performance 24/7 and act quickly to respond to opportunities and challenges in your market

Explore the platform powering Experience Management

• Free Account
• For Digital
• For Customer Care
• For Human Resources
• For Researchers
• Financial Services
• All Industries

Popular Use Cases

• Customer Experience
• Employee Experience
• Net Promoter Score
• Voice of Customer
• Customer Success Hub
• Product Documentation
• Training & Certification
• XM Institute
• Popular Resources
• Customer Stories
• Artificial Intelligence
• Market Research
• Partnerships
• Marketplace

The annual gathering of the experience leaders at the world’s iconic brands building breakthrough business results, live in Salt Lake City.

• English/AU & NZ
• Español/Europa
• Español/América Latina
• Português Brasileiro
• REQUEST DEMO
• Experience Management

Brand Experience

Competitor Analysis

What is competitor analysis?

What are the benefits of competitor analysis, who are your competitors, what are the different aspects of competitive analysis, steps to performing competitive analysis, using competitor research to understand the wider picture, how often should i do competitor analysis, what tools can i use to do competitor analysis, taking action on your competitor analysis, see how qualtrics strategic brand works, competitor analysis & competitive market research.

25 min read Part of crafting a robust brand strategy involves understanding the competitive landscape. Find out why learning this context through competitor analysis is a vital ingredient in building your competitive advantage.

A foundational part of crafting a brand strategy relies on market orientation, i.e. the process of identifying and meeting the stated or hidden needs or wants of customers .

However, a critical part of your strategy is also associated with choosing how you want to compete, which naturally requires an understanding of the competition as well as your overall market share.

Focusing attention on your current and potential competition will help zero in on specific claims that you believe distinguish your brand from its competitors. The more you can understand the brands that directly and indirectly compete in your area of business or industry, the better you’re equipped to capitalize on opportunities and mitigate the threats to your own business.

That way you can ensure you are one step ahead of the game and the competition.

Learn about our competitive benchmarking study

Category competitors vs. the wider market

While it is important to pay attention to your most relevant competitors, businesses can be at risk by only focusing on what they believe are their category competitors.

However, what can really impact your market share is not seeing a category disruptor or a business redefining the category itself. In recent years, we have seen numerous examples of this – from Facebook and Google becoming major advertising channels to Amazon and eBay disrupting retail.

The ability to redefine a category by shifting the offered benefits to differentiate in new and unexpected ways was the foundational idea developed in The Blue Ocean Strategy .

It’s critical for businesses and brands to attend to this challenge, periodically take a broader view of industry trends, and look beyond their own category. Talk to consumers who have left your category – that way, you can understand if the “category” is losing consumers and what categories, outside of your own, you might be competing with.

Competitor analysis is used by the most successful businesses to remain forward-looking – it helps you revise strategy based on the insights you uncover and amplify what works.

Competitive analysis also helps businesses understand how they can improve by better serving their customers, based on customer feedback around other competing businesses in their market.

Businesses are better off if they know how they are faring when competing for market share, and why.

Businesses not executing regular competitive analysis risk not understanding when and why consumers prefer their competitors, not identifying their competitive vulnerabilities, and not seeing new threats and opportunities.

When marketers have a strong knowledge of their brand, it can be tempting to think that competitor analysis is an unnecessary exercise, but this is a common misconception.

Customer decision-making isn’t always straightforward or rational, but by asking your customers about their beliefs, attitudes, behaviors, and experiences toward you and your competitors, you can build an accurate picture of how to become a more significant part of their everyday lives.

Most importantly: you can find actionable insights that lead to practical, positive changes to your marketing strategies, product or service, or business as a whole. This, ultimately, means that competitor analysis is a vital tool in cultivating a competitive edge.

Image credit: QuickBooks

Direct, indirect, aspirational – all your competitors matter, and it’s important you understand their significance to what you’re trying to achieve, and where and how you will decide to compete. First, let’s look at how to find yours :

Ask your customers

The reason for this is that what we assume isn’t always true. People don’t stick to categories the way we often think they do – sometimes they think of alternatives that we might miss.

Only by talking to existing or potential customers can you reflect their point of view and understand their behaviors, your business’ role within that, and the wider competitive landscape.

Desk research

Read feature articles and industry trend reports and get a gauge for what’s here and now, and also on the horizon. That way you can stay one step ahead of your competitors and lead the market.

Online tools

There are a host of digital tools to help you hone in on a list of your competitors. Google Trends, for example, lets you see search results for various terms. Maps is a simple way to find locally-based rivals, while, SocialMention scours social media channels for brand mentions based on any search query.

The next thing you need to do is classify the competitors you’ve found into one of four groups:

1. Direct competitors

The brands that first come to mind when you think about your competition. They’re in your sector or neighborhood, marketing products and services that do the same like-for-like job as yours.

2. Indirect competitors

They address the same customer needs as your business does, but they do it differently. Your target audience will overlap with theirs but won’t be an exact match.

3. Substitute competitors

These don’t sell the same products but compete for consumer spending, e.g. bars, cafés, restaurants, delis, and supermarkets all compete for lunchtime trade on a main street.

4. New entrants

Competitors who have recently entered a market offering the same products or services.

With all this in mind, keep the lens wide and try to maintain an open mind. Try to take as broad a view of the competitive landscape as you can. Not only will you understand the context in which you operate better, but you will learn more too. Some of the best businesses take ideas that are working well in other markets and replicate them in their sphere.

For example, rather than looking to understand a beer brand’s market share, think of the competition as ‘share of throat.’ Why? Because not everyone likes beer, but they might like wine or gin – and these are often in competition with beer as someone’s drink of choice.

Image credit: Buffer

Marketing research, as applied to competitive analysis, is key to helping us understand consumer sentiment toward brands and products, as well as those of our competitors and how they influence the market.

This is because you’re asking the people that actually use them, or those who choose not to, and gaining valuable insight into why.

But this can be broken down into specific topics:

• Who is the target audience of your competitors?
• What do people like/dislike about the product/service/brand sentiment?
• Why do people like/dislike the product/service/brand? And why do they use/not use the brand?
• When do people use them? Are there particular circumstances or occasions of use?
• How much would a customer spend, and why?
• Are they front of mind for the customer when it comes to buying or using a product/service?
• But most importantly, how does this stand up against you?

An effective way of conducting a competitor analysis is to break it down into stages, using the questions above as your framework.

Firstly, ask yourself – What do I already know?

Begin by conducting stakeholder interviews and tap into their vision and experience of the brand. See the market landscape from their perspective – it might be different from yours or your colleagues’. Then undertake desk research to get more insight into any broader trends that may be emerging, as well as review recent marketing research that may contain information about your competitors. It is key to begin any new marketing research efforts with some clear ideas about what you might find.

Secondly, ask yourself – what don’t I know?

But how do I know what I don’t know? – you might ask. Begin by casting your net wide, and then bring it in as you hone in on the information important to your business.

Any thorough competitor analysis will want to absorb and compare as much information as possible – but it’s crucial that you look at the right information that’s relevant for your business.

In essence, though, competitor analysis is all about information gathering. Generally, there are four business areas to concentrate on, which we’ll cover below. Some of them will require specialized competitor analysis tools, while others rely more on desk research and a bit of digging.

These metrics are the core numbers and details associated with your competitor as a business. And within that sphere, you can group those into sections like revenue, customers, funding, and basic info.

Whereas the latter might be a simple case of filling out details on your competitors’ number of employees, the name of their C-suite executives, locations, etc. via sources like LinkedIn or CrunchBase , metrics like revenue are harder to figure out.

Start by googling their names alongside ‘revenue’ or ‘customers’ to see what you can uncover from their website, press releases, and investor keynotes. If that doesn’t work, you can also try a business directory like Dun & Bradstreet .

2. Products and services

Understanding the products or services that your competitors offer is the key to finding market differentiation for your brand. The first thing you’ll need to do is answer a few basic qualitative questions:

• What are your competitors selling?
• What is their USP
• What key features are offered?
• What technology are they using?

Most of this information can likely be found on their website, but you should also consult their LinkedIn posts, job ads, and tools like BuiltWith to fill in any gaps.

After that, you can move on to more quantitative details around price. Questions to answer here include:

• How much does their product cost?
• Is that more or less than your closest equivalent?
• Is it a subscription or a one-off fee?
• Do your competitors offer more packages than you?

3. Target market and customer awareness

Whom are your competitors trying to sell to? Is it the same kind of customer your own company wants to attract? And, importantly, is it working? You can get a decent handle on that last question by monitoring both share of voice and sentiment. Most social listening and competitor analysis tools (more on those in a bit) will be able to track this for you.

The crucial part with both is: how does your competitor’s share of voice or sentiment rankings stack up to yours? It’s only really by tracking a range of competitors that you can apply meaning and context to the results your brand sees.

Social listening can also help you learn what customers are saying about your competitors and whether they’re listening. It’s also useful to see what kind of things your competitors are saying on their social channels – and on which ones.

For instance, if your competitor is posting more on say, TikTok than LinkedIn, then you can make an educated assumption that they’re probably looking to attract a younger audience.

4. Marketing strategy

The meta-information around the above line of inquiry can help you fill in a few more blanks, too. For example, you’ll learn the geographical markets your competitor is focussed on alongside which ones they aren’t, and you’ll soon develop a full picture of their online presence as it relates to their target market.

But beyond that, a vital part of competitor analysis is in examining direct and indirect competitors’ marketing strategies as a whole. And there are many areas to dive into:

Advertising

Alongside TV and other traditional ATL advertising, it’s helpful to use competitor analysis tools to find out how (and how often) other brands are running ads online. You’ll want to see how your advertising output matches up against your rivals’ Google, YouTube, Display, Facebook, and Twitter ads.

Social media and influencer marketing

As mentioned in the section above, it’s important to know where your direct competitors are focussing their efforts when it comes to social posting. Moreover, if you monitor engagement levels per platform, you’ll learn which channels it’s best for you to prioritize.

Content marketing

Are your competitors blogging? Do they publish thought-leadership pieces on LinkedIn? Do they make regular videos on their YouTube channel? Do they own or sponsor a podcast? And is any of it working? Learning what others are publishing and tracking engagement can be a useful benchmarking exercise, or – again – it can highlight potential gaps in the market.

SEO performance

Tracking content marketing will likely lead to monitoring the SEO performance of your direct competitors. There are several online tools (like PowerSuite, Ahrefs, Rank Tracker, and SimilarWeb) that can help you find out what keywords other brands are ranking for, and how you stack up in comparison.

Understanding this is crucial for adjusting your marketing strategy, to win a greater share of common search results in your industry.

Lead handling

Familiarize yourself with your competitors’ lead and sales process by venturing down it yourself. Watch a tutorial, book a demo, or make contact with their sales teams to see how much of the process is gated, how seamless things are, and how long responses take.

Similarly, competitors’ customer service is also something to keep an eye on: how do your rivals handle it? Take a look at Twitter complaints and note down their response times, or you could even email them with a ‘query’ of your own.

At this point, it’s also useful to gather insight on your designated topics from the point of view of the consumer. Marketers have various tools available to them to do this – surveys , social media listening, and purchasing panel data (E.g. Nielsen Panel, IRI), each serving a particular purpose.

Brands can leverage surveys to assess attitudes ; passive data can be used to understand behavior; and panels for market penetration and share. All of these, when used together, help to understand the sentiment and opinion about particular topics and competitors and give a broader view of the market.

You may want to segment this research too, so you can see how different audiences behave differently from competitors in the market. This will help you to establish where you are performing strongly, and how you can improve in relation to your competitors. Whilst knowing this information is great, it’s just as important to listen and act on the insights that arise from it.

There are tools to help with this. For example, the Qualtrics BrandXM platform can help you focus on the important points of action recommended in the platform.

Qualitative collection methods also play an important role. For example, social media listening tools are great at helping understand the share of voice and can help you set key metric benchmarks.

These can be used in partnership with more traditional qualitative collection methods too, like focus groups and interviews. Use these methods to dig deeper and talk to people to understand what drives their attitudes and behaviors.

At Qualtrics, we work with partners to help you facilitate this qualitative research. By pulling this qualitative data into BrandXM , you can quantify it and pull out trends and valuable insights in your dashboard. This will help you with your strategy moving forward.

Research only reflects a certain point in time, so if you want to stay ahead of the competition then you need to make sure that this data is maintained for accuracy. Many businesses find themselves wrong-footed, not because they did something wrong, but because they failed to anticipate changes in the market.

This is why keeping a pulse on how the business competes is important. Maintain an awareness of who’s gaining attention and who’s losing traction, amongst who too.

Do so by updating this research periodically, be it once a year, bi-annually, or every quarter. That way, whenever a change in strategy is taking place you can draw on the most recent data to establish this foundation for the change.

Traditionally, competitor analysis and other similar studies have been outsourced to agencies. However, these studies were often expensive, were slow to complete, and only reflected one point in time and you didn’t have access to real-time data. With advancements in technology, brands have far greater accessibility to tools that mean they can take this discipline in-house.

Complex processes and data have now been greatly simplified , so now everyone can be an expert with access to vital insights in real-time.

Qualtrics (quantitative and qualitative)

From usage & attitude studies to segmentation, brand perception , or awareness and perception tracking, Qualtrics BrandXM can get you up and running in no time. With all data in one platform, you can spend less time collating and cleaning survey responses, and more time listening and acting on your insights.

Qualtrics can also pull in all of your qualitative data at scale, giving you a holistic view of your competitors so you know how you compare. We also work with partners to give you the most comprehensive tool for competitor research. The partners listed below can be used to collect customer feedback about the competitive landscape in qualitative and quantitative formats.

Using Qualtrics, you’ll be able to see a holistic, unified snapshot of your place in the market, alongside a host of suggested actions for how to improve.

Qualtrics Research Services

If you don’t have an in-house team available to manage your data, Qualtrics research services can help. Our expert team oversees everything for you, from designing your studies, finding the right respondents, launching your surveys, and reporting on the results – so you can focus on taking action to improve your business. We’re with you every step of the way.

External partners:

Livinglens (qualitative).

LivingLens captures & analyses video content via speech, actions & sentiment, translating human behavior into insights. This makes working with video efficient and scalable, turning it into a usable data asset that you can gather insights from quickly.

Voxpopme (qualitative)

Whilst focus groups are still valuable, new approaches are being developed at scale that are changing the way we do market research . One example is Voxpopme , which “helps connect brands with consumers through real-time video feedback.” If you want to do in-store/shelf testing vs. interviews, digital usability testing, or tracking studies , Voxpopme gives access to qualitative insight at speed and scale for various use cases. Make the most of

Voxpopme’s on-demand community, or access your audience and capture, analyze and share insights from your customers all over the world.

BrandWatch (qualitative – social listening)

Various tools can help with social listening, and Qualtrics has an integration with a few partners – such as Brandwatch . Brandwatch gives “structure and meaning to the voices of billions of people, so you can make decisions that truly fit with consumer and buyer needs.” If you are just beginning to analyze your competitors and the market, social listening is your ally.

The reason for this is because it may (helpfully) challenge your perceptions of what you think is true by learning what your customers are saying about you and your competitors in their context. Brandwatch can also do scene analysis from sources such as pictures to help businesses understand the context in which they, and their competitors, are being consumed.

If you’ve used the right tools and completed all the steps above, you should have a robust view of the competitor landscape. And that means it’s time to take your learnings and use them to form a competitive advantage.

Exactly how you do that will depend on what you learn about industry trends, your market share, what your target audience thinks, and how your major competitors behave, but you should be able to spot areas for improvement in your offering.

But here are a few ideas of how to turn competitor analysis into actionable points:

1. Market your brand where they don’t

If you know that your competitors have left a gap for you to fill, it’s time to adjust your online marketing strategy to do just that. That might mean executing a new content marketing push on platforms that are being underserved by the competition. It could mean responding to people on social media who are currently being ignored. Or it could be working to ensure that your SEO performance puts you at the top of SERPs for more keywords.

2. Adjust pricing or features

If your competitor analysis shows that a direct or indirect competitor offers better value than you, then it’s time to make some adjustments. See if you can identify superfluous parts of the supply chain or other processes that allow you to carve out a stronger value proposition. That could even mean a change in how your products or services are offered – for instance adding a monthly subscription tier instead of just an annual one.

3. Act on known pain points

As mentioned, a truly comprehensive competitive analysis should include collating feedback from new and potential customers. With their responses, you might find experience gaps that nobody in the industry is helping to close. That then provides an opportunity to evolve your offering in such a way as to give people what they currently can’t get – and in an easier way.

And remember: Qualtrics can help you take action on your findings, and stay in the loop with where your brand sits in relation to your competitors.

Find out more about our competitive benchmarking study

Related resources

Question to ask for competitor analysis 4 min read, how to find your competitors 12 min read.

Market Segmentation

Market Fragmentation 9 min read

Brand Perception

Brand Sentiment 18 min read

Brand intelligence 12 min read.

Brand Awareness

How to Increase Brand Awareness 17 min read

How to build a brand 14 min read, request demo.

Ready to learn more about Qualtrics?

How to Write a Competitive Analysis for Your Business Plan

11 min. read

Updated January 3, 2024

Do you know who your competitors are? If you do, have you taken the time to conduct a thorough competitor analysis?

Knowing your competitors, how they operate, and the necessary benchmarks you need to hit are crucial to positioning your business for success. Investors will also want to see an analysis of the competition in your business plan.

In this guide, we’ll explore the significance of competitive analysis and guide you through the essential steps to conduct and write your own. 

You’ll learn how to identify and evaluate competitors to better understand the opportunities and threats to your business. And you’ll be given a four-step process to describe and visualize how your business fits within the competitive landscape.

• What is a competitive analysis?

A competitive analysis is the process of gathering information about your competitors and using it to identify their strengths and weaknesses. This information can then be used to develop strategies to improve your own business and gain a competitive advantage.

• How to conduct a competitive analysis

Before you start writing about the competition, you need to conduct your analysis. Here are the steps you need to take:

1. Identify your competitors

The first step in conducting a comprehensive competitive analysis is to identify your competitors. 

Start by creating a list of both direct and indirect competitors within your industry or market segment. Direct competitors offer similar products or services, while indirect competitors solve the same problems your company does, but with different products or services.

Keep in mind that this list may change over time. It’s crucial to revisit it regularly to keep track of any new entrants or changes to your current competitors. For instance, a new competitor may enter the market, or an existing competitor may change their product offerings.

2. Analyze the market

Once you’ve identified your competitors, you need to study the overall market. 

This includes the market size , growth rate, trends, and customer preferences. Be sure that you understand the key drivers of demand, demographic and psychographic profiles of your target audience , and any potential market gaps or opportunities.

Conducting a market analysis can require a significant amount of research and data collection. Luckily, if you’re writing a business plan you’ll follow this process to complete the market analysis section . So, doing this research has value for multiple parts of your plan.

Brought to you by

Create a professional business plan

Using ai and step-by-step instructions.

Secure funding

Validate ideas

Build a strategy

3. Create a competitive framework

You’ll need to establish criteria for comparing your business with competitors. You want the metrics and information you choose to provide answers to specific questions. (“Do we have the same customers?” “What features are offered?” “How many customers are being served?”)

Here are some common factors to consider including: 

• Market share
• Product/service offerings or features
• Distribution channels
• Target markets
• Marketing strategies
• Customer service

4. Research your competitors

You can now begin gathering information about your competitors. Because you spent the time to explore the market and set up a comparison framework—your research will be far more focused and easier to complete.

There’s no perfect research process, so start by exploring sources such as competitor websites, social media, customer reviews, industry reports, press releases, and public financial statements. You may also want to conduct primary research by interviewing customers, suppliers, or industry experts.

You can check out our full guide on conducting market research for more specific steps.

5. Assess their strengths and weaknesses

Evaluate each competitor based on the criteria you’ve established in the competitive framework. Identify their key strengths (competitive advantages) and weaknesses (areas where they underperform).

6. Identify opportunities and threats

Based on the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors, identify opportunities (areas where you can outperform them) and threats (areas where they may outperform you) for your business. 

You can check out our full guide to conducting a SWOT analysis for more specific questions that you should ask as part of each step. 

• How to write your competitive analysis

Once you’ve done your research, it’s time to present your findings in your business plan. Here are the steps you need to take:

1. Determine who your audience is

Who you are writing a business plan for (investors, partners, employees, etc.) may require you to format your competitive analysis differently. 

For an internal business plan you’ll use with your team, the competition section should help them better understand the competition. You and your team will use it to look at comparative strengths and weaknesses to help you develop strategies to gain a competitive advantage.

For fundraising, your plan will be shared with potential investors or as part of a bank loan. In this case, you’re describing the competition to reassure your target reader. You are showing awareness and a firm understanding of the competition, and are positioned to take advantage of opportunities while avoiding the pitfalls.

2. Describe your competitive position

You need to know how your business stacks up, based on the values it offers to your chosen target market. To run this comparison, you’ll be using the same criteria from the competitive framework you completed earlier. You need to identify your competitive advantages and weaknesses, and any areas where you can improve.

The goal is positioning (setting your business up against the background of other offerings), and making that position clear to the target market. Here are a few questions to ask yourself in order to define your competitive position:

• How are you going to take advantage of your distinctive differences, in your customers’ eyes? 
• What are you doing better? 
• How do you work toward strengths and away from weaknesses?
• What do you want the world to think and say about you and how you compare to others?

3. Visualize your competitive position

There are a few different ways to present your competitive framework in your business plan. The first is a “positioning map” and the second is a “competitive matrix”. Depending on your needs, you can use one or both of these to communicate the information that you gathered during your competitive analysis:

Positioning map

The positioning map plots two product or business benefits across a horizontal and vertical axis. The furthest points of each represent opposite extremes (Hot and cold for example) that intersect in the middle. With this simple chart, you can drop your own business and the competition into the zone that best represents the combination of both factors.

