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Market analysis templates

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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.

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

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Discover, Analyze, Succeed: 10 Best Market Research Templates

Praburam Srinivasan

Growth Marketing Manager

February 13, 2024

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When promoting your products or launching new ones, it’s essential to understand the market, size up your competition, and have a crystal-clear picture of what your customers want. Once you’ve got that insight, you’re ready to set the stage with a marketing plan .

Market research might sound intimidating, considering the laborious process of collecting and analyzing data. But don’t fret—market research templates swoop in to save the day. They provide a structured roadmap that covers all the vital market research steps, from pinpointing your objectives to gathering and interpreting the data. 🗺️

Come along as we delve into the top 10 free market research templates . We’ll walk you through their unique features, making it a breeze to pick the perfect template that suits your needs.

• What Is a Market Research Template? 

What Are the Key Components of a Market Research Template?

1. clickup market research template, 2. clickup market analysis template, 3. clickup business plan template, 4. clickup business development plan template, 5. clickup new product development template, 6. clickup product positioning template, 7. clickup competitive analysis template, 8. clickup customer journey map template, 9. word market research plan template by flexmr, 10. word general market survey template by businessinabox.

What Is a Market Research Template?

Market research is a vast, often time-consuming process that involves gathering essential information about a target market through surveys, interviews, and focus groups. It’s crucial for anticipating trends and maintaining a competitive edge over your rivals.

A market research template is a pre-designed framework to bring structure to your research processes. It comes with questions and fields for collecting data relevant to specific markets or objectives.

It simplifies the whole exercise by providing a standard format that you can customize to align with your research goals.

Market research templates help you:

• Save time designing and planning your research project
• Save money by removing the need for external research firms
• Ensure consistency in data collection, analysis, and reporting

A market research template is like a recipe for conducting research. It tells you what you need and how to use it. Here are the key components you can find in this template:

• Research objectives : Clearly defined goals of the research project
• Data collection methods : Specific methods and tools for gathering information, such as surveys, interviews, or observations
• Research questions : A set of well-crafted questions to address the research objectives
• Sample selection : Guidelines for choosing the right target audience or sample group
• Data analysis : Instructions on how the gathered data will be analyzed and interpreted
• Reporting : A format for summarizing and presenting the research findings
• Timeline : A schedule that outlines when you will conduct each research activity
• Budget : Estimated costs associated with the research project
• Contact information : Details of the individuals or teams responsible for the research

10 Best Market Research Templates

We’ve handpicked the most innovative market research templates from Word and ClickUp to help you discover, gather, and analyze data effortlessly. Now, let’s see what makes them stand out! 💖

Market research is your first ally when you want to enhance your brand management and gain insights into your competitors’ strategies. With the ClickUp Market Research Template , you get a user-friendly tool that simplifies the task of gathering and presenting crucial information about your target audience, the state of your product or service, and the broader industry landscape. 🌄

This Task template takes you through the ins and outs of research, covering your approach, data collection techniques, and the valuable insights you’ve gathered from your current or potential customers through Custom Fields.

Adapt the fields to document any information you see fit—add data links and attachments, or choose a research stage like Design , Preparation , and Execution .

Each task comes with a to-do subtask list to keep a record of research steps, like defining a research scope and setting up a research team. The assignees can use it to monitor each subtask’s progress through Custom Statuses like Open, Under Review, or Closed.

If you’re curious about where your product stands among its competitors, look no further than the ClickUp Market Analysis Template . This tool assists you in identifying and assessing key market trends, gaining insights into customer needs, and examining competitor strategies and performances. ♟️

This extensive market research template sorts competitors into five main types: direct , indirect , potential , future , and replacement (for competitors offering a substitute product).

Use the Growth Share Whiteboard view to evaluate competitor products and decide where to invest your resources. Simply pick the competitor type from the legend, create a sticky note of the corresponding color, and place it on the desired spot. Use the horizontal Quality axis to measure the competitor’s Relative Market Share and the Y-axis to measure their Growth Rate.

The Price vs. Quality Whiteboard view functions similarly, but this time, you’re using a matrix to measure the relation between product quality and price. It gives you a visual grasp of your competitors’ pricing strategy, helping you tactically position your product in the market.

The Competitors List view is your central hub for competitor information, neatly categorized by analysis status like Direct , Indirect , or Potential . Additionally, leverage the Advertisements Board view to see your competitors’ promotional strategies.

Replace traditional, lengthy business plan documents with the ClickUp Business Plan Template and speed up the process. It’s a comprehensive toolkit for documenting every aspect of your business plan and streamlining the drafting process to ensure it’s polished on time. ⏰

This one-page Doc template is neatly divided into several key sections:

• Company description : Provides a company overview, your mission, and vision
• Market analysis : Explains the problem you’re solving, its solution, and the target market
• Sales and marketing strategy : Outlines products and marketing plans
• Operational plan : Covers aspects like your location, equipment, and financial forecasts
• Milestones and metrics : Displays targets and KPIs

Customize the template with your brand logo and contact information. Each section comes with helpful prompts suggesting how to present your data—through bullet lists, pictures, charts, or tables.

Open the Topics List view to see all the sections and subsections included in the comprehensive market research Doc, allowing you to assign them to team members, set due dates, and attach relevant documents.

To track task statuses, switch to the Status Board view and categorize them as To Do, In Progress, Needs Revision, or Complete. Open the Timeline view to monitor potential plan deviations.

Expanding or starting a business is like embarking on an adventure of challenges and surprises. However, a carefully laid-out plan can make this journey much more manageable.

No need to start from scratch, though! Introducing the ClickUp Business Development Plan Template —your business roadmap, equipped with pre-designed sections that will lead you through the entire process, making your path to success smoother. 🛤️

Whether you’re a startup or a growing business, this template offers handy Doc pages to help you document the following:

• Executive summary : For providing an overview of the business you’re growing, outlining the issues you’re addressing, and suggesting solutions
• Key people : For explaining who’s on the executive team and what each person does
• Operations : Lists your business locations and employee count. You can outline the cost of equipment and facilities and map out manufacturing processes on a Whiteboard
• Marketing : Enables sharing the market’s history and growth to foresee potential opportunities, decide on the target audience, and analyze the competitor’s strengths and weaknesses
• Financial plan : Gives an estimate of your cash flow and balance sheet, identifying the revenue point where you break even

Of the market research templates in this list, the one comes with ready-made tables and sheets with guidelines on how to fill them in. Feel free to customize any template section to match your business requirements.

Or you can include images to illustrate your plan, add or remove rows, choose your preferred color pallet, and rename the pages to make them your own—all within the target market research template.

Unlocking the path to a successful product launch boils down to one word: preparation. And guess what? The ClickUp New Product Development Template has got your back! 🙌

This comprehensive market research template streamlines the product development process , ensures alignment between your team and milestones, and keeps all tasks organized for seamless collaboration. All this is possible through Custom Fields, allowing you to explore your project from various viewpoints.

The Project Summary List view neatly organizes your tasks by their project phase , from Idea Generation to Product Launch , making it a breeze to track your progress. The list also clearly displays details like Task Complexity and Impact Level through Custom Fields that you can tailor to your needs.

To observe your tasks like a hawk, open the Process Kanban Board view , which turns tasks into cards and groups them by their phases. It’s your go-to spot to quickly identify which tasks are in the pipeline from conceptualization to launch.

Use the Timeline view for a linear display of your tasks, grouped by the teams working on them and color-coded by phase. This view allows you to efficiently monitor your task schedules and durations by giving you control over your workflow!

You can drag a task to reschedule or tweak its duration by dragging its edges.

Your product’s value directly reflects what your customers think, right? That’s why it’s crucial to figure out where your product slots into the marketplace and how you want your customers to perceive it .

Discover the perfect shortcut to those answers—the ClickUp Product Positioning Template —to implement into your business strategy. This tool helps you better understand your product and find that ideal niche in your target market.

Start by evaluating the product you want to launch in the Product Positioning Assessment view , with pre-made fields like:

• Product name and description
• Market segment
• Target launch date
• Unique selling points
• Pain points

Customize the form by renaming the available fields or adding custom ones.

Distribute the form to your team members, and once completed, all the valuable information automatically appears in the Product List view . This view is where you can review the details covered in the form, assign tasks to team members, set priorities , and group tasks by status.

This template also offers a Product Positioning Map Whiteboard view . It features a graph as a visual aid for showcasing how your upcoming product stacks up in terms of value for money compared to the competition.

