Business owners who desire to comprehend their customers’ needs and outsmart competitors can earnings insight with economy research tools. These tools illuminate relevant demographic information, customer preferences, and social trends—all of which ultimately impact sales.
Processing this quantitative and qualitative data into a cohesive economy research update can provide you the business intelligence you require to make informed decisions about your business’s path forward.
6 steps of the economy research procedure
Traditionally, the economy research procedure is divided into six steps:
1. Research the industry. Compile stats and data on your industry at large and within your niche. If applicable, identify trends in the sector.
2. Investigate the competition. List competing businesses and investigate why customers use their products.
3. Identify any economy gaps. There are likely holes in the economy your business can fill.
4. Define your target economy. Who is your ideal customer? Define their age range, geographic location, values, and shopping habits.
5. Identify barriers to entry. Barriers often include recent business costs, regulatory adherence issues, and legal requirements.
6. make a sales approximate. approximate upcoming turnover and growth potential.
Tips for effectively using economy research tools
- commence with affordable options
- Use industry reports for broad insights
- Gather customer feedback directly
economy research tools assist you make a cohesive roadmap at any stage, whether you’re launching, pivoting, rebranding, or expanding. Choosing suitable tools can assist you make business decisions, whether you’re a Fortune 500 business or a tiny business. Here are some tips for using them well:
commence with affordable options
When you’re just starting out, you can borrowing free and inexpensive tools. Kat Kavner Woolf, co-founder of Heyday Canning Co., used free economy research tools when launching her brand, including Google Forms for surveys and excellent ancient-fashioned spreadsheets for mapping out the competition.
Scores of websites propose free access to existing data, from the Pew Research Center for demographic research to Google Trends for assessing customer interests. Many platforms like SurveyMonkey also have limited free basic plans.
Use industry reports for broad insights
For broad insights into the economy, you can purchase reports compiled and written by experts, researchers, and consultants. Kat finds information compiled by Nielsen and SPINS to be some of the best economy research on customer purchasing habits. Petia Abdur-Razzaaq, the CEO of digital marketing firm The Stylista throng, uses McKinsey research as a foundation for understanding industry trends.
Gather customer feedback directly
As you construct on your economy knowledge, commence talking to consumers within your niche. A survey creation tool can assist you perform economy research by asking consumers about their experiences, preferences, and interests. By sending out surveys, you earnings awareness of customer desires.
“It helps you earnings a perspective of how the economy is either conference or not conference the trends that are shaping customer tastes,” Kat says.
If you desire an even more detailed perspective on customers’ experiences, you can talk to them directly. Petia typically interviews clients’ customers through surveys; however, a handful tend to be so enthusiastic they’re willing to provide feedback over Zoom. These calls can assist reveal the likes and dislikes of the target spectators most enthused about your brand.
Petia notes that it’s helpful to add an incentive—such as a chance to triumph a $100 gift card—when she creates surveys for clients’ customers.
“People tend to not desire to do those things unless there’s something in it for them,” she says.
Practical economy research tools for entrepreneurs
There are scores of economy research tools to choose from when conducting economy research at any stage of a business’s growth. Here are some of the best economy research tools to get you started:
Google Trends
Google Trends (along with the Google Keyword Planner) can assist you gauge customer profit in trending topics. It can also assist attune your SEO schedule and marketing campaigns to align with your target economy’s needs. Google Trendsprovides graphs using real-period Google search engine data to display rises and falls in a given topic’s search volume.
“This gives you real-period data in terms of what consumers are actually looking for online by search terms and by industry,” Petia says.
You can use Google Trends to contrast search stats for terms relevant to your product. For example, a chocolate business might contrast the terms “bean to bar” and “artisanal chocolate” to view which is more commonly used by consumers. The comparative keyword research tool tracks and compares multiple search terms in one graph, which provides economy insights andconsumer insights about brand popularity.
Pricing: Free.
