Say you have an excellent idea for a product.
But before you invest resources in bringing it to life, you need to answer a few crucial questions:
- Is there any demand for it in the market?
- How should you market that product to reach the right audience?
- Who are your competitors, and how are they growing?
Market research can help you answer these questions. It’s key to successfully launching, marketing, and scaling a product or business.
But to conduct this type of analysis, you need the right tools.
In this article, we’ll review the best market research tools.
1. Market Explorer
Best for: Gaining insights into your target market and competitors.
Semrush’s Market Explorer allows you to analyze any market or niche surrounding a domain in detail.
By simply entering a domain, you will instantly get a complete picture of the competitive landscape—showcasing top players, their market shares, growth rates, and seasonal trends.
The tool offers three options for compiling market data:
- Create List: Create a custom list of up to 100 competitors
- Find Competitors: Generate a list of competitors based on your specific domain
- Analyze Category: Choose from 110 business categories for industry data
If you don’t know your competitors, click “Find Competitors,” choose your location, and enter your domain. Click “Research a market.”
The report uses a variety of data sources, including keyword data, website traffic data, and social media data. Providing you with a comprehensive view of your market.
Market Explorer offers actionable insights into your target audience, competitors, and industry. This helps you gain a clear perspective on market size, trends, and other realities.
What Market Explorer Offers
- Market overview: Understand your market’s size, growth, and key players
- Audience: Find your audience’s demographics, interests, and online behavior
- Competitive analysis: Set benchmarks by looking at how you stack up against competitors
- Keyword research: Discover high-traffic keywords that your target audience is searching for
- Industry insights: Stay informed on your industry trends and leading players
What We Like
Market Explorer stands out for its depth of data from various sources. With a user-friendly interface, it provides users with a clear view of their market and their competitors. You will find many rich insights that can aid your go-to-market strategy.
Pricing
Market Explorer is a part of Semrush .Trends, a competitive intelligence solution. Semrush .Trends costs $289 monthly in addition to your existing Semrush subscription.
Check out our full pricing details.
2. Traffic Analytics
Best for: Evaluating website traffic and visitor behavior.
Traffic Analytics is a market intelligence and competitive research tool that decodes the traffic metrics of any website.
This Semrush tool helps you uncover the sources of a website’s visitors, the devices they use, and how they interact with the content.
Open the tool, enter a competitor’s URL, and click “Analyze.”
The “Overview” tab will provide a high-level overview of your competitor’s website traffic.
Navigate to different tabs to access more insights into traffic journey, audience, and more.
You can also add up to five domains. And compare the data to understand the competitive market and trends in-depth.
You can curate all the information to identify your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses. Based on this research, you can develop strategies to improve your own website’s traffic.
What Traffic Analytics Offers
- Traffic sources: Understand your competitors’ most effective marketing channels by seeing where their traffic is coming from
- Audience overview: See who your competitors’ visitors are, including their demographics and socioeconomic data
- Traffic behavior: Find out how your competitors’ visitors interact with their websites
- Traffic trends: Identify trends by looking at how your competitors’ traffic has changed over time
- Keywords: Discover what keywords people are using to find your competitors’ websites
What We Like
Traffic Analytics shows how users navigate and interact with competitors’ sites at a granular level. This data can help you identify patterns and curate insights. Which improves your site’s user experience, turning it into a more effective acquisition channel.
Pricing
Traffic Analytics is a part of Semrush .Trends, a competitive intelligence solution. Semrush .Trends is priced at $289 per month on top of your existing Semrush subscription.
You can check out our full pricing details.
3. EyeOn
Best for: Monitoring competitors’ online activities.
EyeOn is a competitive tracking tool from Semrush that helps you monitor your rivals’ online activities 24/7. You can use it to gain real-time insights into your competitors’ content and advertising strategies.
While Traffic Analytics helps you understand your competitors’ digital presence, EyeOn enables you to track their digital activities.
Open the tool, enter your competitor domains, and click “Start free monitoring.” (You can add up to 20 domains.)
From this report, you can track your competitors’ Google Search Ads, new pages, blogs, and social media.