Competitive analysis isn’t just a fancy term—it’s your secret weapon if you’re gearing up to introduce a fresh product or service. The ClickUp Competitive Analysis Template is your trusty sidekick for this mission. It assists in revealing competitor strengths and weaknesses, providing a comprehensive industry overview , and cooking up strategies to outshine the competition and nail down your target audience. 🌟

To start your competitive analysis , brainstorm a list of potential competitors. Think about where your customers might go if they didn’t choose your company. Keep it realistic—aim for a list of up to 10 names, leaving time for thorough market research.

After you’ve completed the research, use the provided Matrix to place the competitor’s product concerning the Market Presence and Satisfaction axes. Use the Legend to help you understand the product type , including:

• High market presence and high satisfaction
• High market presence and low satisfaction
• High satisfaction and low market presence
• Low satisfaction and low market presence

Duplicate a color-coded sticky note that matches your product type and drag it over to the quadrant where it fits the best. The Matrix is split into four sections to help you decide whether a product is a Contender , a Leader , a Niche , or a High Performer.

This business strategy template gives you the ultimate freedom to play around with its elements. Add, tweak, and place them wherever you like in the interactive Whiteboard view.

Have you ever found yourself scratching your head, wondering what your customers want? The ClickUp Customer Journey Map Template is a handy tool that can help you out! 🛠️

Think of it as a guide to better understanding your ideal customer’s user persona . By mapping their journey, you can uncover their needs and expectations and come up with sensible strategies to improve your products and services for your target audience.

This Whiteboard template brims with handy question prompts about customer actions, experiences, touchpoints, and solutions. The template leads you through three key stages:

• Awareness : You introduce customers to your business and what it offers
• Consideration : They start considering your business as a solution to their needs, leading them to research your products or services and compare them to other options
• Conversion : They go from pondering to action and become paying customers

Each of these stages comes with pre-made sticky notes to get you started, but you’ve got the creative license to add more. Give the Whiteboard a personal touch with freehand drawing, create shapes, insert images, use connectors, and add text from focus groups, customer research, or any market research examples you own.

If you’re looking for a structured framework to streamline market research, the Word Market Research Plan Template by FlexMR is a handy solution. It’s divided into well-structured sections for every step and features tips and instructions on how to use them.

This Word template is fully customizable, allowing you to modify colors, change font and letter size, add rows and columns to pre-made tables or include graphs and charts. ✍🏻

Use its first section to provide a brief business background. Then, define the project’s scope and specify what you expect to achieve at the project’s conclusion, including target response numbers, data presentation guidelines, and the influence of data on future decision-making .

Additional details the template covers are:

• Target Audience : Describe the customers you aim to research, considering age, demographics, and interactions with the company or product
• Sample Plan : Detail the number of participants you intend to research
• Research Methods : Include qualitative and quantitative methods
• Timeline : Present a project timeline, breaking down tasks and accounting for variations in response rates
• Budget : Outline the budget, providing a cost breakdown and highlighting areas requiring investment
• Ethical Considerations : Address ethical and other considerations that may arise during the project, like conflict of interest with suppliers

To finish up, add Further Considerations to include anything the previous sections don’t cover.

One way to conduct effective market research is through a survey. If you’re unsure about the questions to include for optimal results or need a structured framework to streamline the process, try the Word General Market Survey Template by BusinessInABox.

This two-page Word document contains open-ended and multiple-choice questions for an effective customer case study . They provide all the essential information to understand the market you’re involved in or planning to enter.

The questions in the template cover customer information like:

• Age and gender
• Education level
• Marital status
• Total annual income

As this is a Word template, customize it however you like ! Add or tweak questions to dig into the specifics you’re curious about, and make the survey longer or shorter. Feeling fancy? Give it a personal touch by using a different font or changing the background color!

Crack the Code to Market Domination with These Essential Market Research Templates

Market research can be a wild ride, but these top-notch market research templates make it smooth sailing. From gaming insights into customer preferences to uncovering your competitor’s strategies, they provide a structured solution for every research step.

If you’re hungry for more research assets, dive into the ClickUp template library , where you’ll find over 1,000 user-friendly templates waiting to guide you on areas like mapping out customer journeys , performing competitor analysis , and nailing down product positioning with minimal effort. ✌

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WTO / Business / Analysis / 30 Free Market Analysis Templates (Examples) – Word | Excel

30 Free Market Analysis Templates (Examples) – Word | Excel

Whether you have a business that is large or small, staying on top of trends is vital for its success. Determining what it is that is driving demand, the strategies being used by your competitors , and what marketing technique will work are all things that can be found by doing a market analysis. This will also help you when you need to reevaluate your current strategies and business plans.

What is Market Analysis?

A market analysis is used to determine the dynamics of a certain market in a specific industry. It provides information and data regarding competitors, customers, the industry, and other variables. It can also give you details on supply and demand for a certain service or product. All of this helps the business create strategies based on informed decision-making.

Four Parts of the Market Analysis

There are four main parts to market analysis: the industry overview, your target market, your competition, and your forecast and pricing.

Industry overview

Use this to describe the industry you are in and what direction it seems to be heading in. This is a bit different from doing market research because, with industry research, you are looking at all the businesses that are similar to your own. With market research, you are learning about your buyers.

Target market

This section will detail who your ideal customers are.

You need to consider:

• Market size –this refers to the pool of potential customers who need your product or service.
• Demographics – this gives details about the gender, age, income, and education of your average customer.
• Location – used to describe a specific region or location that customers come from.
• Psychographics – this is where you will describe the likes and dislikes of your customers.
• Behaviors – look at how your customers purchase and shop for products and services like yours.
• Trends – details noticeable trends within the market.

Competition

A detailed market analysis needs to have information on your competition, such as their strengths and weaknesses and gaps in services or products that you can offer.

The important areas to look at are:

• Direct competition: this refers to businesses that offer services and products similar to your own.
• Indirect competition: this refers to businesses that offer alternative solutions for problems that your company solves.
• Uniqueness: refers to how you are different from the competition.
• Entry barriers:  refer to how you are protecting yourself from new competition, such as having patents or a really good location.

Pricing and forecast

Your last step is to determine what your pricing is and then create a sales forecast . This can help you figure out what part of the market you may be able to get into. Use your forecast as a way to track sales and your goals.

Market Analysis Templates

You can download any of the free templates and samples to get a better understanding of how to do this analysis.

Market analysis example

Market analysis template for PDF

Market analysis template (PDF)

Market research & analysis report for PDF

Real estate market analysis template (Excel)

How to Write a Market Analysis Template?

The template is dependent on the industry you are in and what your requirements are for the analysis. Each business has its own requirements, but there are certain things that they should all cover.

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.

Also known as Porter’s Five Forces, this framework will help you analyze your competition.

The five areas to consider are:

Supplier’s bargaining power 

This refers to suppliers in the industry and how easy it is for them to raise their prices. This is an important consideration because, as the prices of suppliers increase, it will affect your net inflow. Consider how many suppliers you can do business with, how unique their services or products are, and how much it would cost to switch suppliers.

Buyer’s bargaining power 

This refers to the buyer’s influence and how easy it is for them to cause your prices to drop. You can do this by determining how many buyers you have and how many orders they place. It’s also important to consider what the cost would be for them to switch from your services and products to one of your competitors. Also, consider whether you have the power to influence the purchasing behavior of your buyers.

The competition

You need to get familiar with your competition. Look at how many competitors there are in your market, what the quality of their services and products is, the quantity they offer, and how this compares to the services and products that you offer. Knowing what the competition’s strategies are will give you a better idea of how this influences the behavior of the market.

Substitute product threats

Your next task is to consider how easy it is for buyers to replicate your services or products themselves. Is it easy for them to outsource the product or service, cutting you out of the process? Buyers often look to cut their expenses by switching to a substitute that costs less and offers the same thing that you do.

Up-and-coming competition threats

Lastly, you want to determine how easy it is for any new business to enter your market. The more competition, the smaller the share you will have in the pool of customers. You can start by analyzing what it would cost to start a new business, as well as looking at any regulations within the industry.

Step 3–Market trends 

Once you’ve gone over PFF, it’s time to look at market trends. This means determining things such as the purchase behavior of customers, price sensitivity, and the influence of suppliers over prices.

Step 4–The competitive landscape

To get a better idea of what you are up against, you need to look at the competitive landscape. Knowing what your competitor’s pricing, product quality, and marketing strategies are can help you improve key areas of your business. This will help you stay a top contender.

Step 5 – Success factors

Your last step is to look at your key success factors, such as ensuring your business’s continued growth and success, what your strengths and weaknesses are, how you reach your objectives and goals for your business, and taking time to reevaluate all of these things to come up with a fresher market plan and analysis.