I often refer to marketing expert Philip Kohler’s simple strategic positioning map of breakfast, shown here. You can easily draw your own map with any two factors of competition to see how a market stacks up.

It’s quite common to see the price on one axis and some important qualitative factor on the other, with the assumption that there should be a rough relationship between price and quality.

Competitive matrix

It’s pretty common for most business plans to also include a competitive matrix. It shows how different competitors stack up according to the factors identified in your competitive framework. 

How do you stack up against the others? Here’s what a typical competitive matrix looks like:

For the record, I’ve seen dozens of competitive matrices in plans and pitches. I’ve never seen a single one that didn’t show that this company does more of what the market wants than all others. So maybe that tells you something about credibility and how to increase it. Still, the ones I see are all in the context of seeking investment, so maybe that’s the nature of the game.

4. Explain your strategies for gaining a competitive edge

Your business plan should also explain the strategies your business will use to capitalize on the opportunities you’ve identified while mitigating any threats from competition. This may involve improving your product/service offerings, targeting underserved market segments, offering more attractive price points, focusing on better customer service, or developing innovative marketing strategies.

While you should cover these strategies in the competition section, this information should be expanded on further in other areas of your business plan. 

For example, based on your competitive analysis you show that most competitors have the same feature set. As part of your strategy, you see a few obvious ways to better serve your target market with additional product features. This information should be referenced within your products and services section to back up your problem and solution statement. 

• Why competition is a good thing

Business owners often wish that they had no competition. They think that with no competition, the entire market for their product or service will be theirs. That is simply not the case—especially for new startups that have truly innovative products and services. Here’s why:

Competition validates your idea

You know you have a good idea when other people are coming up with similar products or services. Competition validates the market and the fact that there are most likely customers for your new product. This also means that the costs of marketing and educating your market go down (see my next point).

Competition helps educate your target market

Being first-to-market can be a huge advantage. It also means that you will have to spend way more than the next player to educate customers about your new widget, your new solution to a problem, and your new approach to services. 

This is especially true for businesses that are extremely innovative. These first-to-market businesses will be facing customers that didn’t know that there was a solution to their problem . These potential customers might not even know that they have a problem that can be solved in a better way. 

If you’re a first-to-market company, you will have an uphill battle to educate consumers—an often expensive and time-consuming process. The 2nd-to-market will enjoy all the benefits of an educated marketplace without the large marketing expense.

Competition pushes you

Businesses that have little or no competition become stagnant. Customers have few alternatives to choose from, so there is no incentive to innovate. Constant competition ensures that your marketplace continues to evolve and that your product offering continues to evolve with it.

Competition forces focus & differentiation

Without competition, it’s easy to lose focus on your core business and your core customers and start expanding into areas that don’t serve your best customers. Competition forces you and your business to figure out how to be different than your competition while focusing on your customers. In the long term, competition will help you build a better business.

• What if there is no competition?

One mistake many new businesses make is thinking that just because nobody else is doing exactly what they’re doing, their business is a sure thing. If you’re struggling to find competitors, ask yourself these questions.

Is there a good reason why no one else is doing it?

The smart thing to do is ask yourself,  “Why isn’t anyone else doing it?”

It’s possible that nobody’s selling cod-liver frozen yogurt in your area because there’s simply no market for it. Ask around, talk to people, and do your market research. If you determine that you’ve got customers out there, you’re in good shape.

But that still doesn’t mean there’s no competition.

How are customers getting their needs met?

There may not be another cod-liver frozen yogurt shop within 500 miles. But maybe an online distributor sells cod-liver oil to do-it-yourselfers who make their own fro-yo at home. Or maybe your potential customers are eating frozen salmon pops right now. 

Are there any businesses that are indirect competitors?

Don’t think of competition as only other businesses that do exactly what you do. Think about what currently exists on the market that your product would displace.

It’s the difference between direct competition and indirect competition. When Henry Ford started successfully mass-producing automobiles in the U.S., he didn’t have other automakers to compete with. His competition was horse-and-buggy makers, bicycles, and railroads.

Do a competitive analysis, but don’t let it derail your planning

While it’s important that you know the competition, don’t get too caught up in the research. 

If all you do is track your competition and do endless competitive analyses, you won’t be able to come up with original ideas. You will end up looking and acting just like your competition. Instead, make a habit of NOT visiting your competition’s website, NOT going into their store, and NOT calling their sales office. 

Focus instead on how you can provide the best service possible and spend your time talking to your customers. Figure out how you can better serve the next person that walks in the door so that they become a lifetime customer, a reference, or a referral source.

If you focus too much on the competition, you will become a copycat. When that happens, it won’t matter to a customer if they walk into your store or the competition’s because you will both be the same.

Tim Berry is the founder and chairman of Palo Alto Software , a co-founder of Borland International, and a recognized expert in business planning. He has an MBA from Stanford and degrees with honors from the University of Oregon and the University of Notre Dame. Today, Tim dedicates most of his time to blogging, teaching and evangelizing for business planning.

Table of Contents

• Don't let competition derail planning

Related Articles

24 Min. Read

The 10 AI Prompts You Need to Write a Business Plan

3 Min. Read

What to Include in Your Business Plan Appendix

10 Min. Read

How to Write the Company Overview for a Business Plan

How to Set and Use Milestones in Your Business Plan

The Bplans Newsletter

The Bplans Weekly

Subscribe now for weekly advice and free downloadable resources to help start and grow your business.

We care about your privacy. See our privacy policy .

The quickest way to turn a business idea into a business plan

Fill-in-the-blanks and automatic financials make it easy.

No thanks, I prefer writing 40-page documents.

Discover the world’s #1 plan building software

Inc. Power Partner Awards Deadline This Friday! Apply Now

• Newsletters
• Best Industries
• Business Plans
• Home-Based Business
• The UPS Store
• Customer Service
• Black in Business
• Your Next Move
• Female Founders
• Best Workplaces
• Company Culture
• Public Speaking
• HR/Benefits
• Productivity
• All the Hats
• Digital Transformation
• Artificial Intelligence
• Bringing Innovation to Market
• Cloud Computing
• Social Media
• Data Detectives
• Exit Interview
• Bootstrapping
• Crowdfunding
• Venture Capital
• Business Models
• Personal Finance
• Founder-Friendly Investors
• Upcoming Events
• Inc. 5000 Vision Conference
• Become a Sponsor
• Cox Business
• Verizon Business
• Branded Content
• Apply Inc. 5000 US

Inc. Premium

10 Tips on How to Research Your Competition

Keeping tabs on your competition is a great strategy for growing your business. follow these tips, from fellow small business owners, on which tools are best and how to get started..

Competitors . Whether you want to admit it or not, they're out there and they're hungry for your customers. While it might seem unfair given everything else you need to keep on top of in building up your business, you might want to consider devoting the time and energy into keeping tabs on your competition. "By monitoring competitors on an on-going basis you get to know their behavior and so can start to anticipate what they will be likely to do next," says Arthur Weiss, managing director of UK-based Aware , which helps businesses gain competitive intelligence. "You can then plan your own strategies so that you keep your customers and win (not steal) customers away from competitors." In other words, keeping tabs on your competition is a great strategy for growing your business. The good news is that while hiring someone like Weiss can save you or your employees from spending the time to conduct research on your competitors, you can also employ several techniques to get the job done virtually for free. Here are 10 tips from entrepreneurs and small business owners on how you can start gathering information on your competitors. 1. Go beyond a google search. There's no doubt that any research project these days should begin with a simple Google search or visiting your competitor's web page. But there are also a variety of tools either supplied by Google or that relate to Google's search results and AdWords campaigns that might give you interesting insights into your competition. For example, Sheel Mohnot of FeeFighters , a comparison shopping website for credit card processing, says he uses the following tools to keep an eye on his competition:

• SpyFu : "A great resource to research what keywords and Adwords our competitors are buying," says Mohnot.
• Google Trends : For Mohnot, it's helpful when he wants "to stay on top of the latest in [his] industry, comparing [his company] to others, and seeing where people who come to [his] site go."
• Google Alerts : "We keep alerts for ourselves but also for all of our competitors to know what they are up to," says Mohnot. (P.S. Don't forget to set up an alert on your own company to see if anyone else is talking about you.)

Dig Deeper : 6 Ways to Track Competitors Online

2. Do some reporting. There are great and inexpensive resources for checking up on your competitors online and offline. "I recommend routinely tracking what the industry analyst firms like Gartner are reporting about your industry, as well as trade associations and advocacy groups," says Becky Sheetz-Runkle, author of Sun Tzu for Women: The Art of War for Winning in Business . "These organizations are doing research and studies that evaluate the people who are and should be your competitors. What are they telling you about where the industry is trending? Where are the unmet market needs that you can fill?" Other resources you can use to dig up information on your competitors include: Alexa , Compete , Keyword Spy , Hoovers , and ReferenceUSA . 3. Tap the social network. Of course, given how companies are increasingly using social networking sites like   Facebook ,   LinkedIn , and   Twitter as marketing outlets these days, you might be able to pick up interesting facts about your competition--and maybe even your own company--just by tuning in. "We find that monitoring tweets, Facebook posts, blogs, and other new media mentions of our competition is an easy, cost-effective way to stay in tune with and in the know about the public's sentiment about our competitors," says Michael Meschures, the president of Spaphile.com , a weekly deals site that shares high-end spa and beauty offers.  "In a similar vein, we track our competition by keeping a very close eye on review sites, such as Yelp and Citysearch. We scour through reviews to find mentions of our competitors' deals, and then target that particular Yelper or Citysearcher's other favorite businesses so we're always one step ahead of the competition." Even if your competition isn't social media savvy, it's a good bet that they produce newsletters--either e-mail or print varieties--that you can sign up for to get the latest and greatest news and updates on things like new products or services they are introducing and what events they might be attending.

Dig Deeper : How to Conduct Qualitative Market Research 4. Ask your customers. When it comes to identifying sources of information about your competition, don't skip over the obvious ones--like your customers. "Speaking to customers is one of the best (and cheapest) ways of gathering real information on competitors," says Weiss. "Whenever you win a new customer, find out who they used before, and why they switched to you (i.e. The reason they were dissatisfied with their previous supplier). Do the same when you lose a customer--identify what they preferred about your competitor. If you gather enough of these stories you'll get a very clear idea on what competitors are offering that customers view as preferable. You can then adjust your own offering to beat that of the competitor." 5. Attend a conference. Attending industry trade shows and conferences--as well as joining industry associations--can be a great way to learn about who your competitors are and what they're offering, says Amy Lewandowski, who heads up marketing at online retailer, PepWear . "We attend these conventions anyway so we make sure to visit competitors' booths while we are there and observe their interactions with customers, pick up literature, and check out the quality of their products," she says. "I am always shocked that most of them never visit our booth."

Dig Deeper : How to Get the Most Out of a Conference

6. Check in with your suppliers. If you work in an industry where you share the same suppliers as your competitors, it could pay to ask them some simple questions. "Talk to your suppliers and spend time getting to know them," says Zach Berning, co-owner of Overland Gourmet . "While they may not tell you what your competition ordered or their volume, ask better questions." For example, if you ask them how many units of a certain product have been pre-ordered for the next month, you might find out not only what your competition might have ordered, but what other products your supplier might be bringing in as a result. 7. Hire your competition... Another strategy is to hire employees from competing firms--especially sales people--and team up with competitors' partners, suggests Sheetz-Runkle. "No one knows more about the inside of those organizations than the employees," she says. "Find out all that you can about how these companies operate, and more importantly, what's on the horizon for them? Where are they taking their business? What markets are they venturing into? How are they leveraging innovation to cut costs and advance productivity? Where is the highest level of dissatisfaction with their products or services? No one has more and better intelligence when it comes to sales than disgruntled sales people."

Dig Deeper : How to Poach an Employee From a Competitor 8. ...And watch who they're hiring. You can also learn something by studying the kinds of jobs your competitors are looking to fill, says David B. Wright, the chief marketing officer at W3 Group in Atlanta. "For example, if a company is hiring a programmer, they will include information about exactly what technologies the candidates need to know, which tells you what they use," he says. "Also look at what positions they are hiring--if they're looking for a patent attorney, they could be working on some big new inventions. If they're hiring for several HR, they may be preparing to expand overall." 9. Conduct a survey. If you're interested in getting a comprehensive report of all the players in your industry, you might consider conducting a survey. "A year or so ago, I hired someone to e-mail several of our competitors and ask them the same questions about their services," says Jeff Huckaby, CEO of RackAid , an IT management business in Jacksonville, Florida. "We looked at price, response time, how the sales request was handled, etc. By doing this, we learned how to clearly differentiate our sales process from that of our competition." While Huckaby says he learned a lot from the process and plans on doing it again, he does have one caveat: "I am a big fan of outsourcing this. You don't want to run into someone you were spying on at an industry conference."

Dig Deeper : How to Write a Customer Survey 10. Call 'em up! Once you have done enough research to identify who your competitors are, you might want to try an old school tactic to take it from there: Just call them up and ask away. "One of the best ways to research competition is to call them and ask whatever you'd like," says Jordan Harbinger, the co-founder of The Art of Charm . "You'd be surprised how often companies will tell you everything you'd like to learn over the phone, especially if the question is phrased in a context that makes sense. For example, if you want to know how many people work there, you can say: 'I'm looking for individualized attention, and my fear is that your organization is too large, and I'll get lost in the shuffle. How many coaches do you have on staff? Oh, wow, that's quite a few. How much support staff do you need for a team that size?' This approach has served me very well."

Dig Deeper : Become Friends With Your Competitors

A refreshed look at leadership from the desk of CEO and chief content officer Stephanie Mehta

Privacy Policy

START YOUR ECOMMERCE BUSINESS FOR JUST $1

• Skip to primary navigation
• Skip to main content

A magazine for young entrepreneurs

The best advice in entrepreneurship

Subscribe for exclusive access, the complete guide to market research: what it is, why you need it, and how to do it.

Written by Mary Kate Miller | June 1, 2021

Comments -->

Get real-time frameworks, tools, and inspiration to start and build your business. Subscribe here

Market research is a cornerstone of all successful, strategic businesses. It can also be daunting for entrepreneurs looking to launch a startup or start a side hustle . What is market research, anyway? And how do you…do it?

We’ll walk you through absolutely everything you need to know about the market research process so that by the end of this guide, you’ll be an expert in market research too. And what’s more important: you’ll have actionable steps you can take to start collecting your own market research.

What Is Market Research?

Market research is the organized process of gathering information about your target customers and market. Market research can help you better understand customer behavior and competitor strengths and weaknesses, as well as provide insight for the best strategies in launching new businesses and products. There are different ways to approach market research, including primary and secondary research and qualitative and quantitative research. The strongest approaches will include a combination of all four.

“Virtually every business can benefit from conducting some market research,” says Niles Koenigsberg of Real FiG Advertising + Marketing . “Market research can help you piece together your [business’s] strengths and weaknesses, along with your prospective opportunities, so that you can understand where your unique differentiators may lie.” Well-honed market research will help your brand stand out from the competition and help you see what you need to do to lead the market. It can also do so much more.

The Purposes of Market Research

Why do market research? It can help you…

• Pinpoint your target market, create buyer personas, and develop a more holistic understanding of your customer base and market.
• Understand current market conditions to evaluate risks and anticipate how your product or service will perform.
• Validate a concept prior to launch.
• Identify gaps in the market that your competitors have created or overlooked.
• Solve problems that have been left unresolved by the existing product/brand offerings.
• Identify opportunities and solutions for new products or services.
• Develop killer marketing strategies .

What Are the Benefits of Market Research?

Strong market research can help your business in many ways. It can…

• Strengthen your market position.
• Help you identify your strengths and weaknesses.
• Help you identify your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses.
• Minimize risk.
• Center your customers’ experience from the get-go.
• Help you create a dynamic strategy based on market conditions and customer needs/demands.

What Are the Basic Methods of Market Research?

The basic methods of market research include surveys, personal interviews, customer observation, and the review of secondary research. In addition to these basic methods, a forward-thinking market research approach incorporates data from the digital landscape like social media analysis, SEO research, gathering feedback via forums, and more. Throughout this guide, we will cover each of the methods commonly used in market research to give you a comprehensive overview.

Primary vs. Secondary Market Research

Primary and secondary are the two main types of market research you can do. The latter relies on research conducted by others. Primary research, on the other hand, refers to the fact-finding efforts you conduct on your own.

This approach is limited, however. It’s likely that the research objectives of these secondary data points differ from your own, and it can be difficult to confirm the veracity of their findings.

Primary Market Research

Primary research is more labor intensive, but it generally yields data that is exponentially more actionable. It can be conducted through interviews, surveys, online research, and your own data collection. Every new business should engage in primary market research prior to launch. It will help you validate that your idea has traction, and it will give you the information you need to help minimize financial risk.

You can hire an agency to conduct this research on your behalf. This brings the benefit of expertise, as you’ll likely work with a market research analyst. The downside is that hiring an agency can be expensive—too expensive for many burgeoning entrepreneurs. That brings us to the second approach. You can also do the market research yourself, which substantially reduces the financial burden of starting a new business .

Secondary Market Research

Secondary research includes resources like government databases and industry-specific data and publications. It can be beneficial to start your market research with secondary sources because it’s widely available and often free-to-access. This information will help you gain a broad overview of the market conditions for your new business.

Identify Your Goals and Your Audience

Before you begin conducting interviews or sending out surveys, you need to set your market research goals. At the end of your market research process, you want to have a clear idea of who your target market is—including demographic information like age, gender, and where they live—but you also want to start with a rough idea of who your audience might be and what you’re trying to achieve with market research.

You can pinpoint your objectives by asking yourself a series of guiding questions:

• What are you hoping to discover through your research?
• Who are you hoping to serve better because of your findings?
• What do you think your market is?
• Who are your competitors?
• Are you testing the reception of a new product category or do you want to see if your product or service solves the problem left by a current gap in the market?
• Are you just…testing the waters to get a sense of how people would react to a new brand?

Once you’ve narrowed down the “what” of your market research goals, you’re ready to move onto how you can best achieve them. Think of it like algebra. Many math problems start with “solve for x.” Once you know what you’re looking for, you can get to work trying to find it. It’s a heck of a lot easier to solve a problem when you know you’re looking for “x” than if you were to say “I’m gonna throw some numbers out there and see if I find a variable.”

How to Do Market Research

This guide outlines every component of a comprehensive market research effort. Take into consideration the goals you have established for your market research, as they will influence which of these elements you’ll want to include in your market research strategy.

Secondary Data

Secondary data allows you to utilize pre-existing data to garner a sense of market conditions and opportunities. You can rely on published market studies, white papers, and public competitive information to start your market research journey.

Secondary data, while useful, is limited and cannot substitute your own primary data. It’s best used for quantitative data that can provide background to your more specific inquiries.

Find Your Customers Online

Once you’ve identified your target market, you can use online gathering spaces and forums to gain insights and give yourself a competitive advantage. Rebecca McCusker of The Creative Content Shop recommends internet recon as a vital tool for gaining a sense of customer needs and sentiment. “Read their posts and comments on forums, YouTube video comments, Facebook group [comments], and even Amazon/Goodreads book comments to get in their heads and see what people are saying.”

If you’re interested in engaging with your target demographic online, there are some general rules you should follow. First, secure the consent of any group moderators to ensure that you are acting within the group guidelines. Failure to do so could result in your eviction from the group.

Not all comments have the same research value. “Focus on the comments and posts with the most comments and highest engagement,” says McCusker. These high-engagement posts can give you a sense of what is already connecting and gaining traction within the group.

Social media can also be a great avenue for finding interview subjects. “LinkedIn is very useful if your [target customer] has a very specific job or works in a very specific industry or sector. It’s amazing the amount of people that will be willing to help,” explains Miguel González, a marketing executive at Dealers League . “My advice here is BE BRAVE, go to LinkedIn, or even to people you know and ask them, do quick interviews and ask real people that belong to that market and segment and get your buyer persona information first hand.”

Market research interviews can provide direct feedback on your brand, product, or service and give you a better understanding of consumer pain points and interests.

When organizing your market research interviews, you want to pay special attention to the sample group you’re selecting, as it will directly impact the information you receive. According to Tanya Zhang, the co-founder of Nimble Made , you want to first determine whether you want to choose a representative sample—for example, interviewing people who match each of the buyer persona/customer profiles you’ve developed—or a random sample.

“A sampling of your usual persona styles, for example, can validate details that you’ve already established about your product, while a random sampling may [help you] discover a new way people may use your product,” Zhang says.

Market Surveys

Market surveys solicit customer inclinations regarding your potential product or service through a series of open-ended questions. This direct outreach to your target audience can provide information on your customers’ preferences, attitudes, buying potential, and more.

Every expert we asked voiced unanimous support for market surveys as a powerful tool for market research. With the advent of various survey tools with accessible pricing—or free use—it’s never been easier to assemble, disseminate, and gather market surveys. While it should also be noted that surveys shouldn’t replace customer interviews , they can be used to supplement customer interviews to give you feedback from a broader audience.

Who to Include in Market Surveys

• Current customers
• Past customers
• Your existing audience (such as social media/newsletter audiences)

Example Questions to Include in Market Surveys

While the exact questions will vary for each business, here are some common, helpful questions that you may want to consider for your market survey. Demographic Questions: the questions that help you understand, demographically, who your target customers are:

• “What is your age?”
• “Where do you live?”
• “What is your gender identity?”
• “What is your household income?”
• “What is your household size?”
• “What do you do for a living?”
• “What is your highest level of education?”

