Ever heard of someone driving on the roads blindfolded to take their road-safety instincts for a spin?
Me neither.
But I hear about people experimenting with the marketing equivalent more often than I’d like to. Driving marketing initiatives without consumer insight or data analysis removes the one thing you need to advance safely: Your vision. Market research gives you a clearly signposted direction, shows you where not to go and maps out where those in your space are trying to get to.
AI tools are like a GPS in the equation. They can calculate the fastest route, anticipate roadblocks and set you up for an efficient journey. In other words, they shift your approach from manual or semi-automated labor to accurate, real-time guidance that shows you the way forward. Keep your hands on the wheel and save intuitive decisions for execution.
So, when should you use AI for market research and which tools should be on your radar?
To AI, or Not to AI … That’s the Question
Among worldwide market researchers, 47% claim they use AI regularly. Even so, diving into the markets has always been a mixed bag, and now, the debate over whether to incorporate AI is a hot topic. While traditional tools hold value, AI has taken market research to a new level. Here’s how:
- Data analysis and insights: Traditional research is usually a slow grind. You collect data manually or maybe somewhat automate it with basic software. Then, you spend hours (if not days) trying to make sense of it. Artificial intelligence, on the other hand, can analyze hoards of data rapidly, uncovering patterns and trends that might go unnoticed by human analysts. Enter clear, nuanced and actionable insights.
- Data collection methods: We previously relied on spreadsheets, gut instincts and the occasional focus group to figure out what our customers wanted. Now, AI plucks multi-source data in real time. We’re talking social media, website interactions and even video content analysis, facilitating a more comprehensive view of your market.
- Real-time processing: In the past, gathering and analyzing data could take weeks and an endless supply of coffee. AI-powered tools give you the goods as soon as the data rolls in. With play-by-play updates (instead of waiting for the final score), you can pivot your strategy on the fly. This agility is crucial in today’s rapidly changing markets.
- Personalization and targeting: Traditional tools provide broad insights but don’t always hit the mark for every segment of your audience. AI can help you drill down into individual customer preferences, behaviors and needs, so you can craft hyper-targeted marketing strategies that speak directly to individuals rather than shouting into the void.
While the traditional approach to market research is not entirely obsolete, integrating AI can up your game, helping you understand and reach your audience.
5 AI Market Research Tools You Should Know About
The ideal AI technology to integrate into your marketing strategy depends on your game plan. Where do you want (or need) to increase efficiency? How well do you know your blind spots?
Each of the following tools offers features that cater to different aspects of marketing research, from a broad market overview to specific tasks like creating surveys or analyzing user behavior.
For a Bird’s Eye View on the Market: Semrush Market Explorer
Market researchers use Semrush Market Explorer for competitive analyses, showing insights into target markets and contenders. Glance at your market’s competitive landscape, including top players, their market shares, growth rates and trends.
Market Explorer can either create a list of your market’s top performers, identify your specific challengers or analyze business categories for industry data. If you need rich insights from multiple sources to understand market competition and identify opportunities, this is the tool.
Semrush Market Explorer Features
- Competitor benchmarking showing how you stack up in the competitive environment.
- Audience segmentation, including demographics, behavior and interests.
- Market trend analysis, covering growth, size and top dogs.
Creating Surveys: SurveyMonkey Genius
Looking for insights straight from the source? SurveyMonkey Genius is a survey and feedback management system that leverages its 25-year runnings to create automated surveys. Enter your goals into a prompt, and generative AI will produce high-quality surveys to send to your target audiences. You can collect, interpret and analyze data to fuel growth and innovation.
SurveyMonkey Genius Features
- Survey draft scores, encouraging improved structure and question formats to enhance user experience and boost completion rates.
- Predictive analytics generate answer choices that eliminate bias and ensure accurate data collection.
- Machine learning models to comb through responses and shine a light on statistically significant trends.
Enhanced UX: Hotjar
Hotjar uses AI to help you understand user behavior on your website. By analyzing clicks, scrolls and navigation patterns, this behavioral analytics platform provides deep insights into what’s working and what’s not. Its AI algorithms help you identify friction points in the user journey, making it easier for UX designers and product managers to optimize their website performance for better conversions.