Frequently Asked Questions

This is a brief outline of the market that provides a snapshot of the present to get a better idea of its key features and marketing activity.

The major advantage is that it helps a business protect itself from potential loss by identifying how it can reach potential customers.

This type of analysis identifies your rivals or competitors and lets you evaluate their marketing strategies, their weaknesses, and their strengths in relation to your products and services.

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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.

Free eBook: Guide to Modern Agile Research

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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19 Best Free Marketing & Sales Templates for Microsoft Excel

Published: January 15, 2024

In my experience, sales and marketing Excel templates can help you expedite your data analysis and reporting.

To help those of you looking for a way to sharpen your Microsoft Excel skills , I've put together a detailed list of templates you can start using to simplify your sales and marketing tasks.

10 Excel Marketing Templates

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Marketing Excel Templates

Sales excel templates, project management excel templates, free excel spreadsheet templates.

• Marketing Planner Excel Template
• 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
• Excel Ecommerce Planning Template
• Excel Contact List Template
• Excel Sales Forecasting Template
• Excel Sales Metrics Calculator Template
• Excel Social Media Planning Template
• Excel Blog Editorial Calendar Template
• Excel Work Log Template
• Excel Social Media Content Calendar Template
• Excel Product Launch Plan Template

Why use sales and marketing Excel templates?

Many of us can recall a time in high school when we were sitting in math class and thinking, “When am I ever going to use this stuff in the real world?”

And then we suddenly find ourselves in the real world, only to realize that numbers do play a pivotal role in what we do. At least that’s true for me when it comes to digital marketing and sales.

The trouble is, many Excel templates and spreadsheets are riddled with numbers and formulas that aren’t all that inviting. And making them from scratch can be especially intimidating.

While I won't argue with that, I will say that the advantages of using Excel to organize information and streamline tasks are unparalleled.

Free Excel Marketing Templates

10 free templates to help you master marketing with Excel.

• Marketing Reporting Template
• Email Planning Template
• SEO Template

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Benefits of Microsoft Excel Templates

Microsoft Excel has many capabilities, formulas, and shortcuts :

• It stores data and has tools for data analysis.
• It performs calculations and allows you to use code for automation.
• It allows you to create social media schedules, editorial calendars, campaign trackers, and more.

Before I start talking about all things Excel templates, now’s your chance to refresh your knowledge with this helpful crash course on Microsoft Excel fundamentals .

Whether you need a source-of-truth for stakeholders to look at or a way to track the progress on a specific marketing plan or campaign, here’s a list of my favorite Excel templates to help get the job done.

1. Marketing Planner Excel Template

Download Your Free Excel Marketing Planner Template

This marketing planner template for Excel contains everything you need to plan a wide variety of email marketing campaigns . It contains specific columns for the emails’ topic, owner, status, and subject line.

You can supplement this template with a full-on marketing plan , written in Word or Google Docs format.

What I like: You can easily use this template to plan any other progressive marketing effort, such as blogging, content writing, or social media marketing. Simply change the titles of the columns to fit your specific marketing plan, and use the column to the left to track the dates of implementation.

Featured Resource: Microsoft Word Marketing Plan Template

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2. Excel Marketing Budget Templates

Download Free Marketing Budget Templates for Excel

If you want to avoid a budgeting mess at the end of the month or quarter, take a look at this collection of marketing budget templates designed to help you better organize your marketing spend.

Check out the master marketing budget template which allows you to generate a high-level visualization of your monthly and quarterly marketing budget.

What I like: From product marketing and website redesign to content marketing and events, these templates serve as a guide for marketers to visualize and track their expenses to avoid overspending.

3. Marketing Dashboard for Excel

Download Your Free Excel Marketing Dashboard

This particular tool allows you to enter metrics by campaign to auto-populate visual and easy-to-read charts. As a result, you can visualize the effectiveness of spending and activity across multiple initiatives.

You can also track the progress of different campaigns and marketing efforts, such as website content and email marketing, as well as ad spend and sales by platform.

What I like: There is no shortage of data to monitor when it comes to marketing. This template makes it easy to understand your marketing ROI and prove the effectiveness of your campaigns to stakeholders and leaders at your company.

4. Excel Monthly Marketing Reporting Template

Download Free Excel Marketing Reporting Templates

To simplify your reporting, check out these monthly marketing metrics templates and the corresponding PowerPoint template. Each month, you can update them quickly and easily to reflect your monthly visits, leads, customers, and conversion rates.

From there, you'll have everything you need to track and report on which channels are performing best.

What I like: I mean, come on — is there a feeling sweeter than hitting all of your goals for the month? Leadership loves to see ROI, and these spreadsheets can prepare comprehensive reports of your marketing metrics to send to your boss.

5. SMART Goal Excel Marketing Template

Download Your Free Excel SMART Goal Template

Whether you're planning for a new year, quarter, or month, defining a clear set of goals is critical for driving the direction of your marketing efforts..

Start with these SMART goal planning templates . Rooted in specificity, measurability, attainability, relevancy, and timeliness, these templates will help you set your team up for success.

What I like: Its user-friendly and readable format makes it one of the most shareable options on this list. You can easily send it over to your stakeholders without worrying about formatting.

6. Excel On-Page SEO Template

Download Your Free Excel SEO Marketing Template

When it comes to SEO , there‘s a lot for marketers to remember to see results.If you’re looking for the light at the end of the tunnel, pull up this handy SEO template created in Excel .

Designed to make the process of managing your SEO efforts a whole lot easier, marketers can use this template to guide their strategy step-by-step or pass it off to their webmaster to serve as a helpful guide.

What I like: This template focuses on keywords and SEO best practices, while also providing tips and tricks to identify nuances and increase productivity.

7. Google Ads Campaign Excel Tracker

Download Your Free Excel PPC Campaign Tracker

If you’re doing your Google Ads campaigns right, they probably aren't “walks in the park.” This Google Ads tracking template is a marketing campaign template that can keep you on top of your Google Ads game.

It‘ll help you catch mistakes and implement best practices across all the different campaigns and ad groups you’re running — for the top, middle, and bottom of the funnel.

What I like: It’s a perfect complement to that SEO template you've started using. Plus, this tracker will help you get the most bang for your buck from all of those ad campaigns you’re running.

8. Excel Lead Tracker Template

Download Your Free Excel Marketing Template for Lead Tracking

It's no secret that sales and marketing have a pretty rocky relationship history.

With this customizable lead tracking template in your toolbox, you'll have the information you need to reduce tension and define a concrete monthly lead generation goal. You’ll also be able to track and measure the success of specific lead generation channels and keep close tabs on your current sales close rates.

What I like: You can easily supplement this lead tracker with a marketing-sales SLA template to better align your sales and marketing teams — and get one step closer to crushing your goals.

Featured Resource: Microsoft Word SLA Template for Marketing & Sales

9. excel sales conversion and close rate calculator.

Download Your Free Excel Conversion Calculator

You have to set a conversion goal, but you don't know where to start. It sounds like you could use a hand in calculating your leads and traffic goals. Luckily, there's an Excel template for that .

What I like: You won’t have to sort through these numbers on your own. This template will take care of the math and give you a clear picture of what you need to accomplish to achieve your conversion goals.

10. Excel KPI Dashboard Template

Download Your Free Excel KPI Dashboard

If you’re a fan of the monthly metrics template, you might want to grab a copy of this template as well. The essential KPI tracker, shown above, takes the metrics your marketing team has agreed to track and describes them in more detail.

What I like: Using this template, you can assign specific employees to each KPI, define the frequency at which you'll monitor each KPI’s performance, and assign each KPI a color that reflects the quality of that KPI’s performance.

For example: Let’s say one of my company’s KPIs is organic traffic. I could set up my template such that 100 page views per month are red (poor performance), 500 page views per month are yellow (stable performance), and 1000 page views per month are green (great performance).

Sales is a number-heavy field. Whether we’re talking about sales goals or closed-won ratios, here are a few of my top templates to help expedite the process.

11. Excel Ecommerce Planning Template

Download Your Free Excel Ecommerce Planner Template

Ecommerce stores come with many moving parts. This template, which also includes an ecommerce sales plan and go-to-market template, includes dedicated space for each of your ecommerce vendors.

The kit also includes a marketing plan that guides you through market research, target market analysis, channels and vendors, and more.

What I like: Once your ecommerce store is live and running, you can use the conversion template to track performance across vendors and platforms where products are listed to give you a holistic view of your efforts.