Product-Based Questions: Whether you’re seeking feedback for an existing brand or an entirely new one, these questions will help you get a sense of how people feel about your business, product, or service:

• “How well does/would our product/service meet your needs?”
• “How does our product/service compare to similar products/services that you use?”
• “How long have you been a customer?” or “What is the likelihood that you would be a customer of our brand?

Personal/Informative Questions: the deeper questions that help you understand how your audience thinks and what they care about.

• “What are your biggest challenges?”
• “What’s most important to you?”
• “What do you do for fun (hobbies, interests, activities)?”
• “Where do you seek new information when researching a new product?”
• “How do you like to make purchases?”
• “What is your preferred method for interacting with a brand?”

Survey Tools

Online survey tools make it easy to distribute surveys and collect responses. The best part is that there are many free tools available. If you’re making your own online survey, you may want to consider SurveyMonkey, Typeform, Google Forms, or Zoho Survey.

Competitive Analysis

A competitive analysis is a breakdown of how your business stacks up against the competition. There are many different ways to conduct this analysis. One of the most popular methods is a SWOT analysis, which stands for “strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.” This type of analysis is helpful because it gives you a more robust understanding of why a customer might choose a competitor over your business. Seeing how you stack up against the competition can give you the direction you need to carve out your place as a market leader.

Social Media Analysis

Social media has fundamentally changed the market research landscape, making it easier than ever to engage with a wide swath of consumers. Follow your current or potential competitors on social media to see what they’re posting and how their audience is engaging with it. Social media can also give you a lower cost opportunity for testing different messaging and brand positioning.

SEO Analysis and Opportunities

SEO analysis can help you identify the digital competition for getting the word out about your brand, product, or service. You won’t want to overlook this valuable information. Search listening tools offer a novel approach to understanding the market and generating the content strategy that will drive business. Tools like Google Trends and Awario can streamline this process.

Ready to Kick Your Business Into High Gear?

Now that you’ve completed the guide to market research you know you’re ready to put on your researcher hat to give your business the best start. Still not sure how actually… launch the thing? Our free mini-course can run you through the essentials for starting your side hustle .

About Mary Kate Miller

Mary Kate Miller writes about small business, real estate, and finance. In addition to writing for Foundr, her work has been published by The Washington Post, Teen Vogue, Bustle, and more. She lives in Chicago.

Related Posts

How to Create a Marketing Plan In 2024 (Template + Examples)

What Is UGC and Why It’s a Must-Have for Your Brand

Ad Expert Phoenix Ha on How to Make Creative Ads without Breaking Your Budget

14 Punchy TikTok Marketing Strategies to Amplify Your Growth

How to Grow Your YouTube Channel and Gain Subscribers Quickly

How to Get More Views on Snapchat with These 12 Tactics

12 Instagram Growth Hacks For More Engaged Followers (Without Running Ads)

Create Viral Infographics That Boost Your Organic Traffic

How to Create a Video Sales Letter (Tips and Tricks from a 7-Figure Copywriter)

How to Write a Sales Email That Converts in 2024

What Is a Media Kit: How to Make One in 2024 (With Examples)

Namestorming: How to Choose a Brand Name in 20 Minutes or Less

10 Ways to Increase Brand Awareness without Increasing Your Budget

What Is a Content Creator? A Deep Dive Into This Evolving Industry

Content Creator vs Influencer: What’s the Difference?

FREE TRAINING FROM LEGIT FOUNDERS

Actionable Strategies for Starting & Growing Any Business.

Don't Miss Out! Get Instant Access to foundr+ for Just $1!

1000+ lessons. customized learning. 30,000+ strong community..

• Give A Call

Market Research and Competitor Analysis: A 10-Step Guide for Startup Success

Before launching a new business, it is important to conduct market research and competitor analysis. Before you dive in headfirst, it’s important to understand your market and competition. In fact, market research is so widely used that it’s one of the fastest-growing global industries and has crossed the mark of $74.3 billion in 2019.

In this 10-step guide, we’ll show you how to conduct market research and competitor analysis like a pro. From identifying your target audience to uncovering your competitors’ secrets, this guide is packed with tips and tricks to help you make informed decisions and set your startup on the path to success. Let’s get started!

10-Steps of Market Research and Competitor Analysis

1. define research objectives.

Before doing any research or competitor analysis, figure out exactly what you want to learn. Define specific research goals.

Do you want to discover what customers really need and want? Do you hope to identify which features they value most in products like yours? If so, you should research their preferences and pain points.

Or maybe you want to analyze how your competitors operate. If your goal is to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of similar businesses, focus your research on your competitors’ strategies, offerings,marketing tactics, and customer service.

By setting clear research objectives upfront, you’ll stay on track and end up with the most useful information for your business. Don’t just gather random information – know exactly what you’re trying to accomplish and research accordingly.

2. Identify Target Market Segments

Figure out who your ideal customers are, Who do you want to buy your product or use your service? Think about customers’ characteristics like demographics, interests, job roles, and behaviors. The more specific you can be the better.

Focus your research on learning about these target customers. What problems do they have that your business could solve? What do they need or want that you could provide? The insights you gain from researching your ideal customers will be most useful for deciding how to shape your business.

3. Collect Primary Data

Collecting primary data means gathering information directly from your target audience. You can get primary data through methods like surveys, interviews, and focus groups.

Primary data can give you valuable firsthand knowledge about what your target customers need and want. It provides insights straight from the horse’s mouth.

4. Gather Secondary Data

Look to verified secondary data. Secondary data is information that has already been collected by others for you to use. This includes things like industry reports, research studies, competitor websites, and government statistics.

Secondary data can give you useful information about the industry you’re entering and what your competitors are doing. It’s a good starting point before you collect your own primary data directly from customers. Secondary research allows you to stand on the shoulders of giants – leveraging the work that others have already done.

5. Analyze Customer Preferences and Needs

Figure out what customers really want and need from a business like yours. Look at all the data you’ve collected from customers directly through surveys, interviews, focus groups, etc. as well as secondary research data.

Analyze this information carefully to understand customers’ preferences, wishes and needs. What features do they value the most? What problems are they hoping a business like yours can solve?

Identifying customers’ pain points and desires will help you develop products and services that truly meet your target market’s needs. Focus on giving customers what they actually want so they will become loyal, long-term customers of your business.

6. Evaluate Market Trends

It’s important to keep an eye on market trends when conducting market research and analyzing your competition.

What’s hot right now in your market? What are customers wanting that they didn’t want a year ago? Are there any major shifts underway that will change the playing field in the coming years?

Pay attention to trends in customer preferences, technology, product innovation and industry growth or decline. Then think through how those trends might create opportunities for your business or pose threats you’ll need to navigate.

Being aware of market trends helps you determine the best product to offer, the right messaging to use and how to differentiate yourself to gain an edge over competitors. Market trends show you which way the wind is blowing so you can set your sails to ride the wave instead of fighting the current.

7. Assess Competitor Strategies

Understanding your competitors’ strategies is key to competing effectively. Analyze what your competitors do well and where they struggle.

How do they distinguish themselves from others in the industry? Learn from their successes, mistakes, and methods of differentiating themselves.

Apply these learnings to craft your own strategies that take advantage of competitors’ weaknesses and shortcomings.

8. Benchmark Best Practices

Understanding your competitors’ strategies is key. Take note of their strengths and weaknesses. Analyze how they distinguish themselves from other businesses in the same industry. By studying your competitors, you gain valuable insights from their wins and losses. You can then develop strategies that improve your odds of success. Examine:

• Their unique value propositions
• What type of problems of customers is the company solving
• How they market and sell their products or services
• Tactics that seem to work well for them
• Any deficiencies or gaps in their approaches

Learning from competitors’ strategies and mistakes allows you to avoid pitfalls, refine your offerings, and position yourself for an edge up. So assess away – your competitors’ insights can propel you forward!

9. Validate Findings and Insights

Double check your findings and conclusions before making big decisions based on your research. Make sure your facts are straight and your assumptions hold water. Ask yourself:

• Do the numbers actually back up what I think?
• Could there be another reason for the patterns I’m seeing besides the obvious explanation?

By validating your research along the way, you’ll have more confidence moving forward with changes to your business. Don’t rush to implement ideas until you’ve triple-checked that your facts, insights and conclusions are solid. Taking that extra step now can save you a lot of headache later.

10. Translate Insights into Actionable Strategies

The most important aspect of research is determining how to apply the knowledge gained. After analyzing the market and evaluating competitors, it’s time to develop a strategy for success.

Based on your target audience, competitors’ actions, and industry trends, determine the specific steps necessary to achieve your goals. Develop tactics to generate sales, build relationships, and differentiate your brand.

Creating an actionable plan based on your research increases your chances of success as a startup. A well-defined strategy allows you to immediately apply your new knowledge and focus your efforts for maximum impact.

Don’t just gather information – use it to create a strategic plan that propels you towards your goals. Leverage your research to gain a competitive advantage in the market. Be specific, tactical, and ready to execute your plan.

Also Read:- 6 Ways a Strong Finance Team Can Benefit Your Startup

In conclusion, conducting market research and competitor analysis is essential for launching a successful business. This 10-step guide provides a comprehensive framework to understand the target market, customer preferences, industry trends, and competitor strategies. By translating research into actionable strategies, entrepreneurs can make informed decisions, differentiate their offerings, and increase their chances of success. Market research empowers startups to navigate the competitive landscape, meet customer needs, and achieve their business goals.

Related Posts

Why Financial Metrics are Important Numbers for Success

Introduction In the business world, financial metrics are like maps that show the way for making decisions and plans. They give us helpful clues about how well a company is doing, so we can make…

Understanding Valuation Basics: The Three Valuation Approach

Introduction In the realm of startups, valuation is the process of determining the worth of an asset, company, or investment. It’s a critical aspect of decision-making for investors, businesses, and financial professionals alike. While there…

Recent Posts

Decoding investor motivations: understanding different investor types, why founders need to understand investor exit strategies.

• Pre-Money and Post-Money Valuation in Startup Investments

Recent Comments

• February 2024
• January 2024
• November 2023
• October 2023
• September 2023
• August 2023
• February 2023
• Entrepreneur
• Uncategorized

Want to get more content like this?

Signup to directly get this type of content to your inbox!!

Latest Post

Advertisement

Privacy preference center, consent management.

• Cookie Settings

Advertising

Our Recommendations

• Best Small Business Loans for 2024
• Businessloans.com Review
• Biz2Credit Review
• SBG Funding Review
• Rapid Finance Review
• 26 Great Business Ideas for Entrepreneurs
• Startup Costs: How Much Cash Will You Need?
• How to Get a Bank Loan for Your Small Business
• Articles of Incorporation: What New Business Owners Should Know
• How to Choose the Best Legal Structure for Your Business

Small Business Resources

• Business Ideas
• Business Plans
• Startup Basics
• Startup Funding
• Franchising
• Success Stories
• Entrepreneurs
• The Best Credit Card Processors of 2024
• Clover Credit Card Processing Review
• Merchant One Review
• Stax Review

How to Conduct a Market Analysis for Your Business

• Local Marketing Strategies for Success
• Tips for Hiring a Marketing Company
• Benefits of CRM Systems
• 10 Employee Recruitment Strategies for Success
• Sales & Marketing
• Social Media
• Best Business Phone Systems of 2024
• The Best PEOs of 2024
• RingCentral Review
• Nextiva Review
• Ooma Review
• Guide to Developing a Training Program for New Employees
• How Does 401(k) Matching Work for Employers?
• Why You Need to Create a Fantastic Workplace Culture
• 16 Cool Job Perks That Keep Employees Happy
• 7 Project Management Styles
• Women in Business
• Personal Growth
• Best Accounting Software and Invoice Generators of 2024
• Best Payroll Services for 2024
• Best POS Systems for 2024
• Best CRM Software of 2024
• Best Call Centers and Answering Services for Busineses for 2024
• Salesforce vs. HubSpot: Which CRM Is Right for Your Business?
• Rippling vs Gusto: An In-Depth Comparison
• RingCentral vs. Ooma Comparison
• Choosing a Business Phone System: A Buyer’s Guide
• Equipment Leasing: A Guide for Business Owners
• HR Solutions
• Financial Solutions
• Marketing Solutions
• Security Solutions
• Retail Solutions
• SMB Solutions

A market analysis can help you identify how to better position your business to be competitive and serve your customers.

Table of Contents

A market analysis is a thorough assessment of a market within a specific industry. These analyses have many benefits, such as reducing risk for your business and better informing your business decisions. A market analysis can be a time-intensive process, but it is straightforward and easy to do on your own in seven steps.

To perform a market analysis for your business, follow the steps outlined in this guide.

What does a market analysis include?

In a market analysis, you will study the dynamics of your market, such as volume and value, potential customer segments , buying patterns, competition, and other important factors. A thorough marketing analysis should answer the following questions:

• Who are my potential customers?
• What are my customers’ buying habits?
• How large is my target market ?
• How much are customers willing to pay for my product?
• Who are my main competitors?
• What are my competitors’ strengths and weaknesses ?

What are the benefits of running a marketing analysis?

A marketing analysis can reduce risk, identify emerging trends, and help project revenue. You can use a marketing analysis at several stages of your business, and it can even be beneficial to conduct one every year to keep up to date with any major changes in the market.

A detailed market analysis will usually be part of your business plan , since it gives you a greater understanding of your audience and competition. This will help you build a more targeted marketing strategy.

These are some other major benefits of conducting a market analysis:

• Risk reduction: Knowing your market can reduce risks in your business, since you’ll have an understanding of major market trends, the main players in your industry, and what it takes to be successful, all of which will inform your business decisions. To help you further protect your business, you can also conduct a SWOT analysis , which identifies the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats for your business.
• Targeted products or services: You are in a much better position to serve your customers when you have a firm grasp on what they are looking for from you. When you know who your customers are, you can use that information to tailor your business’s offerings to your customers’ needs.
• Emerging trends: Staying ahead in business is often about being the first to spot a new opportunity or trend, and using a marketing analysis to stay on top of industry trends is a great way to position yourself to take advantage of this information.
• Revenue projections: A market forecast is a key component of most marketing analyses, as it projects the future numbers, characteristics and trends in your target market. This gives you an idea of the profits you can expect, allowing you to adjust your business plan and budget accordingly.
• Evaluation benchmarks: It can be difficult to gauge your business’s success outside of pure numbers. A market analysis provides benchmarks or key performance indicators (KPIs) against which you can judge your company and how well you are doing compared to others in your industry.
• Context for past mistakes: Marketing analytics can explain your business’s past mistakes or industry anomalies. For example, in-depth analytics can explain what impacted the sale of a specific product, or why a certain metric performed the way it did. This can help you avoid making those mistakes again or experiencing similar anomalies, because you’ll be able to analyze and describe what went wrong and why.
• Marketing optimization: This is where an annual marketing analysis comes in handy – regular analysis can inform your ongoing marketing efforts and show you which aspects of your marketing need work, and which are performing well in comparison to the other companies in your industry.

What are the drawbacks of running a marketing analysis?

The below drawbacks of running a market analysis pertain less to the method itself than the resources it requires.

• Market analysis can be expensive. If you’re not as familiar with marketing concepts such as market volume and customer segmentation, you might want to outsource your market analysis. Doing so can be great for your analysis’s quality, but it can also leave a big dent in your budget. Narrow your market analysis to a certain group – perhaps current customers – to lower your costs.
• Market analysis can be time-consuming. Market analysis can take precious time away from more directly business-related tasks. You can analyze one area at a time – say, buying patterns or competition – to free up your day-to-day schedule.
• Market analysis can require extra staff. Some larger companies retain in-house market analysis staff, and you can follow their lead. Doing so, though, comes with all the usual costs of hiring a new employee . The question then becomes: Do you conduct your market analysis yourself, outsource it, or hire in-house? The more expensive options can often yield more meaningful insights.
• Market analysis can be narrow. The most successful market analyses use actual customer feedback, which analysts often get through customer surveys. These surveys may reach only a portion of your entire customer base, leading to an inaccurate sample size. The result is that market analysis may not fully detail your customers and what you should know about them.

Market analysis vs. conjoint analysis vs. sentiment analysis

Where market analysis is broad and comprehensive, conjoint analysis focuses on how customers value what you offer. Surveys are often the backbone of conjoint analysis – they’re a great way for customers to share what drives their purchases. Product testing is an especially common application of conjoint analysis. This method can yield insights into pricing and product features and configurations.

Sentiment analysis goes beyond number-driven market and conjoint analysis to identify how customers qualitatively feel about your offerings. It can show you what customers are happy and unhappy about with your offerings or buying process. You can also wade into deeper emotional territory such as anger, urgency and intention, or you can dig up descriptive feedback. It’s a great tool to use alongside market analysis, whereas conjoint analysis is all but included in market analysis.

How to conduct a market analysis

While conducting a marketing analysis is not a complicated process, it does take a lot of dedicated research, so be prepared to devote significant time to the process.

These are the seven steps of conducting a market analysis:

1. Determine your purpose.

There are many reasons you may be conducting a market analysis, such as to gauge your competition or to understand a new market. Whatever your reason, it’s important to define it right away to keep you on track throughout the process. Start by deciding whether your purpose is internal – like improving your cash flow or business operations – or external, like seeking a business loan. Your purpose will dictate the type and amount of research you will do.

2. Research the state of the industry.

Map a detailed outline of the current state of your industry. Include where the industry seems to be heading, using metrics such as size, trends and projected growth, with plenty of data to support your findings. You can also conduct a comparative market analysis to help you find your competitive advantage within your specific market.

3. Identify your target customer.

Not everyone in the world will be your customer , and it would be a waste of your time to try to get everyone interested in your product. Instead, use a target market analysis to decide who is most likely to want your product and focus your efforts there. You want to understand your market size, who your customers are, where they come from, and what might influence their buying decisions. To do so, look at demographic factors like these:

During your research, you might consider creating a customer profile or persona that reflects your ideal customer to serve as a model for your marketing efforts.

4. Understand your competition.

To be successful, you need a good understanding of your competitors, including their market saturation, what they do differently than you, and their strengths, weaknesses and advantages in the market. Start by listing all your main competitors, then go through that list and conduct a SWOT analysis of each competitor. What does that business have that you don’t? What would lead a customer to choose that business over yours? Put yourself in the customer’s shoes.

Then, rank your list of competitors from most to least threatening, and decide on a timeline to conduct regular SWOT analyses on your most threatening competitors.

5. Gather additional data.

When conducting marketing analyses, information is your friend – you can never have too much data. It is important that the data you use is credible and factual, so be cautious of where you get your numbers. These are some reputable business data resources:

• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
• U.S. Census Bureau
• State and local commerce sites
• Trade journals
• Your own SWOT analyses
• Market surveys or questionnaires

6. Analyze your data.

After you collect all the information you can and verify that it is accurate, you need to analyze the data to make it useful to you. Organize your research into sections that make sense to you, but try to include ones for your purpose, target market and competition.

These are the main elements your research should include:

• An overview of your industry’s size and growth rate
• Your business’s projected market share percentage
• An industry outlook
• Customer buying trends
• Your forecasted growth
• How much customers are willing to pay for your product or service

7. Put your analysis to work.

Once you’ve created a market analysis, it’s time to actually make it work for you. Internally, look for where you can use your research and findings to improve your business. Have you seen other businesses doing things that you’d like to implement in your own organization? Are there ways to make your marketing strategies more effective?

If you conducted your analysis for external purposes, organize your research and data into an easily readable and digestible document to make it easier to share with lenders.

Retain all of your information and research for your next analysis, and consider making a calendar reminder each year so that you stay on top of your market.

Making market analysis easy

If you have the time to conduct a market analysis yourself, go for it – this guide will help. If you don’t have the time, hiring an in-house expert or outsourcing your analysis is often worth the cost. Your analysis will help you figure out who to target and how – and that’s a huge part of business success.

Building Better Businesses

Insights on business strategy and culture, right to your inbox. Part of the business.com network.

• Best SEO Tools
• Social Media Scheduling Tools
• Social Listening Tools
• Website Analytics Tools
• Rank Tracking Software
• Hashtag Generator Tools
• Paraphrasing Tools
• Reputation Management Software
• Email Marketing Software
• Free Email Marketing Services
• Email Tracking Software
• Email Newsletter Software
• Mass Email Services
• Email Verifier Tools
• Email Signature Generators
• Email Marketing Services
• Mailchimp Pricing
• ActiveCampaign Pricing
• Sendinblue Pricing
• GetResponse Pricing
• ConvertKit Pricing
• Constant Contact Pricing
• MailerLite Pricing
• Klaviyo Pricing
• What is Advertising?
• What is Affiliate Marketing?
• What is Omnichannel Marketing?
• What is Marketing Mix?
• What is Service Marketing?
• Important Marketing KPIs
• What is Integrated Marketing?
• Types of Market Segmentation
• Beginner’s Guide to SEO
• How to Increase Domain Authority
• Beginner’s Guide to Email Marketing
• Guide to Facebook Marketing
• Pricing Strategies Guide
• How to Define Target Audience
• How to Do Market Research

How to Do Market Research (+ Insights to Beat the Competition)

Why bother with market research for your business?

People have ideas all the time.

You may have had one last night in the shower, and you know that it is a billion-dollar idea that you need to build upon right now before someone steals it from you.

It is always exciting when you think of a new product, and spending hours on market research is the last thing on your mind.

You would rather spend your time creating strategies to build and launch your product.

But without proper market research, your product will be doomed even before you start. One of the main differences between successful and would-be entrepreneurs is failing to conduct appropriate market research.

Market research is not an add-on to your business; it is a necessity. It is the backbone of any powerful business strategy.

In this blog, I’ll explain the basic concepts of market research and why it is essential for your business . I’ll also tell you how to do market research and share resources to help you start your marketing research.

What is Market Research?

