Market Research - Without the Cost

Marketing research comes in handy at many points during the eBusiness lifecycle: when contemplating a new business venture; introducing a new product; identifying potential customers, etc. In-depth research performed by one of the many market research companies is a fast way to use up your marketing budget if you are a small business. Are there any alternatives? Of course. The Internet is a wealth of information, and while the market information you get for free or inexpensively is not as focused or detailed as you might get with the professional consultants, it usually suffices for many on a small budget. So where does one find this information online? Let’s look at a few sites:
* Yahoo! Web Statistics

Check Yahoo at http://dir.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Internet/World_Wide_Web/Statistics_and_Demographics/ for links to good sites and surveys pertaining to the web and Internet.

* AdAge Magazine Online

Look at http://www.adage.com/datacenter.cms for leading ad spending estimates, media rankings, ad agencies, and salary surveys.

* NUA Internet Surveys

Surveys and news clippings from various categories related to the Internet.

* Email Marketing Case Studies

Go to http://www.clickz.com/em_mkt/case_studies/ and take a look at these case studies by Heidi Anderson. Real companies, real cases, real results.

* Esearch General Case Studies

This sites available studies are somewhat dated, but can still be useful as a general guideline. Studies include: Online Investing; Online Auctions; Children Online, etc.

* Ecommerce Guide

This site at http://ecommerce.internet.com/ is a great general online resource. The articles provide insight into what is happening with ecommerce right now. Recent articles as of this writing are: “Dot-Com Sales Lower This Year”, “Amazon Sales Jump 21%”, and “Payment Made Easy (online merchant accounts)”.

* Big Picture Cyberatlas Statistics Toolbox

This site (http://cyberatlas.internet.com/big_picture/stats_toolbox/article) has recent stats on Internet usage, ecommerce, demographics, advertising, and more. This is a real treasure trove of valuable data. Here are some of the reports you can find here: “Top US ISPs by Subscriber”; “Online Populations”; “Hispanic Ownership of Selected Home Media Technologies”; “Lycos Top 50 sites for the week ending June 29, 2002”; “Surfer Traffic, May 2001 to May 2002”; “Newspaper Site Traffic”; “2001 Worldwide PDA Shipments”. As you can see, there is tons of information here that can help you plan a marketing campaign, or roll out a new product or service.

* eMarketer.com

This site provides excellent reports, but alas they are not free. However, for a reasonable price you can get highly focused and detailed reports for any segment and topic you are interested in…check it out.

This is just a quick list to get you started. You can always do a Google search on ‘market research’ or ‘statistics ’. By the way, many of the links mentioned in this article can be found on our Resources page at http://www.profitmonkey.com/resources.html