This enables you to keep an eye on your competitors. And respond promptly to shifting market trends.
Remember to configure your email report settings to receive automated updates.
You can also follow our guide for more information on configuring the tool.
What EyeOn Offers
- Website monitoring: Track your competitors’ blogs and webpages to spot shifts in their strategies
- Promotion tracking: Understand your competitors’ Google Ads campaigns and how they position themselves in the market
- Social media analysis: Keep tabs on their social media activities, noting the type of content they’re posting on Facebook, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter)
- Automated notifications: Stay informed with weekly email updates that summarize competitors’ online activities
- Data export: Easily share your findings with team members using Google Sheets and CSV file exports
What We Like
EyeOn stands out for its diverse, comprehensive real-time tracking capability. The tool’s intuitive interface and automated alerts ensure you never miss out on your competitors’ web activities.
Pricing
EyeOn is a part of Semrush .Trends, a competitive intelligence solution. Semrush .Trends is priced at $289 per month on top of your existing Semrush subscription.
Check out our full pricing details.
Note: You can try EyeOn for free for seven days.
4. One2Target
Best for: Gaining insights into your target audience.
One2Target is a Semrush audience research tool that helps you better understand your target audience. It offers detailed demographic, psychographic, and behavioral data.
This is one of the most popular tools for marketing research that helps you refine your marketing strategies based on:
- Who your target audience is
- What their interests are
- Which channels they spend most of their time on
Open the tool, enter a domain, and click “Analyze.” You can add up to five competitor domains.
You’ll get a complete breakdown of the domain’s audience in four reports: Demographics, Socioeconomics, Behavior, and Audience Overlap.
With One2Target, you can segment your audience more accurately (based on factors like age, interests, or location) to tailor your marketing campaigns.
For instance, click the “Behavior” tab and scroll down:
For the “nationalgeographic.com” domain, 67.7% of the audience uses mobile devices. And they visit YouTube, Facebook, and Reddit the most.
You could use this information to, for example, better optimize your website for mobile users. Or prioritize Reddit over LinkedIn for your ad campaigns.
What One2Target Offers
- Demographics report: Get broad demographic information, like your audience’s age, sex, and location
- Socioeconomics report: Gain insights into your audience’s employment statuses, education levels, household sizes, and income brackets
- Behavior report: Dive deep into your audience’s interests, device preferences, and social media usage
- Audience overlap report: Discover where your audience shares interests with other groups to identify potential collaboration areas
What We Like
One2Target offers a comprehensive range of metrics that show a holistic view of your audience’s characteristics. It provides both broad and detailed insights. Which ensures that businesses can make informed decisions—from high-level strategy formulation to granular campaign adjustments.
Pricing
One2Target is a part of Semrush .Trends, a competitive intelligence solution. Semrush .Trends is priced at $289 per month on top of your existing Semrush subscription.
You can check out our full pricing details.
5. Organic Research
Best for: Analyzing competitors’ organic search strategies.
As one of the top marketing research tools, Semrush’s Organic Research helps you understand your competitors’ SEO strategies.
The report shows you what keywords they rank for and get traffic from.
Open the tool, enter your competitor’s domain, and click “Search.”
Then, navigate to the “Top Keywords” section and click “View all # keywords.” You’ll see a list of keywords the website is ranking for.
You can also analyze your competitors’ top pages, track their ranking trend on search engine results pages (SERPs), and identify competing domains for specific keywords.
You can use these insights to:
- Analyze your competitors’ organic results
- Set benchmarks for yourself
Further reading: Market Analysis: 6 Steps to Building a Surefire Marketing Strategy
What Organic Research Offers
- Positions report: Gain insights into the organic keywords a domain ranks for, their respective positions on SERPs, and the estimated traffic they bring
- Position changes report: Track the evolution of keyword rankings over time. Understand which keywords have recently entered the top results, which have dropped, and which have improved in position.
- Competitors report: Identify domains that are competing for the same organic keywords
- Pages report: Dive deep into the performance of individual URLs from a domain. Discover which pages are driving the most organic traffic, the number of keywords they rank for, and their estimated traffic value.