In simple terms, market research is all about understanding whether or not your idea for a product or service has a future.

With market research, you gain insights into your target audience and understand the motivation behind why they are interested in a particular offer.

Whether you are launching a new product or service or rebranding your business, analyzing risks is critical. Market research helps you reduce the risk involved with any decision.

Analyzing the market helps you develop a revenue forecast to see whether your investment will be justified and how much profit you would earn.

Market research is not just done before you launch a product or service. Successful businesses keep up with their market and continuously optimize their marketing strategy according to their insights.

In the last decade, the global market research industry has gone from $33.15 billion in 2009 to around $73.38 billion in 2019.

This shows how much businesses invest in market research to understand the current market trends accurately.

Market research helps you make an informed decision based on data and statistics instead of feeling and intuition.

How 3D TV failed due to the negligence of market research

Launching a product without market research is a recipe for disaster.

After the 3D movie ‘Avatar’ hit its second billion, companies like LG and Sony decided to strike when the iron was hot. They released 3D televisions backing on how successful the movie was, hoping they would gain the same traction and profit as the 3D movie.

3D TV failed spectacularly because what they didn’t consider was that people didn’t want to watch all their content in 3D.

With 3D TV, there was a lot of sales hype at the beginning, but when the product launched, it didn’t make much in terms of actual sales.

3D television required glasses and caused headaches, nausea, and neck strain.

After the market didn’t react as per their assumptions, 3D TV manufacturing ceased . 3D TV is considered one of the biggest market research failures of all time.

In this scenario, businesses downright neglected to conduct market research. But there are also instances where companies did do their research thoroughly, but their research was done in isolation.

Why Coca-Cola's ‘New Coke' Flopped

When Coca-Cola tested the market for its ‘New Coke,’ they received a hugely positive response. New Coke was a sweeter version of the original, and the results of the comparison were extremely favorable to the New Coke.

In fact, the taste tests showed that people favored the New Coke over both the original Coke and Pepsi.

The result? The product didn’t just fail, it was one of the biggest marketing debacles in history .

But if everything was perfect, why did the market crash when Coca-Cola launched their New Coke?

While consumers favored the New Coke's taste and flavor, what they did not know was that they would eventually have to choose between the original Coke and the New Coke.

Coca-cola didn't factor in people's enormous emotional connection with their original Coke when they launched a new product to replace it.

Though this was a colossal blunder, this fiasco increased their brand loyalty because people started asking for “their Coke.”

And till date, Coca-cola remains the best-selling soda on the planet.

Some of the strongest brands like Colgate , Pepsi , and Microsoft , have fallen prey to poorly researched marketing blunders.

But here is the thing.

These brands have the luxury to take such risks once in a while. For smaller businesses, such blunders can be fatal.

Why is Market Research Important for Business?

Market research is vital for businesses to realize whether or not the goals they set can be accomplished. Accurate statistics allows businesses to make the right business decisions that will maximize their profit.

Without research, businesses don't have specific directions to follow and hence, they proceed on intuition and assumptions.

There are many ways in which market research keeps businesses on track.

1. Understand your target audience.

People who are most likely to be interested in your product or service will fit into some typical demographic. Customer research provides answers to variables like age, gender, location, education, employment, and even income level.

Based on factual data and statistics, you can construct a finite build of your ideal customer and determine what triggers them.

Market research helps you identify how customers and prospects might view your business. You can recognize your customers' wants and needs and get to know why they chose your product or service over your competitors.

2. Understand your competitors.

Market research not only helps you keep a tab on your competitors, but also gives you knowledge about how you can stand out, be different, and rise above them.

Understanding their ups and downs will help you create a better strategy to succeed in your business. Analyzing their failures will tell you what pitfalls you should avoid.

A thorough understanding of your competitors will ensure you are always one step ahead in the game.

3. Keep up with market trends.

If you do not stay relevant, surviving will be a challenge.

Nokia was once the world's top mobile phone producer, but it fell because it failed to understand the change in market trends.

While on the other hand, its competitors like Apple and Samsung thrived because they stayed relevant.

You need to have thorough knowledge about where your industry is heading in the future and create strategies to ensure you are on the same path.

4. Determine the viability of a new product or service.

Before you launch anything, obtaining an objective opinion is a necessity. Basing your products on “our-customers-will-love-it” theories never work.

Testing the market before launching a product helps you determine the feasibility of the product.

Not every product can work for every person.

Effective market research can help you narrow down on your target audience and realize how much potential your product holds.

This will help you analyze how customers will connect with your product; what message creates the most impact; and how much value it holds in the real world.

5. Identify business challenges.

Market research helps you identify areas of difficulty in your business.

You can identify problems before they blow out of proportion and predict obstacles that can become an inconvenience for your business.

When you face an issue, more often than not, it has a ripple effect and affects more than just one aspect of your business.

If you do encounter an issue, market research helps ascertain the source of the problem and develop a strategy to overcome it.

6. Identify new opportunities.

Market research will help you identify areas your competitors have not addressed.

Consumers may not voice their opinion when they are satisfied with something, but they will charge without abandon when they are not happy with something.

With market research, you will be able to discover what your competitors are lacking in and target those pain points.

7. Significantly minimize risk and loss.

The data you acquire from market research may not be 100% accurate at all times, but you can significantly minimize risk and loss.

With market research, you can take calculated risks that your enterprise needs to grow. Your promotional campaigns will have a higher rate of success.

Types of Market Research: Primary versus Secondary Market Research

In terms of how you can collect research data, you can categorize market research into two types: primary and secondary.

Primary Market Research

Primary Market research is when you gather information directly from the source, i.e., your prospects and customers.

In this method, you carry out your own personal research and get realistic and personalized results about what will work for you.

You can narrow down your exact target audience and get real-time feedback about what exactly they're looking for.

This information you collect is for you alone and is not shared unless you decide otherwise. This offers your business an “information advantage” as your competitors will not be able to get hold of this inside information.

Primary market research is more time-consuming than secondary market research because you need to develop your own research plan and work on executing it.

This research technique may not be as cost-effective, but it always saves you money in the long run.

The process of collecting information with primary market research can be broken down into two methods.

• Quantitative Data Collection
• Qualitative Data Collection

Quantitative Market Research.

Quantitative market research focuses on the collection of numerical data. This technique offers concrete data that will help you quantify a research problem.

You can collect data in an organized manner using surveys, polls, or questionnaires.

The results obtained from quantitative research can be analyzed mathematically and can curate vital statistics to aid your business.

It is easy to draw conclusions from data collected by this method. You can implement this technique on a large market, and hence, the information obtained is more statistically valid.

There are various methods for obtaining quantitative data. Surveys are one of the most widely used quantitative methodologies in market research worldwide.

There are three main types of primary quantitative market research techniques.

• Questionnaires.
• Interviews.

1. Surveys.

Surveys are incredibly adept at providing data to analyze a large population. This research technique can offer a broad capability that is not provided by any other method.

The data collected via surveys is easy to analyze and interpret to make decisions.

If your survey includes checklists and rating scale type questions, it helps to quantify your audience’s behavior.

Always keep the questions of your survey to a bare minimum. The following statistical display by SurveyMonkey shows the average completion percentage by the number of questions.

Here are a few things to keep in mind when you create your survey.

• Ensure your opening question is easy-to-answer.
• Only ask questions you need to be answered.
• Close-ended questions are easy for your audience to respond to.
• Your questions should be short, specific, and straightforward.

2. Questionnaires

Surveys and questionnaires are not the same, no matter how much people use these terms interchangeably.

Questionnaires are more focused on collecting information rather than drawing a conclusion.

Questionnaires are done in isolation. You have your audience answer a predetermined set of questions.

You do not look at any kind of bigger picture, try to spot trends, or statistically analyze this data.

You can create questionnaires with the objective of conducting a survey, or you may use a series of standardized questions and other prompts with the purpose of gathering information.

3. Interviews.

You can conduct a market research interview on telephone, video-call, or even face-to-face to collect quantitative and qualitative data.

Quantitative interviews can also be called survey interviews because they have the same standardized survey question-answer format to collect data.

You can contact existing customers and potential customers with information collected by lead generation forms or website analytics.

Qualitative Market Research.

Qualitative market research doesn’t often include data that can be statistically analyzed.

This method of research focuses on understanding why people behave in a certain way. What motivates them to make a particular decision? How will they respond to a new product or service?

While qualitative questions are more close-ended where specific answers can be expected, qualitative questions are more open-ended and give people the space to state their opinions and feelings.

This research produces data that is much harder to analyze. Researchers are required to interpret the gathered information without any numbers and figures.

Among the traditional qualitative research methodologies used worldwide, 58% of respondents said they used focus groups to be their most used method.

After focus groups, the in-depth interviews have been stated to be the most dominant research technique.

There are three main types of primary qualitative market research techniques.

• Focus Groups
• In-depth Interviews.
• Observations

1. Focus Groups.

Focus groups are organized sessions with around six to twelve people who share a common characteristic.

The main objective of conducting these sessions is to comprehend people’s opinions, perceptions, and beliefs about a particular service, product, or concept.

Focus groups can give you an in-depth understanding of how and why people respond to specific topics in a certain way.

Focus groups are not about merely reporting about a discussion; it is a market research technique that can give you powerful insights that reveal something you need.

How to select participants for a focus group?

The most crucial aspect of any focus group is the selection of participants. Randomly selecting participants for your focus group is simply foolish.

For example, if you are conducting a focus group for why people don’t use a vacuum cleaner, the discussion would yield much better results if you select homemakers who clean their own homes.

Clearly define, verify, and recruit people keeping your target audience for the focus group in mind.

2. In-depth interviews.

By conducting in-depth interviews, you can gather extensive information from the respondents.

You can create in-depth questionnaires for this research technique and discuss highly complex or sensitive topics.

While other primary market research methods can give you valuable insights, have you ever poured your heart out in an online survey?

With interviews, you can gain information that would be nearly impossible to attain otherwise.

• You can know how customers really use your product.
• What stops someone from making a purchase.
• What hidden emotions drive your target audience.

How an interview saved Febreze.

The marketing story of Febreze proves how powerful interviews can be.

Procter & Gamble launched Febreze with a strong marketing campaign.

Their message behind the campaign was that their product could eliminate the foulest stenches like smoky bars and the heavy odor caused by house pets and teenage boys.

The result? Their campaign failed drastically.

Their research showed that people often get desensitized to their surrounding smell due to constant exposure. The stench doesn’t bother them as much.

P&G then turned to interview their most devoted users to understand why exactly they used Febreze.

An interview with a woman in Scottsdale was what led to their breakthrough.

She said, “It's nice, you know? Spraying feels like a little mini-celebration when I’m done with a room.”

P&G realized people didn’t use Febreze for proper cleaning; they used it as a reward of sorts.

They had found their “Dopamine hook.”

They revamped their marketing strategy and positioned Febreze as a part of the cleaning routine, restaging it as a reward.

The result? Within two months, the sales of Febreze doubled.

P&G would never have come to this epiphany if not for their decision to conduct interviews.

3. Observations.

This market research technique focuses on observing people’s behavior in a natural or planned setting.

As a researcher, you may observe your customers’ behavior from the sidelines, or you may be an active participant by conversing with people and then observe their reactions.

In a clinical setting, people’s behavior can be influenced by external stimuli. What people say doesn’t always align with what they do.

Qualitative research by observation allows you to see their true self.

But this method is very time consuming and doesn’t allow you any control over the setting or environment.

Secondary Market Research.

Secondary market research is the process of analyzing existing data and statistics that are already available for you to consume for free.

This research method involves gathering information from secondary sources.

Businesses have already collected and compiled information for you, and all you need to do is know how to access this information.

The internet is one of the most apparent sources to conduct your secondary market research, as there are many resources available online for free, as well as in exchange for money.

There are various other resources available for this research, like libraries, colleges, universities, government data, competitor’s data, trade publications, media sources, etc.

Businesses often gather as much information as they can from various sources and put them together to analyze market trends and compile their own reports with this information.

But though there are so many resources available, secondary market research is not always as easy as it may sound.

Limitations of Secondary Market Research.

• It is a time-consuming process. While a vast amount of information helps a lot, not everything you find will be applicable to your goals. It is often a time-consuming task to filter through all this data to find what you are looking for.
• It is not always credible. Finding reliable information for free is exceedingly challenging. It is your responsibility to evaluate whether the data is reliable or not.
• Nature of data. The data you find will not always be specific to your needs. It is pointless if you spend your time and effort and then find information that may not fulfill your requirements.

Not everyone knows how to acquire accurate data and statistics. And knowing how significant gaining this information is, it is even more critical to get this data right!

If you do not evaluate your market research data, it could lead to bad business decisions.

Here are a few things to look for to access the authenticity of data.

Factors you need to consider when you evaluate secondary research data.

• The research provider’s purpose. Many biased reports are published, so it favors them in some way. This data holds their personal interests at heart and may not be entirely accurate.
• The source. Who has published the information plays a significant role. You can always rely on government sources as compared to sources like private companies or websites. If the name is big, they will have a reputation to keep up. Hence, they are much more reliable than other sources.
• When the data was collected. You need to make sure that the information is relevant. Outdated information will do more harm than good, and using this information will only lead to trouble.
• How the information was collected. Methods of data collection can help you analyze the consumer’s mindset. This is especially important when looking at qualitative data, which gives you information about your audience’s beliefs, opinions, and feelings.
• What information was collected. If you have a specific type of information in mind, it will not do if the data you get includes a much broader aspect. For example, if you want to know which mobile company is most popular amongst millennials, it would not help if the data is about the most popular mobile company.
• Cross verify with other sources. If you find a report that says something specific and can’t find any information regarding the same anywhere else, it might be dangerous to trust that information blindly. Or if information regarding the same topic varies from source to source, you need to dig deeper to find the most accurate information. Always check if the data you have is consistent with other sources.

Three ways of accessing secondary market research data.

• Public sources.
• Commercial sources.
• Educational institutions.

1. Public sources.

Public sources are open sources that are available for everyone to access.

Most governments collect and publish information about markets, growth rates, consumer behavior, current trends, economic factors, and other entities. This data is usually available for free for you to access.

Google Public Data Explorer is an excellent source to access public-interest datasets.

It provides public data from several different international organizations including, but not limited to

• ICT Statistics Database
• U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
• International Monetary Fund
• U.S. Census Bureau

2. Commercial sources.

Commercial sources are those that offer marketing data and consumer insights for a cost.

They usually include research and trade associations and operate across nearly every industry.

Directory of Associations , National Trade and Professional Associations Directory , Equifax , and Dun & Bradstreet are major commercial data sources in the market.

3. Educational institutions.

Business departments of educational institutions like colleges and universities conduct research on various industries. They are the most overlooked sources for market research.

Right from graduate student projects and theses to faculty-based projects, the research material available is very vast.

To use this data, you may have to subscribe to a specific journal or pay a subscription fee to access their newsletter or website.

How to Do Market Research for Maximum Actionable Insights?

While most businesses understand the significance of market research, they sometimes skip this because they simply don’t know where to look and what to look for.

Compiling data for the sake of market research is one thing, actually doing market research, which will lead to actionable insights, is a different story altogether.

Define Your Buyer Persona.

With business, there is no “one-size-fits-all.” You need to connect with your audience if you want them to take you seriously, and that will not happen if you aim to form a connection with everybody.

If you do not create a personal appeal, people will most likely mark you as spam and move on without giving you a second glance.

This is why you need to build your ideal customer profile.

But who is an ideal customer?

An ideal customer is someone who has their wants and needs met by what you have to offer.

You need to have a detailed description of those who are likely to be interested in your products and services.

What are their goals? What are their backgrounds? What challenges do they face? Do you know what interests them? How old are they? Do they have kids? What does their daily routine look like?

This might seem more specific than you expected, but creating customer profiles that answer such intricate details will help you create much more personalized appeals.

The characteristics you define is what will give way to your business’ buyer personas.

What is a Buyer Persona?

Based on the data and statistics you collect from your potential and existing customers, you can map out a semi-fictional character of your ideal customer. This semi-fictional character is called a buyer persona.

A buyer persona is a generalized representation of your target customers.

Amongst other information, there are a few key characteristics you should specify your buyer persona.

• Their gender
• Geographical location
• Their designation and job role
• Family size
• Annual income
• Major challenges they face

Here is an example of a buyer persona.

Why use a Buyer Persona?

When you create buyer personas for your business, it is much easier for marketers, sales representatives, and designers to optimize their content specific to their wants and needs.

Creating buyer personas can essentially help you get into your customer’s head and understand what makes them tick.

How many Buyer Personas should you create?

It’s very unusual for businesses to have only one category of target audience. If you have a business, chances are that your strategy would aim to target a range of people.

But how many buyer personas you create differs from business to business. Some businesses have as little as one or two personas or go as far as 15 to 20.

But creating too many personas will only lead to chaos.

I would suggest you create no more than four personas.

If you have more, chances are that your personas are very similar to each other. You can create three to four primary personas and categorize others under these primary personas in such cases.

If two personas seem similar to you, don’t hesitate to club them. If you do not have enough information on a persona, scrap it.

Your buyer personas are not set on stone. As you move on, add and remove personas with changing market trends.

Creating content as per your buyer personas will help you pitch the same product in different ways to your audience's categories.

Negative Buyer Personas.

Negative buyer personas are a representation of people you do not want to target. These personas are based on demographics and characteristics of people who are not your ideal customers.

While it is essential to know whom you want to target, it is equally important to know whom you should avoid.

You can create anti-buyer personas to be more accurate with your target audience.

If you know exactly what you do not want, you will stray away from messages that might appeal to the wrong audience.

This will save you money in the long run as you will not waste your resources to market to the wrong people. This helps increase your business’ efficiency and productivity.

How do buyer personas benefit a business?

According to NetProspex’s case study , their following results were observed after they implemented reinforced their buyer personas:

• 900% increase in the duration of visit.
• 46% increase in conversions.
• 111% increase in email open-rate.
• 100% increase in the number of pages visited.
• 171% increase in marketing-generated revenue.

Buyer personas help businesses identify and analyze their target audience’s behavior. You can use this real-time data to ensure your products and services consider your customers' desires.

Buyer personas benefit a business in a number of ways.

• Increase compatibility. Buyer personas bring your target audience to life in a memorable way that will help everyone in your business understand your users better. It will make sure everyone is on the same page and makes it easier to communicate and collaborate while creating strategies.
• Find the right platform. While researching for your buyer persona, you will understand which platform your target audience leans towards. This will help you focus your advertising and marketing strategies on these platforms to increase your reach.
• User-focused. Buyer personas will keep you from wasting your time and resources on products and services that would not interest your target audience. With a clear understanding of your buyer personas, your products and services will be focused on your customers and ensure high efficiency.
• Build product roadmaps. Buyer personas will help you identify what your customers want and use this to create a plan of action to ensure your product’s success.
• Product positioning. With your buyer personas, you will know how to market your product in a way that people will be inclined towards. You will know what campaign message will create the best connection with your audience.

Identify a Portion of That Persona to Engage

Now that you know what a buyer persona is, the next step is to create your buyer persona.

You must already have a rough idea about what you want in your target audience. With that as a guide, identify people whom you want to engage in your research.

This step involves researching your target audience to learn more about what characteristics make up your buyer persona.

How to Research Buyer Personas?

There are many ways of collecting information via primary and secondary market research.

Many businesses create surveys to study their customers’ inclinations.

But to create buyer personas, you need to get into people’s heads, and the most powerful market research technique is to conduct interviews.

You can interview existing customers, potential customers, and even third-party networks who are not in your existing pool of target audience but come close.

The interview should cover necessary demographic information to what triggers them to make purchasing decisions.

You need to dig as deep as you can and gather as much insight about them. The more you know, the stronger your buyer persona will be.

How to find participants for your buyer persona research?

• Existing Customers. These are the easiest people to target. You already have a point of contact, and they are familiar with your products. Interviewing them will help you notice patterns about the things that appeal to them and their challenges. Since they are already connected to your product, you may not need to offer any incentives to get feedback.
• Potential Customers. You typically must have acquired their contact information via lead generation forms or web analytics . These are people who may be interested in what you have to offer but haven’t taken the leap to purchase your products.
• Referrals. If you do not have an existing customer base or any contact information about your market audience, you need to work with your personal network. Reach out to your co-workers, social media contacts, even family members, and find people you can interview. LinkedIn is an excellent place to start if you are lost; type in keywords of your target audience into the search box and filter through your connections to see people you can contact.
• Third-party Networks. You can use platforms like Respondent , UserInterviews , UserTesting and PlaybookUX to find participants for your research.

But using these platforms does not give you a chance for one-on-one interaction. This may make it much more difficult for you to gather information to create your buyer personas.

How to get people to become interviewees?

• Offer Incentives. Of course, there’s always chocolate. And you may not even need to offer that for interviewing people who are already your customers. But while reaching out to people under other categories, you could provide simple gift cards. According to PeoplePulse , there is a 10 to 15% increase in response rate when offered incentives.

You can appeal directly to your social media network and get participants to approach you if your incentive is strong.

• Be honest about your purpose. Be clear at the very beginning that it is not a sales call. Tell them you are calling them because you want to get some information for your research. If you are honest from the beginning, they are more likely to trust you and open up about their lives, feelings, and opinions.
• Be flexible. Work according to their schedule and make it easy for them to say yes. Allow them to give you a time, and make sure you send them a reminder before your call to ensure you don't catch them off guard.

Questions you can ask participants during the interview.

Telephonic or face-to-face interviews can be a little daunting if you don’t know where to start.

This is just a sample list for inspiration to help you get started. You can optimize the questions according to your target audience (in fact, you definitely should.)

Personal Background

Describe your Personal Demographics.

