Market analysis templates

Turn market research into insights

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Last updated

22 July 2023

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To outlast competitors, your business needs to stay ahead of the curve. To do this, you need to have your finger on the pulse of the market.

Conducting a market analysis can provide you with detailed information about all areas of your industry and help guide decisions for the greatest growth potential.

Benefits of conducting a market analysis

A market analysis is one of the things a business can do that benefits nearly every facet of the business. From your marketing team to your product development manager, all the way up to the CEO, the insights provided by a market analysis will help to drive important decisions and push the business forward. 

Some of the ways in which it can do that are:

Identifying customer needs and preferences

Your reputation is made or broken by how well you meet the needs and preferences of your target customers. Market analysis gives you deep insights into those needs and preferences, allowing you to tailor your products, services, and marketing strategies to better meet them. You'll build better customer satisfaction and increase brand loyalty in the process.

Identifying competitors and market share

You don't just have to meet your customers' needs; you have to do a better job of it than your competitors. This will not be possible if you don't understand the strengths and weaknesses of those competitors. A market analysis can provide that information, giving you the data you need to set yourself apart from them.

Identifying market opportunities and threats

Markets aren't static. Your business can't be static, either. Through ongoing market analysis, you'll identify opportunities and threats as they occur, allowing you to pivot gracefully to best handle those situations. You'll be able to better predict opportunities for growth and better prepare for potential threats such as new competitors or changing market conditions.

Enhancing product development and innovation

With more information about customer needs and preferences and deeper insight into emerging market trends, you'll be positioned nicely for a more efficient product development process. You'll be able to make product decisions quickly based on the knowledge you've gained and develop products the market will love.

Supporting business planning and strategy

Data plays an important role in planning and decision-making from the very first days of a startup to a large corporation planning its next few years. A market analysis helps you identify target markets, build your value proposition, and set realistic goals and objectives. They can help guide the feasibility of new business ventures or business expansions.

Component of a market analysis

A market analysis consists primarily of three components. Although they overlap, each focuses the bulk of its intent on one specific area of analysis. 

Industry examination

This part of the analysis is focused on the specific industry you operate in or are hoping to expand into. It examines the trends, characteristics, and dynamics of the industry. 

To do so, it looks at the key players in the industry and its market size and growth rate. It also examines factors impacting entry into the market, such as technological barriers, regulatory requirements, supply chain logistics, and more.

The industry analysis can be broken down into the following steps:

Industry size and growth — Determine the market size and growth rate. For a complete picture, consider historical data and future projections.

Industry structure — Identify the key players, market segments, and distribution channels within the industry. When prudent, focus on the region you'll be working within.

Market trends — Analyze the current and emerging trends, innovations, and technologies influencing the industry. Look for opportunities to capitalize on those trends.

Competitive forces — Assess the competitive landscape. Look at the bargaining power of buyers and suppliers and competitive rivalry within the industry.

Regulatory and legal factors — Examine any policies, regulations, or laws that must be accounted for when entering the industry. When needed, consult with a lawyer familiar with the industry.

Market examination

The market examination focuses on understanding a specific target market within the industry.

When conducting a market analysis, you'll gather data about customers within the industry—their demographics, buying behavior, needs and preferences, and demand for products or services. This part of your analysis helps you identify your target audience and help you begin to form your value propositions.

Conducting the market examination portion of the market analysis consists of the following steps:

Target market segmentation — Segment customer segments based on characteristics such as demographics, psychographics, behavior, location, and other factors. This helps you decide which market segments are a good fit for you.

Customer analysis — For each segment, research the needs, preferences, motivations, and purchasing behavior of those customers. For this, you can limit yourself to only those market segments you're interested in appealing to.

Market size and growth — Gather detailed data on the market size. Examine the historical size of the market to identify any trends that might impact your perception of the market. Look at future predictions to see where the market will be in years after you've entered it.

Market trends — Examine customer behavior to determine what their needs and preferences are now, how they've changed in the future, and where they might be heading. Look also for customers' behavior in the market and the strength of their demand for products and services.

Market gaps and opportunities — Armed with your data on customers and market trends, look for any gaps in the market that currently aren't being met by the existing players in the space. Explore each gap further to examine its market viability.

Competitor examination

The final area of the market analysis is the competitor examination.

During this part of the analysis, the focus is squarely on the competitors operating in the industry. A close look will be taken at their strengths and weaknesses and the strategies they use within the market. This helps you further refine your value proposition and set yourself apart from other market players.

For the competitor examination, follow these steps:

Competitive analysis — Identify key competitors in the industry and research them thoroughly. Analyze their market share, product offerings, pricing strategies, and marketing tactics. Look at their distribution and supply channels to better understand how they function in the industry.

SWOT analysis — A SWOT analysis assesses the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats posed by competitors. It tells you what you need to be wary of when dealing with your competitors and potential avenues for gaining a competitive advantage.

Differentiation — With the help of your SWOT analysis and the other data you've gathered, look for areas where gaps in the market mesh with weaknesses in the competitive landscape. These are areas you can focus on to differentiate yourself from your competition.

Competitive advantage — Understand the value proposition of your competitors, both as they state it and as customers perceive it. These factors will identify their competitive advantages. Develop a plan to work around these advantages or turn them in your favor.

8 market analysis templates

As you can see, there are many steps within the three areas of market analysis. Getting a template to guide you through the ones you're working on can save a lot of time.

Below, we've gathered eight quality templates for some of the most important aspects of market analysis. All of the companies linked provide a host of other templates to fit other aspects of the analysis as well.

1. Market research kit

2. market analysis.

This market analysis template streamlines business market research by utilizing secondary sources and analyzing market reports and industry data. It saves time, emphasizes key insights, and informs strategic decision-making.

3. SWOT analysis

This SWOT analysis template helps assess strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in a concise and organized manner. It will help facilitate strategic planning and decision-making.

4. Risk assessment 

This risk assessment template , integrated with market analysis, enables businesses to identify and evaluate potential risks associated with market dynamics and other potential barriers.

5. Competitive analysis 

This template helps to systematically evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of competitors. It provides a structured approach to research, and it analyzes its products, services, target market, marketing strategies, and financial performance.

6. Marketing SWOT analysis

This marketing SWOT analysis template allows for evaluating a company's marketing strategies. It helps identify strengths and weaknesses internally while analyzing opportunities and threats in the market. 

7. Market segmentation

This template aids in analyzing geographic, demographic, psychographic, and behavioral segments to better understand the target audience's preferences and needs. It enables effective targeting and messaging.

8. Market potential analysis

This market potential analysis template offers a comprehensive and customizable solution for analyzing market size, trends, segmentation, SWOT analysis, and new product launch strategy.

market research spreadsheet template

Here are 8 templates to analyze market reports, industry data, and other relevant documents.

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Market research templates: what they are and how to use them.

18 min read Interested in market research but need some templates to start with? In this guide, we unpack market research, survey planning best practice and share some of our best templates for brand, customer, product and employee research.

What is a market research template?

While you’re no doubt familiar with the concept of market research and how it can help you to reach your target audiences and improve your product or service , the real challenge is designing a market research plan that is conducive to excellent results.

All of this starts with the right market research template(s) to help you analyze specific target audiences, collect the right data and uncover insights that can drive actionable change.

In this article, we’re going to:

  • talk about market research and its use cases,
  • provide you with a standard template that allows you to plan your research,
  • and share several other templates to help you with specific types of market research

You can also check out our free template library.

But first, let’s revisit market research.

What is market research?

Market research is the process of determining the viability of a new service or product through surveys and questionnaires with prospects and/or customers. It involves gathering information about market needs and prospect/customer preferences .

Through market research, you can discover and/or refine your target market, get opinions and feedback on what you provide to them and uncover further prospect/customer pain points and expectations of your service or product .

Market research can be conducted in-house, either by you and your research team, or through a third-party company that specializes in it (they will typically have their own research panels or be capable of creating a research panel to suit your requirements).

The four common types of market research

There are lots of different ways to conduct market research to collect customer data and feedback , test product concepts , and do brand research, but the four most common are:

The most commonly used form of market research, surveys are a form of qualitative research that asks respondents a series of open or closed-ended questions , delivered either as an on-screen questionnaire or email.

Surveys are incredibly popular because they’re cheap, easy to produce, and can capture data very quickly, leading to faster insights.

2) Focus groups

Why not bring together a carefully selected group of people in your target market using focus groups? Though more expensive and complex than surveys and interviews, focus groups can offer deeper insight into prospect and customer behavior – from how users experience your products and services to what marketing messages really resonate with them.

Of course, as a market research method that’s reliant on a moderator to steer conversation, it can be subject to bias (as different moderators might have preferred questions or be more forceful) and if you cut corners (not asking all the necessary questions or making assumptions based on responses), the data could get skewed.

3) Observation

As if you were a fly-on-the-wall, the observation market research method can be incredibly powerful. Rather than interviewing or surveying users, you simply take notes while someone from your target market/target audience engages with your product . How are they using it? What are they struggling with? Do they look as though they have concerns?

Observing your target audience/target market in this fashion is a great alternative to the other more traditional methods on this list. It’s less expensive and far more natural as it isn’t guided by a moderator or a predefined set of questions. The only issue is that you can’t get feedback directly from the mouth of the user, so it’s worth combining this type of research with interviews, surveys, and/or focus groups.

4) Interviews

Interviews allow for face-to-face discussions (both in-person and virtually), allowing for more natural conversations with participants.

For gleaning deeper insights (especially with non-verbal cues giving greater weight to opinions), there’s nothing better than face-to-face interviews. Any kind of interview will provide excellent information, helping you to better understand your prospects and target audience/target market.

Use cases for market research

When you want to understand your prospects and/or customers, but have no existing data to set a benchmark – or want to improve your products and services quickly – market research is often the go-to.

Market research (as mentioned above), helps you to discover how prospects and customers feel about your products and services, as well as what they would like to see .

But there are more use cases and benefits to market research than the above.

Reduce risk of product and business failure

With any new venture, there’s no guarantee that the new idea will be successful. As such, it’s up to you to establish the market’s appetite for your product or service. The easiest way to do this is through market research – you can understand the challenges prospects face and quickly identify where you can help. With the data from your market survey, you can then create a solution that addresses the needs and expectations of would-be customers.

Forecast future trends

Market research doesn’t just help you to understand the current market – it also helps you to forecast future needs. As you conduct your research and analyze the findings, you can identify trends – for example, how brands and businesses are adopting new technology to improve customer experiences or how sustainability is becoming a core focus for packaging. Whatever it is you’re looking to understand about the future of business in your market, comprehensive market research can help you to identify it.

Stay ahead of the competition

Understanding your market and what prospects and customers want from you will help to keep you ahead of the competition . The fact is that the top businesses frequently invest in market research to get an edge, and those that don’t tap into the insights of their audience are missing low-hanging fruit.

As well as helping you to stay in front, you can also use market research to identify gaps in the market, e.g. your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses . Just have participants answer questions about competitor products/services – or even use the products/services – and work out how you can refine your offerings to address these issues.

Plan more strategically

What’s the foundation of your business strategy? If it’s based on evidence, e.g. what people expect of your products and services, it’ll be much easier to deliver something that works. Rather than making assumptions about what you should do, market research gives you a clear, concrete understanding of what people want to see.

Check out our guide to market research for a more comprehensive breakdown.

How do you write a market research plan/template?

A market research plan is very similar to a brief in that it documents the most vital information and steps about your project. Consider it a blueprint that outlines your main objective (summary), key questions and outcomes, target audience and size, your timeline, budget, and other key variables.

Let’s talk about them in more detail.

Elements of a great market research plan

1) overview or summary.

Use the first section of your market research plan to outline the background to the problem that you are attempting to solve (this is usually your problem statement or problem question). Include background information on the study’s purpose and the business to provide context to those who would read the report, as well as the need for the research. Keep the overview simple and concise; focus on the most salient elements.

2) Objectives

What is it that you hope to achieve with this survey? Your objectives are the most important part of the survey. Make sure to list 3-5 of the decisions or initiatives that the research will influence.

For example:

Understand the most-used channels for customer engagement and purchasing to decide where to prioritize marketing and sales budget in Q1 2022. Determine what’s causing customer churn at the later stages of the buyer journey and implement a new retention and sales strategy to address it.

Your objectives should be smart, that is: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely.

3) Deliverables (or outcomes)

This section should focus on what you expect to have at the end of the project. How many responses are you looking for? How will the data be presented? Who will the data be shared with? (Stakeholders, executives) What are your next steps? Make sure you state how you will collect and analyze the data once it’s available.

Products such as Qualtrics CoreXM make this process fast and incredibly easy to do, drastically reducing the time to insights so you can make more meaningful changes, faster.

4) Target audience

Not to be confused with your market research sample, your target audience represents who you want to research. Of course, your sample may include ideal buyers from your target audience. Here you want to define the main variables or factors of your audience: demographic , age, location , product interaction, experience, and so on. It’s worth building out your buyer personas (if you haven’t already) and including a quick breakdown of them here.

5) Sample plan

How many participants do you want to research and what kind of groups do you want to reach? Depending on these two variables, you may have to use qualitative, quantitative , or multi-method approaches.

6) Research methods

What methods will you use in your market research project? The insights (and the granularity of those insights) will depend on the methods and tools you choose. For example, and as mentioned earlier, surveys are often the go-to for many organizations as they’re affordable and straightforward, but if you want to get more personal views from your respondents, one-to-one interviews might be more applicable. You might even want to take a hands-off approach and simply observe participants as they use your products, or try a combination of research methods. Make sure to outline what methods you will use as part of your research plan.

7) Timeline

How long will your research project run? It’s worth putting together a Gantt chart to highlight key milestones in the project, along with dependencies, and to break down tasks as much as possible. Schedule in contingency time in case some tasks or research runs over – or you need more responses.

Set a budget for the overall program and list it in your plan. Though this might be the most difficult aspect of any research plan, it helps you to be more strategic about tasks and hold people accountable at each stage of the process. If costs go over, that’s good to know for future market research. If costs are lower than anticipated, you then have the opportunity to do further research or prop up other areas of the study.

9) Ethical concerns or conflicts of interest

One of the most important parts of your market research plan, you should highlight any ethical concerns. To begin with, it’s your duty to state whether or not responses will be kept confidential and anonymous as part of the study. It’s also important to allow participants to remain anonymous and ensure you protect their privacy at all times.

Another issue to consider is stereotyping. Any analysis of real populations needs to make approximations and place individuals into groups, but if conducted irresponsibly, stereotyping can lead to undesirable results.

Lastly, conflicts of interest – it may be that researchers have interests in the outcome of the project that lead to a personal advantage that might compromise the integrity of your market research project. You should clearly state in your market research report that any potential conflicts of interest are highlighted and addressed before continuing.

But I want a faster solution!

Well, there’s a quicker and far easier way to do all of the above and get the data you need – just use a market research survey template. In our next section, we’re going to share a whole list of templates that you can use.

Free market research survey templates

No matter what kind of research you want to conduct, we have templates that will remove the complexity of the task and empower you to get more from your data. Below we’ve compiled a list of templates for four key experience areas: Brand , Customer , Employee , and Product .

All of our research templates are free. All you need to do is sign up for a free Qualtrics account to access them.

Brand experience market research templates:

  • Logo testing : Collect feedback to help you evaluate and iterate on your logo designs and concepts
  • Brand awareness : Track the level of brand awareness in your target market, including current and potential future customers
  • Ad testing : Evaluate your consumers’ reaction to an advertisement so you know which campaigns to deploy before you invest
  • A/B testing : Quickly and easily compare to versions or options in a study, whether it’s a design, headline, color palette or a mock-up of your latest ad campaign

Customer experience market research templates

  • Student satisfaction : Gather feedback on how your institution is delivering on the student experience
  • Net promoter score (NPS) : Measure customer loyalty and understand how they feel about your product or service using one of the world’s best-recognized metrics
  • Customer satisfaction : Evaluate how satisfied your customers are with your company, including the products and services you provide, and how they are treated when they buy from you
  • Customer service : Gain insights into the contact center experience, so you can achieve and maintain optimum levels of customer experience (CX) performance
  • Event feedback : Measure the effectiveness of your events and how well they meet attendee expectations so that you can continuously improve your offering
  • IT help desk : Understand how satisfied your employees and customers are with your IT help desk experience
  • Website suggestion box : Collect visitor feedback on how your website can be improved
  • Website satisfaction : Find out how satisfied visitors are with your website’s design, usability, and performance
  • Store purchase feedback : Capture customer experience data at the point of purchase to help you improve the in-store experience
  • Online purchase feedback : Find out how well your online shopping experience performs against customer needs and expectations

Employee experience market research templates

  • Employee satisfaction : Get an overview of your current employee experience
  • Manager feedback : Improve your skills as a leader with valuable feedback from your team
  • Employee engagement : Find out how employees find the current experience at your workplace with this entry-level engagement survey
  • Employee exit interview : Understand why your employees are leaving and how they’ll speak about your company once they’re gone with this survey template
  • Employee onboarding : Improve your onboarding program by understanding what’s working and what’s not
  • Team event planning : Collect inputs from employees to plan a team event that works for everyone
  • Meeting feedback : Check-in with team members after a meeting to see how well your company is running and what improvements can be made
  • Interview feedback : Improve your candidate experience by gathering actionable insights about the interview process
  • Employee suggestion box : Gather anonymous data to help address concerns and improve the employee experience in your organization
  • Candidate experience : Improve your candidate experience to increase brand perception, offer acceptance rates, and hiring process efficiency with this single-touchpoint survey template
  • Employee suggestion action : Take employee feedback a step further by working with your staff to quantify solutions based on their experience data

Product experience market research templates

  • Product research : Evaluate your consumers’ reaction to a new product or product feature across every stage of the product development journey
  • Pricing : Understand how to set the exact price point for your product or service, according to your target consumers
  • Feature prioritization : Compare and contrast product features using conjoint analysis to find the optimal mix for your customers
  • Product package testing : Collect feedback on your product packaging to see how well it meets the needs and expectations of your customers

Armed with the right market research templates, getting the information you need across brand, product, customer and employee disciplines — as well as beyond — is significantly easier.

