Marketing research is an important part of any marketing plan. It helps you understand how people think and behave so that you can create products and services that will appeal to them. For many small to midsize brands, market research can feel cost-prohibitive. This article will show you five ways you can do some market research for free. The more you understand your consumer, the better you can define your brand positioning. Marketers should improve their overall knowledge by learning about market research.
SurveyMonkey
Use SurveyMonkey to create surveys with ease.
If you need to gather some market research data quickly, SurveyMonkey is one of the easiest ways to do it. You can use SurveyMonkey’s free version to create surveys and then share them online. Click on this link to learn more: Survey Monkey
Leading a deep-dive business review
Too many marketers are not taking the time to dig in on the analytics. There is no value in having access to data if you are not using it. The best brand leaders can tell strategic stories through analytics. You should conduct a deep-dive business review on your brand at least once a year. Use our 64 analytical questions to get you started.
Qualtrics
Use Qualtrics to conduct online research studies.
Qualtrics offers an easy way to conduct online research studies. It allows you to build surveys with questions and answers, and then send them to people who opt into your study. Click on this link to learn more: Qualtrics
How to write meaningful consumer insights
Once you have done market research, try to turn the work into consumer insights. Our consumer insights tool below helps you put yourself in your consumers’ shoes and use their voice.
Every consumer insight should start with the word “I” to get into the shoes of your consumer. Put the consumer insight into quotes to engage their voice. To kickstart your brainstorming, use the consumer voice with our simple tool, “I feel ________ whenever I _______” with a human truth in the first blank, and a moment in your consumer’s life in the second blank.
To illustrate, zoom in to see more details.
Google Analytics
Use Google Analytics to see where your traffic comes from.
Google Analytics is one of the most popular free analytics tools available to help with market research. You can use it to track how visitors interact with your website, as well as see what pages are getting the most views.
Here’s a great video from Neil Patel, who is one of my favorite resources. His UbberSuggest tool has a free version and a lifetime price of $200. I use it five times per week for my own website research.
Hotjar
Use Hotjar to monitor user behavior.
Hotjar is an online survey tool that allows you to monitor user behavior. It’s easy to set up and offers a variety of features. Hotjar helps you understand how users behave on your site, what they need, and how they feel. Moreover, you can map the user journey to spot patterns and trends. And, then develop a deeper understanding of your users with Hotjar.
Take your brand knowledge to new heights with our Beloved Brands playbook
Beloved Brands is a comprehensive guide that covers the fundamentals of brand management. It goes deep on strategic thinking, brand positioning, brand plan development, advertising decisions, media planning, marketing analytics, and the brand financials. This is an opportunity to build your marketing skills to help your career. And, it will provide you with the roadmap for driving growth on your brand.
Marketers see Beloved Brands playbook as a go-to resource, as they keep it within arm’s reach for any new project. We are thrilled to see that it has received a 5-star rating from nearly 90% of Amazon reviewers. Additionally, we have also created playbooks for B2B Brands and Healthcare Brands, catering to specific industries.
Buzzsumo
Use Buzzsumo to find influencers and track their social media performance.
BuzzSumo is a free market research tool that helps marketers find the top performing blogs and websites in any given industry. You can use it to see what people are saying about your competitors, as well as discover new opportunities for your own brand.
You can use it to find the most popular content on the web. And, you can find real questions to answer in your content.
Click on this link to learn more: Buzzsumo
Marketing Careers
On a classic marketing team, there are four key levels:
- Assistant Brand Manager.
- Brand Manager.
- Marketing Director or Group Marketing Director.
- VP Marketing or CMO.
To illustrate, click to zoom in on the brand management career pathway.
In simple terms, the Assistant Brand Manager role is about doing, analyzing and sending signals you have leadership skills for the future.
At the Brand Manager level, it becomes about ownership and strategic thinking within your brand plan. Most Brand Managers are honestly a disaster with their first direct report, and get better around the fifth report.
When you get to the Marketing Director role, it becomes more about managing and leading than it does about thinking and doing. To be great, you need to motivate the greatness from your team and let your best players to do their absolute best.
And finally, at the CMO level, you must create your own vision, focus on your people to make them better and shine, drive the business results, and run the processes.
Our Beloved Brands Marketing Training program will make your team smarter.
If you are running a marketing team, you will always benefit from having a smarter team. When you invest in our marketing training program, you will help your team gain the marketing skills they need to succeed. As a result, you will see them make smarter decisions and produce exceptional work that drives business growth.
We’ll work with your team to help them learn more about the five core marketing skills: Strategic Thinking, Brand Positioning, Marketing Planning, Marketing Execution, and Brand Analytics. Most importantly, your marketers will learn new tools, concepts, and ideas to trigger new thinking. To help their skills, we get participants to take each tool on a test run. Then, we give feedback for them to keep improving.
To illustrate, click to zoom in on the brand management career pathway.
Take a look at our Marketing Skills assessment tool to see how you or your marketing team measure up.
For more information on our Beloved Brands Marketing Training programs, click below or email Graham Robertson at [email protected]