• Marital status.
• What are your interests and hobbies?
• What is your educational background? Where did you complete your education?
• What is your career path? How did you end up where you are today?

Professional Background

• Which industry or industries does your company serve?
• What is the size of your company (revenue, employees)?
• What are the most common challenges in your industry?
• What are the most common objections to your product or service?
• What is your job role? And your job title?
• How many years of experience do you have?
• Whom do they report to? Who reports to them?
• How is your job measured?
• Describe a typical working day.
• Which specialized skills or tools are required to do your job?
• What frustrates you the most about your job?
• What do you enjoy the most about your job?

Goals & Challenges

• What are your biggest challenges?
• What are you responsible for?
• What does it mean to be successful in your role?
• What are your personal goals? Career goals?
• How do you prioritize them?

Decision Making

• Who do you consult with and trust for advice and information?
• What is the most important thing you look for when you buy a product?
• What are your biggest complaints about our product or service?
• What must happen for you to overcome these complaints?

Information Sources

• How do you learn about new information for your job?
• What publications, blogs, or social networks are you interested in?
• How did you find out about our company?

To gain an in-depth insight, the followup question of most of the above questions should be “why?”

Ask open-ended questions and encourage them to talk. The more they talk, the more you’ll understand what motivates them to do something.

How to create your Buyer Persona?

After you have collected all raw data about your target audience, it is time to analyze this information and look for patterns and commonalities.

Here is an example of a B2C buyer persona.

From this buyer persona, you can understand that Rachael has a busy life, and doesn’t spend excessively.

The most effective way to pitch your products to her would be to highlight how easy it would make her life. She would appreciate quick and easy solutions.

Creating in-depth personas with intricate details will help you better visualize your target audience and develop messages that they can instantly connect with.

After you are done with your research, it is time to map out your buyer personas and create a layout.

If you are not sure where to start, I’ve compiled examples, tips, and templates you can use as a guide to creating your buyer persona from scratch.

1. Create 2-4 primary buyer personas.

While you may create as many personas as your business needs, it is not advisable to create more than four.

You may, of course, create more, but you can categorize those personas under the primary personas you’ve created.

2. Highlight brands or products your audience already uses in your industry.

If your customer favors Nike or only uses Apple products, it speaks about your audience’s preferences. You will understand what they value, and this secondary information will help you deduce a lot about your customers.

3. Create a customer journey map

Creating a customer journey map will help you when you try to define your primary buyer personas.

You can categorize your buyer personas by how your audience uses your product or service.

4. Include icons and illustrations.

Visuals like icons and illustrations help add context to your content. You can use them to make complex ideas more straightforward to understand and remember.

5. Have a consistent layout.

A consistent layout for all your personas will help you spot differences better.

You can easily compare information instead of trying to locate things blindly just because your designer was overzealous.

Additionally, you can also highlight fundamental differences between your personas to make your work easier.

7. Create an infographic of your persona guide.

Creating a buyer persona means including as many essential insights as possible, and what better way to illustrate your buyer persona guide other than an infographic?

Infographics are an exciting and powerful way to display information.

You can use free templates offered by websites like Canva , Pictochart , and Venngage to create your infographic.

8. Include an introduction paragraph.

This paragraph will serve the purpose of giving your persona a backstory. Talk about what makes them tick, or it could be a simple narrative that is purely biographical.

9. Use sliding scales to understand your persona better.

You can’t define everyone in extremes; it is never always this or that . Using sliding scales and or other similar visual aids will help you understand your buyer persona better.

Willian is more of an introvert than an extrovert, but labeling him solely as an introvert would not do him justice.

10. Give your personas a real name.

As you would have noticed in the above examples, all the buyer personas have names. This makes them memorable and motivates you to think of them as an actual person rather than research metrics.

This works wonders when working on a campaign, for all you have to think about is to convince “Mike” or “William.”

This keeps your target audience in center focus every time you develop an idea.

11. Use a few keywords that summarize your persona effectively.

You can summarize your buyer persona with a few keywords that practically define them.

Keywords are powerful, and if you happen to use these images as posters around your desk or office, they will cement your target audience's characteristics in your mind.

12. Don’t use celebrity images as your persona.

When you think of Will Smith , what comes to mind?

• His determination and dedication.
• His humble nature even after achieving great heights.
• How he is unapologetically himself.

If you were to use Will Smith's face for your buyer persona, it would be challenging to stop his characteristics from overshadowing your target audience.

Using images of people you don’t know will help you start afresh.

Now that you know the features that would help make your buyer persona, here are a couple of tools to help you design your persona.

Tools to create your buyer personas.

You can use templates offered by Xtensio to create your buyer personas. The software is very user-friendly and also allows you to customize your layout as per your requirements.

Hubspot’s buyer persona tool walks you step-by-step to create your persona. One downside to using Hubspot is you can not add your own persona image and have to choose from a handful of character images offered.

If there are elements you want to add that are not included by default, you can add them using the “Add new section” button.

Engage Your Market Research Participant

One of the biggest challenges of conducting primary market research is finding people willing to participate in your study.

Finding participants seems like an exceedingly tedious task, which doesn’t have to be the case. There are various ways you can recruit people for your market research.

Channels you can use to recruit interviewees.

1. Crowdsourcing.

With crowdsourcing, you can engage a large volume of people in your market research. It is an excellent alternative to traditional human subject pools.

You can use platforms like Amazon Mechanical Turk to recruit participants for reasonable rates. The average wage is $1.40 per hour .

Some other platforms you can use to source participants are Respondent and Testing Time .

2. Broadcast email.

Broadcast emails are sent to a large group of people at once. You can take advantage of your email list.

Keep note of people who have participated in your research so you can get in touch with them in the future in a similar scenario.

If you don’t have your own email list, narrow down on your interest group and approach organizations that focus on the same demographic.

Some organizations may be open to sharing their database for a price or some other inducements.

If not, at the very least, you could convince them to share an email containing your market research survey with their audience.

3. Snowball Sampling.

The best way to recruit more participants is to take advantage of your current participants. Word of mouth is one of the most potent tools of marketing.

Offer referral incentives to your current participants, and they will help recruit new people. This is called snowball sampling or chain-referral sampling.

4. Traditional and Internet Media.

You can use press releases and related print or TV/radio reports to recruit participants for your research.

If your research requires a specific pool of people, this may work really well. It does take a while to get a good volume of participants, and it may cost significantly more than other means of recruiting participants.

Another affordable and more effective alternative is to use internet media. You can research web portals and online forums that target your ideal market.

5. Search Engine Marketing (for example Google Adwords).

With online search engine ads, you can reach millions of people looking for information regarding your targeted keyword.

Depending on how strong your incentive is, you can recruit participants quickly using this method.

6. Social Media.

This is one of the best ways to source participants for your research. You can create pages or launch ads to recruit participants.

One of the best parts about using social media is that you can access people’s profiles and find extensive information about them to see if they are the right match for your research.

You can source on LinkedIn by searching for people who fit your criteria and use inMail and 2nd-degree intros to contact them.

7. Online Panels.

An online research panel is a group of selected individuals who have agreed to complete surveys via the Internet.

With online panels, it is effortless to recruit participants, and additionally, it is cost-effective.

I recommend using QuestionPro or Survey Monkey .

One drawback of using these online portals is that you can’t have immediate contact with your participants as most online panels don’t share their audience’s contact details.

8. Craigslist.

Using Craigslist may not be the best method, but you can still use it to recruit participants for low prices.

You can post an ad on Craigslist for free, but many marketers have stopped using this platform for the validity of the information provided is always in question.

Prepare Your Research Questions for Maximum Actionable Learnings

Even after you find the right participants, the most crucial part of the research is the questionnaire.

You can’t just note down questions from the top of your head. You need to ensure that each question you’ve included will help you progress with your research.

But how can you make sure all your questions are important? I’ll tell you how.

How to prepare survey research questions

1. Create a frame.

Before you write a single question, I need you to note down three things.

• The objective of your research.
• What is your desired outcome?
• Characteristics of your target audience.

This is the fundamental part of your research and will help you ground your questions. Cross-referencing your questions with these points will ensure you don’t sway away from the main objective.

2. Brainstorm Questions

You already have a list of questions you are dying to ask your customers, and it would be so convenient to include anything and everything just so you don’t miss out.

But that’s not the way to go. In this step, you write down all questions you have in mind.

Write down the silliest of questions because after you create momentum, you will find that your questions have much more depth.

But one crucial thing is to think about the questions “you already know” answers to.

How do you know the answer? Do you have any research to back your answer, or is it just your gut feeling?

Be wary of these traps where your mind says not to include a question because you already know the answer.

Learn to separate what you know and what you believe to be true.

3. Filter and find the best questions.

After you are done with brainstorming questions, it is time to review it against the frame you created in the first step.

Cross-check if your questions fulfill your objective, discard the questions that don’t, and club questions whenever necessary.

Only pick the best, juiciest questions that will give the most insights. Remember, you need actionable feedback.

Below is the result of a study conducted by Survey Monkey to understand how much time respondents spend on a survey.

It is recommended that your survey should not include more than 12 questions.

You need to hold the respondent’s attention, and for that, the survey should not take more than 5 minutes to complete.

But of course, if the incentive you offer is good enough, you can make the survey longer.

Types of Research Questions

1. Open-ended research questions.

Open-ended questions require the respondent to type in their answer into a comment box. These questions call for more depth and lengthier responses.

While open-ended questions allow the respondents the freedom and space to state their opinions, it is recommended that you don’t include many of these questions.

You can see an example of an open-ended survey question below:

2. Multiple choice research questions.

They are the most popular type of survey questions. They are easy for your participants to answer, and you receive clean data for analysis.

Below is an example of a multiple-choice research question with a multiple-select answer option:

3. Ranking research questions.

These questions help you understand your respondent’s preferences. Keep in mind that this type of question takes longer to answer, so don’t include too many of them.

For instance, in the question below, respondents need to be familiar with each feature and select a corresponding number to rank the features as per their preference.

4. Rating scale research questions.

These questions are used to get responses on a continuous scale to understand how your audience feels about something.

Here’s how a rating scale question can look:

5. Net promoter score research questions.

This is a type of rating scale question where the question has an answer that depicts a range (for example, 1 to 10, or 1 to 100.)

Always remember to give context to these questions. The numbers on the scale would not make any sense if you don’t explain the value of the numbers.

Like in the above example, 0 is ‘very unlikely,’ and 10 corresponds to ‘very likely.’

6. Likert scale research questions.

These are very popular questions for surveys. They help you understand exactly how your customer feels about something.

Below is a typical example of a Likert scale question:

7. Semantic differential scale research question

This is a type of Likert scale question which is extremely effective in quantifying how your audience feels about a particular brand, product, service, or organization.

8. Stapel scale research questions.

This type of rating scale question has an even number range with no neutral point.

For example, the question below has a range of +2 to -2, and your respondent’s answer accurately describes whether they are in agreement or disagreement with something.

9. Constant sum research questions.

In this type of question, the respondent can rate a particular entity, and you can compare the other entities using one as a reference.

This is useful for devising ratio data of different attributes.

10. Matrix table research questions.

Matrix table questions are presented in a grid and are usually easy to interpret for your respondents. This is because the answer options and scales remain consistent across all entities.

This is also highly efficient as you can make use of one question to gather significant data.

11. Image choice research questions.

These questions have images as your answer options. They dramatically increase response rates and also make your survey visually appealing.

I would recommend using this question type in between as they give your respondent a break from reading.

12. Dropdown research questions.

You can use dropdown questions when you have a long list of brief answer options. For example, if you want the respondent to pick their home town or their birth year.

Use them lightly as most people like to refer to the answer options as context when they read a question.

13. Click Map research questions.

If you want direct feedback on a product image or any other visual, this is the best approach.

Click Map question allows the user to click one spot on the image.

For example, the following is a product packaging image. You could ask the survey taker to click on the part of the packaging that appeals the most to them.

14. File Upload research questions.

In case you need supporting documents or images, you can use file upload questions.

Though, it is not recommended as it is tedious for the respondent, you can collect whatever file you require as a PNG, PDF, or Doc file.

Survey Pre-Launch Checklist.

Here is a checklist of things you need to take note of before you launch your survey.

• Ensure that your survey is compatible with all devices.
• Preview and test your survey.
• Check how long the survey takes to complete. The recommended time to finish a survey is 5 minutes.
• Check the structural components of your survey like the navigation buttons, page, and titles, etc.
• Make sure the answer format is in harmony with the question type. If the question requires multiple option selection, ensure the format allows the user to select all options that apply.
• Check the reporting value format. If you have customized your reporting value, check if the format for birth date, age, email address, etc. is set correctly.
• If you’re unsure how you can analyze the results, do a trial run, and familiarize yourself with how the results show up. Also, don’t forget to delete your test responses before you launch the survey.
• Make sure there are no grammatical or spelling errors.
• Ask someone else to cross-check the survey. A second pair of eyes might spot something you missed.

Reminder Emails.

Reminder Emails are an excellent strategy to boost your response rates.

But when do you send your first reminder email? The second? The third? When do you stop?

Survey Monkey recommends sending the first reminder email 48 to 72 hours after you have sent your first survey invite.

Below given table shows how the response rate drops exponentially after the first reminder email.

It is recommended that you send reminders only if necessary and don’t send more than four reminders.

Research Closure.

After you have closed the survey, send an email to all the respondents to thank them for participating in the survey.

Don’t forget to include the top two or three things you have found from the research and how you plan to act on them.

People like to know that their contribution created an impact and that the time they took to respond was worthwhile.

This closes the loop and sets you up with the respondents for the next time you decide to conduct a survey.

Analyze Your Findings and Identify Patterns

You finally have everything you need for your research; your results are in, and all you have to do is analyze everything you’ve found.

This next step is called Data Analysis. In this step, you bring together all the data you’ve collected, identify patterns, and draw conclusions.

You need to keep in mind a few things before you start analyzing your market research data.

• Don’t start analyzing the results before all your responses come in, and the survey is closed.
• Filter the results. There would be many low-quality responses that won’t help your research. These could be
• Incomplete survey responses.
• Responses from people who are not your target audience.
• People who completed the survey with supersonic speed. Yeah, they didn’t really read your questions.
• Unrealistic answers. For example, family size is 4700. Well, really?

Now that you have your data, what are you going to do about it? Read through hundreds of survey responses and interview notes?

The amount of data you receive can be quite overwhelming. To ensure your head doesn’t go spinning while analyzing this data, it is essential to use data organization and data reduction techniques.

These methods will be beneficial to compile and assemble data to interpret and analyze your findings.

You can segment your results to gain in-depth insights. Below are a few samples of segments you can utilize.

Types of Market Segmentation.

• Demographic Segmentation, like age, gender, and marital status.
• Geographic Segmentation, like country, state, and regions.
• Psychographic Segmentation, like personality traits, beliefs, values, lifestyle, opinions, and interests of consumers.
• Behavioral Segmentation, like decision-making patterns such as consumption, purchase, lifestyle, and usage.
• Firmographic Segmentation, like company size and the number of employees.

Online survey portals like Survey Monkey and Questionpro offer in-depth analysis with statistical data and visual charts to draw conclusions for your research.

However, not all platforms may offer such services, and additionally, you may have secondary research data to combine with your survey responses.

Here is a list of data analysis software programs that you can use to integrate your market research data, analyze your findings, and identify patterns.

Quantitative Data Analysis Software

Quantitative Data Analysis focuses on statistical, mathematical, and numerical analysis of data you have collected with market research.

Here is a list of quantitative analysis software programs.

SPSS stands for Statistical Package for Social Sciences. It is the most popular quantitative analysis tool used for editing, analyzing, and presenting numerical data.

With SPSS, you can perform analysis, interpret the results, and make sound statistical decisions.

SPSS is well-suited for all formats used for structured data analysis like Excel, plain text files, and relational (SQL) databases.

STATA is a powerful and flexible general-purpose statistical software package.

It is an interactive data analysis program that runs on a variety of platforms. It is easy to analyze, manage, and produce graphical visualizations of data.

You can use STATA for both simple and complex statistical analyses.

STATA offers several purchase options to fit your budget.

SAS is an acronym for Statistical Analysis System.

With the Market Research Application (MRA) of this software program, you are provided with advanced graphical and statistical data evaluation techniques.

R is a free software to download and use , especially for graphical and statistical computing.

If you are familiar with statistics and computing, you can add your own programs to it.

There are free software programs like JAMOVI and Jasp , both of which require no coding knowledge and are extremely easy and straightforward to use.

While all these tools can help you analyze numerical data and create statistics, they may not be of much help while trying to identify patterns in open-ended survey responses and interview comments.

The aforementioned tools are excellent for quantifiable data, but if you want to break down qualitative data, I have a list of tools to make your life easier.

Please note that most of these tools analyze both qualitative and quantitative market research data.

Qualitative Data Analysis Software.

NVivo is, by far, the largest player in the qualitative software field.

You can analyze the unstructured text, video, audio, and image data, including interviews, open-ended survey answers, focus groups, social media, and journal articles.

You can import text, audio, video, emails, spreadsheets, images, online surveys, web content, and social media from various sources and create a centralized base to conduct in-depth analysis.

NVivo offers a 14-day free trial . The price is variable .

Like NVivo, you can import data from interviews, focus groups, surveys, videos, and even social media from various sources into a simple, intuitive interface.

After you import your data, you can organize your data into different categories. You can even mark specific data and leave notes, and color-code your data for better organization.

MaxQDA offers a 30-day free trial . The price is variable according to your specifications.

Quirkos is designed to help researchers sort, manage, and comprehend large amounts of data. You can code or tag specific sections of data and even compare themes across various sources.

Quirkos does not offer as many extensive features as NVivo; its main focus is to provide simple tools for exploring qualitative data that are flexible and easier to use.

It has an extremely straightforward interface so you can focus on your work and not how to do it.

One of Quirkos’ best features is its text analyzer. This tool helps you find common keywords and phrases within various text documents.

One major drawback is Quirkos does not have support for integrated multimedia and quantitative analysis.

You can choose between a subscription service or a one-off license fee. Additionally, Quirkos offers a free trial of the full version.

With Dedoose, you organize research data in a broad range of formats, including qualitative data such as text, audio, images, or video, and quantitative data such as spreadsheets, surveys, test scores, ratings, or demographics.

It is easy to collaborate as it is a web-based software.

You can also import project data from other software like NVivo, Atlas.ti, MaxQDA, Saturate, HyperResearch, Quirkos, and others.

Dedoose pricing starts from $14.95 Per Active Month for an individual. They also offer plans for small and large groups and have a special package for students.

Regardless of the group size, Dedoose offers the first-month cycle of use is free for all users.

5. Atlas.ti

Atlas.ti is a web-based qualitative data analysis software program that allows you to capture perspectives & insights into primary or secondary research.

It is a powerful tool for efficient and effective work on your research data. You can organize data, add information, and create comments, codes, annotations, categories, and shows relationships among all of them.

Atlas.ti is an excellent tool if you want to analyze large bodies of textual, graphical, audio, and video data.

With Atlas.ti, you can import source materials as DOCX., CSV, PDF, TXT, RTF, JPEG, GIF, and other audio/video formats.

This software program is easy to manage and gives you a lot of freedom to name categories according to your preferences.

Atlas.ti offers a free 14-day trial version . The price is variable according to your specifications.

6. Qualtrics

Qualtrics is an easy-to-use web-based software program that allows users to build surveys, analyze and interpret responses, and generate reports.

You do not require any coding knowledge. Their drag-and-drop interface is extremely simple and straightforward.

From setting up your project, managing it, finding respondents, and reporting on the results, Qualtrics offers all kinds of services.

Qualtrics’ Prediction Analysis tool uses historical and current survey responses to make predictions about customer behavior. This tool helps analyze how the market will react to new products or services you plan to launch.

Qualtrics offers a flexible service so that you can request a quote according to your requirements.

These are some of the best tools available for qualitative analysis.

However, if these tools are a bit pricey for your needs, here is a list of free tools you can use.

Free Qualitative Data Analysis Software Programs:

• Square Feedback
• QDA Miner Lite
• ConnectedText

Now you know the best ways to analyze your market research data and the tools you can leverage to make this process more efficient and systematic.

List Hyper-Specific Action Items and Follow-Up Research Questions to Maximize the Value from Your Market Research

Market Research helps you identify your customer’s requirements and expectations.

With research, you can benchmark yourself against your competitors and ensure you have a leading advantage.

One of the best ways to gain a better perspective is through follow-up questions.

Interviews via telephone or face-to-face and emails are your principal follow-up marketing tools.

After your customer fills out your survey, you already have their attention. You could ask them almost any question related to your product or service, and they would probably answer it.

You might choose to stay anonymous during your original survey to avoid the respondent to be influenced by your brand. So, in the follow-up section, you can ask your audience everything you want them to answer about your brand.

You also have the freedom to include as many open-ended questions as you like, for it gives them space to share how they feel directly.

Here is a list of follow up questions to find additional information specific to your brand and business.

• What could we do to increase your score by just one mark?
• If you could change one thing about our product, what would it be?
• What three of these features would you most like to see in the product’s future?
• Which of these words best describes our product?
• What problem would you like to solve with our product?
• How would you rate the value for money of the product?
• How easy is it to navigate on our website?
• Were you able to find the information you were looking for on our website?
• How did this effort compare to your expectations?
• How responsive have we been to your feedback about our products?
• Why did you choose our product rather than a competitor’s?

You may get answers to some of these questions in your original survey, but the follow-up survey gives your audience the chance to open up.

When you allow your customers to go deeper and speak about their experience and feelings, it builds a foundation for trust and loyalty.

This happens only when you take their responses into account and improve your products to meet their needs and wants.

Most people take surveys and never hear back apart from a stale, thank you note. They don’t know how their contribution helped; if the business did anything with the information in the first place.