12. Excel Contact List Template

Download Your Free Excel Contact List Template

In a business, the most important people are your customer or client base. Although your current customers constantly need to be nurtured, focusing on your contact or prospect list is also essential.

The information needed to build a prospect list is elementary. You can use this template to start building this list with the person's name, title and company, location, and contact information. Additional information could include their industry, employee size, company description, and pain points.

What I like: Once you’ve used a template like this one, you’re ready to upgrade to a CRM , which stores the same information in a more user-friendly format.

13. Excel Sales Forecasting Template

Download Your Free Excel Template for Sales Forecasting

Sales forecasting is similar to weather forecasting. Without the proper tools, it’s impossible to get an accurate idea of what’s ahead.

Excel sales forecasting helps with business planning, budgeting, and risk management. Using this template will help you track business sales, accurately predict your sales revenue, and plan for future growth.

What I like: Sales forecasting is challenging, but this spreadsheet formula makes the process easier. Ultimately, it helps strengthen the sales strategy that you build for your company.

14. Excel Sales Metrics Calculator Template

Download Your Free Excel Sales Metrics Calculator

Sales are complex. Once you add sales metrics into the picture, the complications increase.

Not only does this template help you keep track of sales, but it keeps track of your salespeople too. With the sales metrics calculator template, you can calculate customer retention rate, win rates, product revenue, and employee turnover rate.

What I like: I know there are many numbers and figures to calculate, track, record, and document when it comes to sales. This interactive Excel spreadsheet will help you get the job done.

Specific projects require a specific setup, but sometimes, the setup itself can be the most exhausting part. I’ve compiled the following templates to help you manage general projects and track your progress for specific tasks.

15. Excel Social Media Planning Template

Download Your Free Excel Social Media Planner

You might already use a social media scheduler to manage and publish your posts every week, but you still need a place to draft your social copy and decide which posts will go to which social networks.

This social media posting schedule allows you to draft each social post — the time it will post, the message you want to publish, and any link you want to accompany your message (blog post, registration page, an ebook landing page, etc).

What I like: Most social media schedulers allow you to upload social post copy in bulk from a spreadsheet. Once you've drafted all of your social posts for the week, month, or quarter, you can easily sort them by social network and import them into your social media platform of choice.

16. Excel Blog Editorial Calendar Template

Download Your Free Excel Editorial Calendar Template

Blogging plays a significant role in your ability to attract visitors and leads to your website. But managing a blog is one of those responsibilities that's easier said than done.

Use this editorial calendar template as the starting point for keeping track of all of your business‘ content. It’ll help you be more mindful of topic selection, buyer personas, keyword inclusions, and CTA alignment.

What I like: When I’m struggling with ideation, consistency, or simply just lacking organization, an editorial calendar helps me refocus my blogging efforts to generate even more traffic and leads.

17. Excel Work Log Template

Download Your Free Excel Work Log Template

How do you keep track of the day-to-day progress of your company, especially when there are people, tasks, and timelines to monitor? A work log template is essential to keeping track.

This template provides you with a project overview that makes tracking easier than ever. The work log template tracks tasks, time, status, and comments.

What I like: If you’re not ready to commit to a project management software , you can still monitor the life cycle and progress of your projects with this spreadsheet.

18. Excel Social Media Content Calendar Template

Download Your Free Excel Social Media Calendar

Since you’re probably generating tons of clicks from your Google Ads campaigns and writing amazing content, I’d imagine you'll need some help figuring out how to spread the love on social media.

The social media calendar template is the perfect resource for helping you scale and streamline your social media marketing.

What I like: When you use Excel to break out separate worksheets for each social network you‘re using, you’ll be able to keep a repository of content ideas, so you‘re never struck by writer’s block and always have something to post.

19. Excel Product Launch Plan Template

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6 Free Market Research Templates to Help Win Your Market

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Discover your competitors' strengths and leverage them to achieve your own success

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.

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.

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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.

by Liz March

Digital Research Specialist

Liz March has 15 years of experience in content creation. She enjoys the outdoors, F1, and reading, and is pursuing a BSc in Environmental Science.

Related Posts

Competitive Benchmarking: Crack the Code to Your Competitors’ Success

Importance of Market Research: 9 Reasons Why It’s Crucial for Your Business

Audience Segmentation: Definition, Importance & Types

Geographic Segmentation: Definition, Pros & Cons, Examples, and More

Demographic Segmentation: The Key To Transforming Your Marketing Strategy

Unlocking Consumer Behavior: What Makes Your Customers Tick?

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Market research templates

Find out what your customers want and their pain points with Miro's market and business research templates. Target the right audiences and design better customer experiences consistently across all platforms.

Empathy Map Template

Works best for:.

Market Research, User Experience, Mapping

Attracting new users, compelling them to try your product, and turning them into loyal customers—it all starts with understanding them. An empathy map is a tool that leads to that understanding, by giving you space to articulate everything you know about your customers, including their needs, expectations, and decision-making drivers. That way you’ll be able to challenge your assumptions and identify the gaps in your knowledge. Our template lets you easily create an empathy map divided into four key squares—what your customers Say, Think, Do, and Feel.

Fishbone Diagram Template

Operations, Diagrams, Workflows

What is the best way to solve any problem your team faces? Go straight to the root. That means identifying the root causes of the problem, and fishbone diagrams are designed to help you do it best. Also known as the Ishikawa Diagram (named after Japanese quality control expert Kaoru Ishikawa), fishbone diagrams allow teams to visualize all possible causes of a problem, to explore and understand how they fit together holistically. Teams can also use fishbone diagrams as a starting point for thinking about what the root cause of a future problem might be.

Likert Scale Template

Desk Research, Decision Making, Product Management

It’s not always easy to measure complex, highly subjective data — like how people feel about your product, service, or experience. But the Likert scale is designed to help you do it. This scale allows your existing or potential customers to respond to a statement or question with a range of phrases or numbers (e.g., from “strongly agree” to “neutral,” to “strongly disagree,” or from 1 to 5). The goal is to ask your customer some specific questions to turn into easy-to-interpret actionable user insights.

Buyer Persona Template

Marketing, Desk Research, User Experience

You have an ideal customer: The group (or few groups) of people who will buy and love your product or service. But to reach that ideal customer, your entire team or company has to align on who that is. Buyer personas give you a simple but creative way to get that done. These semi-fictional representations of your current and potential customers can help you shape your product offering, weed out the “bad apples,” and tailor your marketing strategies for serious success.

UX Research Plan Template

Market Research, Desk Research, User Experience

A research plan communicates the fundamental information that stakeholders need to understand about a user experience research project: who, what, why, and when. The plan ensures everyone is aligned and knows what they must do to make the UX research project a success. Use the research plan to communicate background information about your project; objectives; research methods; the scope of the project, and profiles of the participants. By using a UX research plan, you can achieve stakeholder buy-in, stay on track, and set yourself up for success.

Job Map Template

Design, Desk Research, Mapping

Want to truly understand your consumers’ mindset? Take a look at things from their perspective — by identifying the “jobs” they need to accomplish and exploring what would make them “hire” or “fire” a product or service like yours. Ideal for UX researchers, job mapping is a staged process that gives you that POV by breaking the “jobs” down step by step, so you can ultimately offer something unique, useful, and different from your competitors. This template makes it easy to create a detailed, comprehensive job map.

Research Template

Education, Desk Research, Product Management

Teams often need to document findings from usability testing sessions and customer interviews into a systematic, flexible user research template. Collecting everyone’s observations into a centralized location makes it easier to share insights company-wide and suggest new features based on user needs. Research templates can be used to record quantitative or qualitative data.. When it’s your job to ask questions, take notes, learn more about your user, and test iteratively, a Research Template can help you validate your assumptions, find similarities across different users, and articulate their mental models, needs, and goals.

Jobs to be Done template

Ideation, Design Thinking, Brainstorming

It’s all about a job done right — customers “hire” a product or service to do a “job,” and if it's not done right, the customer will find someone to do it better. Built on that simple premise, the Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) framework helps entrepreneurs, start-ups, and business managers define who their customer is and see unmet needs in the market. A standard job story lets you see things from your customers’ perspective by telling their story with a “When I…I Want To…So That I …” story structure.

Low-fidelity Wireframes Template

Desk Research, Product Management, Wireframes

When you’re designing a site or building an app, the early stages should be BIG — seeing the big picture and communicating the big idea. Low fidelity wireframes empower you to see it and do it. These rough layouts (think of them as the digital version of a sketch on a napkin) help your teams and project stakeholders quickly determine if a design meeting meets your users’ needs. Our template lets you easily use wireframes during meetings or workshops, presentations, and critique sessions.