- Subdomains report: Analyze the organic performance of subdomains within a primary domain
What We Like
The tool’s emphasis on presenting visually appealing data offers a unique perspective that’s both informative and easy to understand. So you don’t feel overwhelmed—even when you see in-depth reports with a lot of actionable insights.
Pricing
You can sign up for a free account to get limited access. Paid plans start at $139.95 monthly (save up to 17% by choosing annual billing). Which includes the suite of 55+ Semrush tools.
You can also check out our full pricing details.
6. Think with Google
Best for: Accessing insights, digital trends, and research about digital marketing.
Think with Google is a comprehensive resource for marketing research and digital trends data. It offers a wide array of insights, ideas, and tools to help you build and refine your marketing strategies.
The free market research tool taps into Google’s extensive data resources. This helps you gain real-time insights into consumer behavior and market trends. Allowing you to spot emerging trends early and adjust your marketing strategies accordingly.
What Think with Google Offers
- Consumer insights: Gain insights into how consumers are behaving and what they’re interested in
- Google Trends: Utilize real-time data on what people are searching for to gauge market interest
- Market Finder: Receive information and insights to help you discover new international markets
- Grow My Store: Evaluate and enhance your online store’s user experience
- Marketing strategies: Access guides and tips on topics like AI, mobile engagement, and data analytics
What We Like
Think with Google is a free market research tool. While it doesn’t offer detailed reports, you get a broader understanding of the evolving market trends and consumer behavior in real time. Specifically, Google Trends is great for businesses that want a quick snapshot of their current market.
Pricing
You can use Think with Google for free.
7. AdClarity - Advertising Intelligence
Best for: Gaining in-depth insights into competitors’ advertising strategies across multiple platforms.
AdClarity is a powerful tool designed to dissect your competitors' advertising strategies. It provides comprehensive coverage across display, social, and video advertising channels, giving you a full view of how competitors engage with their audience.
You can also view your competitors’ top-performing ads.
What AdClarity Offers
- Competitive Analysis: See how competitors allocate their advertising spend, which ads perform best, and where these ads are placed.
- Ad Spend and Impressions: Get accurate estimates of the expenditure and the reach of competitors' ads.
- Ad Placement Insights: Understand the strategic placement of ads across various platforms.
- Trend Analysis: Track how advertising strategies evolve over time with detailed trend reports.
- Top Campaigns and Publishers: Identify the most successful campaigns and the publishers delivering high ROI.
What We Like
AdClarity delivers a detailed, data-centric look at advertising strategies in a visually appealing and easy-to-understand format. The ability to export data and conduct side-by-side comparisons of various competitors significantly enhances strategic planning capabilities.
Pricing
AdClarity offers flexible pricing options to best suit your needs.
- AdClarity Display: $169/month
- AdClarity Social & Video: $180/month
- All Advertising Channels (Display + Social & Video): $349/month
8. Statista
Best for: Accessing a database of statistics.
Statista is a data research platform that provides comprehensive access to market research reports, consumer survey results, and industry studies.
It simplifies data interpretation. And helps you visualize complex market data through easy-to-understand graphs and infographics.
With Statista, you get deep insights into specific industries through a vast database of statistics.
Here’s an example of Statista’s Market Insights report on ecommerce. You can get full access to it upon subscribing to its paid plan.
What Statista Offers
- Market research reports: Get detailed reports that provide insights into market trends and consumer behavior
- Infographics: Understand complex data easily with visual representations and infographics
- Forecasts: Anticipate market changes and plan for the future with forecasts on market trends
- Industry and country data: Access industry-specific data and global indicators for over 150 countries
- Custom research: Get tailored market analysis and research services with Statista Q
What We Like
Statista stands out for its diverse data resources. It provides ready-to-use data and interpretations you can directly apply to your business strategies. The tool’s user-friendly interface makes navigating and finding the data you need easy.
Pricing
You can get a basic account for free to see some statistics in limited categories.
For full access to niche reports and data, subscribe to the premium plans that start at $79 per month. In addition, you can order specific reports at an additional cost.