Be sure to drop an email after your market research analysis to thank them sincerely. Additionally, include the top 2 or 3 three conclusions you have drawn from their surveys and how you plan to implement them.

People like to know how their contributions helped create an impact and assure your audience that they didn’t waste their time with you.

When you engage them in your research process, they will distinctly remember your brand and be more open to participating in your future research.

Best Market Research Methods for Small Businesses on a Low Budget.

Spending an outrageous amount of money is not the only way to do market research.

I’ll give you five cost-effective market research strategies that you can implement to gain actionable data.

1. Research Product Reviews on Amazon.

Amazon is the world’s largest online retailer.

Amazon accounts for 13.7% of worldwide e-commerce sales . In the United States, Amazon is projected to account for more than half of the local e-commerce market.

Amazon is the fastest and easiest way to uncover what your customers are looking for and what they are actually buying.

What people say and what they do can sometimes be miles apart, and amazon shows you their actions.

You can check out your competitor’s products and head over to the review section to know what people have to say regarding the product.

You can know exactly what products are working, and the positive reviews will tell you what aspects of the product people are benefitting from.

But what will help you the most is finding what people are complaining about.

Viola! You found their pain point.

Suppose your company manufactures helmets. You scroll through your competitor’s products on amazon and navigate to the customer reviews.

There’s your pain point!

Your competitor’s product does not offer proper gear to shield people’s nose from dust.

If your product works to satisfy those customers, you can effectively steal your competitor’s audience!

2. Use Quora for Your Market Research

Quora has over 300 million unique visitors each month.

Quora is an information-focused platform to ask questions, get answers, and share your knowledge on topics you are familiar with.

Quora’s online community is an excellent place to find views, opinions, advice, standpoints, beliefs, explanations, and answers to everything you want to know.

If you think you may not find what you need at Quora, you should note that there are over 400,000 topics on Quora right now.

Quora is a platform for real people seeking answers. There is no third party involved, and you can know what people want in their own words.

It is an excellent place to conduct your research.

How to use Quora for market research?

You can sign up for Quora using your Google or Facebook account, and you can start following topics you are interested in.

Quora also gives you relevant suggestions when you type in specific topics or keywords in the search bar.

Quora has a feature where you can follow topics you are interested in.

When you follow a topic, Quora will optimize your home page news feed to show you the latest activity within topics you are interested in.

You can also note topics related to your search result on the right section of the page.

When people post questions tagging topics you follow, Quora will notify you.

You can also get the latest questions sent to you via email.

Go to the Settings option and then navigate to Email and Notifications to optimize settings according to your preference.

You will be able to track relevant topics with notifications and learn about what people in your industry are saying and what your audience has to say about your industry.

To gain more insights about a topic, click on the meatballs menu button, and select Manage.

Quora will give you information about common misspellings, alternative names, and standard abbreviations for your chosen topic.

On Quora, very similar topics are merged. You can find topics that have been integrated with the subject you are interested in.

On the right section of the page, Quora gives you information about your chosen subject's parent topics and child topics .

When you look for a particular question , Quora ranks the answers based on the number of Upvotes a response received. This feature will help you understand customer pain points.

Use Quora for your product research.

Quora also has brand-based topics. If your business has products, you can use Quora to see what people have to say about your products or services.

You should follow topics and questions specific to your business and answer queries people might have about them.

Joining in on conversations where your products or services are involved will help you gain a deeper understanding of how people perceive your products.

You can use websites like QuestionsPro to find relevant questions and track your answers.

3. Look at Your Google Analytics Data and Email Marketing Data

Google analytics.

Google Analytics is an exceptional tool for market research that is available for free.

At first glance, Google Analytics can be quite daunting.

There is way too much data presented to you, and if you are not familiar with the tool, you will keep going around in circles and walk away with a spectacular headache.

To make your life easier, here is an overview of the features of Google Analytics that can help you with your market research.

Google Analytics has eight main sections: Dashboards, Shortcuts, Intelligence Events, Real-Time, Audience, Acquisition, Behavior, and Conversions.

Out of all these, there are four sections you need to pay close attention to — Audience, Acquisition, Behavior, and Conversions.

1. Audience Section

This section gives you detailed insights about your users.

In this section, you can find information regarding the gender, age, and location of visitors to your website.

To find this information, focus on sub-sections Demographics and Geo .

The Demographics section will give you information regarding your website visitors’ age range and gender.

To know where your website visitors are from, click on the Geo Dropdown, and select Location.

If you want more specific information, you can click on individual countries to know which states in those countries your visitors are from.

Furthermore, you can select individual states to obtain a list of cities.

This will help you create strategies for your campaigns to drive better results.

2. Acquisition Section

Do most of your visitors come from Google? Instagram ? Facebook ? Quora? Website referrals?

This section will give you detailed information about how people come to your website.

You can analyze where most of your traffic comes from and find keywords your visitors used to navigate them to your website.

But this Keywords tool of Google analytics may not always be useful because of Google’s decision to encrypt keyword data.

If you would like to obtain data about Google's organic search keywords, you can use Google Webmaster Tools (Go to Search Traffic, then select Search Queries. )

3. Behavior Section

This section will provide a rich understanding of how your audience interacts with individual pages on your website.

Google Analytics Behavior section includes nine sections and tools .

These tools will help you learn about your user behavior. You can know which is the most visited page on your website and what actions people are taking while visiting your website.

4. Conversion Section

If you have an online store , the Conversion section will give you insights regarding your leads and conversions.

This section provides eCommerce Analytics to get information regarding how your products are performing and how many sessions or days it takes before your prospects convert.

Email Marketing

People don’t give their personal information without reason, and if used right, your email list can develop a profound connection with your customers.

You have contact details of people interested in what you have to say and have directly interacted with your business by providing their contact information.

So why not make the best of it?

In 2020, roughly 306.4 billion emails were sent and received each day.

Social Media platforms come and go with changing market trends, but email has been an integral part of our daily lives for ages.

This is because, with emails, you have the freedom to reach out to your audience with no restrictions. There is no third-party who can impact how, when, or why you reach out.

As of 2020, there are over 4.03 billion email users worldwide.

That is more than half of the world’s population. So, if you are looking for a way to connect with people, email is the perfect place for you.

Many marketers have used email marketing to generate sales , but if you look at email marketing in terms of only leads and sales, you lose out on a lot.

One hidden capability of email marketing is market research.

Though it isn't as full-blown as other research tools, email marketing does help with market research and has advantages over cost-effectiveness and reciprocation speed.

Using Email Marketing Data for Market Research

Any email with a call-to-action gives insights to help your research.

If you have sent an email offering seven products to your subscribers, you can analyze which product has done the best and which hasn’t.

But this isn't only limited to knowing your product's popularity; you can gain a deeper understanding by analyzing who purchased which product.

Based on past purchases or demographics, you can see which customers like a certain kind of product.

Email marketing does have its limitations.

It does not offer anonymity, meaning your customers will know who has sent them the survey. So, if they choose to take up the survey, their answers could be influenced by how they perceive your brand.

So, how can you make the most of a survey delivered by email?

• Offer Incentives. When you offer a promo code or a gift card to someone in exchange for a few minutes of their time, they will be more inclined to help you out than if you just ask them to fill a survey.
• Survey Questionnaire. The survey you send via email to your subscribers can't include the same questions as your other surveys. You need to keep in mind that they already know who you are, including questions like, “According to you, who is the best brand in the XYZ industry?” will not be useful.
• Type of questions. Your questions should be clear and straightforward. Don’t include too many open-ended questions; make it as easy-to-answer for your audience as possible.
• Compare survey analysis. You can get deeper insights if you compare survey results according to specific categories like geographical location. This will provide you with information about which type of your audience favors what.

How to build your email list?

To build your email list, you need people to subscribe. As we have already established that people don’t give out their personal information for free, you could create lead magnets.

Types of lead magnets:

• Online Courses
• Whitepapers
• Reports or Studies
• Infographics

Email Marketing Tools

Using an email marketing service is tremendously important. These software programs help you optimize and personalize your emails.

I would suggest you choose either Getresponse or Convertkit .

They are simple to use and offer a variety of features that you can leverage to create email marketing campaigns.

Even if you do not have a technical bone in your body, you can create, personalize, and customize your emails by yourself.

These tools ensure that all your emails are optimized to display perfectly over all devices and give you detailed engagement analytics.

How to Use Competitor Research for Market Research

Why are your competitors doing better than you are? What is their marketing strategy? Who are they targeting? What keywords are bringing traffic to their website?

If you are not aware of what your competitors are doing, how do you expect to outrank them?

This is the reason why you need to conduct a competitor analysis.

What is competitor analysis?

Competitor Analysis (or competitive research) is the process where you identify your major competitors and evaluate their strengths and weaknesses.

The goal of conducting a competitor analysis is to replicate their successful strategies and exploit their weaknesses.

When you know what entities your competitors are targeting, you can develop strategies to target the same entities and generate better results.

These weaknesses could be a particular market they’re overlooking or even keywords that they’re not targeting to get traffic to their website.

Competitive Analysis in Marketing

Competitor analysis will:

• Help you create full-proof marketing strategies.
• Identify gaps in the market and opportunities that your competitors are overlooking.
• Replicate your competitor’s strengths and take advantage of their weaknesses.
• Help you make informed decisions for future investments.

How to conduct your competitive analysis?

1. Identify your major competitors.

Determining who you are competing with is an essential first step.

Social media and search engines have made market research a much easier process. You are only a search result away from knowing who the major competitors in your industry are.

What products or services do they offer?

Understanding what your competitors offer and its features are essential. Here are a few questions you can answer to understand your competitor better.

• What is the price range of their products?
• Who are their ideal customers?
• What is their primary customer demographic?
• How do they stand out from their competitors?
• How are they marketing their products or services?
• What are its most popular features?

You need to assess the market to identify both the major players and those steadily on the rise.

Porter’s Five Forces Model allows you to analyze the competition in the marketplace and helps you identify your standing among competitors.

Porter’s industry analysis method recognizes the following five fundamental for

• Competitive rivalry. How many firms compete, and how much is the market growing?
• Threat of substitute products. How likely is it for customers to switch to other firms?
• Bargaining power of buyers. How much power do customers have?
• Threat of new entrants. How easy is it to establish a new firm?
• Bargaining power of suppliers. How much power do suppliers have?

This market research analysis technique will give you a better understanding of your industry’s competitive landscape.

2. Acquire Competitors’ Credit Reports.

Business credit scores rank the creditworthiness of a business.

You can get access to your competitor’s credit reports online for free. While personal credit scores are not available online, business credit scores can be accessed by anyone.

Additionally, it is vital to create your business’ credit report to determine and prove your credibility.

According to a study published by The Wall Street Journal , around 25% of business credit reports you find online may contain errors or lack critical information.

Trusted Sources to Get a Free Business Credit Report.

• Nav You can gain access to free credit report services, including a summary of business credit reports from D&B , Equifax , and Experian . The business credit report also includes a letter grade with the credit-score range.
• Creditsafe . You can sign up at CreditSafe to gain a free credit report for your own business. After you fill out an online request, you have to talk to a Creditsafe representative to activate your business credit report.
• Dun & Bradstreet Credit Signal It is a free business credit reporting service provided by D&B. Credit Signal offers free monitoring service so you can be instantly notified of changes in your business’ D&B credit scores and ratings.

Sources for Paid Business Credit Reports.

• Dun & Bradstreet It is one of the oldest credit reporting companies in existence. For every business you research, D&B provides a credit summary, a credit score, and a financial stress score. With D&B, you can also check out payment comparisons between different businesses in an industry.
• Equifax This tool will give you access to public records information like bankruptcy and a business failure score, which is a forecast of how likely it is for a company to crash in the next year. Along with a business failure score, Equifax business credit reports also include possible reasons for failure. You can also gather information about other companies associated with your chosen business and even their business demographics and payment history.
• Experian It is one of the newest key players in the credit reporting industry. Their business credit reports are incredibly detailed, including information right from the basics to risk alerts, risk indicator ratings, and even business verification. You can gain as many credit reports on your targeted business and be notified whenever new information is updated.

Analyzing these reports can tell you if the businesses are financially stable and how much risk there is in the industry.

3. Analyze and compare competitor’s content.

Familiarize yourself with the kind of content your competitor is publishing. Take note of the type of content that is receiving the most engagement.

What kind of content are you publishing, and how is it different from their content? Are you making use of all formats, or are you missing out on opportunities?

What is your competitor's primary focus on content marketing?

Here is a list of content formats you should take note of:

• White papers
• Case studies
• Newsletters
• Press releases

Compare the quality of content and analyze how frequently they are publishing. Determine their content strategy and see how you can build about that to gain better results.

4. Analyze their Website.

98% of businesses have rated a competitor’s website as a valuable resource and the best source for obtaining competitive intelligence data.

What are consumers searching for? Why are your competitors outranking you in SERPs? What strategies are they using to do so?

An essential aspect you need to know is what keywords they are ranking for.

Let’s assume McDonald’s to be your competitor brand.

For your market research, you should, of course, consider a wide range of brands. I’m only considering one brand for the purpose of learning how to do competitor analysis.

Use Google Ads Keyword Planner to analyze your competitor market.

Go to Keyword Planner and paste your competitor’s website URLs.

Be sure to select Use the entire site for the keyword planner to analyze their entire site.

When you click on Get Results , the keyword planner will give you a list of keywords that your competitor’s website ranks for.

But as you can see, most of the results won't help you as they are specific to your competitor's brand.

You can exclude their brand name by

• Clicking on Filter.
• Select Keyword.
• Choose Does not contain from the drop-down menu.
• Enter your competitor’s brand name.

Now you can see a much more relevant list that you can target.

You can now do this individually for all your competitor brands and see what they rank for and which keywords they have in common.

Note: Google Ads Keyword Planner is a free tool that is primarily for advertisers, not SEOs. You can use SEO specific tools like SEMrush , Moz , and Ahrefs to gain in-depth insights about your competitor’s SEO.

Your main objective is to try and outrank your competitor in SERPs .

Once you know what keywords your competitor is ranking for, analyze where they are using these keywords.

• URL architecture
• Meta description
• Heading tags
• Content Body
• Inbound links
• Image alt text
• Social media

Additionally, also take note of the following:

• Page Speed Insights
• Domain Authority
• Root linking domains
• Sitemaps – HTML, image, XML, video
• Backlinking strategy
• Website responsiveness (Mobile and Desktop)

Analyze what keywords your competitor is ranking for that you are not. This is called keyword gap analysis.

Analyze how they are ranking for those keywords and build upon their strategy to give Google better content to consider.

5. Look at their social media engagement.

The next step is to analyze your competitor’s social media and see how they integrate it into their marketing strategy.

• Which social media platform are they focusing on?
• Where do they receive the most engagement?
• What kind of content are they posting?
• Which content format is working the best for them?
• How often do they post?
• What kind of profile pictures and cover images are they using?
• Check out their social media bio. What points have they mentioned in their overview section?
• What is their growth rate?
• Who are they following?
• How proactive are they? How well are they addressing consumer complaints?
• How are they interacting with their customers and brand advocates?
• What are their weaknesses? Is their response rate poor? Is it irregular posting? Spelling or grammatical errors? Lack of engagement? Poor imagery?

Find out areas you can exploit and use their social media strategies to successfully build your online presence.

6. Sentiment Analysis.

Sentiment Analysis is interpreting how customers feel about your business.

This is something that is often overlooked by businesses. It is crucial to track how the audience feels about your brand when compared to your competitors.

There are various free and paid tools that can help you assess the sentiment behind customer behavior.

Sentiment Analysis Tools.

• Quick Search
• Critical Mention
• Social Mention
• Sentiment Analyzer
• Social Searcher
• MonkeyLearn

Use these insights to gain the upper hand over your competition. And though you won't take the lead overnight, it is essential to track your progress with tools like Google Analytics , SEMrush , Moz , and Google Webmasters .

Analyze what is working and what isn’t, and optimize your strategy accordingly.

Ask Your Audience with Online Surveys

Conducting an online survey is probably the most effective means of getting direct feedback from your customers.

It is a straightforward, reliable, and affordable way of obtaining data.

You do not need any coding knowledge to conduct an online survey. You simply need to register on an online survey portal and create your survey.

These are hundreds of online survey platforms you can choose to conduct your market research. Each of them has its unique features, and it is important to filter through to find the one that fits your requirements.

I have compiled a list of leading SaaS online survey platforms for you to choose from.

Online Survey Platforms.

1. Typeform .

Typeform offers over 150+ survey templates for you to choose from. You can easily optimize them as per your specifications.

Many people abandon their surveys because they get bored. With Typeform, you can choose to project one question at a time to keep your audience engaged.

The free version of Typeform, nicknamed the CORE plan, offers various features.

• 3 typeforms.
• 10 questions per Typeform.
• 100 responses per month.
• Reports and metrics.
• Email notification when someone completes your Typeform.
• Embed your Typeform on a web page.

Price: Typeform plans start from $35 per month.

2. SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey is one of the leading online survey platforms in the market.

It is incredibly user-friendly, and you can get reports of your market research survey in minutes.

If you do not have a source of participants for your research, with SurveyMonkey, you can find people who fit your criteria from their global panel of respondents.

SurveyMonkey Basic (Free) plan features:

• 10 questions or elements per survey
• View either 40 or 100 responses per survey (depending on when you created an account and your billing location.)

Responses over your plan’s limit are hidden and will be deleted after 60 days unless you upgrade to a paid plan.

3. QuestionPro

With QuestionPro, you can not only create surveys but analyze your qualitative and quantitative research data.

As far as free survey tools go, you won’t find another that delivers as much value as QuestionPro’s free trial version.

Here are a few features of QuestionPro’s Essential (Free) plan :

• Unlimited surveys.
• Unlimited questions‪ per survey.
• Unlimited responses (however, each survey is limited to a maximum of 1000 responses.)
• 25+ question types‪.
• Add your own logo to the survey.
• Shareable dashboard reports‪.
• Customized thank you page‪.

Price: QuestionPro plans start from $85 per month

These are the best online survey platforms available. A few other notable survey platforms you should consider are:

• Google Forms
• Zoho Survey
• ProProfs Survey Maker
• Client Heartbeat
• Survey Gizmo
• Survey Planet

All the survey tools mentioned above have their advantages and limitations. Which platform you choose ultimately depends on your business requirements.

If you are not able to come to a conclusion, I would recommend starting with SurveyMonkey or QuestionPro .

Best Sites for Market Research Reports, Finding Users to Interview, and Surveying

Throughout the blog, I’ve mentioned several websites and software programs you can use for various stages of your market research.

In this section, I am going to list additional tools (free and paid) that will make your life much easier while conducting market research.

1. U.S Census Data Tools

U.S. Census Bureau data tools are excellent for conducting secondary market research.

It provides various market research tools and free industry research reports.

You can access economic, demographic, and population data and gain valuable insights for your research.

In fact, you can segment the user data by age, race, ethnicity, and even housing status and compare this information with other locations side by side.

Price: Free.

2. Pew Research Center

This is another excellent website for obtaining free industry reports and datasets.

Pew Research Center gathers data and creates reports based on public opinion polls, demographic analysis, content research, and other social science data-driven research.

Its Download Datasets page lists the direct links to access the datasets available.

By creating an account , you can download survey reports and be notified if there are any changes made to datasets you’ve previously accessed.

3. Statista

Statista is one of the largest statistics portals in the market. The site provides datasets for over 80,000 topics.

Statista conducts market research using a broad range of specialist tools and is excellent at transforming qualitative data into statistics.

Price: You can register to create a free basic account. However, the features offered are minimal. The pricing plans start from $39 per month for a single account.

4. Google Trends

Google Trends is one of the best tools available for market research.

With Google Trends, you can determine what consumers are searching about competing brands.

You can analyze the popularity of one search term in comparison with other terms simultaneously.

You can also use filter features like region and category to gain insights according to your specifications.

With Feedier, you can effectively engage your participants, export your data, and run insight reports for your market research.

Here are a few features of Feedier’s free trial version , also called Essentials.

• 100 monthly responses
• 1 Feedback Form
• Interactive Form builder
• 12+ question types (NPS)
• Participant actions
• Visual data insights

Price: Feedrier plans start from $150 per month.

6. Think With Google – Market Finder

Think With Google is another terrific research tool to uncover the latest marketing trends.

Think With Google’s Market Finder helps you gain insights based on in-depth national and global data and consumer insights.

7. SBA’s Office of Entrepreneurship Education Resources

SBA’s Office of Entrepreneurship Education provides access to various resources and business and economic statistics.

There is a variety of tools, reports, and resources available for conducting your market research analysis.

8. Social Mention

With billions of people using social media all over the world, it is challenging to analyze what is being said and done on these platforms.

Social Mention is a search engine that analyzes content across various social media platforms.

With Social Mention, you can enter a specific keyword and get a list of mentions related to your search term. You can filter your search results by source, date, and even location.

Social Mention also provides a score for sentiment, strength, reach, and passion with respect to your search term.

9. Testing Time

One of the biggest challenges of conducting primary market research is finding participants for your research.

With Testing Time, you can find participants by specifying your target audience's characteristics like their location and demographics. You can even include additional criteria specific for your research like, “must own a car.”

Price: Their pricing options depend on the number of test users and the test method.

10. Respondent

Most survey portals that provide a source for participants do not allow direct contact with the audience.

With Respondent, you can conduct video calls, phone calls, in-person discussions, or online research. It's up to you.

You decide on how much you are willing to pay per participant according to your budget.

Price: Respondent charges a 50% service fee per participant.