User Persona Template

A user persona is a tool for representing and summarizing a target audience for your product or service that you have researched or observed. Whether you’re in content marketing, product marketing, design, or sales, you operate with a target in mind. Maybe it’s your customer or prospect. Maybe it’s someone who will benefit from your product or service. Usually, it’s a whole collection of personalities and needs that intersect in interesting ways. By distilling your knowledge about a user, you create a model for the person you hope to target: this is a persona.

Service Blueprint Template

Desk Research, Operations, Market Research

The Service Blueprint template is a visual tool for designing and optimizing service experiences. It provides a structured framework for mapping customer journeys, identifying touchpoints, and aligning internal processes. This template enables teams to visualize the entire service ecosystem, uncover pain points, and innovate solutions to enhance customer satisfaction. By promoting customer-centricity and collaboration, the Service Blueprint empowers organizations to deliver exceptional service experiences and drive sustainable growth.

Scenario Mapping Template

Desk Research, Mapping, Product Management

Scenario mapping is the process of outlining all the steps a user will take to complete a task. The scenario mapping template helps you create a visual guide to what different personas are doing, thinking, and feeling in different situations. Use scenario mapping to outline an intended or ideal scenario (what should happen) as well as what currently happens. If you’re trying to outline the ideal scenario, user mapping should take place very early on in a project and can help inform user stories and the product backlog. If you’re just trying to get a better sense of what currently happens, you can do user mapping when conducting user interviews or observation.

Lean UX Canvas Template

Desk Research, Product Management, User Experience

What are you building, why are building it, and who are you building it for? Those are the big pictures questions that guide great companies and teams toward success — and Lean UX helps you find the answers. Especially helpful during project research, design, and planning, this tool lets you quickly make product improvements and solve business problems, leading to a more customer-centric product. This template will let you create a Lean UX canvas structured around eight key elements: Business problem, Business outcome, Users and customers, User benefits, Solution ideas, Hypothesis, Assumptions, Experimentation.

Website Wireframing Template

Wireframes, User Experience

Wireframing is a method for designing a website at the structural level. A wireframe is a stylized layout of a web page showcasing the interface elements on each page. Use this Wireframe Template to iterate on web pages quickly and cheaply. You can share the wireframe with clients or teammates and collaborate with stakeholders. Wireframes allow teams to get stakeholder buy-in without investing too much time or resources. They help ensure that your website’s structure and flow will meet user needs and expectations.

Screen Flow Template

UX Design, Product Management, Wireframes

A screen flow (or wireflow) brings together a multi-screen layout that combines wireframes with flowcharts. The result is an end-to-end flow that maps out what users see on each screen and how it impacts their decision-making process through your product or service. By thinking visually about what your customers are looking at, you can communicate with internal teams, stakeholders, and clients about the decisions you’ve made. You can also use a screen flow to find new opportunities to make the user experience frictionless and free of frustration from start to end.

Low-Fidelity Prototype Template

Design, Desk Research, Wireframes

Low fidelity prototypes serve as practical early visions of your product or service. These simple prototypes share only a few features with the final product. They are best for testing broad concepts and validating ideas. Low fidelity prototypes help product and UX teams study product or service functionality by focusing on rapid iteration and user testing to inform future designs. The focus on sketching and mapping out content, menus, and user flow allows both designers and non-designers to participate in the design and ideation process. Instead of producing linked interactive screens, low fidelity prototypes focus on insights about user needs, designer vision, and alignment of stakeholder goals.

Online Sketching Template

UX Design, Desk Research, Design Thinking

Before you go full steam ahead with a promising idea, look at it from a high level — to know how it functions and how well it meets your goals. That’s what sketches do. This template gives you a powerful remote collaboration tool for the initial stages of prototyping, whether you’re sketching out web pages and mobile apps, designing logos, or planning events. Then you can easily share your sketch with your team, and save each stage of your sketch before changing it and building on it.

iPhone App Template

UX Design, Desk Research, Wireframes

Incredible percentages of smartphone users worldwide have chosen iPhones (including some of your existing and potential customers), and those users simply love their apps. But designing and creating an iPhone app from scratch can be one seriously daunting, effort-intensive task. Not here — this template makes it easy. You’ll be able to customize designs, create interactive protocols, share with your collaborators, iterate as a team, and ultimately develop an iPhone app your customers will love.

App Wireframe Template

UX Design, Wireframes

Ready to start building an app? Don’t just imagine how it will function and how users will interact with it—let a wireframe show you. Wireframing is a technique for creating a basic layout of each screen. When you wireframe, ideally early in the process, you’ll gain an understanding of what each screen will accomplish and get buy-in from important stakeholders—all before adding the design and content, which will save you time and money. And by thinking of things in terms of a user’s journey, you’ll deliver a more compelling, successful experience.

Look Mock Analyze Template

Design, Desk Research, Product Management

Doing your homework (aka, the research) is a key step in your design process, and the Look, Mock, Analyze approach helps you examine, structure, and streamline that step. With this powerful tool you’ll be able to identify your strengths and weaknesses, what you did right or wrong, and whether you spent time efficiently. Our Look, Mock, Analyze template makes it so easy for you to discover inspiration, mock up designs, and get feedback — you can start by setting up your board in less than a minute.

Newsletter Template

Design, Marketing, Desk Research

Using a newsletter template allows you to create a structured and eye-catching newsletter for your subscribers. Add images, text, a call-to-action, and anything else that’ll keep your audience engaged. Take a look at Miro’s newsletter template to start creating unique and distinctive emails today.

Visual Story Map Template

Marketing, Desk Research, Mapping

Some people like to think of a visual story map as a stylized to-do list, but it’s a lot more powerful than that. Visual story mapping allows your product management team to visualize multiple dimensions of information.

Remote Design Sprint Template

Design, Desk Research, Sprint Planning

A design sprint is an intensive process of designing, iterating, and testing a prototype over a 4 or 5 day period. Design sprints are conducted to break out of stal, work processes, find a fresh perspective, identify problems in a unique way, and rapidly develop solutions. Developed by Google, design sprints were created to enable teams to align on a specific problem, generate multiple solutions, create and test prototypes, and get feedback from users in a short period of time. This template was originally created by JustMad, a business-driven design consultancy, and has been leveraged by distributed teams worldwide.

Official 5-Day Design Sprint

The goal of a Design Sprint is to build and test a prototype in just five days. You'll take a small team, clear the schedule for a week, and rapidly progress from problem to tested solution using a proven step-by-step checklist. Steph Cruchon of Design Sprint created this template for Miro in collaboration with design sprint gurus at Google. This Design Sprint template is designed specifically for remote sprints so you can run productive and efficient sprints with colleagues around the world.

User Story Map Template

Popularized by Jeff Patton in 2005, the user story mapping technique is an agile way to manage product backlogs. Whether you’re working alone or with a product team, you can leverage user story mapping to plan product releases. User story maps help teams stay focused on the business value and release features that customers care about. The framework helps to get a shared understanding for the cross-functional team of what needs to be done to satisfy customers' needs.

Mood Board Template

Design, Brainstorming, Ideation

When you’re kicking off a creative project, it’s sometimes important to communicate the mood you’re trying to evoke — but it’s so hard to do it with words. So create a mood board and use images, color palettes, textures, and typography. Mood boards are also perfect for gathering inspiration and sketching out and pitching ideas, and they’re not just for designers — your content writers, sales teams, and product teams can use them too, and this template makes it easy for all of you to get started.

Website Flowchart Template

Flowcharts, Mapping, User Experience

A website flowchart, also known as a sitemap, maps out the structure and complexity of any current or future website. The flowchart can also help your team identify knowledge gaps for future content. When you’re building a website, you want to ensure that each piece of content gives users accurate research results based on keywords associated with your web content. Product, UX, and content teams can use flowcharts or sitemaps to understand everything contained in a website, and plan to add or restructure content to improve a website’s user experience.

Customer Journey Map Template

Ideation, Mapping, Product Management

A customer journey map (CJM) is a visual representation of your customer’s experience. It allows you to capture the path that a customer follows when they buy a product, sign up for a service, or otherwise interact with your site. Most maps include a specific persona, outlines their customer experience from beginning to end, and captures the potential emotional highs and lows of interacting with the product or service. Use this template to easily create customer journey maps for projects of all kinds.

