What market research tools do you recommend for efficiency?

Market and competitive analysis can sometimes feel overwhelming. With so many sources to keep track of, and new competitors popping up all the time, it can be a full time job!

To avoid feeling overwhlemed, it's important to prioritize the competitors and channels that are the msot relevant to your messaging and GTM strategy. What competitors are your sales team coming up against the most? What industry publications does your leadership team (especially product) look to for insights and inspiration? Use those as a starting point, and expand your scope from there.

But the real power of consistent competitive intel comes from the ability to recruit everyone to contribute, and creating a repo of shared knowledge. Too often, PMM feels the pressure to collect and share all of the market and competitive intel. But sales people hear information about competitors all the time. Product Managers do their own research when building justification to build new products. Find ways to centralize that information, such as in shared Slack channel or documentation, so that everyone can benefit.

I think market research (and all research, really) needs to be right-sized to the problem that you’re trying to solve. If you’re doing market research to name a tiny feature, that’s very different from analyzing the market to change your pricing model—so your investment into the research should look different, too!

For scrappy research: there’s no greater friend than Google. Seriously! I like aggregators—tools that bring together a lot of insights for you at once—because they help you cut out a ton of research time. Things like Google, G2, Gong, SEMrush, and “state of” reports. But keep in mind this is all research someone did for their business and their audience. No guarantees everything holds true for your business.

For mission critical research: I like to combine 3rd (someone else did it) and 1st party (we did it) research. Given the importance, I’d want to talk to analysts, investors, and experts in the space. I’d like to get demos of companies/competitors that know more than we do. I’d also want to do some of my own research—either independent (like ad testing, buying audiences to send surveys, etc) or with a partner who knows a lot about that space (e.g. partner with a consulting firm in fintech if I am trying to learn more about fintech).

A market analysis is complex: there are many (many) different things that make up a market, and it can easily become a sociological discussion - especially as you see similar trends across multiple markets, driven by divergent factors.

Ultimately, you are seeking to understand a) headwinds b) tailwinds c) market accelerants and d) what your competitors may be doing to influence this. 

At a very basic level, the tools that will help you evaluate that are:

• Offsite trends: search tools like SimilarWeb, Google Trends, AppAnnie, 
• Competitive: similar to the above, augmented by media spending, earnings reports, and press releases
• Onsite trends: this would be your own internal performance metrics
• User research: interviews survey tools, and site intercept tools
• 3rd party reports: recongnized, reputable (well sourced) outlets. If possible, try to leverage any existing licenses your company has access to mitigate costs

The key to a market analysis is to try and piece together different data points and view it as a whole to start to see the story. Like a puzzle. 

Your best bet is always "talk to customers." You'll learn more in 10 conversations with prospects and customers than you will with $10K or $20K in market analysis. 

To keep it fresh, participate in weekly customer calls and prospecting. You'll hear where the threats are coming from immediately, and you'll know when the conversation changes. 

There's so many tools out in the market today, so here are a few recommendations of categories:

• Surveys - SurveyMonkey, TypeForm, Qualtrics
• Dashboards - Looker, Sisense, Etc
• Market Data - Statista, MarketingCharts
• Analysts/Review Sites - Gartner, Forrester, IDC, G2, Trust Radius

There's plenty of others -- but these are a great foundation to build market research. Beyond these, there are programs you can gain a ton of additional data like closed won/loss interviews, competitive intelligence, product usage data, and more. The real value, in my opinion, comes from the mix of these sources and data. 

Unfortunately, I'm probably not the best one to query about various tools for this - I'm the guy who still takes all his notes with a pen, has a total of four apps downloaded to his phone and refuses to own a watch with a battery, let alone a touch screen. My market research is similarly very old-school and my interviews are recorded in notebooks and analyzed by laying notes out on my desk... 

I'll admit, for someone whose job it is to market SaaS, I'm a little like the tailor whose pants never fit right. I'm also living proof of my philosophy that behavior change is pretty much the hardest thing to sell/adapt to...