Market Research FAQ

There is no one size fits all when it comes to market research.  Four primary factors that define your market research cost: 1. The type of research to fulfill your specifications and the cost associated with it. 2. The number of participants you need for your research. 3. Incidence rate, i.e., the percentage of people who fit your target audience criteria. 4. Data collection method and the incentives you offer The average cost for Top-level reports: $100 to $1,000. These reports will provide basic insights into your industry. The average cost for Full-market reports: $1,500 to $8,000 (most commonly $3,500 to $4,000). These reports will be extremely detailed and cover various metrics about your industry from current market trends to future projections. But if you are willing to put in the effort and cut down labor costs, and conduct most of your research online, you can gain insightful data for $300 to $1,500.

The truth is, you can undoubtedly conduct your market research in-house, but it is incredibly tedious to try to do everything on your own. Extending your research by making use of market research firms and online marketing tools will make this process much smoother for you. While you may not want to outsource your entire research, there is too much work that goes into market research, and handing out a few tasks makes your research much more efficient.  Hiring a freelance researcher may be the best course of action for small-scale field research. Most marketing agencies do not undertake projects with a budget below $4,000. Before hiring a freelancer, run a thorough background check to analyze their credibility. Ensure they fit your business and have enough authority to conduct the research.

While conducting secondary market research, there are thousands of sources available online for free and a cost.  While it may be tempting to leverage free research reports, it is imperative to ensure that the source is credible.  Use government sources to access free reports that give basic insights about your industry. Statistics that will have a direct impact on your business decisions should be handled with caution. For example, economic projections or subjective analysis reports. To obtain accurate data for such statistics, the information must come from multiple credible sources. So, here is the baseline.  If the data is free, verify it. If you can’t verify it on your own, purchase it from a reputed and unbiased publisher. 

Ready to Understand Your Market Better Than Your Competitors?

When it comes to understanding your customers better than your competitors, you can’t rely on assumptions or feelings. You need hard numbers.

Market research may seem incredibly daunting at first glance.

It is time-consuming and tedious, but you wouldn’t be unnerved by conducting market research if you know the exact process.

In this blog, I’ve systematically broken down the entire market research process step-by-step, so you can conduct your research to attain maximum actionable insights.

You now know how to find gaps in the market and exploit your competitor’s weaknesses.

What market research methods you can use if you are on a budget.

How to understand your competitors’ strategies and build upon them to attain better success.

I’ve also listed several market research tools that you can use to conduct your research much more efficiently.

All you have to do is follow everything I’ve mentioned in this blog to understand the market and your consumers better.

Was This Article Helpful?

Anastasia belyh.

Anastasia has been a professional blogger and researcher since 2014. She loves to perform in-depth software reviews to help software buyers make informed decisions when choosing project management software, CRM tools, website builders, and everything around growing a startup business.

Anastasia worked in management consulting and tech startups, so she has lots of experience in helping professionals choosing the right business software.

Search the site:

• WordPress Retainers
• Enterprise Development
• Maintenance & Support

How to Conduct Market Research: A Step-By-Step Guide

Figuring out how to do market research for the first time can be intimidating and confusing. There are so many categories and different methods to choose from. It often seems like an endless list of organizational tasks and preparations.

However cumbersome as it might seem, research has an irreplaceable value for every company, be it a startup or a big corporation. It’s an instrument that leaders must use to keep themselves informed and up-to-date with market changes and make smart choices.

By observing your customers, you gain valuable insights into their personalities, motivations, challenges, and consumer behavior.

Furthermore, the data you gather gives you a glimpse of the processes that control the marketplace. You can gain a strategic edge over seemingly random or meaningless situations by learning more about them.

To sum up, doing your research helps you make better data-based business choices. This leads to better products, satisfied customers, and crushed competition. Sounds good, right?

If you follow through with your research with precision and discipline, you will soon be able to scale your company’s success rate significantly.

Before you read this guide and start your efforts, we advise you to brush up on the basics first and go through our other articles on market research:

• Market Research 101: From Beginner to Advanced
• Conducting Market Research: 6 Methods to Explore
• 15 Essential Market Research Tips for Businesses

Digging deeper into the process will give you the necessary background and confidence to go forth without any concerns.

So, without further ado, let’s roll our sleeves and get started on how to conduct market research. Read on and take notes!

1. Define the Research Goal

The first step of the process is defining your goal. It is important to start with a clear idea of why you are doing the research and what you want to accomplish. If your motivation is vague, you risk straying from your objectives and becoming distracted by irrelevant information.

During your study, you may find other important topics that are not closely related to the problem you are addressing. You should record them and save them for later research in different projects.

Mixing questions regarding too many problems in one survey can confuse the respondents and affect the accuracy of their answers. It can also make the research results too inconsistent. And it’s hard to conclude a bunch of random facts.

By stating the purpose and the problems of your research, you can establish a clear goal guiding everyone throughout the process.

This way, you’ll concentrate your efforts, and, in the end, you’ll be able to make informed decisions based on data.

For example, if you are choosing the pricing model for a new SaaS product, you should perform market research to make sure you’ll pick out the best one for your business. In this case, it should be something like “ Find out the best pricing strategy for the product ”. Some of the objectives can be:

• Identify the target audience.
• Find out what products they are currently using.
• Learn how much they are paying for them.
• Understand how much they are willing to pay.
• Research how they are using similar products.
• Discover what features they’d pay more for.
• Compare your product to the competition, etc.

Ultimately, your goal should be what you want to see accomplished in the future. That’s why it’s best to focus on your plans and targets, rather than on your current problems. Otherwise, you risk being stuck with unsolvable issues rather than with creative solutions.

2. Create Client Personas

When doing market research, you need a group of people who’ll answer your questions and whose opinions are important to your business. To identify these people, you should first create profiles that fit your target audience.

Client personas, or buyer personas , are collective profiles representing your ideal customers’ common qualities. They can be based on your top buyers in an attempt to attract more people like them to your business, or if you are just starting, they can be the product of separate market research.

Every business should have market personas. If you have already created yours – way to go, you are one step ahead! If you have not yet done it, now is a good time.

When building the buyer persona’s profile, you should include the following basic information, and add other specific factors, if there are any:

• Demographic – Age, gender, location, etc.
• Personal Information – Family status, income, interests, etc.
• Work-related details – Company, position, decision-making level, etc.
• Pain Points – Work and personal life struggles, barriers to achieving goals, etc.

For further reference on how to build buyer persona profiles, you can read DevriX’s article:

An Advanced Guide to Creating and Using Buyer Personas to Convert Leads

3. Identify the Sample

A market research sample is a representative group of people who match your client persona profiles. Depending on the scope of the study, you might include in it people who fit one or multiple personas.

Ideally, if you want the results to be representative, you should focus on a single profile. However, if you feel that you will get more information from different types of customers, you can define separate samples for every participating persona and compare the results at the end.

Defining and identifying a representative sample is the foundation of accumulating accurate results. If your participants don’t match the profile you need, their answers will not be relevant to your goals.

Participants for samples can be identified in:

• Your customer database . Clients should be divided into groups matching your buyer persona profiles. If you haven’t already implemented the segmentation , doing it will help you sift through who to invite to participate in the research.
• Competitors’ clients. People who use products similar to yours and fit the profile, but are not currently your customers, are a great addition to your research. By learning about their opinions and preferences, you can attract them as clients in the future.
• Your lead database . Every lead you have in your email list or CRM tool can be a potential candidate for the survey sample. As with existing customers, leads should be segmented not only for research but also for better marketing.
• Social media profiles . Your network of followers on different social media platforms can be a valuable resource in every survey. By announcing the desired profiles participants should fit and encouraging people to share with acquaintances, you can reach many more potential participants.

Your sample must be large enough and also representative of the population you are targeting. Choosing an audience too small or an ill-targeted group of people can make the results of the research biased.

Although there is not a universal minimal number of people to include in your study, it is generally accepted amongst scientists that less than 100 people is insufficient to make up a statistically relevant conclusion. Therefore, to ensure you’ll reach this number, you’ll have to distribute your questions to at least 150 people.

However, if you want to research only your existing customers and they are less than 100 in total, you can still carry out your study but you’ll have to accept a larger error margin .

4. Perform Your Chosen Research Methods

Once your sample is clear, you can move forward to conducting market research. Depending on your goals, you can explore different methods, but we will be using a strategy combining a few of them for this article. This is usually the safest way to guarantee that your results will be comprehensible and on point.

Prep Your Questions

The goals and objectives you set in the initial stages of your research should be organized and formulated into questions you can ask your participants.

Although the phrasing and scope of these will probably change and be refined throughout the different stages of the research, you should consider testing them at the beginning on a small sample. This will allow you to eliminate rookie mistakes and save you some trouble further on in the research.

Do Secondary Research

Before you start studying your audience, you should consider doing secondary research to build a general idea of the market.

You can find paid and free data available in government databases, private research companies, educational institutions, and public libraries.

There is a chance that the information you go through has nothing to do with the goals of your particular research. But it can still help you identify market patterns at scale and configure your following moves.

Try Various Exploratory Methods

The next step is to dive into your specific target audience and see how things are. This can be done via different exploratory research methods.

1. Observation. At this stage, consider starting with observation. This will give you an idea of how your customers act in real-life situations in their natural environment.

2. Focus Group Meetings. You can continue by consolidating your initial impressions in focus group meetings. The moderator can ask the participants about the subjects that got their attention and the discussion that follows can give you additional insights.

3. Personal Interviews. Interviewing individual representatives of your sample will allow you to ask even more follow-up questions and have a chance to learn about your customers’ preferences, goals, and pain points.

Distribute Customer Surveys

You can leverage all the information you’ve gathered in the previous steps to design customer surveys . They will help you acquire the answers to your questions at scale and prove or disprove the hypothesis built in the exploratory stage.

The questions in the surveys should be as simple and easy to understand as possible. Avoid answers that lead the customer in the direction you’d like. This might influence their responses and compromise the results.

5. Analyze the Data and Organize It Into a Report

The data you obtain should be analyzed and organized at the end of every stage of your market research. These preliminary reports will serve you in the process of the study and will make building the final report easier.

Results from the research will be both qualitative and quantitative and should be properly visualized to make sense to everyone to whom they would be presented.

Cold statistics can be overwhelming, but presenting the data in an engaging format can make it more appealing and clear.

Some forms of reporting are customer journey maps and affinity diagrams . Even users who are not technically advanced can take advantage of modern data visualization tools and make research data interesting to the audience of their presentation.

Step-by-Step Market Research

Conducting market research is complicated. It takes a lot of preparation and can seem intimidating at first. But once you become familiar with the basics, you will be able to do it yourself and reap its success.

By using this guide, you can study different aspects of your target market, and get to know your audience on a different level. Leveraging the data and insights you gather will give you a strategic advantage and empower you to make more informed data-based decisions for your business.

Marketing Assistance for Your Business

One of our core specialties as a part of our full-service suite of services is the Inbound Marketing package. If you need expert assistance in keyword generation and SEO, you should get in touch with us. We are a professional WordPress development company profiling in business growth for your next big challenge.

Team DevriX

This article is crafted by DevriX's seasoned marketing team, boasting over four decades of collective expertise in crafting sophisticated marketing funnels, devising comprehensive content frameworks and pillars, implementing engaging email campaigns, and creating impactful social media content designed for scalability.

Our marketing experts specialize in the complete spectrum of inbound marketing strategies. As an accredited HubSpot Agency Partner and a Semrush Partner, we engage in meticulous research, blending our extensive experience with the unique insights of our highly skilled team.

We set benchmarks in content creation by incorporating cutting-edge marketing trends, leveraging in-depth industry research, and utilizing state-of-the-art AI tools for data segmentation and captivating content hooks. Our proficiency extends across a diverse range of sectors, including working with SMEs, Fortune 1000 companies, global B2B brands, major publishing entities, WooCommerce platforms, business directories, and affiliate networks.

More Stories:

Your organization will never be successful without finding your target market and who purchases their products or services. Identifying the main segments of your audience…

The eCommerce industry continues its growth. In 2019, globally, people have spent nearly $3.46 trillion, and with more and more companies expected to jump on…

Webinars are a powerful form of content marketing. They can build your brand, help you generate tons of leads, establish your authority as an industry…

You’ve heard it by now – video is the present and the future of marketing. And the statistics about video marketing for business show it!…

13 Best Keyword Research Tools in 2024 (Including Free Options)

Keyword research is a crucial element of modern SEO. Whether you’re kick-starting an old blog or developing your content strategy for a new one; good quality keywords are one of the most efficient ways to attract consistent, quality traffic to your site. We’ve compiled a list of some of the best keyword research tools to help you conquer your content.

📚 Table of contents :

• SEO PowerSuite
• Ahrefs Keywords Explorer
• Google’s Keyword Planner
• Long Tail Pro
• Keyword Tool
• Moz Keyword Explorer

The 13 best keyword research tools

1. kwfinder.

KWFinder is a tool designed by Mangools – a developer known for delivering the best keyword research and analysis tools across categories. You can use their beginner guide to get started.

The KWFinder platform makes it easy to find keywords with low SEO difficulty, along with a whole host of other useful features.

⚙️ Standout features

• A unique and easy to navigate user interface
• Finding keywords in any language target, anywhere
• Choose options from the list of powerful keywords
• Get precise statistics with the keyword competition checker
• In-depth SERP overview alongside a list of suggestions
• Use filters to refine the list of keyword suggestions

💳 Pricing

KWFinder is part of a package that includes four other SEO tools. This keyword tool only allows a handful of free searches. You can select an annual plan to save up to 40% on any of their three subscriptions.

• Entry – $19.90 (freelancers)
• Basic – $29.90 (small businesses)
• Premium – $44.90 (new startups and blogs)
• Agency – $89.90 (eCommerce stores and heavy sites)

2. SEO PowerSuite

If you’re looking for a comprehensive option, SEO Powersuite is one of the best tools for keyword research. Its complete toolkit includes everything you need to improve on and off-page SEO . You’ll get fundamental SEO keyword research features, as well as optimization options for mobile, social media, and more.

• Comprehensive SEO audit
• Competitor rank tracking
• Professional SEO reports
• Cloud storage (up to 400 projects)
• White-labeling reports for clients
• Link management and backlink history

SEO Powersuite offers a limited free tier, along with two full-featured premium plans.

• Free – There is a free version of SEO Powersuite that may work well if you run a small/personal site and only need to occasionally check your site’s rankings.
• Professional – With this plan you get unlimited SEO audits, link management, and more. You’ll also have access to white-labeling (with watermarks) and cloud storage for up to 20 projects. Professional plans cost $299 per year.
• Enterprise – This option includes everything that the Professional plan does, plus more. You’ll also get white-labeling without watermarks, and cloud storage for up to 400 projects, for $499 per year.

3. Ahrefs Keywords Explorer

Ahrefs is one of the best keyword research tools available for content creators today. The platform provides a broad keyword report to the user and relies on clickstream data to provide unique click metrics.

• Accurate keyword difficulty score
• 1,000+ keyword suggestions
• Supported in over 171 countries
• Click metrics for improving CTR
• Extensive SERP overview

Ahrefs has four pricing plans. The rates for freelancers, online marketers, mid-sized organizations, and bigger brands start at just $83.00 per month if you choose an annual payment plan.

They do have a trial offer ($7 for seven days) on their Lite and Standard subscription plans.

4. SE Ranking

SE Ranking uses advanced data processing algorithms to deliver unique SEO insights. Better yet, the dashboard can be customized to reflect your brand book and domain name, making it a great choice for agencies.

Plus, you can combine the SE Ranking insights with tons of other tools like Google Search Console and Zapier. And, the tool doesn’t neglect any area of SEO. You’re able to monitor local SEO , on-page SEO, backlinks, and even track your competitor’s efforts.

• SEO keyword tracker
• Backlink checker
• Keyword suggestion tool
• Local marketing
• Best for agencies

One of the best parts about SE Ranking is that it offers a generous 14-day free trial (no credit card required). Then, you’ll need to choose between three paid plans.

• Essential – This plan costs $44 a month (with an annual plan) but it’s limited to 750 daily keywords to track. However, you’ll get access to the backlink checker, on-page SEO checker, keyword research, and more.
• Pro – The next plan up costs $87.20 a month. It includes 2000 daily keywords and unlimited projects with page change monitoring, historical keyword data, and more.
• Business – This plan costs $191.20 a month and goes up to 5000 keywords. Additionally, you’ll get access to priority support, team training, and five manager seats. You can also contact SE Ranking if you need a custom package.

5. LowFruits

If you’re looking for one of the best keyword research tools to make SERP analysis easier, LowFruits is what you want. This tool can identify weak positions on the first page of Google search results and assess other crucial metrics like word count, title relevance, and website types.

What’s more, it’s super easy to get started. You can use the SEO keyword generator (including long-tail keywords), or import an existing list. Then, LowFruits will analyze the SERPs in bulk while detecting other significant factors like keyword clusters (which can help you reduce the chance of duplication).

• Keyword clusters
• SERP analysis in bulk
• Wildcard SEO keyword search (to find specific combinations of keywords)
• Domain explorer to identify low authority websites (that are easy to outrank)
• Competitor analysis (with sitemap extraction)

To get started with LowFruits, you can pay-as-you-go or subscribe to an annual plan. With the former option, you’ll get 10 credits for free (no credit card required).

Then, you can purchase 2000 credits for $25, 5000 credits for $60, 10,000 credits for $100, or 50,000 credits for $250. These credits will be valid for one year.

However, if you’d prefer to proceed with a subscription, the Standard plan is the most affordable (costs $249 a year). This includes 3000 credits a month and exclusive features like competitor keyword extraction, sitemap extraction, and free keyword searches.

Or, you can upgrade to the Premium plan for $749 a year. This is best suited to enterprise websites since it includes 10,000 credits a month alongside the exclusive features available with the Standard plan.

6. Google’s Keyword Planner

Google’s Keyword Planner is a simple SEO keyword tool option serving up a few basic features. Despite the lack of functionality, however, it’s one of the most accurate sources of keyword data on the market. The data comes directly from Google and the results integrate well with AdSense monetization .

• Locate commercial keywords using “top of page” bid range
• Accurate search volume directly from Google’s search engine
• Best choice for business websites

Google’s Keyword Planner is available for free. It might not be among the best keyword research tools when stacked up against the premium options on this list, but for being 100% free, it’s a solid addition to any keyword research toolbox.

7. GrowthBar

GrowthBar is one of the best keyword research tools for marketers and bloggers who are in a hurry, and want ranking difficulty or keyword suggestions to appear along with their search results.

A unique feature they recently added is content outline generation , you can use it to generate content outlines in one click for your blog or website with keywords, word counts, headers, images, links and more.

It also allows you to explore competitors’ profile featuring – backlink data, organic keywords, Google/Facebook ads info and related insights.

• Generate content outlines with AI
• Accurate ranking difficulty
• Long tail keyword suggestions
• Exportable keyword data
• On-page word count

GrowthBar offer a free 5-day trial , after which you will be charged based on the plan you choose. The higher-tier plan will let you search unlimited keywords. You’ll get the following rates when you pay annually.

• Standard – $20.30/month
• Pro – $55.30/month
• Agency – $90.30/month

8. Long Tail Pro

It’s no secret that long-tail keywords are the new standard of SEO. The Long Tail Pro keyword tool generates long-tail keywords for niche sites and has even found a cult following with content producers for micro-niche sites.

• Powerful, detailed keyword metrics
• Easily find long-tail keywords
• Provides recommendations for attracting highly convertible organic traffic
• 2,500+ SERP lookups every 24 hours

Long Tail Pro is a premium tool and does offer a 7-day free trial (subscription to be cancelled before seven days). Subscriptions start as low as $24.75 per month (when billed annually). Long Tail Pro currently offers three plans to users.

• Starter – $24.75/month
• Pro – $44.75/month
• Agency – $98.08/month

9. Majestic

Majestic is an all-in-one SEO keyword tool that can help you keep track of your site’s health. It’s an ideal option for new blogs and small businesses that don’t have the resources to invest a lot of complicated support for search engine optimization.

• All SEO features are available in a single toolkit
• Find easy-to-target phrases
• Research competition on each keyword
• Trustworthiness vs. authority graph for website analysis

Majestic allows you to sign up and run three free searches to help you get a feel for the service. The keyword checker, however, is only available in PRO and API plans. You can grab the SEO toolkit for $83.33 per month when you select the annual billing option.

10. Keyword Tool

If you’re obsessed with keyword data mining, try Keyword Tool. The platform is regarded as one of the top keyword research tools on the market and offers analysis for multiple search engines including Google, YouTube, Bing, Amazon, and the App Store.

• Find great keywords using Google Autocomplete
• Supplement your social media marketing with Instagram and Twitter keyword analysis
• Export results to CSV
• Simple UX for beginners

Keyword Tool is very similar to Google Keyword Planner. It’s free for first 750+ keywords and extremely easy to get started with. The Keyword Tool “Basic” plan starts at $69 per month and is billed annually.

11. Serpstat

If you’re searching for a full SEO suite , Serpstat is an excellent option. It’s not only one of the best keyword research tools available, but it also offers website analytics , SERP analysis, backlink analysis, an SEO keyword tracker, and website audit features. It’s an all-in-one solution meant to streamline everything you would need for comprehensive SEO.

• Understand your competition using the competitor graph feature
• Find keyword difficulty and keyword trends
• The most budget-friendly option on our list

Similar to a couple of the other options we’ve listed here, Serpstat can be used a few times for free by signing up for their trial membership. To use the service regularly though, you need to get yourself set up with one of its subscriptions. An Individual plan goes for $50 per month if you pay up front for the year. Otherwise it’s $59 on a month-to-month basis.

12. Moz Keyword Explorer

The Moz Keyword Explorer serves up easy to use, out-of-the-box keyword recommendations. Moz’s SEO tool boasts all the features you’d expect from the very best keyword research tools, plus two very unique data points:

Organic CTR score – This click-through rate demonstrates the number of clicks you’re expected to attract on page one of Google.