Use Case Diagram Template

Marketing, Market Research, Diagrams

A use case diagram is a visual tool that helps you analyze the relationships between personas and use cases. Use case diagrams typically depict the expected behavior of the system: what will happen and when. A use case diagram is helpful because it allows you to design a system from the perspective of the end user. It’s a valuable tool for communicating your desired system behavior in the language of the user, by specifying all externally visible system behavior.

Affinity Diagram Template

You can use an affinity diagram to generate, organize, and consolidate information that comes out of a brainstorming session. Whether you’re building a product, working through a complex problem, establishing a process, or piecing apart an issue, an affinity diagram is a useful and simple framework that gives each team member the opportunity to pitch in and share their thoughts. But it’s not just ideal for brainstorms—this is a great template and tool when you need to reach consensus or analyze data such as survey results.

Feature Planning Template

Desk Research, Agile Methodology, Product Management

Features are what make a product or service fun, but adding new ones is no walk in the park. It takes many steps—ideating, designing, refining, building, testing, launching, and promoting—and just as many stakeholders. Feature Planning lets you put a smooth, sturdy process in place, so you can add a feature successfully, and spend less time and resources doing it. That makes our Feature Planning Template a smart starting point for anyone looking to add new product features, especially members of product, engineering, marketing, and sales teams.

Target Audience Template

Marketing, Desk Research, Prioritization

Understanding your target audience is vital to business success. How can you market yourself effectively if you don’t know who you’re targeting? Using the Target Audience template, you can review valuable data about who your customers are and what they want from your product or service.

App Development Canvas Template

Market Research, Product Management, User Experience

Ever noticed that building a successful app requires lots of players and moving parts? If you’re a project manager, you definitely have. Lucky for you, an app development canvas will let you own and optimize the entire process. It features 18 boxes, each one focusing on a key aspect of app development, giving you a big-picture view. That way you can fine-tune processes and get ahead of potential problems along the way—resulting in a smoother path and a better, tighter product.

Perceptual Map Template

To shape your messaging, tailor your marketing, improve your product, and build your brand, you have to know your customers’ perceptions — what they think of you and your competitors. You can gain those insights by exploring a perceptual map. This simple, powerful tool creates a visual representation of how customers rank your price, performance, safety, and reliability. Put this template to work and you’ll be able to size up your competition, see gaps in the market, and understand changes in customer behavior and purchasing decisions.

Features Audit Template

Add new features or improve existing features—those are the two paths toward improving a product. But which should you take? A features audit will help you decide. This easy, powerful product management tool will give you a way to examine all of your features, then gather research and have detailed discussions about the ones that simply aren’t working. Then you can decide if you should increase those features’ visibility or the frequency with which it’s used—or if you should remove it altogether.

Feature Canvas Template

When you’re working on a new feature that solves a problem for your users, it’s easy to dive right in and start looking for solutions. However, it’s important to understand the initial user problem first. Use the Feature Canvas template to do a deep-dive into the user’s problems, the context in which they will use your feature, and the value proposition you will deliver to your users. The template enables you to spend more time exploring the problem to anticipate any potential blind spots before jumping into solutions mode.

Customer Problem Statement Template

Ideation, Design Thinking, Product Management

Put yourself in the shoes of your consumers with a customer problem statement. Figure out their problems and how your product or service can solve those problems and make their lives easier. As a bonus, you’ll better understand your customers throughout the process.

UX Project Canvas Template

User Experience, UX Design, Market Research

Inspired by Alexander Osterwalder's 2005 business model canvas, the project canvas will help your team visualize the big picture of your UX and design projects, providing a convenient structure that holds all of your important data. This innovative tool enables you to transform an idea into a project plan, stimulating collaboration and communication between collaborators. Unlike alternative models, the project canvas is a simple interface. There are few startup costs, and employees can easily be brought up to speed to start using the canvas quickly.

Proto Persona Template

UX, UX Research, Product Design

The Proto Persona Template is tailored to capture the essence of hypothetical user segments. It encapsulates key attributes such as user needs, behaviors, and potential pain points. One of its standout benefits is its ability to foster empathy. By visualizing and understanding these preliminary user profiles, design and strategy teams can tap into a deeper connection with their target audience, ensuring that solutions resonate authentically and address genuine needs.

Supply and Demand Graph Template

Market Research, Mapping, Diagrams

How do you price your product so that you make a profit while keeping customers and manufacturers happy? By finding a fair price. A supply and demand diagram is a graph that visualizes how much demand there is for your product and how many products you need. This, in turn, helps you with product pricing.

Kano Model Template

Desk Research, Product Management, Prioritization

When it comes down to it, a product’s success is determined by the features it offers and the satisfaction it gives to customers. So which features matter most? The Kano model will help you decide. It’s a simple, powerful method for helping you prioritize all your features — by comparing how much satisfaction a feature will deliver to what it will cost to implement. This template lets you easily create a standard Kano model, with two axes (satisfaction and functionality) creating a quadrant with four values: attractive, performance, indifferent, and must-be.

Prune the Product Tree Template

Prune the Product Tree (also known as the product tree game or the product tree prioritization framework) is a visual tool that helps product managers organize and prioritize product feature requests. The tree represents a product roadmap and helps your team think about how to grow and shape your product or service by gamifying feedback-gathering from customers and stakeholders. A typical product tree has four symbolic features: the trunk, which represents the existing product features your team is building; the branches, each of which represents a product or system function; roots, which are technical requirements or infrastructure; and leaves, which are new ideas for product features.

Strategy Diamond Template

Leadership, Operations, Strategic Planning

To achieve key objectives, every business assembles a series of strategies. But what elements should you consider when building a strategy? A strategy diamond is a collection of elements forming a coherent business strategy. These elements include: Arenas, Differentiators, Vehicles, Staging, and Economic Logic. Most strategic plans focus on just one or two of these elements, creating gaps that might cause problems for your business later on. A strategy diamond can help you stay focused and ensure you’re fulfilling all of your business’s needs rather than one or two.

Go-to-Market Strategy Template

Marketing, Desk Research, Strategic Planning

It doesn’t matter how innovative or effective a new product is — if it doesn’t get noticed and adopted by the right audience, the product won’t get off the ground. That’s where your Go-to-Market Strategy comes in. It’s a single resource that houses all of your research, insights, and data, and includes your business plan, target audience, marketing approach, and sales strategy. A GTM is especially important for any startups who grow fast, have to make split-second decisions, and have to be fully in sync.

Design Research Template

UX Design, Design Thinking, Desk Research

A design research map is a grid framework showing the relationship between two key intersections in research methodologies: mindset and approach. Design research maps encourage your team or clients to develop new business strategies using generative design thinking. Originally designed by academic Liz Sanders, the framework is meant to resolve confusion or overlap between research and design methods. Whether your team is in problem-solving or problem space definition mode, using a research design template can help you consider the collective value of many unrelated practices.

Product / Market Fit Canvas Template

Market Research, Strategic Planning, Product Management

The product/market fit canvas template is used to help product teams meet customer and market needs with their product design. This template looks at a product in two dimensions: first, how the product fits user needs, and second, how the fully designed product fits within the market landscape. This combined metric understands a product holistically from the way customers use and desire a product, to the market demand. By comparing customer and product qualities side by side, users should better understand their product space and key metrics.

Product Positioning Template

Marketing, Product Management, Desk Research

For better or for worse, your company’s chances for success hinge partially on your market. As such, before you start building products and planning strategies, it’s a good idea to conduct a product positioning exercise. A product positioning exercise is designed to situate your company and your offering within a market. The product positioning template guides you to consider key topics such as defining your product and market category, identifying your target segment and competitors, and understanding your key benefits and differentiation.

Working Backwards Template

Desk Research, Strategic Planning, Product Management

Find out how to use the Working Backwards template to plan, structure, and execute the launch of a new product. Using the template, you’ll figure out if the product is worth launching in the first place.

HEART Framework Template

Desk Research, Project Management, User Experience

Happiness, Engagement, Adoption, Retention, and Task Success. Those are the pillars of user experience — which is why they serve as the key metrics in the HEART framework. Developed by the research team at Google, this framework gives larger companies an accurate way to measure user experience at scale, which you can then reference throughout the product development lifecycle. While the HEART framework uses five metrics, you might not need all five for every project — choose the ones that will be most useful for your company and project.

Voice of the Customer Template

Identifying the voice of the customer is a crucial part of any customer experience strategy. Your Voice of Customer is simply a framework for understanding your customers’ needs, wants, preferences, and expectations as they interact with your brand. Evaluating your Voice of Customer allows you to dive into what your customers are thinking, feeling, and saying about your products and services, so you can build a better customer journey. Use the Voice of Customer template to record answers to key questions about your customer, including: What are they saying about our product? What do they need? How can we fulfill that need? And who is this persona?