But if you want help putting together complex market research and scaling your in-house research team to get agile insights, check out our guide to building an agile research function.

Insights are more important than ever, especially during times of change, but building a great team takes a lot of time and money.

In our eBook, we’ll explain how you can:

  • Scale your research team
  • Build a smart partner strategy
  • Ensure you have the right technology for market research and data analysis

Tackle your market research with our agile market research eBook

Related resources

Market intelligence 10 min read, marketing insights 11 min read, ethnographic research 11 min read, qualitative vs quantitative research 13 min read, qualitative research questions 11 min read, qualitative research design 12 min read, primary vs secondary research 14 min read, request demo.

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8 Templates to Plan & Organize Your Market Research

Market research (or marketing research) helps you deeply understand your customers and target market. It's a group of activities that will uncover insights you can use to create better products and improve your marketing. These templates will help you organize every part of your market research project in one collaborative place.

Market Research Brief Template

The goal of any marketing research brief is to define the objectives in a way that a researcher can confidently build an appropriate study. This clarity will then lead to the 'right' research method used and consequent insights uncovered.

Market Research Brief Template, within the Milanote app

Brand Positioning Map Template

The Brand Positioning Map template (or Competitive Landscape) is perfect for identifying your opportunity in the market. It's a simple way to ensure your brand will stand out against your competitors.

Brand Positioning Map Template, within the Milanote app

Customer Persona Template

It's crucial to have a crystal clear picture of your ideal customer. Building a customer persona helps your team understand the people they're designing for. Use this template to map out your customer's goals, background and pain-points so you can design a brand or product that naturally appeals to them.

Customer Persona Template, within the Milanote app

Market Research Template

How well do you understand the market you're designing for? The Market Research template is the perfect way build a complete picture of your industry and audience. Use it to collect insights about the competitors, links, customer research, trends, stats and more in one visual place.

Market Research Template, within the Milanote app

SWOT Analysis Template

The SWOT framework helps you uncover your internal Strengths and Weaknesses plus external Opportunities and Threats. You can use it to assess your entire company, brand, marketing or an individual product. It is traditionally used by management teams but is also a great tool for brand strategy and marketing projects.

Brand SWOT Analysis Template, within the Milanote app

Moodboard Template

Before you begin designing your new brand or campaign, it's important that everyone involved agrees on the visual style. A moodboard lets you explore different directions in minutes. This template contains placeholders for images, video, color swatches and notes.

Logo Moodboard Template, within the Milanote app

Diary Study Template

Understand a user's experiences, behaviour, and activities over time using the Diary Study research method.

Diary Study Template, within the Milanote app

Day in the Life of Template

The Day in the Life research technique lets you create a visually engaging timeline of a customer's day. The template allows you to create notes for research, lists of questions, and add images and videos to bring someone's habits and behaviours to life.

Day In the Life Of Template, within the Milanote app

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6 Free Market Research Templates to Help Win Your Market

6 Free Market Research Templates to Help Win Your Market

Market research templates save time and give clarity about what should and shouldn’t be included in any type of market research .

These days, doing regular market research is key. Particularly given how quickly consumer behaviors shift and companies change tactics to keep up with the ever-growing number of competitors in their industry.

In this post, I’m sharing six market research report templates to give you a head start and help steer your analysis in the right direction from the onset.

What is a market research template?

Market research templates provide questions and specific fields to fill out – relevant to specified market research objectives. You can add or remove fields according to what’s relevant to your market and research goal. It provides a framework to develop your own research methodology if you don’t want to go full-scale with a research firm.

What are the advantages of using market research templates?

There are many ways market research templates benefit organizations of any size.

  • It costs less than hiring an external market research firm.
  • Completion is often quicker because pre-set fields guide your research.
  • Little to no professional training is required to complete a template.
  • Templates can be easily shared with other business units.
  • Files can be easily updated internally in the future.
  • Research Intelligence tools like Similarweb make it much easier to access market research data than ever before.
  • Using a template enables you to stay focused and organized.

Doing market research with a template can help you generate results faster than any agency can deliver. You set your priorities and start collecting information without untimely back-and-forth correspondence. This is particularly valuable for online companies in markets that develop and change quickly. You need real-time data to improve your results, so time is always of the essence.

Jim Rohn Quote

In addition to time, you also save costs. Comprehensive market research usually demands additional financial resources. By using shareable templates, you can involve relevant internal business units at minimal extra cost.

This presents another advantage: You own your information. You can come back to the files, reuse, update, and compare whenever it’s relevant. This is particularly useful in the dynamic world of online business because you’ll want to research the market repeatedly to detect and adapt to changes.

What are market research templates used for?

Most types of market research templates provide a robust framework that steers market research efforts in the right direction. When we consider the “journeys” a market research report template can help with – most use cases aren’t merely one-time research projects but should include periodic monitoring and analysis.

  • Assess your brand’s strength and influential power. Evaluate your market share , and measure which percentage of the market you reach and sell to.
  • Launch a new product or enter a new market . Get to know the territory and the key players to avoid unnecessary risks and recognize new opportunities.
  • Identify and keep tabs on your top competitors. Be aware of your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses to align your strategic planning.
  • Understand your target audience. If you truly want people to resonate with your product or service, you need to take the time to get to know them, their interests, pain points, likes, and dislikes.
  • Innovate your business model. Before applying changes to products or business strategies, understand user demand and need shifts.
  • Drive more sales. Optimize product placement by identifying your product’s uniqueness and the specific value to boost your marketing campaigns.
  • Fine-tune your digital advertising and analytics. Find and optimize the marketing channels and keywords with the highest potential and lowest competition .
  • Find and follow emerging trends. Detect changes in the market development early and use them to your advantage.

Five things to do before using a market research analysis template

As you’ll soon discover, there are lots of tools and resources at your disposal – and you won’t need all of them to reach your goal. Your choices should depend on the goal of your research, something you’ll need to clarify before you start to use any type of market research report template.

Take a little time to do the following pre-planning steps 1-3 before you use any template in your research.

  • Define the reason for your research and its goals.
  • Identify the most suitable research types and methods.
  • Prepare the materials you need to conduct the research, i.e., templates, tools, and market research questions ; then delegate responsibilities if applicable.
  • Identify your market’s characteristics.
  • Define your target audience and segments.
  • Consider both qualitative and quantitative data points.
  • Decide whether to use primary research, secondary research , or a mixture of both.
  • Google Analytics vs. Similarweb
  • Free online sources and tools
  • Advanced competitor analysis
  • Summarize your findings in a template and start to analyze.

Get a step-by-step roadmap for easy and comprehensive market research in our guide – Market Research: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How To Get It Right .

Types of market research templates

In this next section, I’m sharing the most important types of market research templates you need to fulfil your research goals. I’ll cover what each is and how a template can help with the research. In the final section of this post, I’ll share the quickest way to find the data you need to complete your template.

SWOT analysis template

Many of you will have heard of or used a SWOT analysis framework before. It’s a tried and trusted tool that helps organizations and individuals uncover the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of their business and the competition. A template gives you pre-set fields to consider and complete, helping you know the essential metrics. Once complete, it shows a range of factors relevant to your business and market that can help you adapt for growth.

Use this type of market research analysis template to review your business, along with each of your competitors – analysis of the top four rivals is enough, but you might want to extend this up to eight. This market analysis template provides key questions to answer in each section to help guide your responses.

Market sizing template

Using a market analysis template shows you exactly how to do market sizing correctly. What’s more, it can ensure others within your organization are clear about how the figures have been calculated and provide a consistent and transparent framework for repeating the process in the future.

Use this simple market research template to get the formulas for the total addressable market (TAM), serviceable addressable market (SAM), and serviceable obtainable market (SOM).

Competitive analysis framework template

Pick between 2-4 direct and indirect competitors , then compile the same data and information about each. Start with company research, then customer research, and add information about products and marketing strategies to build the ultimate competitive framework. Collecting the same data points gives you a straightforward comparison and clear picture of the competitive landscape .

This market analysis template covers both B2C and B2B markets. It gives you a detailed framework that helps you map company, customer, product, go-to-market, and marketing channels for your business, and that of your rivals.

Further reading: this post covers seven different types of Competitive Analysis Frameworks that can be used for this form of market research.

Use this market research template for a business plan or as a base document to do regular checks on the state of the competitive landscape.

Trend analysis template

Completing regular market trend analysis is vital – particularly given how fast consumer behavior and markets change. Sure, you can set up news alerts and keep an ear close to the ground, but this is not necessarily the most effective way to future-proof a business and stay ahead of the curve. Rather, it’s a slow and unreliable way to access the intel you need, not just to survive but to flourish.

Early detection of fluctuations, shifts, and changes is key; and a trend analysis template, when done periodically, can help you quickly identify and prepare your business to react.

This market trend analysis template is designed specifically for those operating in the B2B space. It clearly guides you through industry research, historical competitive data, desktop vs. mobile trends , and seasonal keyword research ; each of which can help you discover market-specific trends effectively.

Further reading: Trendspotting: Why All the Market Leaders Are Doing It

Buyer persona template

Define the customer who would benefit most from your product or service. Based on what you’ve learned about consumers and your target market , characterize your ideal customer. Who are they, what are their pain points, and how can you help them?

This template shows you exactly what kind of data to include when you build a new buyer person. We’ve completed an example for you as a guide; but also given you empty slides you can fill-in yourself for your own business and market.

Further reading: How to Create Buyer Personas That Boost Conversions

Audience analysis template

An Audience analysis looks at a group of people in much the same way you examine your current customers. It can help you discover how to turn more of your audience into paying customers by segmenting visitor and behavioral characteristics.

This market analysis template will guide you through the different types of data you should collect from both your own and your rival’s channels. It takes into account various characteristics of company, product, purchase, consumers, interests, and more to help you form a clear and comprehensive view of your target audience.

It’s split into three tabs, each covering B2B, transactional, and informative businesses separately.

Further reading: If this is your first time doing audience analysis, read this guide to understand what a target audience is and how to analyze it .

Get started with all the free market research templates you need to succeed!

How to use Similarweb to help with market research templates

Similarweb Digital Research Intelligence can help you complete almost any market research project quickly and effectively. One of the most-cited reasons people choose tools like Similarweb is due to the accuracy and timeliness of data. Unlike other forms of market research, like secondary research; Similarweb’s information is always the most up-to-date there is.

  • Benchmarking tool : Accelerate your new digital strategy and learn how you stack up against the competition and market leaders.
  • Market research tool : Analyze market trends in near-real time so that you can take action when it matters most, not a quarter later.
  • Company research : Take a closer look at any company’s digital performance and expose your competitor’s digital strategies.
  • Audience analysis tool : Engage more deeply with your audience, explore new audience segments and expand your reach.
  • Customer journey analytics : Understand your customers and explore bottom-of-the-funnel metrics to discover what makes them convert.
  • Mobile app intelligence : See the impact of mobile apps in your market: spot trends and emerging players.

Wrapping up…..

Good market research shouldn’t have to take an age; but as a task that requires careful planning, meticulous attention, and focus – even with the best tools, you’ve got to know the right questions to ask, and the best places to uncover the best intel.

Using market research templates will save significant time in the market research process while providing a clear and comprehensive set of guidelines that can be easily replicated or revisited in the future.

Market analysis templates allow for consistency and provide a clear framework that allows the inexperienced market researcher to do the task with ease.

Use these templates to jumpstart your research efforts and make strategic decisions more effectively, and in a more informed way.

Boost Your Market Research with Similarweb

Enjoy 360° visibility into your industry and instantly adapt to market changes

What is the importance of market research?

Market research is important because you can’t succeed if you’re not aware of market conditions, potential obstacles, purported budget, and how to market your products effectively.

How do you write a market research document?

The simplest way to write a market research document is to obtain a free market research template to guide your content. It can prompt you with the right questions to ask, and shape research efforts and outcomes effectively.

Which type of market research should I use?

To employ a highly effective market research strategy, you should combine the two methods. We advise you to use secondary research as a preparation for your primary research.

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market research spreadsheet template

Market research template: DIY guide, tips and examples

What is market research , why do you need to do market research , type of market research , market research methods , how to conduct market research, market research template .

We’ve covered specific areas of market research, for instance aimed at successful product development and for startups . But there are many more reasons to conduct market research, so today we’re taking a step back and looking at the complete picture.

What does solid market research project entail in 2021, when we’re using metrics and tools that are relevant nowadays?

In this article, you’ll find the basic concepts of market research linked to handy tools and a free market research template and survey templates that’ll help you put the knowledge into practice.

Photo Of People Using Laptop

Market research comes in many different shapes and sizes. You’ll look at all or some aspects of the market: market share, competitors, trends, target audience and more.

You’ll combine these based on the goal of your research, to inform your marketing strategies. You can also focus on one aspect of market research. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach, but market research templates give you an awesome starting point.

You can identify gaps and opportunities by analysing consumers’ needs and preferences and comparing that to what is currently on the market. Or you evaluate trends to come up with a new business idea.

To guide your market research, or the parts of it, it can be helpful to divide it into different topics to make the scope of your research clear.

Here are some topics that are often used in market research:

  • Analysing distribution : to find cheaper or faster alternatives, or enter new markets
  • Consumer behaviour : how has this been developing over the years? What can you expect going forward, and how do you prepare your business for this?
  • Competitor analysis : who is leading your market, and how are they perceived? How can you position your brand to win territory?
  • Market Segmentation and Targeting : are there any target groups that are being overlooked? How can you reach your ideal customers more effectively?
  • Internet Marketing : learn to work with the search engines — what keywords are important in your market? What social media channels and types of content are working well?

As you can see, market research doesn’t just involve marketing. It can be used for your logistics as well, your product development department and even your sales people will need it, if they want to be effective sellers. All in all, successful market research is your gateway to product, sales and marketing strategies that really work.

New to market research? Here’s our whistle-stop intro!

Even the biggest, most successful and established companies are still conducting market research. Coca-Cola doesn’t just assume their position, Apple stays on top of consumer behaviour and Mercedes needs to know how they can get millennials to drive the cars their parents used to own.

Market research can be done in different stages. Below we’ll look at two scenarios in which market research is relevant, and how you can use it.

Attest's consumer audience filters

Before starting a business or developing a product

In this case, market research is used to find out how likely you are to succeed and what needs you should address to put a successful product or service on the market. You gather data, using market research templates or your own research drafts, to minimise risks and potentially to convince investors that this idea of yours is worth pursuing.

Some things market research in this stage can help you with:

Minimising risks

Think your idea for a new product is great because you’ve never heard of it before? Going in blindly is a risk – even if you want to move fast. With market research, you can determine what competition really looks like and if there’s enough demand for you to benefit from.

Plus, it will help you calculate the real costs you are going to make upon entering the market to find out if the idea is really viable in the long run.

Attest gives us reliable and direct access to all of our audiences across 11 markets, reducing our risk by reliably delivering against all of our needs. Beatrice Ramelle-Rigollet, Research Manager, WorldRemit

Attracting investors

Try convincing investors of your idea without giving them some numbers. Even though market research doesn’t exactly predict the future, past trends and thorough research into consumers and competitors will give investors a clear picture of how likely you are to make some profits from your idea.

What is the sweet spot when it comes to pricing? By looking at your competitors and surveying your ideal customers, you can pinpoint the right price for your product or service.

Research into your competitors' pricing, coupled with analysis of how much consumers are willing to pay, will be super useful for your pricing strategy

Positioning

What areas of the market are crowded and what spots are still available – and are they interesting to look into? Market research can help you choose a strong positioning.

Product features

Don’t develop a product without ever talking to your target customers. They know what they really want, and market research surveys will help you find out how to create that.

Shaping your marketing mix

Your communication and messaging should come from your values, but it should also match the needs of the market.

Defining strategy

A comprehensive mixture of market research is an essential part of any effective marketing strategy

Combining everything above will help you create an unbeatable strategy for every aspect of your business.

Keep up to speed with your market

Attest’s intuitive platform helps showcase where and how you can win market share and unlock new sources of growth.

Ongoing market research

It might seem like an unnecessary extra workload, to have someone keep an eye on the market on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. But the alternative is more dangerous and, potentially, more costly.

If you don’t keep up to speed with the market, you will only notice changes when your sales are dropping. It’s important to be proactive, especially when you’re in a competitive market. Stay on top of what your rivals are doing, so you can make decisions and react accordingly faster.

Some things market research templates in this stage can help you with:

Keep an eye on how your own campaigns and ads are performing, but also check on your competitors. How does your target respond to their campaign? What can you learn from their successes and failures?

