15 October 2024
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By
Mark Meyerson
At a Glance
The digital marketing landscape is more competitive and complex than ever, but modern technologies and techniques can make reaching the right people highly effective.
Before you start reaching out, you need to be clear on who your audience is and how you’re going to connect with them. Market research should directly inform your marketing plan with insights that shape decisions on messaging, channels, and targeting.
For freelancers and SMEs working with limited budgets, investing time in research is essential – but it doesn’t have to be overwhelming or costly. By using the right tools and techniques, you can gain insights into your audience, competitors, and industry to craft campaigns that deliver results. Let’s dive in.
While KPIs are often used once marketing campaigns have kicked off, they do play a crucial role in market research. By helping you track progress, your time and resources will be better spent as you explore and gather insights.
Make your goals Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. For instance, “I want to increase my website traffic by 25% over the next six months”.
Common metrics you can use in your digital marketing campaign include Cost Per Click (CPC), Open Rates, Click-Through Rate (CTR), Organic Search Rankings, and Return on Ad Spend (ROAS). Tools like Google’s Keyword Planner can help estimate CPC, while LinkedIn’s Audience Insights and Facebook’s audience planning tools provide insights into both CPC and Cost Per Mille (CPM).
Given the complexity of planning and data management, tools can simplify and streamline the process. For example, check out this ClickUp action plan template to see how you can make your tasks more manageable and efficient.
Today’s digital audiences have diverse interests and needs, with high expectations and low patience for time-wasting. Understanding who you want to reach goes beyond basic demographics – instead, you’ll need to dig deeper to find their motivations, digital habits, and the platforms they engage with.
By running market segmentation and building up customer profiles, you can compartmentalise your research and refine your ongoing strategy. We recommend you explore these guides by HubSpot and digital marketing guru Neil Patel on how to go about it.
Industry pioneers such as Brandwatch, Sprinklr, and Mention can help you monitor conversations around your brand, industry, and competitors, with real-time insights into audience sentiment and trending topics.
Check out tools such as Audiense and SparkToro to analyse audience behaviours, preferred social channels, content engagement habits, and even which influencers they might like.
Leverage your own data from website analytics, CRM systems, and email marketing platforms to support findings and targeting. Here’s a little more on how to analyse your website traffic.
Now that you know who your audience is and where they spend their time, it’s time to dig deeper into their preferences. Explore what they’re saying, read reviews, use research tools, and pay attention to their feedback. This will help you identify their pain points, needs, and frustrations so that you can tailor your approach and offer solutions that resonate with them.
Take a look at candid customer experiences and impressions on retail websites, Google Reviews, TrustPilot, G2, and any other relevant platforms.
By adding a chatbot to your website, you’ll be able to see what questions customers are asking, and therefore, which pain points they are encountering. From there, you’ll know how to make things easier for them.
Take a look at Qualtrics and Medallia, which collect and analyse customer feedback across multiple touchpoints.
The world moves fast, and trends move with it. Your digital marketing research needs to include new technologies, platform changes, and shifts in consumer behaviour. This will take a combination of your own discovery, and the use of tools. By staying on top of trends, you’ll be able to better understand your market, uncover niches, and identify seasonality patterns – all of which make your strategy more targeted and effective.
an oldie but still a goodie – Google Trends is a simple way to track trending search terms, giving insights into what topics are gaining traction.
A simple platform with free and premium options that simply shows trends that are on an uptick. Super handy if you want to get ahead of the curve.
This is grassroots but very important. Tools have their place, but you shouldn’t forget about traditional press. Read news and opinions in your sector to stay in the know, and relevant to your audiences.
It’s good to know who the competition is, but it’s even better to know their strategies, strengths, and gaps. Take the time to look at the content they are putting out, where it’s going, how people are reacting, and how you can do the same – or better. You’d be surprised at the gaps you uncover, giving you the chance to fill them and own the space.
To look at competitor keyword strategies, backlink profiles, and even organic search performance. For content gaps, Ahrefs will identify the topics your competitors cover, so that you can even the playing field. Here’s a SEMrush competitor report template you can use to bring it all together.
Platforms like Social Blade and Rival IQ are useful when tracking competitor social media growth, content performance, and engagement rates.
As previously mentioned, take a look at Amazon, TrustPilot, Google Reviews and other relevant platforms to see what customers are saying about your competitors. This can give you a decent platform from which to differentiate yourself.
This is one of marketing’s most-used techniques and is still perfectly applicable for digital endeavours. An acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats, it offers a simple and structured way to evaluate your position in the market. For instance, you can explore how your strengths align with customer profiles, the weaknesses you want to address and fix before executing your plan, the communication gaps you can fill, and what threats new market entrants may present.
Canva has a bunch of fantastic SWOT templates for you to use and adapt.
AI platforms like Crayon can automate the competitive analysis part of SWOT, with real-time data on market shifts and competitor moves.
Take a look at Miro or Lucidchart to create interactive SWOT analyses that your team teams can contribute to in real-time
Dashboards can be a powerful tool for organising, analysing, and visualising your digital marketing audience research data. By effectively using a dashboard, you can:
Your research will draw from a variety of sources. Consolidate it into a single place to keep things consistent and easy to understand.
By using charts, graphs, and other visualisations, understanding trends and patterns is easier.
Easily work with team members and save time by automating data refreshes.
Digital marketing templates are a handy tool for businesses of all sizes. Whether you’re a seasoned marketer or just starting out, we have the right template to streamline your research. From social media posts and email newsletters to advanced SEO and Paid Search, these pre-designed resources save time and ensure consistency across your digital market research efforts.
To put it simply, market research in the digital realm takes a blend of traditional analysis methods and advanced digital tools to get the full picture. Starting off with clear goals and an understanding of your strengths, gaps, and opportunities, you’ll have the foundation for a strong digital marketing campaign.
From there, it’s all about strategy. Understanding your competition, differentiating your brand, and analysing data effectively are key. To stay on top of it all, check out our blog, which offers a treasure trove of digital marketing advice and templates to streamline your processes and achieve your goals.
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