Priority score – The priority score is a mixture of all the individual factors a typical tool uses to suggest keyword options. It combines data on CTR, search volume, and keyword difficulty to help you select the best terms for your project.

• Get related keyword suggestions
• Organic CTR and Priority score for smart targeting
• Moz offers a one month trial period

You can sign up for a free Moz account and get ten free queries per month. The Keyword Explorer is not a standalone researching tool, to get full access to this useful little asset, you will need to pay for the entire SEO suite. You can get the keyword research features with the Moz Pro plan, which starts at $79 per month if paid annually (or $99 if paying month-to-month) with the option to do a free 30-day trial.

SpyFu works best as an SEO keyword competition checker. The SEO keyword tool uncovers valuable, virtually untapped keywords and makes a huge difference if you’re working in a highly saturated niche.

• Compare different websites competing for a single search term
• Discover ranking difficulty and historical rank changes
• Additional modules for in-depth domain analysis

SpyFu is a little different from the other best keyword research tools we’ve listed here as they offer monthly results, not real-time feedback. You can subscribe to SpyFu for $16 per month if you choose the annual billing option.

Which one of these best keyword research tools is right for you? 🤔

The benefits of keyword research cannot be understated, and the options you just read through are some of the best keyword research tools you can currently find in the SEO marketplace. To find the one that works for your business, start by analyzing your budget and then consider the primary focus of your brand’s SEO strategy .

That being said, here are some of the best keyword research tools for you to add to your workflow:

• If budget is your chief concern , narrow your search to Google Keyword Planner or Serpstat .
• If you need a more robust set of tools , you’re going to be looking at KWFinder or Moz Keyword Explorer .
• For beginners that prioritize ease-of-use and simplicity , you might prefer Keyword Tool , Majestic , or Google’s Keyword Planner.
• For bloggers, marketers, and content writers , GrowthBar and Ahrefs Keywords Explorer make great options.
• If you run an enterprise-level website , your best bets are SEO PowerSuite , SE Ranking , or LowFruits .

Do you have any questions about choosing between these tools? Ask away in the comments!

By Themeisle Editorial

Themeisle contributor.

We're the crew behind Themeisle Blog, where we eat, sleep, and breathe WordPress, website building, and all things blogging. Under the leadership of Karol K, our team is composed of WordPress wizards, web design junkies, and blogging enthusiasts. Between us, we've got a boatload of experience (like, 50+ years worth!) in making the digital world more accessible and fun.

Updated on:

You can check also:.

All In One SEO vs Yoast SEO: Which Is Better in 2024

Naming Images for SEO: Here’s the Right Way to Do It

The SEO Framework vs Yoast SEO: Which Is Better in 2024?

How to Send a Mass Email in Gmail

How to Increase Organic Traffic to Your Website (7 Strategies)

7 Best Gmail Alternatives in 2024 (Most Are Free)

How to Use Gmail With Your Own Domain Name (Free Method)

How to Get a Free Email Domain: 4 Easy Methods

Do I Need a Website for My Business? 10 Reasons Why the Answer is Yes

2 Easy Ways to Add Facebook Pixel to WordPress

How to Increase Blog Traffic in 2024 (8 Essential Strategies)

8 Ways to Integrate WordPress with Facebook

Constant Contact Review: Honest Pros and Cons in 2024

How to Craft a Solid Website Structure: A Beginner’s Guide

How to Create an Interactive Landing Page: 7 Game-Changing Tips

Which Attributes Describe a Good Landing Page Experience?

8 Revenue Streams for Online Business (Look Into These First)

Image SEO: What It Is, Plus 8 Best Practices You Need to Know

Or start the conversation in our Facebook group for WordPress professionals . Find answers, share tips, and get help from other WordPress experts. Join now (it’s free)!

• Privacy Policy

Most Searched Articles

10 best free blogging sites to build your blog for free in 2024: tested, compared and reviewed.

Starting a blog without spending a penny is absolutely possible, and you’re in the right place to find out how to do it. Over the years, I’ve experimented with dozens of different blogging sites and tested how they perform for various purposes ...

How to Create and Start a WordPress Blog in 15 Minutes or Less (Step by Step)

Ready to create a WordPress blog? You've made an outstanding choice! Learning how to start a blog can be your path to an exciting new adventure. Lucky for you, WordPress is an excellent tool you can use for that. It's free, user-friendly, powerful, ...

The Complete Personal Blog Guide: How to Start a Personal Blog on WordPress

In this tutorial, we will lead you through all the steps you need to take in order to start a personal blog that is cheap, effective, good-looking, and that will set you up for future success. This is your ultimate guide to a personal WordPress blog ...

Handpicked Articles

How to make a wordpress website: step-by-step guide for beginners.

Even though it might not seem like so at first, knowing how to make a website from scratch is a must-have skill for today's small business owners. The following guide takes you by the hand and shows you all the steps to getting the job done with ...

7 Fastest WordPress Hosting Companies Compared (2024)

The web host you choose to power your WordPress site plays a key role in its speed and performance. However, with so many claiming to offer the fastest WordPress hosting out there, how do you decide which company to use? In this post, we'll look at ...

How to Install XAMPP and WordPress Locally on Windows PC

Installing XAMPP and WordPress to set up a local development site is a smart move when you need a private space for testing or experimenting. XAMPP allows you to host a website right from your own Windows PC. Once installed, launching a new ...

Share on Mastodon

• SUGGESTED TOPICS
• The Magazine
• Newsletters
• Managing Yourself
• Managing Teams
• Work-life Balance
• The Big Idea
• Data & Visuals
• Reading Lists
• Case Selections
• HBR Learning
• Topic Feeds
• Account Settings
• Email Preferences

Research: Smaller, More Precise Discounts Could Increase Your Sales

• Dinesh Gauri,
• Abhijit Guha,
• Abhijit Biswas,
• Subhash Jha

Why bigger discounts don’t necessarily attract more customers.

Retailers might think that bigger discounts attract more customers. But new research suggests that’s not always true. Sometimes, a smaller discount that looks more precise — say 6.8% as compared to 7% — can make people think the deal won’t last long, and they’ll buy more. In a series of nine experimental studies involving around 2,000 individuals considering online or retail purchases of a variety of products, the authors found precise discount depths — the difference between the original and sale price — can increase purchase intentions by up to 21%.

Discounts are an important promotional tactic retailers use to drive sales. So much so that discounts were a major factor for three out of four U.S. online shoppers in 2023 , luring consumers away from shopping at other retailers, getting them to increase their basket size, and convincing them to make purchases they otherwise wouldn’t. Discounts have a particularly strong impact on food purchases, where 90% of consumers reported stocking up on groceries when they were on sale .

• DG Dinesh Gauri is a professor and Walmart chair in the department of marketing at the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas. He is also the executive director of retail information at the Walton College. His research and teaching interests include retailing, pricing, marketing analytics, retail media, e-commerce and social media marketing. He advises for various companies in these areas and is a recognized leader in marketing.
• AG Abhijit Guha is an associate professor in the department of marketing at the Darla Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina. His research and teaching interests include retailing, pricing, and artificial intelligence.
• AB Abhijit Biswas is the Kmart endowed chair and professor of marketing, chair of the department of marketing, and distinguished faculty fellow at the Mike Ilitch School of Business, Wayne State University. His research and teaching interests include retailing, pricing and advertising. He has published over a hundred articles, majority of which are in academic journals including the Journal of Marketing , Journal of Marketing Research , etc.
• SJ Subhash Jha is an associate professor of marketing at the Fogelman College of Business & Economics at the University of Memphis. His research and teaching interests include retailing, pricing, online reviews and role of haptic cues.

Partner Center

The state of AI in early 2024: Gen AI adoption spikes and starts to generate value

If 2023 was the year the world discovered generative AI (gen AI) , 2024 is the year organizations truly began using—and deriving business value from—this new technology. In the latest McKinsey Global Survey  on AI, 65 percent of respondents report that their organizations are regularly using gen AI, nearly double the percentage from our previous survey just ten months ago. Respondents’ expectations for gen AI’s impact remain as high as they were last year , with three-quarters predicting that gen AI will lead to significant or disruptive change in their industries in the years ahead.

About the authors

This article is a collaborative effort by Alex Singla , Alexander Sukharevsky , Lareina Yee , and Michael Chui , with Bryce Hall , representing views from QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey, and McKinsey Digital.

Organizations are already seeing material benefits from gen AI use, reporting both cost decreases and revenue jumps in the business units deploying the technology. The survey also provides insights into the kinds of risks presented by gen AI—most notably, inaccuracy—as well as the emerging practices of top performers to mitigate those challenges and capture value.

AI adoption surges

Interest in generative AI has also brightened the spotlight on a broader set of AI capabilities. For the past six years, AI adoption by respondents’ organizations has hovered at about 50 percent. This year, the survey finds that adoption has jumped to 72 percent (Exhibit 1). And the interest is truly global in scope. Our 2023 survey found that AI adoption did not reach 66 percent in any region; however, this year more than two-thirds of respondents in nearly every region say their organizations are using AI. 1 Organizations based in Central and South America are the exception, with 58 percent of respondents working for organizations based in Central and South America reporting AI adoption. Looking by industry, the biggest increase in adoption can be found in professional services. 2 Includes respondents working for organizations focused on human resources, legal services, management consulting, market research, R&D, tax preparation, and training.

Also, responses suggest that companies are now using AI in more parts of the business. Half of respondents say their organizations have adopted AI in two or more business functions, up from less than a third of respondents in 2023 (Exhibit 2).

Gen AI adoption is most common in the functions where it can create the most value

Most respondents now report that their organizations—and they as individuals—are using gen AI. Sixty-five percent of respondents say their organizations are regularly using gen AI in at least one business function, up from one-third last year. The average organization using gen AI is doing so in two functions, most often in marketing and sales and in product and service development—two functions in which previous research  determined that gen AI adoption could generate the most value 3 “ The economic potential of generative AI: The next productivity frontier ,” McKinsey, June 14, 2023. —as well as in IT (Exhibit 3). The biggest increase from 2023 is found in marketing and sales, where reported adoption has more than doubled. Yet across functions, only two use cases, both within marketing and sales, are reported by 15 percent or more of respondents.

Gen AI also is weaving its way into respondents’ personal lives. Compared with 2023, respondents are much more likely to be using gen AI at work and even more likely to be using gen AI both at work and in their personal lives (Exhibit 4). The survey finds upticks in gen AI use across all regions, with the largest increases in Asia–Pacific and Greater China. Respondents at the highest seniority levels, meanwhile, show larger jumps in the use of gen Al tools for work and outside of work compared with their midlevel-management peers. Looking at specific industries, respondents working in energy and materials and in professional services report the largest increase in gen AI use.

Investments in gen AI and analytical AI are beginning to create value

The latest survey also shows how different industries are budgeting for gen AI. Responses suggest that, in many industries, organizations are about equally as likely to be investing more than 5 percent of their digital budgets in gen AI as they are in nongenerative, analytical-AI solutions (Exhibit 5). Yet in most industries, larger shares of respondents report that their organizations spend more than 20 percent on analytical AI than on gen AI. Looking ahead, most respondents—67 percent—expect their organizations to invest more in AI over the next three years.

Where are those investments paying off? For the first time, our latest survey explored the value created by gen AI use by business function. The function in which the largest share of respondents report seeing cost decreases is human resources. Respondents most commonly report meaningful revenue increases (of more than 5 percent) in supply chain and inventory management (Exhibit 6). For analytical AI, respondents most often report seeing cost benefits in service operations—in line with what we found last year —as well as meaningful revenue increases from AI use in marketing and sales.

Inaccuracy: The most recognized and experienced risk of gen AI use

As businesses begin to see the benefits of gen AI, they’re also recognizing the diverse risks associated with the technology. These can range from data management risks such as data privacy, bias, or intellectual property (IP) infringement to model management risks, which tend to focus on inaccurate output or lack of explainability. A third big risk category is security and incorrect use.

Respondents to the latest survey are more likely than they were last year to say their organizations consider inaccuracy and IP infringement to be relevant to their use of gen AI, and about half continue to view cybersecurity as a risk (Exhibit 7).

Conversely, respondents are less likely than they were last year to say their organizations consider workforce and labor displacement to be relevant risks and are not increasing efforts to mitigate them.

In fact, inaccuracy— which can affect use cases across the gen AI value chain , ranging from customer journeys and summarization to coding and creative content—is the only risk that respondents are significantly more likely than last year to say their organizations are actively working to mitigate.

Some organizations have already experienced negative consequences from the use of gen AI, with 44 percent of respondents saying their organizations have experienced at least one consequence (Exhibit 8). Respondents most often report inaccuracy as a risk that has affected their organizations, followed by cybersecurity and explainability.

Our previous research has found that there are several elements of governance that can help in scaling gen AI use responsibly, yet few respondents report having these risk-related practices in place. 4 “ Implementing generative AI with speed and safety ,” McKinsey Quarterly , March 13, 2024. For example, just 18 percent say their organizations have an enterprise-wide council or board with the authority to make decisions involving responsible AI governance, and only one-third say gen AI risk awareness and risk mitigation controls are required skill sets for technical talent.

Bringing gen AI capabilities to bear

The latest survey also sought to understand how, and how quickly, organizations are deploying these new gen AI tools. We have found three archetypes for implementing gen AI solutions : takers use off-the-shelf, publicly available solutions; shapers customize those tools with proprietary data and systems; and makers develop their own foundation models from scratch. 5 “ Technology’s generational moment with generative AI: A CIO and CTO guide ,” McKinsey, July 11, 2023. Across most industries, the survey results suggest that organizations are finding off-the-shelf offerings applicable to their business needs—though many are pursuing opportunities to customize models or even develop their own (Exhibit 9). About half of reported gen AI uses within respondents’ business functions are utilizing off-the-shelf, publicly available models or tools, with little or no customization. Respondents in energy and materials, technology, and media and telecommunications are more likely to report significant customization or tuning of publicly available models or developing their own proprietary models to address specific business needs.

Respondents most often report that their organizations required one to four months from the start of a project to put gen AI into production, though the time it takes varies by business function (Exhibit 10). It also depends upon the approach for acquiring those capabilities. Not surprisingly, reported uses of highly customized or proprietary models are 1.5 times more likely than off-the-shelf, publicly available models to take five months or more to implement.

Gen AI high performers are excelling despite facing challenges

Gen AI is a new technology, and organizations are still early in the journey of pursuing its opportunities and scaling it across functions. So it’s little surprise that only a small subset of respondents (46 out of 876) report that a meaningful share of their organizations’ EBIT can be attributed to their deployment of gen AI. Still, these gen AI leaders are worth examining closely. These, after all, are the early movers, who already attribute more than 10 percent of their organizations’ EBIT to their use of gen AI. Forty-two percent of these high performers say more than 20 percent of their EBIT is attributable to their use of nongenerative, analytical AI, and they span industries and regions—though most are at organizations with less than $1 billion in annual revenue. The AI-related practices at these organizations can offer guidance to those looking to create value from gen AI adoption at their own organizations.

To start, gen AI high performers are using gen AI in more business functions—an average of three functions, while others average two. They, like other organizations, are most likely to use gen AI in marketing and sales and product or service development, but they’re much more likely than others to use gen AI solutions in risk, legal, and compliance; in strategy and corporate finance; and in supply chain and inventory management. They’re more than three times as likely as others to be using gen AI in activities ranging from processing of accounting documents and risk assessment to R&D testing and pricing and promotions. While, overall, about half of reported gen AI applications within business functions are utilizing publicly available models or tools, gen AI high performers are less likely to use those off-the-shelf options than to either implement significantly customized versions of those tools or to develop their own proprietary foundation models.

What else are these high performers doing differently? For one thing, they are paying more attention to gen-AI-related risks. Perhaps because they are further along on their journeys, they are more likely than others to say their organizations have experienced every negative consequence from gen AI we asked about, from cybersecurity and personal privacy to explainability and IP infringement. Given that, they are more likely than others to report that their organizations consider those risks, as well as regulatory compliance, environmental impacts, and political stability, to be relevant to their gen AI use, and they say they take steps to mitigate more risks than others do.

Gen AI high performers are also much more likely to say their organizations follow a set of risk-related best practices (Exhibit 11). For example, they are nearly twice as likely as others to involve the legal function and embed risk reviews early on in the development of gen AI solutions—that is, to “ shift left .” They’re also much more likely than others to employ a wide range of other best practices, from strategy-related practices to those related to scaling.

In addition to experiencing the risks of gen AI adoption, high performers have encountered other challenges that can serve as warnings to others (Exhibit 12). Seventy percent say they have experienced difficulties with data, including defining processes for data governance, developing the ability to quickly integrate data into AI models, and an insufficient amount of training data, highlighting the essential role that data play in capturing value. High performers are also more likely than others to report experiencing challenges with their operating models, such as implementing agile ways of working and effective sprint performance management.

About the research

The online survey was in the field from February 22 to March 5, 2024, and garnered responses from 1,363 participants representing the full range of regions, industries, company sizes, functional specialties, and tenures. Of those respondents, 981 said their organizations had adopted AI in at least one business function, and 878 said their organizations were regularly using gen AI in at least one function. To adjust for differences in response rates, the data are weighted by the contribution of each respondent’s nation to global GDP.

Alex Singla and Alexander Sukharevsky  are global coleaders of QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey, and senior partners in McKinsey’s Chicago and London offices, respectively; Lareina Yee  is a senior partner in the Bay Area office, where Michael Chui , a McKinsey Global Institute partner, is a partner; and Bryce Hall  is an associate partner in the Washington, DC, office.

They wish to thank Kaitlin Noe, Larry Kanter, Mallika Jhamb, and Shinjini Srivastava for their contributions to this work.

This article was edited by Heather Hanselman, a senior editor in McKinsey’s Atlanta office.

Explore a career with us

Related articles.

Moving past gen AI’s honeymoon phase: Seven hard truths for CIOs to get from pilot to scale

A generative AI reset: Rewiring to turn potential into value in 2024

Implementing generative AI with speed and safety

How hard is it to buy a home right now? The new NBC News Home Buyer Index measures the market

Why is it so hard to buy a home? Prices have far outpaced middle-class incomes. Mortgage rates are above 7% for the first time since 2002. And 3 out of 10 homes are sold above listing price.

But none of those factors fully captures the variety of challenges buyers nationwide face in the current market. The conditions on the ground can vary widely across state and even county lines.

To better capture how housing market conditions shift at the local level — as comprehensively and in as close to real time as possible —  we’re introducing a new monthly gauge: the NBC News Home Buyer Index.

The Home Buyer Index, which NBC News developed with the guidance of a real estate industry analyst, a bank economist from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta and other experts, is a number on a scale of 0 to 100 representing the difficulty a potential buyer faces trying to buy a home. The higher the index value, the higher the difficulty. 

A low index value, of 10 for example, suggests better purchasing conditions for a buyer — low interest rates, ample homes for sale. Chambers County, Texas, near Houston, is one of the 50 least difficult places to buy in in the country, with low scores on scarcity, cost and competition. 

A high value closer to 90 suggests extremely tough conditions, which can result from intense bidding, high insurance costs or steep jumps in home prices relative to income. Prices are soaring in Coconino County, Arizona, making it one of the 25 most difficult counties to buy a home in. Five years ago it was ranked 300, but the median sale price has increased 81%, nearly twice the national figure.

The index measures difficulty nationwide, as well as on the county level, in the counties where there’s enough homebuying data to make informed assessments.

The national index, presented below, captures the big-picture market and economic conditions that affect homebuying across the U.S.

This index consists of four factors: 

• Cost: How much a home costs relative to incomes and inflation — as well as how related expenses, such as insurance costs, are changing. 
• Competition: How many people are vying for a home — and how aggressive the demand is. This is measured through observations including the percentage of homes sold above list price and the number that went under contract within two weeks of being listed. 
• Scarcity: The number of homes that are on the market — and how many more are expected to enter the market in the coming month.
• Economic instability: Market volatility, unemployment and interest rates — reflecting the broader climate in which home shoppers are weighing their decisions. 

For April, the overall Home Buyer Index nationally was 82.4, up slightly from March and about 5 points lower than it was this time one year ago.

Improvements in market competitiveness and the broader economy have eased conditions somewhat within the past year. However, high costs and continued housing shortages have kept overall homebuying difficulty high.

The index updates monthly on the Thursday after the third Saturday of the month. The next update is June 20.

Methodology

The NBC News Home Buyer Index combines real estate and financial data with forecasting techniques to assess market conditions from a buyer’s perspective. 

The perspective is framed as a combination of factors shaping a buyer’s experience of the housing market: cost, scarcity, competition and overall economic instability. 

Each factor is measured by a monthly analysis that takes the following approach: 

• Data is collected from sources including Redfin , the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. 
• The data is then cleaned, filtered for quality and transformed to address properties that are needed for statistical analysis, including stationarity and seasonality. 
• The data is then brought to a monthly frequency where appropriate, among other steps. 
• The data is scaled to make component variables comparable.
• Finally, the data is combined to generate a single, aggregate measure of homebuyer difficulty. The final output is a single value between 0 and 100, where 0 represents the least difficult market possible and 100 is the most difficult. 

NBC News worked with real estate industry experts to refine the data that would best answer the question ‘How difficult is it to buy a home in the U.S.?’ The experts came from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, and Redfin.

Caveats to this analysis include variation in data availability at the county level, which is generally tied to market size, which correlates with regional characteristics such as population count. Therefore, systematic gaps affect low-population counties, leading them to be underrepresented.

In addition, recent index values may shift slightly in future releases as final data comes in.

Jasmine Cui is a reporter for NBC News.