SEO and social listening

Search engines have become such an important part of ‘the market’ that they are a real part of market research. Keywords and search queries will teach you a lot about your market’s questions and needs.

Identify new opportunities

What’s the most dangerous phrase for any business? ‘We’ve always done it this way.’ With market research, you can proactively find gaps and opportunities in your market.

Keep the focus on current customers

Think you know your customers? Keep in mind that they are also growing older, and are being influenced by other things in your market and society. To stay relevant to them, check in regularly and perform ongoing buyer persona research and survey customer satisfaction.

We track shifting key metrics, like awareness and consideration very carefully and also how our brand is perceived… it helps us to identify areas of opportunity Charlotte Langley, Brand & Communications Director, Bloom & Wild

De-risk market expansion

Spot opportunities to maximise the effectiveness of your marketing strategies in new territories, by understanding the differences between consumers in each market.

Product improvement

In product reviews, and it doesn’t even have to be your own product, you can figure out pain points that customers have. With that information, you can build an unbeatable product.

Did your marketing research team or product designer pitch a crazy idea and you, kind of, like it? Dive into your target market to find background information that can help you find out if it’s worth further investigation.

Market research templates can be used in many ways — and there’s usually not one that is best. The trick is to combine the different types of market research, depending on the availability of data and what you already know about your industry.

We’ll break down some of the types of market research before we dive into the methods and a step-by-step plan. We’ll be comparing primary and secondary research and explain how quantitative and qualitative market research complement each other.

Quantitative market research

Quantitative market research is perfect for the data analysis part of your research. If focused on anything that can be measured, like market statistics, price developments and search volume.

Qualitative market research

You give your quantitative research more meaning and context with qualitative research, This supplements the dry data with motives and emotions, often from your customers.

Primary market research

Any data that you gather first-hand, whether directly from customers or by conducting completely new research, is considered primary data. This can come from surveys, focus groups or fresh research.

Secondary market research

Secondary research is done by data collection and analysing existing reports. You can look at historic data, surveys performed by other brands or trend reports from trusted sources.

Understanding how each of the different types of market research can help your brand is key to effective research

Luckily, there are all kinds of tools and different types of methods you can combine to gather all the data on your target market using your market analysis template . We’ll dive into the methods that are commonly used in market research and give some suggestions on tools that make this a little easier.

Interviews 

You can interview either industry experts or customers, or even both – depending on what your research focuses on. This is a type of primary research that gives you in-depth information on things like buying reasons and preferences.

Experts on the other hand can help you give more context to dry market statistics and give you more information on the meaning of some of the market trends you spotted.

Focus groups 

With focus groups, you sit down with your potential customers and listen to what they have to say. You can either observe or actively engage with them. How do they use certain products? How do they react to different marketing campaigns? This method can help you optimise what you’re offering, either in your product or in your communication.

Trend reports and public domain data

What trends in the world can affect your market? If you use the right sources, market trend reports will give you invaluable insight on things like demand, and factors that influence your target group.

Social listening

When doing market research and brand tracking in 2021, you can’t skip social media. This is where customers are actively talking about brands and products, their needs and wishes and also what bothers them. Twitter and the comments under Instagram posts are incredibly valuable for some brands.

But it can seem impossible to keep track of all of that. Luckily, there are some handy tools that will help you stay updated on relevant keywords and topics within your market. In this blog, we list some of our favourite social listening tools.

Market research without surveys is a lot like guesswork. If you want to know what your target audience is really thinking, hoping, wishing and seeing, all you have to do is ask.

You can use a survey template for all types of market research. Find out what your target audience thinks of other brands, what product features they would love to see, and how much they’d be willing to pay for a certain product.

market research spreadsheet template

Don’t let the market get ahead of you

Understand your target market with our ready-to-use survey templates, global audience of 125 million and results in days, not weeks.

Observation

Whether staged or unstaged, observation can be a great tool to see how your product would perform in the real world. How do they react to marketing visuals? How do they behave in a store? These details can help you fine tune your product and tactics to a t.

Experiment and testing

If you never try, you never know. Experiments can be incredibly useful, especially with product development. Create a minimal viable product (MVP) and see how your target audience likes it. A/B tests can be used for a wide variety of things, from social media campaigns to discounts – so use them! Read more about concept testing.

Competitive analysis

One of the most important parts of market research is undoubtedly an analysis of your competitors . You can’t really analyse your target market without looking at who else is in it. If you think you’re alone, look at how markets similar to yours are developing to become aware of market trends to look out for.

If only you could tell an AI-powered robot your objectives and sit back and relax while he surveys and analyses your market.

While we’re not there yet, we’re certainly equipped with a wide variety of tools that will make conducting market research a whole lot easier.

While it’s important to note that there are several approaches to market research templates, depending on your specific situation, we’ll give you a generic framework to work within. If you follow these steps and add the methods you need for your research goals to it, you surely won’t miss a thing.

  • Define the problem
  • Define how you’re going to approach the problem
  • Design your research
  • Identify information types, gaps and sources
  • Perform field work and collect data
  • Prepare data
  • Analyse insights
  • Create a report on your market research 
  • Communicate the results
  • Turn your insight into action points

Step 1. Define the problem

Before you start, find out what you really need to know and why. The latter is very important. Sometimes you think you want to know more about what your competitors are doing to be successful, while in fact your customers are the one who could close the knowledge gap by telling you what features they are missing in a product.

Step 2. Design your research

Think about what path you should follow to find the knowledge you need. What types and methods of research templates should you combine to find the right data and give context to it?

Step 3. Identify information types, gaps and sources

For what parts of your research will you need to talk to customers, and what can be found in reports for market trends? Make this part of your research design. Identifying this beforehand will save you a lot of time in the process.

Step 4. Fieldwork and collecting data

Get to work! This is the part where you’ll be launching surveys and analysing data from tools and trend reports.

Step 5. Prepare and organise data

It can get a bit messy, so take your time to structure the insights you’ve collected – especially if you used a mixture of tools and methods. Don’t draw any conclusions just yet – you want to have the full picture.

Step 6. Analyse data

If you combine what your customers said during the focus group sessions with the market trends you’ve spotted in reports, what can you say about the market? What keywords have become increasingly important? How have the actions of your competitors influenced and changed the market?

Make decisions based on high-quality consumer insights

With Attest you can run multiple surveys across different markets and see results in days, not weeks.

Step 7. Create a report

Include all the relevant data in a report and also determine what needs further research.

Step 8. Communicate the results

Present the results of your research to whomever it’s relevant to. Investors, marketers, designers – make sure the information is readily available so they can make well-informed decisions.

Step 9. Turn your insights into action points

Nobody conducts a full market research to just let it sit on your desk gathering dust. If you go into the whole process with the intention of changing or improving, base your next steps on this report.

We’ll make market research a little easier for you with our market research templates. Our market analysis template is free and can be used in basically any market research plan, and is a key ingredient in a comprehensive market research program.

With this free market analysis template, you can ask your target customers up to 5 hyper-relevant research questions. You can reach people in the US or UK, or upgrade your plan to talk to the customers in the other 50+ countries we work in. And don’t worry about creating reports – we’ll help you analyse it within our platform.

Here’s what that’ll look like for your target audience:

market research spreadsheet template

Get started with your DIY market research templates – our free template could be the key to unlocking your next successful product or service.

market research spreadsheet template

The Experts’ Guide to Brand Tracking

How to look at the impact of things like audience reach, panel diversity, and survey design to help you decide whether your current brand tracker is up to scratch.

market research spreadsheet template

Nikos Nikolaidis

Senior Customer Research Manager 

Nikos joined Attest in 2019, with a strong background in psychology and market research. As part of Customer Research Team, Nikos focuses on helping brands uncover insights to achieve their objectives and open new opportunities for growth.

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The Ultimate Guide to Market Research [+Free Templates]

A comprehensive guide on Market Research with tools, examples of brands winning with research, and templates for surveys, focus groups + presentation template.

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Rakefet is the CMO at Mayple. She manages all things marketing and leads our community of experts through live events, workshops, and expert interviews. MBA, 1 dog + 2 cats, and has an extensive collection of Chinese teas.

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Natalie Stenge

Natalie is a content writer and manager who is passionate about using her craft to empower others. She thrives on team dynamic, great coffee, and excellent content. One of these days, she might even get to her own content ideas.

Updated February 26, 2024.

The Ultimate Guide to Market Research [+Free Templates] main image

Before you do anything in business you have to have a good grasp of the market. What’s the market like? Who are your competitors? And what are the pain points and challenges of your ideal customer? And how can you solve them? Once you have the answers to those questions then you are ready to move forward with a marketing plan and/or hire a digital marketing agency to execute it.

In this guide we break down what market research is, the different types of market research, and provide you with some of the best templates, tools, and examples, to help you execute it on your own.

Excited to learn?

Let’s dive in.

What is market research?

Market research is the process of gathering information about your target market and customers to determine the success of your product or service, make changes to your existing product, or understand the perception of your brand in the market.

“Research is formalized curiosity, it is poking and prying with a purpose.” - Zora Neale Hurston

We hear the phrase "product-market fit" all the time and that just means that a product solves a customer's need in the market. And it's very hard to get there without proper market research. Now, I know what you're going to say. Why not get actionable insights from your existing customers? Why not do some customer research?

The problem with customer research is two-fold:

  • You have a very limited amount of data as your current customers don't represent the entire market.
  • Customer research can introduce a lot of bias into the process.

So the real way to solve these issues is by going broader and conducting some market research.

Why do market research?

There are many benefits of doing market research for your company. Here are a few of them:

  • Understand how much demand exists in the market, the market size
  • Discover who your competitors are and where they are falling short.
  • Better understand the needs of your target customers and the problems and pain points your product solves.
  • Learn what your potential customers feel about your brand.
  • Identify potential partners and new markets and opportunities.
  • Determine which product features you should develop next.
  • Find out what your ideal customer is thinking and feeling.
  • Use these findings to improve your brand strategy and marketing campaigns.

“The goal is to transform data into information, and information into insight.” - Carly Fiorina

Market research allows you to make better business decisions at every stage of your business and helps you launch better products and services for your customers.

Primary vs secondary research

There are two main types of market research - primary and secondary research.

primary-vs-secondary-research

Primary research

Primary market research is when researchers collect information directly, instead of relying on outside sources of information. It could be done through interviews, online surveys, or focus groups and the advantage here is that the company owns that information. The disadvantage of using primary sources of information is that it's usually more expensive and time-consuming than secondary market research.

Secondary research

Secondary market research involves using existing data that is summarized and collected by third parties. Secondary sources could be commercial sources or public sources like libraries, other websites, blogs , government agencies, and existing surveys. It's data that's more readily available and it's usually much cheaper than conducting primary research.

Qualitative vs quantitative research

Qualitative research is about gathering qualitative data like the market sentiment about the products currently available on the market (read: words and meanings). Quantitative research deals with numbers and statistics. It's data that is numbers-based, countable, and measurable.

Types of market research

1. competitive analysis.

Every business needs to know its own strengths and weaknesses and how they compare with its largest competitors in the market. It helps brands identify gaps in the market, develop new products and services, uncover market trends, improve brand positioning , and increase their market share. A SWOT analysis is a good framework to use for this type of research.

SWOT-analysis

2. Consumer insights

It's also equally important to know what consumers are thinking, what the most common problems are and what products they are purchasing. Consumer research can be done through social listening which involves tracking consumer conversations on social media. It could also include analyzing audiences of brands , online communities, and influencers, and analyzing trends in the market.

3. Brand awareness research

Brand awareness is a super important metric for understanding how well your target audience knows your brand. It's used to assess brand performance and the marketing effectiveness of a brand. It tells you about the associations consumers make when they think of your brand and what they believe you're all about.

brand-awareness-stats

4. Customer satisfaction research

 Customer satisfaction and loyalty are two really important levers for any business and you don't have to conduct in-depth interviews to get that information. There is a wide range of automated methods to get that kind of data including customer surveys such as NPS surveys, customer effort score (CES) surveys, and regularly asking your customers about their experience with your brand.

5. Customer segmentation research

 Customer segmentation research involves figuring out what buckets consumers fall into based on common characteristics such as - demographics, interests, purchasing behavior, and more. Market segmentation is super helpful for advertising campaigns, product launches, and customer journey mapping.

buyer-persona

6. Interviews

Customer interviews are one of the most effective market research methods out there. It's a great way for business owners to get first-party data from their customers and get insights into how they are doing in real time.

7. Focus groups

Focus groups are a great way to get data on a specific demographic. It's one of the most well-known data collection methods and it involves taking a sample size of people and asking them some open-ended questions. It's a great way to get actionable insights from your target market.

8. Pricing research

 Pricing strategy has a huge influence on business growth and it's critical for any business to know how they compare with the leading brands in their niche. It can help you understand what your target customer is willing to pay for your product and at what price you should be selling it.

To start, get automated software to track your competitors' pricing . Then, summarize your research into a report and group the results based on product attributes and other factors. You can use quadrants to make it easier to read visually.

9. Campaign research

It's also important for a brand to research its past marketing campaigns to determine the results and analyze their success. It takes a lot of experimentation to nail the various aspects of a campaign and it's crucial for business leaders to continuously analyze and iterate.

10. Product/service use research

Product or user research gives you an idea of why and how an audience uses a product and gives you data about specific features. Studies show that usability testing is ranked among the most useful ways to discover user insights (8.7 out of 10), above digital analytics and user surveys. So it's a very effective way to measure the usability of a product.

Now that you know the different types of market research let's go through a step-by-step process of setting up your study.

How to conduct a market research study

Looking for your next business idea? Want to check which niche markets are going to be best for it? if it's going to Here's a pretty simple process for conducting

1. Define your buyer persona

The first step in market research is to understand who your buyers are. For that, you need a buyer persona (sometimes called a marketing persona) which is a fictional generalized description of your target customer. You could (and should) have several buyer personas to work with.

buyer-persona-template

Key characteristics to include in your buyer personas are:

  • Job title(s)
  • Family size
  • Major challenges

Now that you've got your customer personas it's time to decide who to work with for your research.

2. Identify the right people to engage with

It's critical that you pick the right group of people to research. This could make or break your market research study. It's important to pick a representative sample that most closely resembles your target customer. That way you'll be able to identify their actual characteristics, challenges, pain points, and buying behavior.

Here are a few strategies that will help you pick the right people:

  • Select people who have recently interacted with you
  • Pull a list of participants who made a recent purchase
  • Call for participants on social media
  • Leverage your own network
  • Gather a mix of participants
  • Offer an incentive (gift card, product access, content upgrades)

3. Pick your data collection method(s)

Here's a quick breakdown of all the different ways you could collect data for your market research study.

Surveys are by far the fastest method of gathering data. You could launch them on your site or send them in an email and automate the whole process. Regular surveys can also help brands improve their customer service so they help kill two birds with one stone.

market-research-survey-template

Interviews take a little longer and require a detailed set of interview questions. Never go into an interview without a clear idea of what you're going to be asking. It's also a little more difficult to schedule time and to get your potential or current customers on the phone or on Zoom.

Focus group

Focus groups are controlled interviews with groups of people led by facilitators. Participants in focus groups are selected based on a set of predetermined criteria such as location, age, social status, income, and more.

focus-group-template

Online tracking

Online tracking is done through digital analytics tools like HotJar or Google Analytics. Tracking user behavior on your site gets you an accurate analysis of who your demographic is and what are the types of products or content that they engage with.

The problem here is that you never get to find out the 'why' - the reason behind their behavior - and that's why you need to combine digital analytics with other data collection methods like surveys and usability/product testing.

Marketing analysis

Another great way to collect data is to analyze your marketing campaigns which gives you a great idea of who clicked on your ads, how often, and which device they used. It's a more focused way of using tracking to zero in on a specific marketing campaign.

Social media monitoring

We've talked about this one before. Social monitoring or listening is when you track online conversations on social media platforms. You can use a simple social listening tool to get all the data you need by searching for specific keywords, hashtags, or topics.

social-media-monitoring-tool

Subscription and registration data

Another great way to collect data is to look at your existing audience. That might include your email list, rewards program, or existing customers. Depending on the size of your list, it could give you some broad insights into the type of customers/users you have and what they are most interested in.

Monitoring in-store traffic

Conduct a customer observation session to monitor your actual customers and how they behave in your store (physically or online). Observation is a market research technique where highly-trained market researchers observe how people or consumers interact with products/services in a natural setting.

4. Prepare your research questions

Write down your research questions before you conduct the research. Make sure you cover all the topics that you are trying to gain clarity on and include open-ended questions. The type of questions you use will vary depending on your data collection approach from the last step.

If you're doing a survey or an in-person interview then here are some of the best questions to ask.

The awareness stage

  • How did you know that something in this product category could help you?
  • Think back to the time you first realized you needed [product category]. What was your challenge?
  • How familiar were you with different options on the market?

The consideration stage

  • Where did you go to find out the information?
  • What was the first thing you did to research potential solutions?
  • Did you search on Google? What specifically did you search for? Which keywords did you use?
  • Which vendor sites did you visit?
  • What did you find helpful? What turned you off?

The decision stage

  • Which criteria did you use to compare different vendors?
  • What vendors made it to the shortlist and what were the pros/cons of each?
  • Who else was involved in the final decision?
  • Allow time for further questions on their end.
  • Don't forget to thank them for their time and confirm their email/address to receive the incentive you offered

If you noticed, the progression of these questions follows the stages of the buyer's journey which helps you to gain actionable insights into the entire customer experience.