9. Gartner
Best for: Accessing research and insights on a range of topics.
Gartner is a global research and advisory firm that provides deep insights, strategic advice, and practical tools tailored to your role and key initiatives.
It’s not a tool in the traditional sense. Gartner is a service provider that equips you with the necessary knowledge, resources, and products to conduct market research. You can contact them to become their client.
What Gartner Offers
- In-depth research: Gain access to detailed research reports across various industries and markets (like IT, marketing, HR, and more)
- Hype Cycle™: Understand the risks and opportunities of innovations within your industry
- Product decisions: Make informed product decisions using proprietary buyer data and analyst insights
- Digital IQ: Benchmark your digital performance relative to peers and competitors
- Strategic advice: Receive personalized guidance on your market research strategies from industry experts
What We Like
Gartner excels in offering personalized advisory services and in-depth research reports. It provides a unique blend of expert advice and user reviews, delivering a holistic view of the market. The opportunity to network with industry leaders at their conferences further helps you learn more about your market’s cutting-edge trends.
Pricing
Contact Gartner directly for a pricing quote.
10. Audience Intelligence
Best for: Deeply understanding and segmenting your target audience.
Audience Intelligence is an innovative tool designed to dive into the characteristics and behaviors of your audience or your competitors.
It moves beyond traditional keyword-based or consumer research methods by offering insights into your audience’s demographics, psychographics, and media affinities.
The app offers you a comprehensive audience analysis, providing a detailed view of who your audience really is.
What Audience Intelligence Offers
- Demographic Insights: Gain a clear understanding of your audience's age, gender, and location
- Psychographic Profiling: Explore interests, engagement habits, and buying mindsets more intensely
- Influencer and Platform Identification: Discover which influencers resonate with your audience and the best platforms for reaching them
- Segmentation and Persona Development: Segment your audience for targeted marketing, creating detailed personas that help tailor your marketing efforts
What We Like
Audience Intelligence offers a unique, granular look at audience characteristics, allowing for highly personalized marketing strategies. Identifying niche communities and lookalike audiences helps expand your reach and refine your marketing tactics effectively.
Pricing
The Semrush App Center offers a paid subscription to the Audience Intelligence app for $150 per month, which allows you to generate or refresh one report on the first of each month.
Additional reports can be purchased within the app at the following rates:
- 1 extra report: $150 per month (total $300 per month for 2 reports)
- 3 extra reports: $375 per month (total $525 per month for 4 reports)
- 5 extra reports: $500 per month (total $650 per month for 6 reports)
11. SurveyMonkey
Best for: Creating and distributing surveys for data collection.
SurveyMonkey is an online survey platform that enables you to create custom surveys, distribute them to your target audience, and analyze the responses in real time.
It’s one of the best market research tools that streamline the data collection process. Making it easier for you to gather feedback and understand your audience.
Here’s the SurveyMonkey dashboard, showing the downloadable results of a survey:
Image Source: SurveyMonkey
What SurveyMonkey Offers
- Custom surveys: Create tailored surveys with a wide range of question types and design options
- Distribution options: Distribute your surveys via email, web, social media, and more to reach your audience wherever they are
- Real-time analytics: Analyze survey responses in real time to gain immediate insights into your data
- Survey templates: Save time with expert-written survey templates that you can customize to fit your needs
- Integration: Connect your surveys with popular apps and services like Mailchimp, HubSpot, Zoom, and Google Drive to automate workflows
What We Like
SurveyMonkey has a user-friendly dashboard. It allows you to create surveys quickly, even if you have no prior experience. The platform’s wide range of question types and pre-written questions makes it easy to design a survey in minutes.
Pricing
SurveyMonkey offers a basic plan for free. It has different tiers for Teams, Individuals, and Enterprise. The paid plan starts at $25 per month.
12. Qualtrics
Best for: Collecting and analyzing data.
Qualtrics is an experience management software that helps you collect and analyze data about your customers, products, employees, and brand.
It provides tools to gather feedback, understand customer preferences, and take action based on these insights.
You can streamline the entire market research process with Qualtrics. From survey design (pictured below) to data analysis and reporting.
