Social Media: Changing the way we do business

Useful Market Research Tools

Here’s a collection of some useful market research tools that can help deliver insights into your audience. This post originally appeared on the Buffer blog.

 1. Typeform – free

Typeform specializes in beautiful, intuitive survey experiences. For instance, survey takers can navigate through with just their keyboard, and survey creators can set up awesome visuals and interactive elements throughout.

2. Survey Monkey – free

The most-used survey tool out there, Survey Monkey has a huge list of features for surveys of all sizes—everything from a quick-and-simple two-question survey to huge, robust surveys sent out to thousands. Their free plan gives you 10 questions and 100 responses. For $25/month, you can unlock unlimited questions and responses.

3. ClickInsights – 14 days free

4. Surveypal – free

A super simple survey option, Surveypal has a clean drag-and-drop interface and is designed to be a great experience for survey takers whether on desktop or mobile.

5. Survata – $100/survey

With Survata, you create the survey and Survata finds people to take it, based on your chosen demographics. It’s a neat way to get targeted insights from a select group.

6. Voice Polls – $0.10/response

After creating a survey, Voice Polls goes out and finds the survey takers for you. For ten cents per response, you can get feedback from the general population. For ten more cents, you can opt to receive responses from a select group of people, complete with demographic info.

Additional survey options: Survmetrics, Survs, Google Consumer Surveys

Feedback tools – How to involve your audience

7. Heat-map – 14-day free trial

In early-access beta, Heat-map allows you to see where on the page your readers are looking so you can tell if your copy, design, and calls-to-action are getting seen. Heat-map can be used for sketches, designs, mockups, and web prototypes—anything visual you’d love some feedback on.

8. User Testing – $225/month

User Testing provides video of real people sharing their thoughts as they go through your website, app, or prototype.

9. UsabilityTools – 14-day free trial

This suite of tools offers all kinds of options for involving your audience in the research process. Surveys, web testing, and click testing are some of the many features you’ll find here.

10. Qualaroo – 14-day free trial

Qualaroo allows you to add a simple survey to any page on your site or at any point in your product. Customize the slide-up questionnaire to show only to particular customers who have taken certain actions.

11. Temper – $12/month

A super simple way to collect feedback, Temper asks a reader or customer to simply click a smiley face to relate their feelings on a topic.

Your questions can pop up on a webpage, blog post, or email footer—anywhere it might be helpful to get some quick feedback from your audience.

12. Proved.co – free

Share your great new idea for an app, tool, product, or service, and the community at Proved will give quick feedback on whether it’s worth pursuing.

Persona tools – How to identify your audience

13. Personapp – free

Create quick and informal profiles for the different personas you’ve developed among your audience. After setting a name, title, and image for the persona, you can add in personal details like behaviors, demographics, and needs/goals.

14. Up Close & Persona – free

For a thorough profile of an audience persona, the Up Close & Persona tool asks a host of great questions for getting at the heart of what motivates your audience and which factors influence their behavior.

Data tools – How to analyze your audience

15. Wolfram Alpha Facebook report – free

Using the data from your Facebook profile, Wolfram Alpha puts together an extensive report on all sorts of different data points from your updates and from your friends. There are some really neat insights to gain here on the demographics of those you connect with on Facebook.

16. Facebook Audience Insights – free

The robust audience creation tool from Facebook lets you create any sort of target demographic—by region, by age and gender, by interest, by page likes, and more—and shows you the break down of the audience slice you’ve chosen.

One of the quickest ways to learn about those who have liked your page is to run insights on that specific segment.

17. Followerwonk – free

Similar to what Audience Insights is to Facebook, Followerwonk provides audience data for Twitter. Enter a Twitter username into Followerwonk to see how that person’s audience is composed, by region, activity, keywords, authority, follower size, and more.

Summary

• Conduct surveys
• Solicit feedback
• Create personas
• Analyze your follower data

Measure What Matters Most!

Improve outcomes by focusing on your best customers and the critical moments in their journey. Don’t wait until after you’ve run your campaign to think about measurement. Establish your measurement-focused marketing strategy before you spend that first dollar.

• Focus on your true business objectives. Make sure your KPIs are in line with the real problems that you’re trying to solve. Don’t let organizational silos stop you from measuring what matters most.
• Measure customers, not just transactions. Measure long-term customer value instead of pure revenue, and look at which channels bring you your best customers. You’ll develop stronger, more profitable relationships and avoid wasting money and effort on customers who cost more than they’re worth.
• Attribute value across the whole customer journey. Understand what your customer journey looks like, and think holistically about your marketing. Attribute credit to various marketing touchpoints to uncover insights and opportunities that will help you invest more wisely.
• Prove the incremental impact of your marketing spend. Identify vital channels and new opportunities—then experiment to prove the value of your efforts (and stop what’s not working). Make experimentation a regular part of marketing cycles: keep testing and keep improving.