5. List your primary competitors

There are two kinds of competitors - industry competitors and content competitors. Industry competitors compete with you on the actual product or service they sell. Content competitors compete with you in terms of the content they publish - whether that's on specific keywords or they rank higher on topics that you want to be ranked for.

It's important to write a list of all of your competitors and compare their strengths, weaknesses, competitive advantages, and the type of content they publish.

There are different ways to find your competitors. You can look on sites like G2 Crowd and check their industry quadrants.

digital-analytics-quadrant-G2-Crowd

You could also download a market report from Forrester or Gartner . And you could also search on social media or market research tools like SimilarWeb .

6. Summarize your findings

Now that you've done your research it's time to summarize your findings. Look for common themes in your research and try to present them in the simplest way possible. Use your favorite presentation software to document it and add it to your company database.

Here's a quick research outline you could use:

Background - your goals and why you conducted this study

Participants - who you've talked to. Break down the type of personas and/or customers you've spoken with.

Executive summary - what was the most interesting stuff you've learned? What do you plan to do about it?

Customer journey map - map out the specific motivations and behavioral insights you've gained from each stage of the customer journey (awareness, consideration, and decision).

Action plan - describe what action steps you're going to take to address the issues you've uncovered in your research and how you are going to promote your product/service to your target audience more effectively.

Market research template

Not sure where to begin? Need some templates to help you get started? We got them for you.

1. Market survey template

First and foremost, you need a template to run your market survey. In this template, you will find all the types of questions you should be asking - demographic, product, pricing, and brand questions. They can be used for market surveys, individual interviews, and focus groups.

We also present a variety of question formats for you to use:

  • true/false questions
  • multiple choice questions
  • open response questions

2. SWOT analysis template

A strength, weakness, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis is one of the best ways to do competitor research. It's a really simple analysis. There are four squares and you write down all four of these attributes for each of your competitors.

3. Focus group template

Not sure how to conduct focus groups? Here is a comprehensive template that will help you to take better notes and record your findings during the focus group meeting.

4. Marketing strategy template

The plan of action from your market research should become a vital part of your marketing strategy. We've actually created a marketing strategy template that you could download and use to update your marketing personas, your SWOT analysis, and your marketing channel strategies.

Market research examples

Here are some examples of the good, the bad, and the ugly in market research. Some brands thrive on research and some ignore it completely. Take a look.

McDonald's

McDonald’s sells its food in 97 countries around the world. Their secret? They do a lot of market research before they launch anything. The company uses four key questions in their research process:

  • Which products are performing well?
  • What prices are most affordable to customers?
  • What are consumers reading and watching?
  • What content do they consume?
  • Which restaurants are most attended, and why?

They also extensively use customer feedback to improve their products. They even put some products up for a vote to see which ones are most loved by their customers.

mcdonalds-ad-last-chance

The iconic coffee brand is valued at almost $30 billion and has over 30,000 coffee shops around the world and part of that success comes from their obsession with customer service. They launched a brilliant idea called “My Starbucks Idea” to try and make the customer feel a part of the journey.

It was an open innovation platform where customers could post their idea for a new coffee drink or food item and if it was good a company representative would actually reach out to them. It had a leaderboard and every year the company would develop some of these ideas.

In 2012, Starbucks launched 73 coffee products from ideas they received from customers. Cake pops and pumpkin spice lattes were born out of this platform, all thanks to market research. Can you imagine a world without pumpkin spice lattes?

my-starbucks-idea-infographic

For all its innovation Facebook had an epic market research failure. In 2013, Facebook partnered with HTC to launch a smartphone called First. It had Facebook’s interface on its home screen and that was a really jarring change for most people. Instead of taking you to a home screen with your favorite apps, Facebook really took center stage.

To be fair, you could turn it off and get a regular Android home window but that would be missing the entire reason you bought the phone in the first place. So it was a complete mismatch to consumers’ wants and the phone flopped.

Turns out, that nobody wanted to see Facebook when they first opened their phone 😅.

market research spreadsheet template

Bloom & Wild

Bloom & Wild is a UK flower delivery brand that was looking for their next campaign. They did some research and found out that people think red roses are cliche and prefer to buy something else as a gift on Valentine’s Day. So the brand chose not to sell roses for Valentine’s Day 2021 and made it into a “No Roses Campaign”.

The results - they saw a 51% increase in press coverage year after year.

bloom-and-wild-no-roses-campaign

Top tools used for market research

Here are some of the top market research and digital analytics tools you should try out for your next research project.

Answer the Public

Answer the public is a free market research tool that helps marketers figure out what questions people ask online. It's really easy to use. You put in a keyword or topic and it spits out a whole variety of questions and subtopics.

market research spreadsheet template

Spyfu is a search engine analytics platform that gives you data on where your competitors get their traffic from. It provides info on the kind of both organic traffic and PPC channels down to the specific keywords people used to find each site. It's a great tool to use to map the competitive landscape.

SpyFu

Think with Google

This is an online publication from Google's team where they publish consumer insights from real-time data and their own insights. It uses Google Analytics but presents it to you as a library of information. You can find industry data on a whole array of businesses from educational institutions to counseling services.

market research spreadsheet template

Want to do the most extensive market research possible? Use SimilarWeb. It's a competitive analysis and data tool that provides you with literally everything you need.

It has data on:

  • Digital marketing data - SEO, traffic, advertising
  • Economic trends - economic indicators like annual growth rate, audience, benchmarking
  • eCommerce, investing, and even sales data

similarweb

BuzzSumo is a great tool to use to get actionable insights from social media and content marketing. It aggregates data from various social media channels and shows you the type of content that users engage with and share on their pages.

buzzsumo

Typeform is a survey tool that can help you make surveys and fun interactive forms. It's a great tool to use to make your forms more engaging for your audience. The tool has a bunch of easy templates and a ton of integrations to help you visualize that data and share it with your team.

typeform

Latana is a brand research tool that helps you understand consumer perception of your brand over time. It helps you answer some key questions about the type of values your customers have, and the type of audiences your competitors are targeting and helps you to focus your campaigns on the right audience for your business.

Latana-brand-tracking

Statista is one of the most popular consumer data platforms around. It has a wealth of information about consumer markets, business conditions, and industry trends around the world. It's easier to use than most business publications because it aggregates all the data you need in one place. The downside is that it's a little pricy but perfect for teams that have the budget for it.

statista

Dimensions.ai

Dimensions is a search engine for academic publications. It is a great resource if you're looking for deeper insights into things like psychology, micro and macroeconomics, and business trends. A lot of the articles are free to view just make sure you select the " All OA " option which stands for Open Access research.

Dimensions-ai

Otter is an AI-powered transcription software for interviews and meetings. It sits in the background and transcribes your meeting for you and then provides you with a digitized conversation that can be stored, search for specific keywords, and analyzed. It's a great tool to use for doing interviews.

otter-ai

Yelp is a search engine for reviews of local businesses. It's one of the best sources of opinions about a whole variety of products and services. It's a great place to get ideas about the kind of interview questions you want to ask, to find out the pain points of your ideal customer, and to find deeper insights into your target audience.

yelp

You have to conduct your market research regularly if you want to see significant results. Try the different methods that we’ve outlined, see what works for you, and remember to keep your team’s focus on the customer. The more knowledgeable they are of your target customer’s needs and wants the better your targeting and marketing strategy will be.

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How To Present Your Market Research Results And Reports In An Efficient Way

Market research reports blog by datapine

Table of Contents

1) What Is A Market Research Report?

2) Market Research Reports Examples

3) Why Do You Need Market Research Reports

4) How To Make A Market Research Report?

5) Types Of Market Research Reports

6) Challenges & Mistakes Market Research Reports

Market research analyses are the go-to solution for many professionals, and for good reason: they save time, offer fresh insights, and provide clarity on your business. In turn, market research reports will help you to refine and polish your strategy. Plus, a well-crafted report will give your work more credibility while adding weight to any marketing recommendations you offer a client or executive.

But, while this is the case, today’s business world still lacks a way to present market-based research results efficiently. The static, antiquated nature of PowerPoint makes it a bad choice for presenting research discoveries, yet it is still widely used to present results. 

Fortunately, things are moving in the right direction. There are online data visualization tools that make it easy and fast to build powerful market research dashboards. They come in handy to manage the outcomes, but also the most important aspect of any analysis: the presentation of said outcomes, without which it becomes hard to make accurate, sound decisions. 

Here, we consider the benefits of conducting research analyses while looking at how to write and present market research reports, exploring their value, and, ultimately, getting the very most from your research results by using professional market research software .

Let’s get started.

What Is a Market Research Report?

A market research report is an online reporting tool used to analyze the public perception or viability of a company, product, or service. These reports contain valuable and digestible information like customer survey responses and social, economic, and geographical insights.

On a typical market research results example, you can interact with valuable trends and gain insight into consumer behavior and visualizations that will empower you to conduct effective competitor analysis. Rather than adding streams of tenuous data to a static spreadsheet, a full market research report template brings the outcomes of market-driven research to life, giving users a data analysis tool to create actionable strategies from a range of consumer-driven insights.

With digital market analysis reports, you can make your business more intelligent more efficient, and, ultimately, meet the needs of your target audience head-on. This, in turn, will accelerate your commercial success significantly.

Your Chance: Want to test a market research reporting software? Explore our 14-day free trial & benefit from interactive research reports!

How To Present Your Results: 4 Essential Market Research Report Templates

When it comes to sharing rafts of invaluable information, research dashboards are invaluable.

Any market analysis report example worth its salt will allow everyone to get a firm grip on their results and discoveries on a single page with ease. These dynamic online dashboards also boast interactive features that empower the user to drill down deep into specific pockets of information while changing demographic parameters, including gender, age, and region, filtering the results swiftly to focus on the most relevant insights for the task at hand.

These four market research report examples are different but equally essential and cover key elements required for market survey report success. You can also modify each and use it as a client dashboard .

While there are numerous types of dashboards that you can choose from to adjust and optimize your results, we have selected the top 3 that will tell you more about the story behind them. Let’s take a closer look.

1. Market Research Report: Brand Analysis

Our first example shares the results of a brand study. To do so, a survey has been performed on a sample of 1333 people, information that we can see in detail on the left side of the board, summarizing the gender, age groups, and geolocation.

Market research report on a brand analysis showing the sample information, brand awareness, top 5 branding themes, etc.

**click to enlarge**

At the dashboard's center, we can see the market-driven research discoveries concerning first brand awareness with and without help, as well as themes and celebrity suggestions, to know which image the audience associates with the brand.

Such dashboards are extremely convenient to share the most important information in a snapshot. Besides being interactive (but it cannot be seen on an image), it is even easier to filter the results according to certain criteria without producing dozens of PowerPoint slides. For instance, I could easily filter the report by choosing only the female answers, only the people aged between 25 and 34, or only the 25-34 males if that is my target audience.

Primary KPIs:

a) Unaided Brand Awareness

The first market research KPI in this most powerful report example comes in the form of unaided brand awareness. Presented in a logical line-style chart, this particular market study report sample KPI is invaluable, as it will give you a clear-cut insight into how people affiliate your brand within their niche.

Unaided brand awareness answering the question: When you think about outdoor gear products - what brands come to your mind? The depicted sample size is 1333.

As you can see from our example, based on a specific survey question, you can see how your brand stacks up against your competitors regarding awareness. Based on these outcomes, you can formulate strategies to help you stand out more in your sector and, ultimately, expand your audience.

b) Aided Brand Awareness

This market survey report sample KPI focuses on aided brand awareness. A visualization that offers a great deal of insight into which brands come to mind in certain niches or categories, here, you will find out which campaigns and messaging your target consumers are paying attention to and engaging with.

Aided brand awareness answering the question: Have you heard of the following brands? - The sample size is 1333 people.

By gaining access to this level of insight, you can conduct effective competitor research and gain valuable inspiration for your products, promotional campaigns, and marketing messages.

c) Brand image

Market research results on the brand image and categorized into 5 different levels of answering: totally agree, agree, maybe, disagree, and totally disagree.

When it comes to research reporting, understanding how others perceive your brand is one of the most golden pieces of information you could acquire. If you know how people feel about your brand image, you can take informed and very specific actions that will enhance the way people view and interact with your business.

By asking a focused question, this visual of KPIs will give you a definitive idea of whether respondents agree, disagree, or are undecided on particular descriptions or perceptions related to your brand image. If you’re looking to present yourself and your message in a certain way (reliable, charming, spirited, etc.), you can see how you stack up against the competition and find out if you need to tweak your imagery or tone of voice - invaluable information for any modern business.

d) Celebrity analysis

Market research report example of a celebrity analysis for a brand

This indicator is a powerful part of our research KPI dashboard on top, as it will give you a direct insight into the celebrities, influencers, or public figures that your most valued consumers consider when thinking about (or interacting with) your brand.

Displayed in a digestible bar chart-style format, this useful metric will not only give you a solid idea of how your brand messaging is perceived by consumers (depending on the type of celebrity they associate with your brand) but also guide you on which celebrities or influencers you should contact.

By working with the right influencers in your niche, you will boost the impact and reach of your marketing campaigns significantly, improving your commercial awareness in the process. And this is the KPI that will make it happen.

2. Market Research Results On Customer Satisfaction

Here, we have some of the most important data a company should care about: their already-existing customers and their perception of their relationship with the brand. It is crucial when we know that it is five times more expensive to acquire a new consumer than to retain one.

Market research report example on customers' satisfaction with a brand

This is why tracking metrics like the customer effort score or the net promoter score (how likely consumers are to recommend your products and services) is essential, especially over time. You need to improve these scores to have happy customers who will always have a much bigger impact on their friends and relatives than any of your amazing ad campaigns. Looking at other satisfaction indicators like the quality, pricing, and design, or the service they received is also a best practice: you want a global view of your performance regarding customer satisfaction metrics .

Such research results reports are a great tool for managers who do not have much time and hence need to use them effectively. Thanks to these dashboards, they can control data for long-running projects anytime.

Primary KPIs :

a) Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Another pivotal part of any informative research presentation is your NPS score, which will tell you how likely a customer is to recommend your brand to their peers.

The net promoter score is shown on a gauge chart by asking the question: on a scale of 1-10, how likely is it that you would recommend our service to a friend?

Centered on overall customer satisfaction, your NPS Score can cover the functions and output of many departments, including marketing, sales, and customer service, but also serve as a building block for a call center dashboard . When you’re considering how to present your research effectively, this balanced KPI offers a masterclass. It’s logical, it has a cohesive color scheme, and it offers access to vital information at a swift glance. With an NPS Score, customers are split into three categories: promoters (those scoring your service 9 or 10), passives (those scoring your service 7 or 8), and detractors (those scoring your service 0 to 6). The aim of the game is to gain more promoters. By gaining an accurate snapshot of your NPS Score, you can create intelligent strategies that will boost your results over time.

b) Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

The next in our examples of market research reports KPIs comes in the form of the CSAT. The vast majority of consumers that have a bad experience will not return. Honing in on your CSAT is essential if you want to keep your audience happy and encourage long-term consumer loyalty.

Visual representation of a customer satisfaction score (CSAT) metric

This magnificent, full report KPI will show how satisfied customers are with specific elements of your products or services. Getting to grips with these scores will allow you to pinpoint very specific issues while capitalizing on your existing strengths. As a result, you can take measures to improve your CSAT score while sharing positive testimonials on your social media platforms and website to build trust.

c) Customer Effort Score (CES)

When it comes to presenting research findings, keeping track of your CES Score is essential. The CES Score KPI will give you instant access to information on how easy or difficult your audience can interact with or discover your company based on a simple scale of one to ten.

The customer effort score (CES) helps you in figuring out how easy and fast it is to make business with your company according to your customers

By getting a clear-cut gauge of how your customers find engagement with your brand, you can iron out any weaknesses in your user experience (UX) offerings while spotting any friction, bottlenecks, or misleading messaging. In doing so, you can boost your CES score, satisfy your audience, and boost your bottom line.

3. Market Research Results On Product Innovation

This final market-driven research example report focuses on the product itself and its innovation. It is a useful report for future product development and market potential, as well as pricing decisions.

Market research results report on product innovation, useful for product development and pricing decisions

Using the same sample of surveyed people as for the first market-focused analytical report , they answer questions about their potential usage and purchase of the said product. It is good primary feedback on how the market would receive the new product you would launch. Then comes the willingness to pay, which helps set a price range that will not be too cheap to be trusted nor too expensive for what it is. That will be the main information for your pricing strategy.

a) Usage Intention

The first of our product innovation KPI-based examples comes in the form of usage intention. When you’re considering how to write a market research report, including metrics centered on consumer intent is critical.

This market analysis report shows the usage intention that resulted in 41% of a target group would use a product of the newest generation in comparison to competing or older products

This simple yet effective visualization will allow you to understand not only how users see your product but also whether they prefer previous models or competitor versions . While you shouldn’t base all of your product-based research on this KPI, it is very valuable, and you should use it to your advantage frequently.

b) Purchase Intention

Another aspect to consider when looking at how to present market research data is your audience’s willingness or motivation to purchase your product. Offering percentage-based information, this effective KPI provides a wealth of at-a-glance information to help you make accurate forecasts centered on your product and service offerings.