Infographic Template

Marketing, Desk Research, Documentation

As we bet you’ve experienced, data can get pretty dense and dry. But you need it to be compelling, memorable, and understandable. The solution? Infographics. These are tools that let you present information in a visually striking way and turn quantitative or qualitative data into stories that engage and resonate. Whoever you’ll be presenting to — customers, donors, or your own internal teams — our template will let you design an infographic that combines text and visuals to break down even the most complicated data.

Growth Experiments Template

Leadership, Desk Research, Strategic Planning

Many ambitious companies are eying the future and aiming to grow. But growth decisions can be leaps of faith that are risky and costly. That’s why growth experiments make so much sense. They offer a systematic six-step method that reveals which strategies are most effective, how they’ll affect your revenue, and how they compare to your past approaches. By helping you test out your strategies for scaling your business before you fully commit, growth experiments can save you serious time, resources, and money.

Flyer Maker Template

Design, Marketing

Whether it’s a client party or a nonprofit fundraiser, your event needs one key thing to be a smashing success: people to show up. That’s why promoting it is such an important part of the planning—and creating and sending a flyer is the first step. These single-page files will grab your guests’ attention and give them the key details, such as the time, date, and location (and if it’s a fundraiser, who/what the funds will benefit). This template will let you lay out text and customize a flyer design.

User Interview Template

Desk Research, Product Management

A user interview is a UX research technique in which researchers ask the user questions about a topic. They allow your team to quickly and easily collect user data and learn more about your users. In general, organizations conduct user interviews to gather background data, to understand how people use technology, to take a snapshot of how users interact with a product, to understand user objectives and motivations, and to find users’ pain points. Use this template to record notes during an interview to ensure you’re gathering the data you need to create personas.

3C Analysis Template

Marketing, Strategic Planning

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Business Case Template

Leadership, Marketing, Market Research

Impress stakeholders and get buy-in with this complete Business Case Template. Cover all key elements of a business case and ensure your pitch is successful.

Audience Persona Template

Research, UX, Design, Product, Marketing

The Audience Persona Template is an essential tool that helps gain valuable insights into the target demographic. It ensures that every strategic decision is tailored to meet the specific needs and preferences of the audience. The template is designed to cover areas like Background, Hobbies and Interests, Goals, Biggest Fears, Challenges, Common Objections, and Demographics. This detailed approach enables the creation of a nuanced and multi-dimensional audience profile. By understanding the basic demographic information and the target audience's deeper motivations, challenges, and apprehensions, teams can develop more empathetic, effective, and targeted strategies. This depth of understanding leads to more resonant and successful product developments, marketing campaigns, and customer engagement initiatives.

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Storyboard Presentation Template

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About the Market Research Templates Collection

Miro's market research templates collection is designed to streamline the process of gathering, analyzing, and presenting market data. These templates cater to various stages of market research, from initial data collection to final reporting. Whether you're conducting a comprehensive market analysis or a focused survey, our templates provide a structured approach to ensure thorough and accurate results. The collection includes templates for market research reports, market research analysis, and more, making it easier for teams to collaborate and share insights.

Why you'll love our market research templates

Our market research templates are designed to enhance your research process from start to finish. Here's why you'll love using them:

User-friendly design : Our templates are intuitive and easy to navigate, allowing you to focus on your research rather than the formatting. This user-centric approach ensures that even beginners can quickly get up to speed.

Customizable : Tailor the templates to fit your specific needs and branding, ensuring that your reports and analyses are uniquely yours. This flexibility allows you to adapt the templates to various research scenarios and organizational requirements.

Collaborative features : Miro's templates facilitate teamwork, enabling real-time collaboration and seamless sharing of insights. This means that team members can work together simultaneously, providing immediate feedback and ensuring everyone is on the same page.

Comprehensive structure : Each template covers all essential aspects of market research, from data collection to analysis and reporting. This thoroughness helps you maintain a structured approach, ensuring no critical element is overlooked.

Time-saving : By providing a structured approach, our templates help you save time and streamline your workflow. This efficiency allows you to focus more on analyzing data and deriving actionable insights rather than spending time on formatting and structuring your research.

How to use the market research templates in Miro

Using the market research templates in Miro is straightforward. Follow these step-by-step instructions:

Select a template : Browse our extensive library and choose the market research template that best fits your needs. The variety ensures that you can find a template suitable for any research project.

Customize the template : Add your data, adjust the layout, and incorporate your branding elements to make the template your own. This customization ensures that the final output meets your organization's standards and requirements.

Collaborate with your team : Use Miro's collaborative features to invite team members to contribute in real time, ensuring everyone stays aligned and informed. This real-time collaboration enhances productivity and fosters a more cohesive team effort.

Integrate other tools : Enrich your research by integrating other tools and data sources directly into the template. This integration capability allows you to pull in data from various sources, providing a more comprehensive view of your research findings.

Present your findings : Use Miro's presentation features to effectively share your insights and recommendations with stakeholders. These features help you create compelling presentations that clearly communicate your research outcomes and support data-driven decision-making.

By following these steps, you can maximize the potential of Miro's market research templates and achieve comprehensive, data-driven results.

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Home Tools Customer Interview Questions to Conduct Market Research (Download PDF)

Customer Interview Questions to Conduct Market Research (Download PDF)

February 22, 2022

How do you determine if you have customers who will positively impact your product, relationships, and overall growth?

Do you know the people who are actually valuable to your brand?

2022 consumers face thousands of daily choices every single day. New products, new features, more bang for your buck…making each of those decisions takes its toll. This intensely competitive market justifies why tech companies are often too involved in investing in new technologies, products, and services.

While adding value to the consumer and aiming to capture a bigger market share isn’t a bad idea, risking missing out on the consumer journey, their needs, and wants can result in big opportunities being wasted.

Jump to the market research template.

Why Conduct Market Research?

There are three core stages critical to tech providers’ success – acquiring customers, retaining customers, and monetizing customers.

Companies who can determine:

• The most compelling reasons why their buyers decided to invest in their solution.
• The results they expect to achieve.
• The risks involved they understand with achieving the results.
• The concerns that cause your buyer to believe that your solution is not their best option.
• The surrounding influences to make a decision, as buyers rarely make them in isolation.
• The emotions and motivations behind making the buying decision.

Can create experience-driven marketing associated with guaranteed customer success.

You want to hear your buyer’s story and get into their heads. It clearly reveals the decision you need to influence showing you exactly how, when and why buyers engage to choose your solution, your competitors’, or stick with what they have.

The better the market research, the more dramatic the insights, and the more laser-focused targeting messaging, positioning, and value proposition are.

The Four Common Types of Market Research

There are multiple ways to conduct market research and collect customer data, test products, and do brand research, but the four most common are:

• Focus groups
• Observation

A form of qualitative research with open or closed-ended questions.

2- Focus groups

These offer deeper insight into the products’ customer experience and what marketing messages really resonate with them.

3- Observation

It has no predefined set of questions, so the challenge here is that you can’t get direct feedback from the user. It’s best when combined with interviews, surveys, and/or focus groups.

4- Interviews

Interviews allow for face-to-face discussions (in-person/ virtual), an excellent way for more natural conversations and deeper insights.

It is no secret that the deeper you dive into the problem, the clearer the solution becomes. But what better way to get into your ideal customer’s head, understand their pain points and needs, get inspiration for product development , learn their vocabulary, and even identify new target audiences than a one-on-one, real-time conversation with them!

You might not be able to directly tune into your customer’s brains. But with the right kind of interview, you can get the next best thing.

What is a Market Research Template?

To build a great product, you have to understand the market you’re targeting deeply. Otherwise, you could end up with a brilliant product that nobody wants. That’s where the market research template comes in, also known as a market study template. It can be a market research report template, market research survey template, market research excel template, or even a customer interview checklist.

It is a pre-built set of questions that will help you identify exactly who your buyers are, what they want, where they usually look for products, and how much they are willing to pay. Learn how you can get the market research template in action with our guide to B2B market research .

Market Research Template for Beginners

To help remove the complexity of the task and empower you to get more from your data, we’ve created a Customer Interview Questions Checklist.

Get started on your market research journey with our free interview tool with 21 open-ended questions so you can make the most of customer interviews. The meaty responses that these questions can provide will help you identify what is and is not working with your product for future improvements.