Source: Qualtrics
What Qualtrics Offers
- Comprehensive research solutions: Conduct all types of market research, from brand tracking to customer segmentation, in one place
- Predictive intelligence: Utilize AI and machine learning to predict market trends and consumer behavior
- Advanced analytics: Dive deep into your data with powerful analytics to transform it into actionable insights
- Automated reporting: Access live data and generate comprehensive reports automatically
- Integration capabilities: Seamlessly integrate with your existing systems and tools, including CRM and human resources information system (HRIS)
What We Like
Qualtrics offers predictive analytics tools that make market research more future-ready. These tools (like Text iQ and Predict iQ) analyze various data types to anticipate consumer behavior and market trends.
Pricing
Reach out to Qualtrics to get a custom quote.
13. Tableau
Best for: Visualizing complex data sets.
Tableau is a visual analytics platform that transforms market research data into understandable, interactive visualizations.
It simplifies the data analysis process—making it accessible for anyone, regardless of their technical skills.
You can dive into your data and extract meaningful insights with Tableau.
The market research tool uses generative AI to enhance your data exploration, offering prompt insights based on real-time data.
Source: Tableau
What Tableau Offers
- Data blending: Combine data from multiple sources like CRM, website analytics, and social media
- Data visualization: Create interactive dashboards and reports that simplify complex data
- Storytelling capabilities: Craft compelling narratives from your data to make your findings memorable
- Collaboration: Share dashboards and reports effortlessly within your team
- AI capabilities: Automate tasks and uncover hidden insights. Make better decisions and save time.
What We Like
Tableau stands out for its highly intuitive products and deep analytics platform. It visualizes insights so you never feel lost in the data cluster. If you're doing marketing research for clients, Tableau will make reporting much simpler and more effective.
Pricing
You can check out its free trial. For pricing details, contact Tableau’s sales team.
Further reading: If you want to learn how to make the most out of these tools, check out our comprehensive guide to market research.
14. Ecommerce Keyword Analytics
Best for: Improving ecommerce marketing strategies through advanced keyword research.
Ecommerce Keyword Analytics provides an in-depth analysis of the keywords that lead to conversions on major e-commerce players like Target, Amazon, and Walmart.
This tool helps you understand the most effective keywords for these online retailers and grasp shoppers' demand patterns. This understanding can be leveraged to use the most impactful keywords when planning your own ecommerce content strategy.
What Ecommerce Keyword Analytics Offers
- Keyword Performance Evaluation: Discover vital stats for any ecommerce keyword, such as search volume, clicks, and orders, to prioritize your optimization efforts.
- Conversion Potential Assessment: Uncover opportunities by reviewing unique data on product page visits, "Add to basket" events, and conversions.
- Demand Trend Exploration: Analyze keywords by domain, country, or month to identify seasonal trends, locales with high interest, and competitor targeting.
- Product Strategy Enhancement: Use keyword insights to determine related products and uncover consumer interest trends that could influence demand.
What We Like
Ecommerce Keyword Analytics provides in-depth insights into the keywords that drive the ecommerce sector, offering a clear advantage in market strategy refinement. It's especially valuable for identifying underused keywords and trends that can lead to better product placement and increased conversions.
Pricing
Pricing for Ecommerce Keyword Analytics is set at $19.99 per month. This subscription provides access to data across more than 130 different online retailers, allows users to check trends for retailers from 16 countries, gain insights about top keywords, and access all historical data starting September 2020.
15. Keyword Analytics for YouTube
Best for: YouTube video optimization and understanding viewer search behaviors.
Keyword Analytics for YouTube is a tool for anyone aiming to increase their YouTube views or discover trending video topics. This app offers important YouTube keyword metrics that can be used to optimize videos for higher visibility and engagement.
You can review search volume, competition, and similar keywords. You can also toggle between Top Keywords, Fast Growing Trends, and Most Viewed Videos for a more in-depth analysis.
What Keyword Analytics for YouTube Offers
- Keyword Discovery: Find new keyword ideas, fastest-growing keywords, and low-competition, high-value search terms.