The purchase intention is showing the likelihood of buying a product in  percentage

Analyzing this information regularly will give you the confidence and direction to develop strategies that will steer you to a more prosperous future, meeting the ever-changing needs of your audience on an ongoing basis.

c) Willingness To Pay (WPS)

Willingness to pay is depicted on a pie chart with additional explanations of the results

Our final market research example KPI is based on how willing customers are to pay for a particular service or product based on a specific set of parameters. This dynamic visualization, represented in an easy-to-follow pie chart, will allow you to realign the value of your product (USPs, functions, etc.) while setting price points that are most likely to result in conversions. This is a market research presentation template that every modern organization should use to its advantage.

4. Market Research Report On Customer Demographics 

This particular example of market research report, generated with a modern dashboard creator , is a powerful tool, as it displays a cohesive mix of key demographic information in one intuitive space.

Market research reports example for a customer demographics study

By breaking down these deep pockets of consumer-centric information, you can gain the power to develop more impactful customer communications while personalizing every aspect of your target audience’s journey across every channel or touchpoint. As a result, you can transform theoretical insights into actionable strategies that will result in significant commercial growth. 

Every section of this responsive marketing research report works in unison to build a profile of your core audience in a way that will guide your company’s consumer-facing strategies with confidence. With in-depth visuals based on gender, education level, and tech adoption, you have everything you need to speak directly to your audience at your fingertips.

Let’s look at the key performance indicators (KPIs) of this invaluable market research report example in more detail.

a) Customer By Gender

Straightforward market research reports showing the number of customers by gender

This KPI is highly visual and offers a clear-cut representation of your company’s gender share over time. By gaining access to this vital information, you can deliver a more personalized experience to specific audience segments while ensuring your messaging is fair, engaging, and inclusive.

b) Customers by education level

Number of customers by education level as an example of a market research report metric

The next market analysis report template is a KPI that provides a logical breakdown of your customers’ level of education. By using this as a demographic marker, you can refine your products to suit the needs of your audience while crafting your content in a way that truly resonates with different customer groups.

c) Customers by technology adoption

Market research report template showing customers technology adoption for the past 5 years

Particularly valuable if you’re a company that sells tech goods or services, this linear KPI will show you where your customers are in terms of technological know-how or usage. By getting to grips with this information over time, you can develop your products or services in a way that offers direct value to your consumers while making your launches or promotions as successful as possible.

d) Customer age groups

Number of customers by age group as a key demographic metric of a market research report

By understanding your customers’ age distribution in detail, you can gain a deep understanding of their preferences. And that’s exactly what this market research report sample KPI does. Presented in a bar chart format, this KPI will give you a full breakdown of your customers’ age ranges, allowing you to build detailed buyer personas and segment your audience effectively.

Why Do You Need Market Research Reports?

As the adage goes, “Look before you leap“ – which is exactly what a research report is here for. As the headlights of a car, they will show you the pitfalls and fast lanes on your road to success: likes and dislikes of a specific market segment in a certain geographical area, their expectations, and readiness. Among other things, a research report will let you:

  • Get a holistic view of the market : learn more about the target market and understand the various factors involved in the buying decisions. A broader view of the market lets you benchmark other companies you do not focus on. This, in turn, will empower you to gather the industry data that counts most. This brings us to our next point.
  • Curate industry information with momentum: Whether you’re looking to rebrand, improve on an existing service, or launch a new product, time is of the essence. By working with the best market research reports created with modern BI reporting tools , you can visualize your discoveries and data, formatting them in a way that not only unearths hidden insights but also tells a story - a narrative that will gain a deeper level of understanding into your niche or industry. The features and functionality of a market analysis report will help you grasp the information that is most valuable to your organization, pushing you ahead of the pack in the process.
  • Validate internal research: Doing the internal analysis is one thing, but double-checking with a third party also greatly helps avoid getting blinded by your own data.
  • Use actionable data and make informed decisions: Once you understand consumer behavior as well as the market, your competitors, and the issues that will affect the industry in the future, you are better armed to position your brand. Combining all of it with the quantitative data collected will allow you to more successful product development. To learn more about different methods, we suggest you read our guide on data analysis techniques .
  • Strategic planning: When you want to map out big-picture organizational goals, launch a new product development, plan a geographic market expansion, or even a merger and acquisition – all of this strategic thinking needs solid foundations to fulfill the variety of challenges that come along.
  • Consistency across the board: Collecting, presenting, and analyzing your results in a way that’s smarter, more interactive, and more cohesive will ensure your customer communications, marketing campaigns, user journey, and offerings meet your audience’s needs consistently across the board. The result? Faster growth, increased customer loyalty, and more profit.
  • Better communication: The right market research analysis template (or templates) will empower everyone in the company with access to valuable information - the kind that is relevant and comprehensible. When everyone is moving to the beat of the same drum, they will collaborate more effectively and, ultimately, push the venture forward thanks to powerful online data analysis techniques.
  • Centralization: Building on the last point, using a powerful market research report template in the form of a business intelligence dashboard will make presenting your findings to external stakeholders and clients far more effective, as you can showcase a wealth of metrics, information, insights, and invaluable feedback from one centralized, highly visual interactive screen. 
  • Brand reputation: In the digital age, brand reputation is everything. By making vital improvements in all of the key areas above, you will meet your customers’ needs head-on with consistency while finding innovative ways to stand out from your competitors. These are the key ingredients of long-term success.

How To Present Market Research Analysis Results?

15 best practices and tips on how to present market research analysis results

Here we look at how you should present your research reports, considering the steps it takes to connect with the outcomes you need to succeed:

  • Collect your data 

As with any reporting process, you first and foremost need to collect the data you’ll use to conduct your studies. Businesses conduct research studies to analyze their brand awareness, identity, and influence in the market. For product development and pricing decisions, among many others. That said, there are many ways to collect information for a market research report. Among some of the most popular ones, we find: 

  • Surveys: Probably the most common way to collect research data, surveys can come in the form of open or closed questions that can be answered anonymously. They are the cheapest and fastest way to collect insights about your customers and business. 
  • Interviews : These are face-to-face discussions that allow the researcher to analyze responses as well as the body language of the interviewees. This method is often used to define buyer personas by analyzing the subject's budget, job title, lifestyle, wants, and needs, among other things. 
  • Focus groups : This method involves a group of people discussing a topic with a mediator. It is often used to evaluate a new product or new feature or to answer a specific question that the researcher might have. 
  • Observation-based research : In this type of research, the researcher or business sits back and watches customers interact with the product without any instructions or help. It allows us to identify pain points as well as strong features. 
  • Market segmentation : This study allows you to identify and analyze potential market segments to target. Businesses use it to expand into new markets and audiences. 

These are just a few of the many ways in which you can gather your information. The important point is to keep the research objective as straightforward as possible. Supporting yourself with professional BI solutions to clean, manage, and present your insights is probably the smartest choice.

2. Hone in on your research:

When looking at how to source consumer research in a presentation, you should focus on two areas: primary and secondary research. Primary research comes from your internal data, monitoring existing organizational practices, the effectiveness of sales, and the tools used for communication, for instance. Primary research also assesses market competition by evaluating the company plans of the competitors. Secondary research focuses on existing data collected by a third party, information used to perform benchmarking and market analysis. Such metrics help in deciding which market segments are the ones the company should focus its efforts on or where the brand is standing in the minds of consumers. Before you start the reporting process, you should set your goals, segmenting your research into primary and secondary segments to get to grips with the kind of information you need to work with to achieve effective results.

3. Segment your customers:

To give your market research efforts more context, you should segment your customers into different groups according to the preferences outlined in the survey or feedback results or by examining behavioral or demographic data.

If you segment your customers, you can tailor your market research and analysis reports to display only the information, charts, or graphics that will provide actionable insights into their wants, needs, or industry-based pain points. 

  • Identify your stakeholders:

Once you’ve drilled down into your results and segmented your consumer groups, it’s important to consider the key stakeholders within the organization that will benefit from your information the most. 

By looking at both internal and external stakeholders, you will give your results a path to effective presentation, gaining the tools to understand which areas of feedback or data are most valuable, as well as most redundant. As a consequence, you will ensure your results are concise and meet the exact information needs of every stakeholder involved in the process.

  • Set your KPIs:

First, remember that your reports should be concise and accurate - straight to the point without omitting any essential information. Work to ensure your insights are clean and organized, with participants grouped into relevant categories (demographics, profession, industry, education, etc.). Once you’ve organized your research, set your goals, and cleaned your data, you should set your KPIs to ensure your report is populated with the right visualizations to get the job done. Explore our full library of interactive KPI examples for inspiration.

  • Include competitor’s analysis 

Whether you are doing product innovation research, customer demographics, pricing, or any other, including some level of insights about competitors in your reports is always recommended as it can help your business or client better understand where they stand in the market. That being said, competitor analysis is not as easy as picking a list of companies in the same industry and listing them. Your main competitor can be just a company's division in an entirely different industry. For example, Apple Music competes with Spotify even though Apple is a technology company. Therefore, it is important to carefully analyze competitors from a general but detailed level. 

Providing this kind of information in your reports can also help you find areas that competitors are not exploiting or that are weaker and use them to your advantage to become a market leader. 

  • Produce your summary:

To complement your previous efforts, writing an executive summary of one or two pages that will explain the general idea of the report is advisable. Then come the usual body parts:

  • An introduction providing background information, target audience, and objectives;
  • The qualitative research describes the participants in the research and why they are relevant to the business;
  • The survey research outlines the questions asked and answered;
  • A summary of the insights and metrics used to draw the conclusions, the research methods chosen, and why;
  • A presentation of the findings based on your research and an in-depth explanation of these conclusions.
  • Use a mix of visualizations:

When presenting your results and discoveries, you should aim to use a balanced mix of text, graphs, charts, and interactive visualizations.

Using your summary as a guide, you should decide which type of visualization will present each specific piece of market research data most effectively (often, the easier to understand and more accessible, the better).

Doing so will allow you to create a story that will put your research information into a living, breathing context, providing a level of insight you need to transform industry, competitor, or consumer info or feedback into actionable strategies and initiatives.

  • Be careful not to mislead 

Expanding on the point above, using a mix of visuals can prove highly valuable in presenting your results in an engaging and understandable way. That being said, when not used correctly, graphs and charts can also become misleading. This is a popular practice in the media, news, and politics, where designers tweak the visuals to manipulate the masses into believing a certain conclusion. This is a very unethical practice that can also happen by mistake when you don’t pick the right chart or are not using it in the correct way. Therefore, it is important to outline the message you are trying to convey and pick the chart type that will best suit those needs. 

Additionally, you should also be careful with the data you choose to display, as it can also become misleading. This can happen if you, for example, cherry-pick data, which means only showing insights that prove a conclusion instead of the bigger picture. Or confusing correlation with causation, which means assuming that because two events happened simultaneously, one caused the other. 

Being aware of these practices is of utmost importance as objectivity is crucial when it comes to dealing with data analytics, especially if you are presenting results to clients. Our guides on misleading statistics and misleading data visualizations can help you learn more about this important topic. 

  • Use professional dashboards:

To optimize your market research discoveries, you must work with a dynamic business dashboard . Not only are modern dashboards presentable and customizable, but they will offer you past, predictive, and real-time insights that are accurate, interactive, and yield long-lasting results.

All market research reports companies or businesses gathering industry or consumer-based information will benefit from professional dashboards, as they offer a highly powerful means of presenting your data in a way everyone can understand. And when that happens, everyone wins.

Did you know? The interactive nature of modern dashboards like datapine also offers the ability to quickly filter specific pockets of information with ease, offering swift access to invaluable insights.

  • Prioritize interactivity 

The times when reports were static are long gone. Today, to extract the maximum value out of your research data, you need to be able to explore the information and answer any critical questions that arise during the presentation of results. To do so, modern reporting tools provide multiple interactivity features to help you bring your research results to life. 

For instance, a drill-down filter lets you go into lower levels of hierarchical data without generating another graph. For example, imagine you surveyed customers from 10 different countries. In your report, you have a chart displaying the number of customers by country, but you want to analyze a specific country in detail. A drill down filter would enable you to click on a specific country and display data by city on that same chart. Even better, a global filter would allow you to filter the entire report to show only results for that specific country. 

Through the use of interactive filters, such as the one we just mentioned, you’ll not only make the presentation of results more efficient and profound, but you’ll also avoid generating pages-long reports to display static results. All your information will be displayed in a single interactive page that can be filtered and explored upon need.  

  • Customize the reports 

This is a tip that is valuable for any kind of research report, especially when it comes to agencies that are reporting to external clients. Customizing the report to match your client’s colors, logo, font, and overall branding will help them grasp the data better, thanks to a familiar environment. This is an invaluable tip as often your audience will not feel comfortable dealing with data and might find it hard to understand or intimidating. Therefore, providing a familiar look that is also interactive and easier to understand will keep them engaged and collaborative throughout the process. 

Plus, customizing the overall appearance of the report will also make your agency look more professional, adding extra value to your service. 

  • Know your design essentials 

When you’re presenting your market research reports sample to internal or external stakeholders, having a firm grasp on fundamental design principles will make your metrics and insights far more persuasive and compelling.

By arranging your metrics in a balanced and logical format, you can guide users toward key pockets of information exactly when needed. In turn, this will improve decision-making and navigation, making your reports as impactful as possible.

For essential tips, read our 23 dashboard design principles & best practices to enhance your analytics process.

  • Think of security and privacy 

Cyberattacks are increasing at a concerning pace, making security a huge priority for organizations of all sizes today. The costs of having your sensitive information leaked are not only financial but also reputational, as customers might not trust you again if their data ends up in the wrong hands. Given that market research analysis is often performed by agencies that handle data from clients, security and privacy should be a top priority.  

To ensure the required security and privacy, it is necessary to invest in the right tools to present your research results. For instance, tools such as datapine offer enterprise-level security protocols that ensure your information is encrypted and protected at all times. Plus, the tool also offers additional security features, such as being able to share your reports through a password-protected URL or to set viewer rights to ensure only the right people can access and manipulate the data. 

  • Keep on improving & evolving

Each time you gather or gain new marketing research reports or market research analysis report intel, you should aim to refine your existing dashboards to reflect the ever-changing landscape around you.

If you update your reports and dashboards according to the new research you conduct and new insights you connect with, you will squeeze maximum value from your metrics, enjoying consistent development in the process.

Types of Market Research Reports: Primary & Secondary Research

With so many market research examples and such little time, knowing how to best present your insights under pressure can prove tricky.

To squeeze every last drop of value from your market research efforts and empower everyone with access to the right information, you should arrange your information into two main groups: primary research and secondary research.

A. Primary research

Primary research is based on acquiring direct or first-hand information related to your industry or sector and the customers linked to it.

Exploratory primary research is an initial form of information collection where your team might set out to identify potential issues, opportunities, and pain points related to your business or industry. This type of research is usually carried out in the form of general surveys or open-ended consumer Q&As, which nowadays are often performed online rather than offline . 

Specific primary research is definitive, with information gathered based on the issues, information, opportunities, or pain points your business has already uncovered. When doing this kind of research, you can drill down into a specific segment of your customers and seek answers to the opportunities, issues, or pain points in question.

When you’re conducting primary research to feed into your market research reporting efforts, it’s important to find reliable information sources. The most effective primary research sources include:

  • Consumer-based statistical data
  • Social media content
  • Polls and Q&A
  • Trend-based insights
  • Competitor research
  • First-hand interviews

B. Secondary research

Secondary research refers to every strand of relevant data or public records you have to gain a deeper insight into your market and target consumers. These sources include trend reports, market stats, industry-centric content, and sales insights you have at your disposal.  Secondary research is an effective way of gathering valuable intelligence about your competitors. 

You can gather very precise, insightful secondary market research insights from:

  • Public records and resources like Census data, governmental reports, or labor stats
  • Commercial resources like Gartner, Statista, or Forrester
  • Articles, documentaries, and interview transcripts

Another essential branch of both primary and secondary research is internal intelligence. When it comes to efficient market research reporting examples that will benefit your organization, looking inward is a powerful move. 

Existing sales, demographic, or marketing performance insights will lead you to valuable conclusions. Curating internal information will ensure your market research discoveries are well-rounded while helping you connect with the information that will ultimately give you a panoramic view of your target market. 

By understanding both types of research and how they can offer value to your business, you can carefully choose the right informational sources, gather a wide range of intelligence related to your specific niche, and, ultimately, choose the right market research report sample for your specific needs.

If you tailor your market research report format to the type of research you conduct, you will present your visualizations in a way that provides the right people with the right insights, rather than throwing bundles of facts and figures on the wall, hoping that some of them stick.

Taking ample time to explore a range of primary and secondary sources will give your discoveries genuine context. By doing so, you will have a wealth of actionable consumer and competitor insights at your disposal at every stage of your organization’s development (a priceless weapon in an increasingly competitive digital age). 

Dynamic market research is the cornerstone of business development, and a dashboard builder is the vessel that brings these all-important insights to life. Once you get into that mindset, you will ensure that your research results always deliver maximum value.

Common Challenges & Mistakes Of Market Research Reporting & Analysis

We’ve explored different types of market research analysis examples and considered how to conduct effective research. Now, it’s time to look at the key mistakes of market research reporting.  Let’s start with the mistakes.

