How to do market research in the age of the Internet?

24 ways to do market research in the age of the Internet. 

In the 1980s market research meant filling in long questionnaires and doing interviews over lengthy phone calls. For this reason, they were a costly affair. 

Hence, many companies were willing to do trial and error while releasing their new products. 

Later came the era of competitions, contests, affordable phone call interviews. The cost of doing surveys and focus group research became cheaper than before by 1990s. 

Let's take this from the top.

Why do people need market research?

Brands & manufacturers or products & service providers need to understand the market vibe/pulse before they release new content or products or services from them.

What is the benefit of doing market research?

1. It helps avoid blunders.
2. The target audience is ideally understood. 
3. Overall business strategy and barriers to the market can be understood.
4. It helps position the brand, product or service amongst its peers.
5. It helps in understanding who the current market leader is and what is working for them.
6. The point is that it helps in understanding the gap or demand which is not currently met by the current products or services or brands. 

Who does this market research?

Agencies who take care of the marketing and promotional activities of brands are the ones who commission and execute market research.

There are two kinds of market research:

1. Primary market research - Original research is done in the market qualitatively or quantitatively.
2. Secondary market research - Research is done based on existing and already published information.

But recently, there is now a third kind of market research: Internet-based market research.

You read it right.

There are multiple ways of researching on the Internet. 

Here are few of the most popular ones (in my opinion)

1. Surveys: There are plenty of tools to do this. But the most popular ones are Google Surveys and Survey Monkey
2. Questionnaires: Google forms is one of the most used ones. People use this as a survey tool. Typically this is shared on social media for their peers to fill out and help with the market research.
3. Video Interviews: Video calling has been on the rise since the rollout of 4G networks across the globe. Zoom.us and Hangouts are the two most popular video conferencing tools. Industry experts help in such interviews via websites such as Zintro to provide their perception and insights about the market.
4. Facebook Groups: This is the current most popular way to collect market perception and key takeaways. And a giveaway can help get some great answers.
5. LinkedIn Groups: This used to be a great way of understanding how corporate employees perceived brands and their market information used to be very relevant as they are professionals working in those specific industries. 
6. Reddit forums: Reddit threads are great places of information and knowledge. Few questions in the right direction and motivation can go a long way. 
7. Facebook Audience Insights: Interactive information of people's mindset, likes and a great way to understand the demographics of target areas.
8. Google Trends: This tool provides detailed information on keyword search volumes, trending topics and informative infographics to understand the psyche of the desired consumers or target audience. 
9. Buzzsumo: A tool which helps in understanding what topic is trending even before it starts to trend. 
10. Google Keywords Planner: This tool provides insights into the keywords for which your competition is ranking on Google search. There are many more creative ways to research market perception. 
11. Google Analytics Benchmarking Data: Google Analytics aggregates data from other Google Analytics properties and helps you understand how you are positioned compared to your peers.
12. Albacross: Helps you understand people from which companies are checking out your business so that you can target them specifically with your paid advertisements. There are other noteworthy tools which deliver great insights here - https://www.g2.com/products/albacross/competitors/alternatives 
13. Facebook IQ: Reports provided by Facebook based on the data their statistical team could derive from the social network(s).
14. Think with Google: Google publishes great market insights based on the data from all their marketing platforms. These insights are industry renowned for their accuracy and data interpretation.
15. Google Shopping Insights: One of the best tools to understand which product is having what level of interest in the USA. There are also other eCommerce and retail industry publications such as https://www.internetretailer.com/, http://wwd.com/, http://www.inc.com/, https://www.entrepreneur.com/us, etc. 
16. Customer satisfaction research: See for Net Promoter Scores of your competition and your's based on customer satisfaction surveys. The scores help to benchmark and position your brand. 
17. Explore Crowdsourcing platforms such as Kickstarter and IndieGoGo: Get insights into their data from tools such as SEMrush, Ahrefs, etc. As new products get developed and promoted here, it is easy to gauge the response of public to them. 
18. Quora: One of the best question and answer platform. From here we can collect more market information than is possible straight from surveys. 
19. Blog comments: The comments in popular blogs are a great way to know what the pulse of the public is. Researching comments on blogs specific to our concerned theme, it is a great source of information and inspiration. 
20. UserTesting.com & Five Second Test: These are 2 websites which help in doing split test on your website. Based on the data from these split tests market research insights can also be drawn and right decisions can be taken. 
21. Government statistic websites: such as https://www.usa.gov/statistics provide loads of valuable information which can help with our market research. 
22. Census data: from sites such as https://www.census.gov provide demographic data and hence, also provide insights or market data.
23. Brandwatch Audiences: Audiences built based on social media platforms and helps in understanding what is trending in social media.
24. Experian Audiences: This would be people present on Facebook who would be satisfying particular credit norms. For example, people who have a car loan taken on their name. These audiences can be used to understand what their financial position would be and their likes, profession, etc. 

These are by far some of my most trusted sources to do market research on the Internet. 

Arguably there can be many other good ones. Please feel free to comment on them and I'll amend the post accordingly. 

Sincere thanks for reading the post till here.