Hotjar Features
- Heatmaps and session recordings show how your audience interacts with your website.
- Conversion funnel analysis creates conversion steps and drop-off visualizations as well as market segment comparisons.
- A feedback tool allows you to collect instant visual user feedback, removing the guesswork from optimization.
For Ideation: ChatGPT
Whether you need content topic ideas, structured outlines or draft copy in a flash, ChatGPT is a powerful AI tool for market research and creative brainstorming. Its generative AI capabilities enable it to draw ideas for social media, SEO, lead magnets and more, based on your competitive environment. This one is a great AI tool for small businesses with resource limitations.
ChatGPT Features
- Content ideation and creation derived from what’s currently performing online.
- Broad insights into the target audience’s behaviors and preferences within your market.
- Marketing strategy methodology and execution support.
For Basically Everything: Google Analytics
Google Analytics might be the grandfather of digital marketing tools, but it’s still one of the best. It’ll sift through mountains of data to show who your audience is, where they come from, which devices they use and how they interact with your site.
With machine learning algorithms, Google Analytics can now predict user behavior, segment audiences more effectively, and even provide automated insights that would otherwise require a dedicated analyst.
Google Analytics Features
- Predictive metrics for user behavior, including bounce rate, time on site and user flow.
- Advanced audience segmentation allows you to filter and analyze segments of your users, drawing insights about high-value customers or those who perform a desired action on your site, for example.
- Automated insights with customizable metrics, event tracking and individual behavior data.
- Google Trends integration to analyze seasonal shifts, popular topics and competitor statistics.
For Audio and Video: Speak
Audio and video have always been around for market researchers, and they’re increasingly showing up in content marketing. Speak is an AI tool that transcribes, analyzes and categorizes multimedia content — including interviews and focus group data.
It’ll assess the impact of your latest video campaign. It’ll even transcribe and scrape video and audio assets to help create SEO copy across other content channels. If video is your game, Speak is your AI assistant.
Speak Features
- AI audio and video-to-text converters, crushing hours into minutes.
- Derive qualitative trends and patterns from unstructured data inputs, such as meetings and surveys.
- Web scraping to analyze or summarize website pages or entire websites.
Market Research Best Practices
While AI tools can lift your market research game, you need to know your destination to steer it in the right direction. First, decide which kind of research you need:
Primary vs. Secondary Market Research
Primary research involves collecting new data directly from sources (used for UX, brand perception or product interactions). AI tools like Speak, Hotjar and Survey Monkey Genius focus on gathering primary data.
On the other hand, secondary research uses existing data, which is great for competitive analysis, segmentation and market trends. Semrush Market Explorer and Google Analytics provide secondary data analysis and are solid tools for secondary data.
Qualitative vs. Quantitative Data
Qualitative data provides insights into why people behave in certain ways, while quantitative data focuses on numbers and statistics. If you need to know who visits your site, go for qualitative. To understand how users navigate your site, go for qualitative.
Steps for Conducting Effective Market Research
- Identify the audience: Before jumping on the data collection, know who you’re targeting. AI tools can help segment your audience based on demographics, behaviors and interests.
- Define objectives: Are you looking to launch a new product, improve customer satisfaction or increase market share? If unsure, remember AI can help you define and refine these goals.
- Select your research methods: Depending on your objectives, select the appropriate methods — surveys, focus groups, social listening, etc. If you haven’t already chosen an AI tool, this stage will clarify which one you need.
- Develop a plan: A solid plan outlines your research approach, timelines and resources. AI tools can automate parts of this process, ensuring your plan is comprehensive and flexible.
- Collect and analyze data: Here’s where you leave the heavy lifting to the robots, who will gather data from multiple sources and analyze it in real time.
- Present findings: The final step is to present your findings in an actionable way. AI tools help create visualizations, reports and even predictive models to support your recommendations and put you in the home run.
Boost Your Research with AI Marketing Tools
Marketing couldn’t be marketing without a healthy dose of research. With the right tools, this phase becomes simpler, more accurate and tons more productive. By integrating AI into your market research process, you’re not just following the competition; you’re giving yourself the momentum to overtake.
Check out how these key players stack up against your current methods and where they can fill the gaps. Once you start using AI tools for market research, you’ll wonder how you ever got by without it.