The mistakes

One of the biggest mistakes that stunt the success of a company’s market research efforts is strategy. Without taking the time to gather an adequate mix of insights from various sources and define your key aims or goals, your processes will become disjointed. You will also suffer from a severe lack of organizational vision.

For your market research-centric strategy to work, everyone within the company must be on the same page. Your core aims and objectives must align throughout the business, and everyone must be clear on their specific role. If you try to craft a collaborative strategy and decide on your informational sources from the very start of your journey, your strategy will deliver true growth and intelligence.

  • Measurement

Another classic market research mistake is measurement – or, more accurately, a lack of precise measurement. When embarking on market intelligence gathering processes, many companies fail to select the right KPIs and set the correct benchmarks for the task at hand. Without clearly defined goals, many organizations end up with a market analysis report format that offers little or no value in terms of decision-making or market insights.

To drive growth with your market research efforts, you must set clearly defined KPIs that align with your specific goals, aims, and desired outcomes.

  • Competition

A common mistake among many new or scaling companies is failing to explore and examine the competition. This will leave you with gaping informational blindspots. To truly benefit from market research, you must gather valuable nuggets of information from every key source available. Rather than solely looking at your consumers and the wider market (which is incredibly important), you should take the time to see what approach your direct competitors have adopted while getting to grips with the content and communications.

One of the most effective ways of doing so (and avoiding such a monumental market research mistake) is by signing up for your competitors’ mailing lists, downloading their apps, and examining their social media content. This will give you inspiration for your own efforts while allowing you to exploit any gaps in the market that your competitors are failing to fill.

The challenges

  • Informational quality

We may have an almost infinite wealth of informational insights at our fingertips, but when it comes to market research, knowing which information to trust can prove an uphill struggle.

When working with metrics, many companies risk connecting with inaccurate insights or leading to a fruitless informational rabbit hole, wasting valuable time and resources in the process. To avoid such a mishap, working with a trusted modern market research and analysis sample is the only way forward.

  • Senior buy-in

Another pressing market research challenge that stunts organizational growth is the simple case of senior buy-in. While almost every senior decision-maker knows that market research is an essential component of a successful commercial strategy, many are reluctant to invest an ample amount of time or money in the pursuit.

The best way to overcome such a challenge is by building a case that defines exactly how your market research strategies will offer a healthy ROI to every key aspect of the organization, from marketing and sales to customer experience (CX) and beyond.

  • Response rates

Low interview, focus group, or poll response rates can have a serious impact on the success and value of your market research strategy. Even with adequate senior buy-in, you can’t always guarantee that you will get enough responses from early-round interviews or poll requests. If you don’t, your market research discoveries run the risk of being shallow or offering little in the way of actionable insight.

To overcome this common challenge, you can improve the incentive you offer your market research prospects while networking across various platforms to discover new contact opportunities. Changing the tone of voice of your ads or emails will also help boost your consumer or client response rates.

Bringing Your Reports a Step Further

Even if it is still widespread for market-style research results presentation, using PowerPoint at this stage is a hassle and presents many downsides and complications. When busy managers or short-on-time top executives grab a report, they want a quick overview that gives them an idea of the results and the big picture that addresses the objectives: they need a dashboard. This can be applied to all areas of a business that need fast and interactive data visualizations to support their decision-making.

We all know that a picture conveys more information than simple text or figures, so managing to bring it all together on an actionable dashboard will convey your message more efficiently. Besides, market research dashboards have the incredible advantage of always being up-to-date since they work with real-time insights: the synchronization/updating nightmare of dozens of PowerPoint slides doesn’t exist for you anymore. This is particularly helpful for tracking studies performed over time that recurrently need their data to be updated with more recent ones.

In today’s fast-paced business environment, companies must identify and grab new opportunities as they arise while staying away from threats and adapting quickly. In order to always be a step further and make the right decisions, it is critical to perform market research studies to get the information needed and make important decisions with confidence.

We’ve asked the question, “What is a market research report?”, and examined the dynamics of a modern market research report example, and one thing’s for sure: a visual market research report is the best way to understand your customer and thus increase their satisfaction by meeting their expectations head-on. 

From looking at a sample of a market research report, it’s also clear that modern dashboards help you see what is influencing your business with clarity, understand where your brand is situated in the market, and gauge the temperature of your niche or industry before a product or service launch. Once all the studies are done, you must present them efficiently to ensure everyone in the business can make the right decisions that result in real progress. Market research reports are your key allies in the matter.

To start presenting your results with efficient, interactive, dynamic research reports and win on tomorrow’s commercial battlefield, try our dashboard reporting software and test every feature with our 14-day free trial !

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Market Research Templates – 5 x MS Word + 14 x Excel

This Market Research Template pack includes 19 templates (5  Word + 14 Excel) . You can use these templates, forms, checklists, and questionnaires to gather, record, and analyze data so you have the information you need to drive your Business Plan and Marketing strategies forward. This template pack includes:

  • 4 x Market Research Templates (16 pages) Use these template to capture Why You Need Market Research, Who You Want to Target, How to Plan, Collect Data, Analyze Data, Report Findings, and Make Decisions.
  • Market Research Brief Template (6 pages) Use this document to brief Consultants on your Market Research requirements.
  • 14 Free Excel  Templates:  including Brand Loyalty Survey, Competitor Analysis , Demographic Comparison, Demographic Profile, Industry Analysis Checklist, Market Planning Checklist, Cost Analysis, Market Research Spreadsheet, Market Survey.

Download Now for only 14.99!

Market Research: Table of Contents

The Market Research Plan (MS Word, 16 pages) contains the following chapters. The other checklists, questionnaires, surveys and templates are listed below.

1 Executive Summary 1.1 Goals 1.2 Points Of Contact

2 Market Research Plan 2.1 Stage 1 – Why You Need a Market Research Plan 2.2 Stage 2 – Who are your Customers 2.3 Stage 3 – How Are Your Going To Get The Information 2.4 Stage 4 – Collect Data 2.4.1 Train Your Staff 2.4.2 Make it Sharable 2.4.3 Avoid Corrupt Data 2.4.4 Design Carefully 2.5 Stage 5 – Analyze Data 2.6 Stage 6 – Generate Report Findings 2.6.1 Descriptive Data Analysis 2.6.2 Inferential Data Analysis 2.7 Stage 7 – Choose Best Strategies

3 Market Research Budget

Market Research Templates: Key Benefits

As a small business owner, you’re looking for ways understand:

  • Who are your current customers and potential customers
  • What do I really know about them Where do they live Do they prefer to shop online or offline
  • What do they want to buy
  • What is their average income What’s the disposable income
  • What type of products do they have (Skoda), like to have (slightly bigger Car), and aspire to having (BMW)
  • How much are they willing to pay for my products
  • Can they find my products where they go shopping If not, why
  • What do they think of my business Do they think we’re reliable, trustworthy, good value
  • How does my business compare with my competitors

Moving Targets

Marketing Research deals with moving targets. Last year you couldn’t give away Tablet PCs. Then Apple launched its iPad. Suddenly everyone wants one.

Marketing research looks at what makes people choose to buy one product over another . What makes them suddenly switch brands What makes them recommend one product over another

To do this you need to gather facts, examine opinions and organize them in a structure manner. This lets you drill down and see what makes people want to buy – not just what you want to sell them.

Screenshots of Market Research Templates

Use these template to capture Why You Need Market Research, Who You Want to Target, How to Plan, Collect Data, Analyze Data, Report Findings, and Make Decisions.

Standard White/Blue Cover Page

Classic Car Theme

The Science of Market Research Theme

The Technology of Market Research theme

Note : The content in all four is the same. Only the cover pages are different.

5 Key Areas in Market Research

You can use these twelve templates ( 10 Microsoft Word and 2 Excel spreadsheets ) to outline the specific goals for your Market Research Plan and then feed these results into your Business Plans , Marketing Plans , and product development strategies.

This Market Research Plan will help you examine five areas:

  • Assess the Competition – Can you compete against the incumbent How many competitors are there in the current marketplace Could you partner with other companies and deliver a superior product offering
  • Identify your Target Market – gather information about the age, location and number of people who’ll be interested in the product. The more you know about your customers, the more you can tailor your product to their needs, spending habits and in relation to emerging trend.
  • Identify the Right Price – how much will the product cost Will you sell it as part of a bundle Do you offer discounts How about international customers Will the price be the same in the US as in Japan And if customers find out, what next
  • Define the Best Sales channels – What’s best approach to selling the products Over the web, in the high street, through partners, direct mail
  • Determine the Number of Customers – How many people are looking for this product How confident are you that this figure is correct Will this number increase or decrease over the next three years

As you can see, there are many factors to consider when launching a product. Interviewing, running surveys and poll s are different ways to get inside the head of your customers (or prospective customers) and see what they think.

Remember, market research is not an exact science.

What works in one area, may not work in another. Likewise, you may need to run different surveys or workshop until you begin to see specific trends emerging, for example, the price may be too high for customers in different regions or the user interface may confuse customers and cause them to leave the site.

The over-arching goal is to learn more about your customers and how their spending habits , preferences and knowledge of your brand will impact your company’s Sales and Marketing strategy.

7 Stages of Successful Market Research

You can then use these forms, checklists, surveys, and questionnaires to complete the seven stages in the Market Research process:

  • Stage 1 – Why You Need a Market Research Plan
  • Stage 2 – Who are your Target Customers
  • Stage 3 – How To Get The Information You Need
  • Stage 4 – How Do You Collect Data How to Train Your Staff How to Make it Shareable How to Avoid Corrupt Data How to Design Questionnaires, Surveys and Polls
  • Stage 5 – Analyze Data
  • Stage 6 – Generate Report Findings Descriptive Data Analysis Inferential Data Analysis
  • Stage 7 – Choose Best Strategies

Market Research Budget

You can also use the budget section and Project Plan ( MS Excel template ) to capture the costs associated with the Market Research Plan. This helps you identify the budget amount allocated by category (e.g., milestone or cost categories).

MS Word Screenshots

Here are screenshots of the MS Word templates.

Standard cover page

Executive Summary to Market Research Plan

Instructions on how to write the Market Research Plan

Further details of the market research plan

Budget Plan

Market Research Project Plan

Market Survey Form

Excel Screenshots

Here are screenshots of the Excel templates.

Market Planning Checklist with conditional formatting

Competitor Assessment spreadsheets with different charts

Competitive Analysis spreadsheet

Feedback Form and Customer Ratings

Market Research Templates: Format & Content

Product specifications.

File Format : The templates are in  Microsoft Word   (.docx) and  Excel  format (.xlsx).

File Size:  The Download file is 2 MBs.

Opening the Files:  You don’t need any special software to unzip the files. To unzip the files, right click on it, then select  Extract , and save it to your computer.

Getting Started:  Depending on your MS Office settings, the files may say Read Only when you open them. If this occurs, click  File ,  Save As  and save the files. There are no security settings on any of the files.

Images:  All of the images in the templates are copyright free.

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The Ultimate Market Research Template

Understanding your market is essential for making strategic and informed decisions that help you innovate quickly. However, the process of getting started with market research can be overwhelming. This comprehensive market research template is meant to break the market research planning process down into simple, straightforward, step-by-step activities to yield valuable insights. We’ll guide you through the importance of a market research template below and demonstrate how to effectively use and customize the template to fit your unique needs.

The power of an effective Market Research Template

A market research template is a structured framework designed to guide you through the intricacies of your research project. It serves as a roadmap, ensuring you cover all the essential aspects of your market analysis. By using a template, you can save time, maintain consistency, and produce well-organized research that leads to actionable insights. It’s also great for collaborating with your team and cross-functional partners to keep key stakeholders aligned.

Introducing Sprint Valley’s Ultimate Market Research Template

Our market research template is thoughtfully crafted to cater to businesses of all sizes and industries. Whether you're a startup aiming to understand your target audience or an established company seeking to explore new opportunities, our template can be tailored to your requirements.

How to use and adapt our Market Research Template

Step 1: download the template.

To copy this template for use within your own teams, click “Use template” in the upper right corner of this page. This will create a new board for you to adopt, customize, and personalize for your needs and requirements.

Step 2: Create your research plan

Use the templates provided to start planning your market research project. The template is divided into three main sections that cover core aspects of market research. These sections include:

Vision: Clearly define the research objectives and goals of your research project.

Vision Setting: Define what success looks like.

Problem/Research Statement: Create a framework based on your vision.

Assumption Mapping: Identify questions most critical for your team to validate.

Focus Finding: Sort your assumptions and questions into categories.

Impact Board: Discuss key questions and prioritise the types of answers you seek.

Structure: Create a well-structured plan to gather valuable insights.

Audience: Identify who you need to reach with your research to get reliable insights.

Methods: Choose the appropriate methods, such as interviews, diary studies, and more.

Outputs: Create a plan for how you will report out on key research findings to make research insights actionable.

Data: Identify which data you will collect and how to keep it safe.

Plan: Set your plan in motion by determining the project partners and timeline.

Resourcing: Identify the support you need to be successful.

Timeline: Clarify the timeline you’ll follow to stay on track.

Action Plan: Agree on first steps to get started.

Our template is designed to be flexible. Tailor each section to match your specific research project. Add or remove sections as needed, ensuring the template aligns with your objectives.

Step 3: Design your research instruments

Craft appropriate research instruments, such as survey or interview questionnaires or specific stimulus like prototypes. Carefully align the questions with your objectives to gather relevant and insightful data.

Step 4: Conduct research and collect data

Execute the research plan by recruiting and engaging with the chosen participants.

Remember that as the researcher, you have an ethical responsibility to all research participants to ensure inclusive research that minimises bias and protects participants’ identity.

Step 5: Analyze and draw conclusions

Thoroughly analyze the collected data using appropriate qualitative and quantitative analysis methods, identifying patterns, trends, and correlations that enable you to draw meaningful and accurate conclusions.

Step 6: Generate actionable insights

Based on the conclusions, derive actionable insights that offer valuable recommendations or strategies for decision-making, addressing the research objectives and providing direction for potential improvements.

Step 7: Create your research report

Compile the research findings, insights, and conclusions into a well-structured and coherent deliverable according to the outputs you laid out in your research plan. This may be a traditional report or take a more immersive approach like a workshop, podcast or mini documentary. Incorporating visual graphs or charts, quotes, video clips and more can enhance the clarity and impact of your presentation.

Our customizable market research template is your key to unlocking valuable insights that drive business growth. By providing a structured framework for your next market research project, this template will help you get started on the right foot to streamline the entire process, from data collection to actionable recommendations. Download our template today, adapt it to your unique project, and harness the power of organized and effective market research.

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21 of the Best Free Google Sheets Templates for 2024

Caroline Forsey

Published: March 07, 2024

Google Sheets templates help you create better spreadsheets while saving you valuable time. And it’s no secret to anyone who knows me that I love a good formula to keep manual math to a minimum (and, therefore, data as accurate as possible).

best free google sheet templates

So, what do Google Sheets templates do? Short of reading minds, a template knows what you need and offers it with minimal manual input, giving you the ability to focus on more important things — like analyzing and translating the data itself.

In this post, I’m touching on the most important templates you’ll need to efficiently use Google Sheets for business — including templates for project management, reporting, people management, and customer tracking.

You’ll explore:

Why should you use Google Sheets templates for business?

How to find templates in google sheets.

  • Helpful Google Sheets Templates

Let’s get started.

Google Sheets templates are valuable business tools that can be used by teams of any size. Whether you’re a business just starting out or an established enterprise firm, using Google Sheets templates is highly beneficial.

Even if not a primary business tool, they can supplement other tools. For instance, you might use a free CRM to track customer information, then use a Google Sheets invoice template to quickly create invoices for each customer.

Let’s explore the top benefits of using Google Sheets templates for business.

Google Sheets templates are free to use.

Google Sheets templates are free and cover a wide variety of needs without forcing anyone to spend big bucks on a subscription to Excel or other platforms. When you sign up for a Google Workspace account, you get immediate access to these templates.

Google Sheets templates make collaboration easy.

What I love about Google Workspace and Google Sheets templates, in particular, is how they allow your team to collaborate seamlessly and easily. By clicking the “Share” button at the top right-hand corner of a document, you can give team members access to the file.

market research spreadsheet template

10 Free Google Sheets Templates

10 Google Sheets templates for your marketing, sales, and customer service needs.

  • Budget templates
  • Goal-setting templates
  • SEO and email templates
  • Sales KPI templates

You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

One of the most common ways to use spreadsheets is as a tool for bookkeeping and invoicing. Here are some of my favorite ready-to-go templates that save you time and make it easy to:

  • Invoice clients.
  • Maintain an annual business budget.
  • Generate financial statements.
  • Create expense reports.
  • Generate purchase reports.

Best of all? You don’t have to create or choose any formulas that will help you calculate this data.

1. Invoices

If you’re a freelancer or work for a small business, this invoice template simplifies the process of using invoices to bill clients for services.

It provides space for all the necessary information and looks more professional than a plain spreadsheet. Plus, the template is customizable, so you can create a theme that aligns well with your brand image.

Click here to use this template.

market research spreadsheet template

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Free Competitive Analysis Templates: Learn about Customers and Competitors to Grow Your Business

By Joe Weller | March 19, 2018

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When engaging in competitive analysis, you can use a template to consider and capture details of the marketing landscape in which your business exists in order to improve your marketing decisions. More importantly, these templates help you focus on gathering information on your competitive landscape and deducing business lessons from that data, rather than mulling over which factors you should study.

