More than any time in modern years, 2021 has turned out to be a year that marketers must look deeply into research tools; this is largely due to the impact of COVID-19 on the marketing landscape. It became abundantly clear that marketers must make a great transformation in the way businesses were conducted, forced upon markets by social distancing, remote interactions & lockdowns. Those factors demanded rapid change, and organizations needed to adapt to survive and strive.  

Before the age of COVID-19, it was relatively easier for brands to predict consumers’ behavior, but the pandemic ensured that the relationship between consumers and brands changed significantly. However bad the situation may seem, one thing that you can’t shy away from is that it has created an opportunity for brands to come up with and revitalize their positions on market research.

There was little or no room for perfecting planned out research by most organizations, only very few companies were able to do the immediate shift to remote working. Human labor and office space did not suffice; organizations that resorted to technology were able to strive; it became completely necessary to deploy automation, AI, and machine learning to build a brand.

Going forward into 2021, it has become expedient that the following new market research services tools must be the focal point of any brand that wants to have a competitive advantage.

Read: 4 Behavioral Drivers of Agile Transformation

Global Consumer Survey 2021

The Global Consumer Survey is a service tool that marketers, planners, and product managers use to understand consumer behavior and the audience’s interaction with their brands. It allows you to explore consumption and media usage on a global basis, as well as access information about more than 50 industries and topics both online and offline.

To compete favorably in the new marketing landscape, you need to have a wealth of consumer insights from the markets that are most important to you. Consumer insights you gather using Global Consumer Survey will not only provide you with what your consumers feel about your products, but you will also gain actionable insights into what the competition is doing.

The Statista Global Consumer Survey can also enable your brand to understand when your consumers are happy, sad, or indifferent to your brand. They do this by posting positive, negative, or neutral reviews; you, however, need sentiment analysis to have a good grasp of what their reviews actually say, since most of these reviews are unstructured.  

This market research tool can give you the much-needed competitive edge since you can have insight into brands that are commanding the market and have a good grasp of changes and new trends. 

The new marketing landscape requires dedicated attention to target groups, and Global Consumer Survey comes with a simple way for you to create, apply, and compare target groups. With this, you can easily go about focusing on the audience that is most relevant to your brand.  

Read: 7 Organizational Change Management Frameworks That Stick

Google Keyword Planner

Keywords and search engines are not new to marketing; however, more attention will be shifted to keywords with the pandemic. One serious fallout from the pandemic is that businesses may have to focus more on online.

Search engines crawl content for relevant keywords, and using the right keyword means that your customers can easily locate your brand since you will often appear on the top results of Google searches from users interested in your offer; this is where you need Google Ads Keyword Planner. 

The tool enables you to search for words or phrases related to your brand’s products or services. You need to know the most relevant keywords for your business, and Google Ads Keyword Planner enables you to do that.  

In the 2021 marketing landscape and years to come, you must know how frequently some words are searched and this knowledge will ensure that your brand ranks high in the search engine results.

What words are popular? What words have become obsolete? These are necessary insights, and the Keyword Planner will ensure that you are on the right path.

What keywords should you use in your marcom texts? The tool can help you to pinpoint these keywords. With the bid estimates of each keyword, it becomes easy for you to determine the budget for ads, and the local SEO efforts will aim to deliver organic traffic from the chosen search terms.

Customer Satisfaction Survey

Customers in the new marketing landscape will be all out for real-time insights; you, therefore, need to conduct market research quickly. You can use customer satisfaction survey tools like Remesh to help you connect at multiple touchpoints to discover your customers’ sentiments.

How do you go about your market research? What are your capabilities to keep track of your brand, test your ideas, or understand your target audience? How do you ensure you can deliver a seamless customer experience?

The customer satisfaction survey enables you to interact with customers where they are, discover insights, know what and how your customers feel about your brand, share learnings across your organization, and ultimately drive meaningful and swift actions.

Read: Agile Alternatives to Customer Satisfaction Surveys

Grow My Store

The retail businesses are not left out in the transformation that is going on. Retail marketers need to do all that is necessary for strengthening their business. With Grow My Store, the tool from Think With Google requires only the following 3 things to evaluate your site: URL, type of business, and industry.

Grow My Store will use the information to analyze your retail site, give you an overall score, and offer you detailed insights and recommendations to help you strengthen your business. Your site analysis will reveal how your site stacks up against retailers in your sector.

You will also identify areas of improvement so you can upgrade effectively as well as have access to personalized market and consumer trends to reach new customers. Grow My Store enables your retail business to grow with advice from a very resourceful database and curated Google tools.

Focus Groups

Focus group discussion (FGD) has been the means brands use to gather people from similar backgrounds or experiences to discuss a specific topic of interest. But the pandemic has ensured that the process of conducting FGD must change.

Moving forward dictates a shift to video conferencing for focus group discussions. Team collaboration tools will have to be used in place of face-to-face group discussions.

Brands need to rely more on voice and video conferencing tools such as Zoom and Skype to ensure participants effectively contribute to the topics for discussion. These tools are now being used to ensure that participants have lively, productive, and natural discussions amongst themselves.

Read: Online Focus Groups vs Traditional Focus Groups

Conclusion

Whichever way we look at it, the need for market research tools can not be wished away. The pandemic even made it more imperative and all brands need to do is to seek out technology-based approaches to ensure the end justifies the means. 

Brands need to have consumer insights to ensure a better customer experience, and market research services tools are the only way to enhance this.