Whether you're a seasoned pro or a newcomer to the world of marketing, you need the right tools if you're going to reach your target customer. To that end, we've assembled this handy list of the best market research tools available on the web, at a price that can't be beat: free!
This tool allows you to search for potential keywords based on search terns related to your website, branding, product, or service. It also generates traffic statistics, like Google search volume, which shows how many times a particular keyword has been searched over time.
Similar to Keyword Planner, Soovle brings together keyword statistics from several of the major search engines, including Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Bing, Wikipedia, AliExpress, Ask.com, and Amazon. Users can search for keywords related to their product or industry, no matter how niche, and easily save potential keywords by dragging them to a folder at the top of the screen.
Context matters, and Answer the Public is one of the only free SEO tools available that provides context for its keyword suggestions. Users can view the complete search phrases or questions that contained various keywords, for deeper insight into what potential customers are looking for.
Social media can provide valuable glimpses into what people are saying about your brand or a specific product—comments that most search engines won’t pick up. SocialMention offers free, real-time social media data pulled from over 100 sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Simply type your business or product name into the search bar to get started.
A good companion for SocialMention, Omgili tracks company and product mentions across over 100,000 online forums, user groups, and newsletters. This free tool can distinguish post titles, content, and publication dates, allowing you to search for consumer testimonials, complaints, brand mentions, and ongoing discussions.
If you’re a small business looking for cold, hard statistics about your industry space, check out Bizstats.com. It’s a free online repository of data including industry ratios, financial benchmark reports, and profitability risk data. The search engine is easy to navigate and mobile-friendly.
Opencorporates allows users to search a database of over 100 million companies and view documents and public filings compiled from government websites and other public resources. If you work in philanthropy, its sister site, OpenCharities, delivers a mirror service for registered charities.
This free mapping tool allows you to visualize US Census data by projecting it on top of the Bing map interface. Users can draw on over 400 million census records to create colorful overlays that represent different demographics or market segments.
For a direct line into your customers’ thinking, Ask Your Target Market (AYTM.com) helps you launch surveys and track their results in real time. Load your own distribution list or create a list from AYTM’s database of over 4 million respondents, via customizable prescreening criteria. While AYTM’s paid subscriptions offer the most features, the free Eco plan is aimed at individuals and small businesses.
Make My Persona is a free, interactive tool that generates customizable, shareable buyer persona documents based on your responses to strategic questions about your ideal customer. If you’re not sure what your ideal customer looks like, Make My Persona will walk you through the research process with a step-by-step guide.
Don't have time to scour all of these resources daily to uncover key competitor insights? Click here to learn more about how we use these and thousands of other online sources to curate actionable intelligence briefings for companies just like yours every single day.
For even more free resources, check out our original list: Free Market Research Tools & Resources