In this article, we cover what competitive analysis is, what a competitive analysis template should include, and where to look for information in your analysis. We also offer free, downloadable templates in Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Google Docs formats — all of these templates are customizable so you can include the particular information that’s relevant to your organization and analysis exercise. Find templates for the web, social media, small and general business analysis, and the presentation of your findings.

Competitive Analysis Templates for Web and Social Media Analysis

Competitive analysis report.

Competitive Analysis Report

If you are reviewing websites to understand usability and structure, you want to know what content sites have in common, what content is unique and interesting, and what common navigational features appear. Use this report to capture features of competitor websites, or adapt it to perform competitive analyses on other aspects of businesses.This template proves space to record details of search functionality and any other pertinent features.

‌ Download Competitive Analysis Report - WORD

Online Social Media Analysis Template

Online Strategy Competitive Analysis

To study social media strategy, you want a template that allows you to look for all the social media channels you and your competitors are engaged with. This template also helps you see how many followers each competitor garners, and prompts you to consider who the product target market includes and what the product branding entails.

Download Online Strategy Competitive Analysis Template

Excel  |  PDF

Competitive Analysis Template for Small Business

Small business competitive analysis template.

Small Business Competitive Analysis

When creating a competitive analysis for your small business, you want to conduct a thorough review of all facets of marketing. Start by determining who your competitors are, what you think you already know about them, and what you know about your own business. Next, describe target markets, products and pricing, media strategies, and perform a SWOT analysis.

Download Small Business Competitive Analysis Template

Word  |  PDF

Competitive Analysis Landscape Template

Competitive Analysis Landscape

In addition to the usual queries about business factors, you may also want a template that reminds you why you are conducting the analysis. Complete this template for your own company and then for your competitors.

Download Competitive Analysis Landscape Template

Excel  |  Word  |  PDF

Competitive Analysis Template for Evaluating Results vs. Unique Value Propositions

Value Proposition Comparative Analysis

By grading competitors on value proposition, content strategy, and funnel efficiency, you can derive an idea of how successful companies are in their marketing strategies. Use Excel formulas and your scores will automatically total and appear on a heat graph.

‌ Download Value Proposition Comparative Analysis

Approaches to the Presentation of Competitive Analysis Template Data

Particularly if you must present your findings to stakeholders throughout your company, certain additions can expedite conveying your message:

  • Define Your Target Audience for the Analysis Presentation: You can also create multiple presentations aimed at different audiences, such as a summary for executives and a PowerPoint for marketing, sales, and development.
  • Add Each Competitor’s Logo: This helps to differentiate among companies in the document and can convey significant information about each brand.
  • Show the Product: If you can, add images of the competitor’s products or images that convey the nature of their services.
  • Use High-Resolution Graphics: They heighten impact.
  • Consider the Company Description: Include the tagline, slogan, mission statement, and value proposition. In addition, discuss how companies position and describe themselves.
  • Keep Information Consistent: All competitors should be described with the same type of information and level of detail to avoid bias.
  • Look at the Good They Do: When reviewing competitor strengths and weaknesses, don’t just consider the weaknesses; think about what makes their customers happy.

Competitive Analysis Presentation Template

Competitive Analysis Presentation

Try the following PowerPoint template for company presentations. The template provides tips for explaining the purpose of an analysis to non-marketing team members and leaves room to discuss factors in the competitive landscape, environmental pressures, and much more.

‌ Download Competitive Analysis Presentation Template

Why Use Competitive Analysis?

Competitive analysis (CA) — sometimes called competitor analysis — is a vital process to help businesses stay on the cutting edge and anticipate market changes that they can use to their advantage. Competitive analyses, which should be conducted periodically, can help you strategize and plan for company growth by discovering opportunities and threats. From a media strategy perspective, the analysis of competitor collateral is essential for launching effective SEO-driven campaigns. SEO analysis reveals what keywords and approaches work, both for you and your competitors, and which campaigns should receive focus. Analyses also offer you a view into your company’s position in the competitive landscape.

Although in the context of marketing, the word “competitive” suggests focus on “the other” (i.e., the rival), many marketing gurus believe that the heart of any marketing activity begins with the customer. An analysis of competitors helps you to better serve customers. By understanding what customers think competitors do well, you can craft a value proposition for your own company that allows you to shine in the marketplace.

Jeffrey Wilke is the CEO of Worldwide Consumer at Amazon.com Inc. He  advocates , “First of all, I’m focused on customers and not competitors. Competitors’ strategy changes all the time. We don’t want to distract ourselves from customers by obsessing over what competitors are doing or not doing.”

Competitive analysis puts a spotlight on the strengths and weaknesses of competing organizations as well as your own. A detailed review helps uncover potential opportunities. Most significantly, though, you must actually use the collected data in your new campaign to reap the benefits. Otherwise, competitive analysis is just an exercise.

To summarize, competitive analysis enables your organization to do the following:

  • Reveal your company’s and your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses
  • Identify the path to opportunities for increased competitive advantage
  • Help the entire company to understand the competitive landscape
  • Contribute to defining your value proposition (that is, help you differentiate from competitors)
  • Inform strategic planning

The Parts of a Competitive Analysis Template

  • A competitive analysis template helps ensure that you store captured information. It can also ensure that analysis is consistent from year to year. Above all, using a template guarantees that your primary efforts are put toward gathering and evaluating information, not into deciding what criteria to study and how to format notes.

Templates may have a specific focus. For example, for online and social media strategy, a template may list all social media platforms and each company’s number of followers. CA templates generally include the following sections:

1. Company Information:

  • The overview and profile provide general information about your company and its competitors.
  • Profiled competitors are usually direct competitors: those who offer a comparable product or service in the same area. A review of indirect competitors (those who offer a slightly different product or service that could substitute for yours) provides clues to potential direct competition or new opportunities for your business.
  • Background information on a competitor may include the location of their head office, the number of employees, recent acquisitions, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings, and the names of key staff members.
  • This section also includes the company’s mission statement, slogan, tagline, and main value proposition.

2. Product Information:

  • The product and service portion of this section describes the products and services offered.
  • Pricing details include list prices for key products and services.
  • Distribution channel details include information about affiliates, retailers, and wholesalers.

3. Market Information:

The target market (personas) area of this section looks at collateral and social media to determine the competitor’s target audience. You can combine this information into customer personas . Target audience information prepares you for when customers leave your competitors.

  • Reviewing online presence is key today. Note all of your competitors’ social media channels and web pages. Also, document any other web pages where competitors are referenced.
  • Understanding the context of social media channels can help you grasp the essence of a target market. For example, LinkedIn is aimed at professionals.
  • Consider the brand messaging and tone on social media. Cultivate your company’s own voice.
  • Market share is expressed as a percentage of the business that the company owns. Some marketing specialists think that knowing competitor market share is unnecessary. They believe you should focus on your own market share.

4. SWOT Analysis :

  • SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Perform a SWOT analysis to identify what competitors are doing right, and what customers are complaining about. Also, you can assess how well a competitor is achieving their goals based on their apparent positioning. Use a competitor’s weaknesses to understand how you can fill gaps to make their customers your customers.

5. Competitive Advantage:

  • Competitive advantage boils down to why a customer likes them better. In other words, what’s unique about the product or service that draws customers?

How to Find Market Information to Complete Competitive Analysis Templates

Today’s digital world makes much of competitive analysis easier. Nevertheless, don’t discount the value of other paths to help you learn about your industry and niche. Visit competitor locations, talk to their customers, look at printed collateral (such as brochures, form mailers, trade shows, newsletters, and bulletins), and talk to your competitors. The following list includes some of the main methods for finding company information:

  • Google: Search with pertinent keywords.
  • LinkedIn: This site offers information on company size, locations, hiring, and key personnel.
  • Yahoo Finance: Check this for financial background on organizations.
  • AngelList: This resource lists startups, investors, and job openings at startups.
  • Crunchbase : This outlines new products and companies and their investments.
  • Alexa, SimilarWeb, and Other Online Tools: Use web search tools to find the traffic on keywords, backlinks, and more.
  • Hoover and Manta: Find organization financial and structural information.
  • SEC Filings: Peruse SEC corporate filings for key information about a company’s financial endeavors and financial health.
  • Purchased Data: Buy database collections of consumer and corporate data.
  • Website , YouTube, and Facebook Comments: Discover what users and customers really think about your products and services as well as those of your competitors.

Social Media and Web Research

Very few, if any, businesses can excel today without some social media presence. Consider these tips when reviewing social media strategy:

  • Brick-and-mortar establishments may be different from online competition.
  • Backlinks are pages that link to other businesses’ pages, but not yours. Backlink analysis helps you gain links to your page from important sites.
  • Keyword gap analysis highlights keywords you don’t currently have on your site that rank well for other competitors.
  • Consider the brand story, and note which social media channels the site supports.
  • Keep in mind that your actual product or service competitors may differ from your SEO competitors because of paid ads. It’s possible that the brick-and-mortar competitor is less important than the online competitor. For SEO research, survey domain authority, the keywords that attract traffic, and the amount of traffic for each of those keywords.

Improve Your Competitive Analysis with Work Management in Smartsheet

The best marketing teams know the importance of effective campaign management, consistent creative operations, and powerful event logistics -- and Smartsheet helps you deliver on all three so you can be more effective and achieve more. 

The Smartsheet platform makes it easy to plan, capture, manage, and report on work from anywhere, helping your team be more effective and get more done. Report on key metrics and get real-time visibility into work as it happens with roll-up reports, dashboards, and automated workflows built to keep your team connected and informed.

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10 Free Competitive Analysis Templates in Excel and ClickUp

Vivian Tejeda

ClickUp Contributor

February 13, 2024

The world moves fast. And chances are, so does your competition. 

What’s a team that wants to stay competitive to do? That’s right. You probably know what I’m about to say.

One of the best ways to know what your next best step should be is to work through a competitive analysis. This ensures that you are taking a holistic view of your market and the competitors in it.

To help you with this, check out the list of 10 free competitive analysis templates for Excel and ClickUp. These templates make it simple to track, compare, and learn from your competitors , giving you the edge you need to be the best. 🥇

But first, of course, let’s start with a clear definition.

What makes a good competitive analysis template?

1. clickup competitive analysis template, 2. clickup competitive analysis pricing template, 3. clickup competitive tracking template, 4. clickup competitive market analysis template, 5. clickup seo competitor analysis template, 6. clickup comparison matrix template, 7. clickup product features matrix template, 8. clickup comparative market template, 9. template.net competitive analysis template excel, 10. slideteam powerpoint competitive analysis template, benefits of using a detailed competitive analysis template.

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What is a Competitive Analysis Template?

A competitive analysis template is a ready-to-use document, spreadsheet, slide deck, or task list that’s designed to help you gather and analyze information about your competitors.

By looking at the different aspects of another business—like products, funding, market share, pricing, and marketing strategies—a competitive analysis template lets you record insightful information. These templates provide board members, leadership teams, or individual contributors with a sortable and easy-to-digest report on your competitors.

This valuable knowledge then helps you make better decisions and plan your own business strategies around your competition.

A good competitive analysis template is clear, easy to use, and comprehensive. It should include relevant categories and fields that allow you to collect and compare information and gather the pros and cons of your competitors. 

A useful template should be adaptable to your specific industry and your target audience. It’s always a plus when your competitive analysis is visually appealing , though that’s not necessarily a requirement. 

You do want to make sure your analysis is organized and that’s where a template saves you tons of time. Ultimately, a high-quality competitive analysis template lets you gain valuable insights into your competition and supports informed decision-making for your business’s growth and success.

10 Free Competitive Analysis Templates

Competitive analysis is valuable for businesses looking to get ahead in their industry and learn about their direct competitors. By using these free Excel and ClickUp templates, you’ll be on your way to understanding your competition and making smarter decisions that boost your business.

Here’s a list of some of our best competitive analysis templates to start using today.

ClickUp Competitive Analysis Template

Try out ClickUp’s Competitive Analysis Whiteboard Template ! The elements can be freely added, modified, and positioned in this interactive view. Based on your set metric, each quadrant depicts how each element performs. It even includes a legend for each quadrant. 

Use this comprehensive template to stay informed about their competitors’ strengths, weaknesses, and strategies. It’s also possible to identify areas where teams excel and areas for improvement by tracking key metrics, such as market share and product offerings. 

For example, the marketing team could use this template to compare social media engagement between competitors.

ClickUp Competitive Analysis Pricing Template

With two statuses and one view, this analysis template helps you investigate your main competitors to learn more about their goods, sales, and marketing strategies as a way to gain market share. 

Use ClickUp’s Competitive Analysis Pricing Template to make data-driven decisions about your own pricing models, ensuring you remain competitive while maximizing profit. A retail business, for example, could monitor competitors’ discounts and promotions to optimize its own pricing strategy.

ClickUp Competitive Tracking Template

Track your competitor’s products! 

With ClickUp’s Competitive Tracking Template , teams monitor competitors’ activities and progress over time. By staying up-to-date on competitors’ product launches, marketing campaigns, and customer feedback, adapting their strategies to stay ahead becomes that much easier. 

Once you create it as a shared doc, the whole team is able to stay informed on what products are currently out there. For example, a software development team might track rival software updates to ensure their product is able to compete.

ClickUp Competitive Market Analysis Template

How well does your product measure up in the market? Try a competitor analysis complete with matrices that help you visualize where you stand in the market.

The Competitive Market Analysis Template is designed to help teams spot trends and use the information to come up with innovative products or services. A startup, for example, might use this template to identify an underserved customer segment and create a targeted offering. It’s also important to detail your direct and indirect competitors.

ClickUp SEO Competitor Analysis Template

Organically ranking in search engine results pages is one of the most cost-effective ways to gather leads, build brand awareness, and grow your market share! 

Try ClickUp’s SEO Competitor Analysis Template out to improve your own SEO efforts and drive more organic traffic to your product website. A content marketing team could use this template to identify high-performing keywords and create engaging SEO-friendly content—giving you a competitive advantage.

This way, you ensure your keyword strategy is organized and you keep track of all of your content creation efforts in one place for all your SWOT analysis .

ClickUp Comparison Matrix Template

ClickUp’s Comparison Matrix Template enables teams to compare multiple competitors across various factors in a visually appealing matrix format for detailed SWOT analysis.

Maybe you need to compare multiple competitors across a handful of factors in a way that’s visually appealing and easy to digest. If so, the ClickUp Comparison Matrix is the perfect template for you. 

Make informed strategic decisions by identifying competitor weaknesses. For example, a sales team might use this template to identify areas where their product outshines the competition , allowing them to emphasize those features during sales pitches.

Check out these product comparison templates !

ClickUp Product Features Matrix Template

This Product Features Matrix Template by ClickUp helps teams compare their products or services with those of their competitors. By highlighting key features, benefits, and pricing, teams can better understand their position in the market and make necessary adjustments. 

A software company, for example, could use this template to compare the features and functionality of competing applications. This gives you a competitive advantage across your direct and indirect competitors so you better identify market trends.

If you’re looking for more examples, check out our list of the best Matrix templates !

ClickUp Comparative Market Template

ClickUp’s Comparative Market Analysis Template is designed to compare the performance of various products, services, or strategies against predetermined criteria for the ultimate competitor analysis.

Use this information to identify your competitive advantage and the most effective approaches and make data-driven decisions. A product development team could use this template to evaluate and compare prototype designs before selecting the final version.

Additionally, a Comparative Market Analysis (CMA) template is helpful for tasks like determining a house’s value using recently sold, comparable properties.

Template.net Competitive Analysis Report Radar Chart Template

This Excel-based template from Template.net offers a familiar and easily customizable format for teams looking to analyze their competition. By tracking competitors’ data in Excel, teams use built-in features like charts and pivot tables to visualize and analyze their findings. 

A finance team might use this template to compare key financial metrics of competitors, such as revenue growth or profit margins. But that’s only one example— keep in mind that Excel is flexible . 

SlideTeam competitive analysis template

This PowerPoint competitive analysis template helps teams present their target market findings in a visually appealing and digestible format. 

By transforming raw data into engaging presentations, teams communicate their insights with much more clarity. A management team, for example, could use this template to showcase the competitive landscape during a strategic planning meeting without spending hours in front of a computer creating a presentation from scratch.

Related: Balanced Scorecard Templates

What’s so great about running a competitive analysis as part of your greater business strategy? 

You learn a lot more about your market

Competitor analysis helps teams understand their industry and target market better. This knowledge equips them with the information they need to come up with a strong plan of action. 

For example—through a competitive analysis—a software company might identify trends in customer preferences, helping them align their product with the demands of the market. 🎯

It uncovers better opportunities for your business

By examining competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, teams uncover potential opportunities for growth and expansion . This process may reveal gaps in competitors’ offerings , which means you’ve just uncovered a chance to introduce a unique solution. 

ClickUp Gap Analysis Template

For instance, a fitness app developer could discover that rivals lack comprehensive nutrition tracking, thus deciding to incorporate this feature into their app and highlight it as a feature that sets them apart. 

It can drive the quality of your products or business strategies

Teams analyzing competitors’ products and services refine their own offerings and set themselves apart. Why is this? Studying competitors enables them to identify best practices and innovative features. From there, it’s just a question of adding them to your own products. 