- Top Video Analysis: See the top videos for each keyword to understand what content performs well.
- Trend Insights: Get insights into commonly searched phrases and other relevant trends.
- Country and Time Filters: Tailor your research by selecting specific countries and time frames, whether daily, weekly, or monthly.
What We Like
This tool is incredibly useful for YouTube content creators. It provides detailed data that can significantly enhance video content strategy and SEO, ensuring content is as discoverable as possible on YouTube and Google searches.
Pricing
Keyword Analytics for YouTube costs just $10 per month. This subscription provides access to a comprehensive list of keywords, top video lists, and the ability to filter results across 17 countries and 11 languages.
6 Factors to Consider When Choosing Market Research Tools
Now that you know the top market research tools, which ones should you choose?
Here are some of the important factors you should consider:
1. Purpose
Start by identifying your specific needs.
Are you a startup looking to understand your target audience? Or perhaps a well-established brand aiming to expand into new markets?
Your objectives dictate your tool choice.
For instance, if you’re entering the health food market and not sure who your exact target audience is, you’d benefit from a tool like One2Target, which offers detailed consumer insights.
Knowing your goals helps you choose a tool that’s not just good, but perfect for your specific needs.
2. Data Quality
The tool should provide reliable and accurate data.
So, check how the tool sources its data. Does it use reputable sources? Does it have mechanisms in place to clean the data?
For instance, here’s how Semrush collects and delivers data:
Also, ensure that the tool updates its data regularly so you’re working with the most current information.
Let’s say you’re in the fashion industry. Having accurate data on the latest trends can be the difference between a sell-out collection and a warehouse full of unsold stock.
3. Integration
Your chosen market research tool should integrate seamlessly with your existing business software.
This will help streamline your workflow and make analyzing data across different platforms easier.
For example, if you’re running a digital marketing agency and you're already using HubSpot for CRM and automation, a tool that integrates with HubSpot would be ideal.
So, check if the market research tool supports integration with common platforms like CRM systems, social media platforms, or communication tools.
Semrush offers integration with several third-party tools (image below). Helping you build a cohesive and efficient ecosystem for market research and implementation.
4. Scalability
As your business grows, your market research needs may change.
Choose a tool that can scale with your business and handle increased data volume as your business expands.
For example, if you start as a local retailer but plan to go national, you’ll need a tool that can handle the surge in customer data and market variables.
Check whether the tool can manage larger datasets. And whether it allows for additional users as your team grows. This ensures you won’t have to switch platforms mid-growth.
5. Cost
Consider your budget—to avoid overspending and underspending.
You will find both free market research tools (which typically provide basic data with limited access) and paid ones (which provide more advanced features with reliable data).
Now, a free tool might suffice if you’re a small business looking to understand broad consumer data. But if you’re a larger organization aiming for a detailed market trends report, investing in a premium tool would be more appropriate.
Generally, you want to look for a premium solution that maintains a balance between cost and features.
You should also consider whether the tool has flexible pricing plans that can be upgraded or downgraded as your needs change.
For instance, Semrush offers multiple plans that you can easily upgrade and downgrade at any time. We also offer a custom plan built around your specific needs.
Note: You can get started with Semrush at no cost. Try our free trial and get full access to 55+ tools.
6. Support
Good customer support can be crucial—especially if you encounter any issues or need help understanding certain features.
Imagine you’re launching a new product and need to gather market feedback quickly. Having a support team that’s just an email or phone call away can be a lifesaver.
So, check if the tool offers support through multiple channels like email, phone, or live chat.
Also, consider whether it comes with resources like tutorials, guides, or a knowledge base to help you troubleshoot.
Pro tip: Choosing the best market research tool is a big decision. So, take your time. Many tools even offer free trials. Try them for free to see if they meet your needs.
Empower Your Decision-Making with the Best Market Research Tools
Whether you’re starting a new business, entering a new market, or launching a new product, market research is essential.
But you need to choose the right online market research tools that provide you with up-to-date and reliable data.
Get started with Semrush .Trends, a competitive intelligence solution that helps businesses better understand their industry, competitors, and target audience.