Online market research: 5 facts about your target audience that you can find out for free in 10 minutes (recommended free tools!)

Here’s what you can find out (for free and in just 10 minutes) with online market research.

Is 360-degree market research critical to your business? Absolutely. Is there any online market research that allows you to find useful (though not 100 percent complete) information so you can get a general idea of the situation and figure out what you need? Again, the answer is yes.

As we always remind our CMI Academy students, thanks to online data everything is tracked. We can then obtain and study this data anonymously so that we can understand what is happening online and find useful information.

Would you like to know what (life-changing) information you can find out about your customers for free in less than 10 minutes? Here they are now listed, along with the tools that enable you to get them!

1. How relevant (and when) is your product/service and the need you solve to your customers.

Do you want to launch a product in the market, see if your products/services are in demand, or expand the range of items you sell? Or maybe you want to update your products and figure out which ones are worth keeping and which ones are not?

Then you need to find out how interested your customers are in that particular product/service and whether the interest is increasing or waning.

Google Trends , the free tool that comes to us straight from the top (i.e., from Big G), gives you a lot of help in this regard.

Start now: write down the keyword that describes what you are selling, paying attention to the singular and plural as well. Expand the time period from 2004 to the present and find out whether the trend is up or down.

In addition to the time period, you can also select the following variables:

• Country
• Category
• Research area among:
  • Google Search
  • Google Images
  • Google News
  • YouTube
  • Google Shopping

Don’t stop here! Google Trends also allows you to compare interest over time among different products. Just click on the “Compare” button next to your search term, and you’re done.

For example, here we compared the search trend between the keywords “Wine” and “Beer” from 2004 to the present:

Read also: How to do technical analysis of market charts: interpreting data

2. What people have in mind when they search for your product/service.

Want to find out what your target customers are really thinking about when they Google your products or services?

Software like Semrush (go ahead and use our affiliate link by clicking here) and Ubersuggest (click here to install the extension) tell you so. Here’s what you can do:

1. Enter your industry keywords in the search bar.
2. Observe related keywords.

Related searches are what are most important to your target audience! You can use them in a variety of ways: writing content, recording useful videos for your customers, drafting editorial plans, and much more.

Here is an example of related searches on white wine extrapolated from Semrush:

3. What do people in your industry read the most? Online market research tells you so!

Knowing what your target customers like to read helps you get closer to them and use the channels they are interested in.

How to do it?

It’s easier than you think (and free!): go to Buzzsumo(https://buzzsumo.com/), a tool that grants you both a free version and a 30-day trial period, and type in the term that describes your products/services.

You’ll find the most-read articles over the past year-click on them and read them, because you’ve found what people like to read in your industry!

Here is an example, again on our beloved white wine:

Read also: Strategies for Business Plan: define the best actions to take to turn your idea into reality.

4. How much your customers read industry magazines.

Go to www.similarweb.com and enter the link to the top blog in your industry in the search bar. You will find out the average site visits over the past 6 months to see how much your target audience reads it.

You will need this information to know whether it makes sense to start a blog (or continue using it) or whether you should opt for other channels.

What will become of our white wine? Let’s see.

Well, it certainly seems that interest is high.

5. What videos your target customers want to watch on YouTube.

Not sure where to start when creating video content?

We’ll tell you: by what people interested in your products/services want to see!

Sign up for free at Vidiq using this affiliate link and download the extension for Google Chrome. Then go to Youtube and search for keywords in your industry.

A pop-up will appear on the side with data on how much the word is searched on Youtube and which videos are the most viewed.

Here are all the details about our wine:

In conclusion

Doing online market research and knowing this information helps you better understand what your target customers have in their heads.

You can use all of these tools to take a look at what you need and get a general idea or, if you want 100 percent complete information (even better), switch to the paid versions.

Would you like more clarification on how to use the tools we have suggested (and many others, such as incompetitive analysis)?

Contact us now to inquire about our CMI Academy, our comprehensive market research, orlistening to the network! We are at your disposal.