 A clothing retailer, for example, might observe that a competitor offers personalized style recommendations through a style quiz and decides to implement a similar experience to enhance their customers’ experience. 

Knowing your competition’s strategies and tactics gives you an edge, no doubt. Gaining insights from competitive landscape templates allows teams to develop better strategies across multiple aspects of their business. 

By understanding the competitive landscape, teams make more informed decisions on marketing, product development, pricing, and customer engagement. Strategies around customer engagement, sales and distribution, and even marketing and advertising are all improvable with a thorough competitive analysis.

You create more informed goals and benchmarks

With a competitive analysis template in tow, teams have an easier time benchmarking their performance against current market standards. The comparative nature of a competitive analysis allows teams to set realistic goals and measure progress against those goals. 

As an example, a digital marketing agency could evaluate its competitors’ client retention rates and set targets to surpass them, ultimately driving business growth. 📈

Where is your brand positioning in relation to your competitors and your overall target audience? It’s a critical question that a competitive analysis helps you answer clearly. By understanding the unique selling points of competing brands, teams are able to emphasize their own strengths and develop a compelling brand identity. 

For example, an eco-friendly cosmetic company could highlight its sustainable practices and natural ingredients to differentiate itself from rivals after finding out that no one else in the cosmetic industry is using this angle. 

Anticipate Your Competitor’s Moves

Analyzing competitors helps teams anticipate their moves and stay ahead of the game. The thing about competitive analysis is that it helps teams uncover patterns and potential opportunities. 

This helps teams prepare for potential challenges that may lie ahead, or it may inform how they’ll run their marketing campaigns for Q4. The main benefit of a competitive analysis lies in the seemingly endless possibilities in terms of what you can do with the data you uncover. 

Let’s say you’re a marketing team at a beverage company. You notice a trend toward low-sugar alternatives and develop new product lines just in time for the holiday season, staying ahead of the competition. 

Identify potential partnerships and collaborations

Who doesn’t love mutually beneficial relationships? Competitor analysis templates may reveal opportunities for collaboration with other companies in your industry. 

A competitive analysis framework uncovers competitor strengths that complement your own. For instance, a tech startup specializing in AI-driven analytics could partner with a larger company offering complementary services like B2B data delivery, ultimately expanding its reach and improving its offerings. 🤝

Enhance The Customer Experience

By understanding the strengths and weaknesses of competitors, teams first have to identify areas of improvement to then be able to enhance the customer experience.  

For example, a product team for a subscription box service might learn that competitors have more efficient shipping processes, prompting them to streamline their own logistics to ensure timely deliveries and satisfied customers. 

Track Competitors with Competitive Analysis Templates

Competitive analysis is a crucial tool for any business looking to stay ahead of the game. By using one of these 10 templates, you get major insights into your competition and the market, allowing you to make more informed decisions about your own products and services.

There’s nothing more valuable than information about your direct competitors, so why not get tracking to get that competitive advantage?

Start identifying areas for improvement and growth, capitalize on new opportunities, and ultimately achieve greater success. So if you haven’t already, consider incorporating these competitive analysis templates into your business strategy—your bottom line will thank you.

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Keyword Research Templates

market research spreadsheet template

Last Updated on October 31, 2022 by Jake Sheridan

Using Google Sheets and keyword research for SEO go hand in hand.

I actually like keyword research. Picking the right terms and watching them jump up the rankings. #SAD

What I don’t like is finding them. It takes too long and there’s too much clicking and copy and pasting involved. Do what I do: supercharge your keyword research (and rank tracking) with these free keyword analysis templates.

Google Sheets Keyword Research Templates

Checkout these Google Sheets Keywords Templates:

Keyword Gap Analysis

market research spreadsheet template

Grab the sheet

Quick Win Keyword Finder

market research spreadsheet template

Search Volume Estimator [for adult keywords]

market research spreadsheet template

Keyword-Level Data

market research spreadsheet template

Bulk Search Volume Checker

market research spreadsheet template

GooberSuggest Keyword Research Tool

market research spreadsheet template

Keyword Cannibalization Finder

market research spreadsheet template

Keyword Cannibalization Checker

market research spreadsheet template

Keyword Ranking Difficulty & Opportunity Finder

market research spreadsheet template

Bulk Free Keyword Position Checker

Keyword research tool [google autocomplete api].

market research spreadsheet template

Keyword Rank Checker

market research spreadsheet template

Google ‘Q&A’ Extraction

market research spreadsheet template

Keyword Traffic Estimator

market research spreadsheet template

Quick Keyword Classifier

market research spreadsheet template

Automated Keyword Research Tool

market research spreadsheet template

Google Search Console Rank Tracker

market research spreadsheet template

Keyword Tracking Sheet (Sistrix API)

market research spreadsheet template

Keyword Research Spreadsheets for Marketers & SEOs 🔥

Think I’ve missed a Google Sheets Keywords Template? Or maybe you’ve built something yourself that isn’t on the list? Just let me know and I’ll add it.

‼️ I did not make these templates, I only collected them & presented them here. The creators are the ones linked to. Again, I do not own (or claim to) any of these sheets. ‼️

Don’t forget to go check out the other Google Sheets Templates →

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Anyone who has worked in the field of marketing must have come across the term market research at least once! The marketing department of a certain company carries out market research analysis at regular intervals to find out about market trends, ups and downs, and other factors that could affect your company.

market research spreadsheet template

Marketing Research Gantt Chart Template

marketing research gantt chart template

Marketing Research Mind Map Template

marketing research mind map template

  • Google Docs
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Market Research Report Template

mareke research

  • Apple Pages

Editable Cost Analysis of Market Research Method

editable cost analysis of market research method

Monthly Marketing Report Template

marketing report template

Why go for Marketing Research Templates?

Editable market survey template.

editable market survey template

Printable Marketing Research Proposal Template

printable marketing research proposal template

Free Printable Market Research Template

market research template

Free Simple Market Analysis Template

market analysis template

Free Marketing Campaign Sample Template

marketing campaign template

Free Statics for Marketing Research Template

statics for marketing research

  • Word (2003 or higher)

Uses of Marketing Research Templates:

  • A marketing research template is one of the great ways in which one can study the trends of the market.
  • Such marketing research builds the very foundation of marketing. You can also see Marketing Strategy Templates.

Free Marketing Research Student Data Template

marketing research student data

  • Excel (2003 or higher)

Free Market Research Report Template

market research report template

Free Market Research Progress Report Template

market research progress report

Tips for using Marketing Research Templates

  • Choose a marketing research formal template that is both easy to use and understand.
  • Look up customizable marketing research templates online.

Free DSCA Market Research Guide Template

dsca market research guide

> We are here to help!

General faqs, 1. what is meant by market research, 2. what is marketing process, 3. how can you develop a market research plan.

  • Outline Your Plans and Objectives
  • Develop an Overall Research Plan
  • Gather and Analyze Information
  • Present the Findings
  • Use the Findings to Make a Decision

4. What is the Importance of Marketing Research?

5. what are the different types of market research.

  • Market Segmentation
  • Product Testing
  • Advertising Testing
  • Brand Awareness and Reach
  • Satisfaction and Loyalty Analysis
  • Pricing Research
  • Data Collection

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Access our collection of user-friendly templates for business planning, finance, sales, marketing, and management, designed to assist you in developing strategies for either launching a new business venture or expanding an existing one.

You can use the templates below as a starting point to create your startup business plan or map out how you will expand your existing business. Then meet with a  SCORE mentor to get expert business planning advice and feedback on your business plan.

If writing a full business plan seems overwhelming, start with a one-page Business Model Canvas. Developed by Founder and CEO of Strategyzer, Alexander Osterwalder, it can be used to easily document your business concept.

Download this template to fill out the nine squares focusing on the different building blocks of any business:

  • Value Proposition
  • Customer Segments
  • Customer Relationships
  • Key Activities
  • Key Resources
  • Key Partners
  • Cost Structure
  • Revenue Streams

For help completing the Business Model Canvas Template, contact a SCORE business mentor for guidance

From creating a startup budget to managing cash flow for a growing business, keeping tabs on your business’s finances is essential to success. The templates below will help you monitor and manage your business’s financial situation, create financial projections and seek financing to start or grow your business.

This interactive calculator allows you to provide inputs and see a full estimated repayment schedule to plan your capital needs and cash flow.

A 12-month profit and loss projection, also known as an income statement or statement of earnings, provides a detailed overview of your financial performance over a one-year period. This projection helps you anticipate future financial outcomes by estimating monthly income and expenses, which facilitates informed decision-making and strategic planning. 

If you’re trying to get a loan from a bank, they may ask you for a personal financial statement. You can use this free, downloadable template to document your assets, liabilities and net worth. 

A Personal Financial Statement is a

Marketing helps your business build brand awareness, attract customers and create customer loyalty. Use these templates to forecast sales, develop your marketing strategy and map out your marketing budget and plan.

How healthy is your business? Are you missing out on potential growth opportunities or ignoring areas of weakness? Do you need to hire employees to reach your goals? The following templates will help you assess the state of your business and accomplish important management tasks.

Whether you are starting your business or established and looking to grow, our Business Healthcheck Tool will provide practical information and guidance.

Learn how having a SCORE mentor can be a valuable asset for your business. A SCORE mentor can provide guidance and support in various areas of business, including finance, marketing, and strategy. They can help you navigate challenges and make important decisions based on their expertise and experience. By seeking out a SCORE mentor, you can gain the guidance and support you need to help grow your business and achieve success.

SCORE offers free business mentoring to anyone that wants to start, currently owns, or is planning to close or sell a small business. To initiate the process, input your zip code in the designated area below. Then, complete the mentoring request form on the following page, including as much information as possible about your business. This information is used to match you with a mentor in your area. After submitting the request, you will receive an email from your mentor to arrange your first mentoring session.

Copyright © 2024 SCORE Association, SCORE.org

Funded, in part, through a Cooperative Agreement with the U.S. Small Business Administration. All opinions, and/or recommendations expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the SBA.

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  3. Market Research Excel Spreadsheet for Business Plan Templates 40Page Ms

    market research spreadsheet template

  4. Market Research Excel Spreadsheet

    market research spreadsheet template

  5. Competitive Analysis Templates

    market research spreadsheet template

  6. Competitive Analysis Templates

    market research spreadsheet template

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  1. 8 Market Analysis Templates: Step-by-Step Guide + Examples

    Competitive analysis. This template helps to systematically evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of competitors. It provides a structured approach to research, and it analyzes its products, services, target market, marketing strategies, and financial performance. 6. Marketing SWOT analysis.

  2. Market Research: A How-To Guide and Template

    Download HubSpot's free, editable market research report template here. 1. Five Forces Analysis Template. Use Porter's Five Forces Model to understand an industry by analyzing five different criteria and how high the power, threat, or rivalry in each area is — here are the five criteria: Competitive rivalry.

  3. Market Research Templates: What They Are and How to Use Them

    Market research is the process of determining the viability of a new service or product through surveys and questionnaires with prospects and/or customers. It involves gathering information about market needs and prospect/customer preferences. Through market research, you can discover and/or refine your target market, get opinions and feedback ...

  4. 8 Essential Market Research Templates (free)

    8 Templates to Plan & Organize Your Market Research. Market research (or marketing research) helps you deeply understand your customers and target market. It's a group of activities that will uncover insights you can use to create better products and improve your marketing. These templates will help you organize every part of your market ...

  5. 10 Best Market Research Templates in Word & ClickUp

    9. Word Market Research Plan Template by FlexMR. Plan out your market research step by step with the Word Market Research Plan Template by FlexMR. If you're looking for a structured framework to streamline market research, the Word Market Research Plan Template by FlexMR is a handy solution.

  6. 6 Free Market Research Templates & Guides

    Market research templates save time and give clarity about what should and shouldn't be included in any type of market research. These days, doing regular market research is key. Particularly given how quickly consumer behaviors shift and companies change tactics to keep up with the ever-growing number of competitors in their industry.

  7. Market research template: DIY guide, tips and examples

    Here's what that'll look like for your target audience: An example of what your target customers might see if they take part in your research through the Attest platform. Get started with your DIY market research templates - our free template could be the key to unlocking your next successful product or service.

  8. The Ultimate Guide to Market Research [+Free Templates]

    The Ultimate Guide to Market Research [+Free Templates] A comprehensive guide on Market Research with tools, examples of brands winning with research, and templates for surveys, focus groups + presentation template. R. By Rakefet Yacoby From. N. Edited by Natalie Stenge. Updated February 26, 2024.

  9. How to Write a Market Analysis: Guidelines & Templates

    8. Market Share. Build your market analysis and share relevant information about market segments, market share, size and opportunities using this beautiful template. The template will help inform your business plan and strategy and communicate the size of the opportunity to potential investors.

  10. 9 Market Research Tutorials [MS Word/ExcelTemplates]

    14 Free Excel Templates: including Brand Loyalty Survey, Competitor Analysis, Demographic Comparison, Demographic Profile, Industry Analysis Checklist, Market Planning Checklist, Cost Analysis, Market Research Spreadsheet, Market Survey. Download Now for only 14.99! Learn more about these Market Research Templates. MS Word Screenshots

  11. Market Research Templates & Examples

    Kano Model Template. UX Project Canvas Template. Go-to-Market Strategy Template. Supply and Demand Graph Template. Lean UX Canvas Template. Prune the Product Tree Template. App Wireframe Template. Likert Scale Template. Customer Problem Statement Template.

  12. 19 Best Free Marketing & Sales Templates for Microsoft Excel

    Excel Marketing Budget Templates. Marketing Dashboard for Excel. Excel Monthly Marketing Reporting Template. SMART Goal Excel Marketing Template. Excel On-Page SEO Template. Google Ads Campaign Excel Tracker. Excel Lead Tracker Template. Excel Sales Conversion and Close Rate Calculator. Excel KPI Dashboard Template.

  13. Market Research Report Examples For Your Analysis Results

    1. Market Research Report: Brand Analysis. Our first example shares the results of a brand study. To do so, a survey has been performed on a sample of 1333 people, information that we can see in detail on the left side of the board, summarizing the gender, age groups, and geolocation. **click to enlarge**.

  14. Free Market Research Templates For Google Sheets And Microsoft Excel

    Business Market Research Form. View our free and editable Market research templates for Excel or Google Sheets. These Market research spreadsheet templates are easy to modify and you can customize the design, the header, table, formulas to suit your needs. Download now to finish your work in minutes.

  15. Market Research Templates

    Market Research Brief Template (6 pages) Use this document to brief Consultants on your Market Research requirements. 14 Free Excel Templates: including Brand Loyalty Survey, Competitor Analysis , Demographic Comparison, Demographic Profile, Industry Analysis Checklist, Market Planning Checklist, Cost Analysis, Market Research Spreadsheet ...

  16. The Ultimate Market Research Template

    A market research template is a structured framework designed to guide you through the intricacies of your research project. It serves as a roadmap, ensuring you cover all the essential aspects of your market analysis. By using a template, you can save time, maintain consistency, and produce well-organized research that leads to actionable ...

  17. 30 Free Market Analysis Templates (Examples)

    Step 1-Market description. This is your starting point and should detail the type of market that you are operating in. It should include things such as what your target market is, its demographics, purchasing behavior, needs, and so on. You should also consider the size of your market in order to determine its profitability.

  18. 21 of the Best Free Google Sheets Templates for 2024

    Image Source. 2. Add-Ons. Another way to find free templates in Google Sheets is to download and install the Vertex42 add-on. Here's how. Open an existing Google sheet, or type " sheets.new " into your address bar to create a new one. On the top left menu, go to Extensions, then Add-ons, then Get add-ons. Image Source.

  19. Free Competitive Analysis Templates

    Competitive Analysis Template for Evaluating Results vs. Unique Value Propositions. By grading competitors on value proposition, content strategy, and funnel efficiency, you can derive an idea of how successful companies are in their marketing strategies. Use Excel formulas and your scores will automatically total and appear on a heat graph.

  20. 10 Free Competitive Analysis Templates in Excel & ClickUp

    Here's a list of some of our best competitive analysis templates to start using today. 1. ClickUp Competitive Analysis Template. ClickUp Competitive Analysis Template. Try out ClickUp's Competitive Analysis Whiteboard Template! The elements can be freely added, modified, and positioned in this interactive view.

  21. Market Research Template Excel

    Excel, a widely used spreadsheet software, offers various templates tailored for market research, simplifying the data collection and analysis process. Here are some benefits of using Excel ...

  22. Keyword Research Templates & Tools in Google Sheets

    Google Search Console Rank Tracker. This free rank tracking template uses data from the Search Console API and tracks, stores and visualises it within Google Sheets. This (beautiful looking) dashboard give you a grossing keyword overview, daily ranking trend tables and ranking distribution charts. Grab the sheet.

  23. 15+ Marketing Research Templates -Word, Excel, PDF, Docs

    Free Printable Market Research Template. is.muni.cz. Details. File Format. PDF. Size: 1.1 MB. Download Now. Market research and marketing research, although similar, are slightly different in meaning. The former is a study of the market and market trends.

  24. Business Planning & Financial Statements Template Gallery

    Download this financial projections template to calculate your small business expenses, sales forecast, cash flow, income statement, break-even analysis & more. Startup Expenses. Navigate your startup's financial planning with SCORE's Startup Expenses template. Opening Day Balance Sheet.