Online Research: Tools and Techniques

A few years ago, carrying out a market study was not an easy task. Nowadays, thanks to new technologies, we can achieve a online research in a more convenient, simple and fast way.

What is a Market Study?

A market study or market research allows us to know outstanding data about a specific sector, the competition, potential customers, etc. All these data will help us to make a series of decisions, such as, for example, defining a Marketing strategy and decide how to apply it. It will also allow us to detect opportunities and reduce risks.

If we have a business idea, the first thing we must do to know if it is viable is to have information. That's why it's vital to do a market study to gather the necessary information for our business to be a success.

What are the steps to carry out a Market Study?

These are the steps that we think are most appropriate:

• Know the objective of the research.
• Define the universe (group to which we are going to direct our offer).
• Determine the sample.
• Select the people and/or tools that we will use.
• Collect and analyze information.

What are the benefits of conducting a Market Study?

These are the 9 benefits that we think are most relevant:

• Predict the success or failure of our business idea.
• Make better communication.
• Improve segmentation.
• Know the keywords to use.
• Detect market opportunities.
• Minimize risks.
• Get to know the competition.
• Find niche markets.
• Know customer satisfaction.

To discover the pros and cons of our business idea there are different techniques, such as surveys, panels, focus groups, interviews, etc. In the past, these practices were very expensive, but thanks to the Internet, we have many low-cost resources to carry out good online market research.

Techniques and Tools for an Online Market Study:

GOOGLE TRENDS

It helps us analyze search volumes and trends for different regions and time periods. We must choose the keywords we want to analyze and enter them in the search field. The horizontal axis of the graph represents time, while the vertical axis represents the frequency with which the term has been searched globally. Google Trends allows us to access statistics from 2004 to the present day.

GOOGLE KEYWORD PLANNER

The purpose of this tool is to help us detect What are the most used keywords and their search volume. We can also filter the search area and language. This tool helps us to find new ideas for the keywords of our business, website, etc.

SEMRUSH

It is one of the online tools that we like the most because it allows us to research the keywords that our competitors use, as well as who uses Google Adwords and the links redirected to their website. The part of Research the keywords it also performs a domain analysis.

KEYWORDTOOL.IO

It's an alternative tool to Google's Keyword Planner. It's a Freemium tool that helps us discover long-tail keywords.

MONITORING TOOLS

There are a large number of monitoring tools that help us gather information about the keywords we have selected, such as our brand, the competing brand, the keywords of a sector, etc. The results provided by the tool allow us to know different types of data such as the number of comments on a specific social network, who are the people who mention the keywords the most, etc.

One of the most interesting Social Media Monitoring and Analytics tools on the market is Brandchats. This platform helps us identify and analyze the presence of our brand and its competition throughout the network (social networks, blogs, forums, etc.).

SOCIAL BAKERS

This platform helps us measure, compare and perform social media analysis, in addition to collecting statistical data on usage, brands and trends.

TOOLS FOR CONDUCTING ONLINE SURVEYS

Surveygizmo is one of our favorite platforms for conducting surveys, although there are many others. Online surveys offer us a series of advantages such as reaching a wider audience, being faster to send, including interactive elements, reducing costs and collecting data on the spot.

ACTIVE LISTENING ON SOCIAL NETWORKS

The voice of the consumer is very important to our company. Social networks allow us to talk with our followers, providing us with their ideas, opinions, motivations, etc. That's why active listening or social listening is key to improving.

MOZ

This software allows us to see how the competition is positioned on the Internet and to know the Title, description, H1, H2, and the page and domain authority.

MARKETING DASHBOARDS

Los Marketing Dashboards are a more convenient and agile interactive data visualization tool for analyzing data and making reports in your company. This panel will allow us to see how our Marketing efforts are working, among other things, such as Google Analytics tracking data. For example, Google Data Studio and Power BI are two tools that allow you to design interactive and real-time data visualization dashboards.

Implementing these techniques to carry out online market research or research is very important for our business because they offer us an important competitive advantage, in addition to helping us to anticipate market needs. The combination of technological tools with consumer opinion will provide us with very valuable information to implement a very good digital strategy and be a success for our company.

What advantages does an Online Market Study offer us?

These are the advantages that we think are the most appropriate:

• Speed
• Immediacy
• Minimizing costs
• Reliability

Don't forget that before capturing the attention of your potential customers, you must first understand and discover what they really want or need.

What tools are you missing?

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How can we help you?

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