Statista
How many social media users were there worldwide from 2017 to 2025? What were the busiest recent York City subway stations in 2023? Statista is a platform that aggregates data into graphics and publishes reports on 170 industries across the globe. Stats on specific companies, like TikTok or Amazon, might propose valuable insights, as might reports on artificial intelligence (AI), sustainable fashion, or online food delivery. Statista’s specialized reports contain industry analysis on a wide range of topics, from luxury fashion to beauty to tech industry trends—all of which can assist you identify gaps in the economy and relevant trends.
Pricing: A free basic schedule has limited access. The starter schedule costs $199 per month with access to two million statistics. The personal schedule costs $549 and adds reports prepared by Statista’s analysts. The professional schedule costs $959 and adds analysis and forecasting tools.
Pew Research Center
Pew Research Center is an incomparable resource and a great starting point for those who desire to comprehend opinions and trends around social or political issues. The nonprofit’s community view polling and research aren’t geared toward economy research needs, but Pew’s data analysis can illuminate why consumers shift habits—for example, due to changing technology, social developments, or other cultural phenomena.
Pricing: Free.
SurveyMonkey
SurveyMonkey is a useful economy research survey platform. Conduct online economy research surveys or use the tool to earnings customer feedback on events, user encounter, and satisfaction. Use pre-built survey templates or customize survey content and design.
All paid plans propose an unlimited number of surveys per year and questions per survey. The more expensive plans have increased survey capabilities, like 24/7 customer back via email, multilingual options, and data visualization.
Pricing: The basic schedule, which is limited to surveys of 10 questions, is free. For individuals, paid plans with additional functionality commence at $39 per month. For teams (of three or more users), plans commence at $30 per user per month.
Qualtrics XM
encounter management platform Qualtrics XM provides a suite of schedule and research tools, offering economy assessment, pricing studies, communication testing, sentiment analysis, and more. These are all accessible via a centralized data hub equipped with an AI tool to assist distill insights. You can also use it to procedure customer feedback and even enable video-based qualitative surveys, gaining actionable insights for your business.
Pricing: Qualitrics XM offers a free basic online survey tool. For Qualtrics XM schedule & Research plans, contact the business for a quote.
Qualaroo
Qualarooimproves customer feedback collection by prompting ecommerce shoppers to respond questions when they’re most likely to have excellent responses top of mind. What does this look like in habit? Rather than sending out a post-purchase survey (which could easily get lost in a customer’s inbox), Qualaroo can collect feedback during the checkout procedure. For instance, if a shopper is perusing your pricing page, a tiny Qualaroo feedback box might appear and inquire if the pricing seems fair. Or, if a customer is about to leave your site, a pop-up might inquire them to quickly explain why they didn’t make a purchase.
Qualaroo is straightforward to use, making it popular with tiny businesses. Its pop-up menus prompt customers to participate in a straightforward rating structure, providing useful spectators insights. You can use this survey data to easily assess what makes your customers joyful or frustrated.
Pricing: A free basic schedule for startups and tiny businesses includes limited feedback collection functionality; the more comprehensive roadmap is $40 per month and includes unlimited feedback collection and other features.
Tableau
It’s typically easier for humans to visualize data via charts and graphs rather than a list of numbers. Tableau lets you make attractive visualizations from your economy research data, from colorful pie charts and bar graphs to Venn diagrams.
Pricing: Tableau plans commence at $35 per month.
BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is a research and analytics tool that helps you monitor your online mentions, discover influencers your target spectators cares about, track industry trends, and more. Its content research tool indexes billions of articles and posts, providing spectators insights and research reports to assist you connect with your target economy.
Pricing: Plans commence at $199 per month for unlimited search capabilities, with higher tiers offering additional users, alerts, and other features.
economy research tools FAQ
What are the primary types of economy research methods?
economy research is conducted in the field and online. Interviews, focus groups, and surveys are all part of economy research, as are quantifying competitors’ social media mentions and studying recent economy trends and social customer behavior.
How do economy research tools work?
There are scores of economy research tools that procedure customer data. The ordinary throughline is that each research tool helps businesses discover about their industry, competitors, and customers, both quantitatively and qualitatively.
How will AI transformation economy research?
Many economy research platforms already use AI. Qualtrics XM’s research platform, for instance, provides an AI assistant that can assist you distill insights from the data you’ve gathered on customers and competitors.