Download The Customer Interview Questions Checklist for Conducting Market Research

Related Content

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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:

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

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.

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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6 Market Research Template Questions

1. what pain point does your product solve, and is your customer aware of this pain point.

Most businesses either improve upon an existing solution or provide a truly new solution. In the second case, you need to know whether customers are aware of the problem you’re solving.

Do they consciously identify this pain point as a problem? If not, you’ll need to educate them before you can make a sale.

Take the Squatty Potty, for example. Most people didn’t know the ideal posture for eliminating body waste, but the company incorporated (humorous) education into their marketing. Once customers learned how much better their bathroom experience could be with the Squatty Potty, it became a tremendous success.

2. Who are your competitors?

If you don’t think you have direct competitors… you’re wrong. There are other solutions to the pain point you’re trying to solve.

Answer this question from your customers’ perspective. Who else could solve their problem? Who do they consider as alternatives?

3. What makes you unique?

How is your solution different from your competitors’ solutions? List three factors that set your solution apart.

4. Who is your target customer?

This goes beyond demographic information. You need to understand your target customers’ behavior and habits and how they’re influenced (through what channels and what other brands).

5. How well-known are you?

Are you a well-known brand? How much trust do you currently have with your audience? How much do you need to educate your target buyers?

6. How will you accomplish your goals?

What resources do you need? What team do you need to build? What channels should you focus on? What budget do you need?

How to Find Data for Your Market Research Template

Where should you go to answer the questions in the above market research template? Use three key channels:

• Associations and networking groups. For example, if you’re starting a business related to healthcare, visit the American Medical Association to learn about the latest developments within the healthcare industry.
• Government databases. Access these to learn about population density and trends, income levels, and even the weather. (For instance, if you’re trying to sell snowboards, Hawaii won’t make your shortlist of target states.)
• SEMrush.com
• Facebook (specifically their targeting and insights within advertising)
• Ads.Google.com (for keyword research)

Your Market Research Template: Final Thoughts

A market research template provides a helpful structure to guide your efforts. By investigating your target customer, competition, market size, and unique positioning, you’ll be well-equipped to make sound business decisions.

So, before launching a new product or venturing into a new market, do your due diligence and invest time in thorough market research. Your success depends on it.

Free Market Research Templates For Google Sheets And Microsoft Excel

200+ Google Sheets Templates

A collection of over  200 Google Sheets templates  for SEO, marketing, PPC and more.

Stay updated when new templates are added:

Google Sheets Templates (by marketers for marketers)

So you work in marketing. Regardless of your position, you are going to spend a good chunk of your time in spreadsheets.

From tracking website analytics, planning content or putting together keyword research docs. It all takes a lot of time. But it doesn’t have to with Google Sheets.

Thankfully there are loads of clever and generous people out there who have made templates to help speed up these tedious jobs.

I’ve spent quite a while compiling all the best Google Sheets Templates so you can do better work by focusing on the data not the process. Enjoy!

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.

Sheets for Marketers’ Hand-Picked Marketing Spreadsheets…

Google analytics templates.

SEO + Website Audit Templates

PPC + SEO Calculators

Competitor Research Templates

Content Marketing Templates

Keyword Research Templates

Link Building Templates

On-Page SEO Templates

Paid Search + PPC Templates

Project Management Templates

Marketing Reporting Templates

Web Scraping Templates

Social Media Templates

Technical SEO Audit Templates

Other Templates

Business Spreadsheet Templates

SEO Checklist Templates

Submit / Request a Template

How to use these Google Sheets templates

Google Sheets + Marketing

So there you have it, enough Google Sheets templates to turn you into a supercharged lazy marketer.

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

And of course, you can’t have a list of over 100 Google Sheets templates without including a version in a spreadsheet, you can grab all the above templates right here .

Now go forth and get lazy.

Looking for the good sheet?

Honourable mentions.

There’s loads more premium SEO sheets templates and add-ons available to supercharge your Google Sheets.

The Blueprint Training (SOPs, templates, custom built tools + more!)

The Blueprint Training is a collection of premium pre-made templates + custom SEO tools to help agency owners scale their operations

Supermetrics Templates

Supermetrics is an add-on for Google Sheets that lets you report, monitor and analyse your marketing campaigns. They’ve also get some nifty pre-set templates for you to steal. Check them out here .

Blockspring Templates

Blockspring is an add-on for Google Sheets that makes it simple to connect Google Sheets to hundreds of webapps and data services to help automate reporting, sales operations and more. Check them out here .

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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Market Research Plan

9 market research tutorials [ms word/exceltemplates].

This is a 10 part series on creating Market Research Plans .

• Market Research Planning 101
• Why Develop a Market Research Plan? Where’s the benefit?
• The 3 Key Ingredients in Every Market Research Plan
• Market Research For Small Business Owners
• Remember Pink iMacs?
• What Jose Mourinho Taught Me About Market Research
• Kickstart your Market Research
• Rocket Science, duh!
• Using Market Research To Develop Brand Loyalty

Feedback Form and Customer Ratings

Learn more about these Market Research Templates

Market Research 101

Before we start this course on Market Research , I’d like to share a little story.

A good friend ran an exclusive winery in France. Very successful. As his son was training to be a Winemaster, they sent him on a course to get his credentials . Nothing to worry about, right?

…after a week he came back.

Devastated.

They’d done a blind tasting and asked him to identify the wines.

He tasted four French wines and one German thrown in for good measure. Maybe it would be a Riesling…

After a few minutes, he identified the four French wines and rogue  German.

And that’s where things went wrong…

Like most young men, he was slightly over-confident of his abilities.

I’ll spare you the gory details but he mixed up the Red and White wines. For a young man with aspirations to be a Winemaster this was a disaster.

With his eyes open, he could see the wines and make a good ‘guesstimate’. But the blind tasting showed his true abilities or rather lack of them .

He couldn’t tell a Bordeaux from a Sauvignon Blanc. And word got out!

This experiment is interesting for those involved in Market Research as it illustrates several points :

• What you think you know about your product may not be true.
• How you determine your own abilities and skills can surprise even the best of us.
• Our pre-conceived ideas about a brand , product or service may not be correct.
• Our inability to see our own blindspots can be a sever liability unless it’s addressed.

This is where Market Research comes to our rescue.

Instead of making assumptions about a product, we can test that assumption. Instead of hoping your target customers will pay for a new product, we can gauge their interest. Instead of adding new features to a product because the Development team thinks it’s cool, we can ask customers what they really want and roll that into the product.

Market Research, as the name implies, is about researching your product’s position in the marketplace .

2. Why Develop a Market Research Plan?

The purpose of a Market Research Plan is to learn what your customers think about your product before you release it. Of course, you may have already released the product but want greater insights into your customer base before you release the next product.

It’s also about where to position it in the market, for example, against the main competitor or to look at new regions that have been under-developed.

There are other ways we can look at this.

How to change customer’s attitude towards our brand? How to price a product so it doesn’t cannibalize our product line? How to assess the interest customers would have in a new product. Useful to know before you start developing it! How to repair our brand if it’s been damaged? BP is a good example here. How do you make customers, the Government, media and partners trust you again?

Why is the product selling more in the West coast than the East?

Or if you offered them a premium version of the product, how much would they pay? Or what’s the one thing that they’d like you to change with the product.

3 Key Ingredients in Every Market Research Plan

There are three key areas in every Market Research Plan .

1. Gather data – what tools and methods do you use to gather the information you need? For example, you might develop surveys, questionnaires, and focus groups. 2. Record data – what tools, software and templates will you use to record the research material? This may include databases, excel Competitor Analysis Worksheet , spreadsheets and MS Word forms. 3. Analyze data – once you have the information in a format you can use, you can then analyze the feedback, look for anomalies, and then clean the data. After the data has been cleanses, you can begin to make chart the results and report on your key findings.

Of course, Market Research is not only to do with launching products.

It can also extend into other areas, for example:

Looking into brand awareness (how many customers know you’re in a specific market?), Customer satisfaction or What the public think of a political figure, new policy or current event. Learn more about these Market Research Templates

4. Market Research For Small Business Owners

For Small Business owners, you’re probably concerned with questions, such as:

Who are my current customers? How do I find new potential customers ? What payment method do they prefer? Some may prefer to pay upfront and get a discount, whereas others may prefer to stagger the payments over smaller payments. Word of Mouth – What makes customers recommend one product over another? How do you get to, ‘Try it, it’s great.’ Instead of investing in expensive marketing campaigns , companies are turning to social media to generate buzz and encourage fans to recommend their products. Trend Watching – When I grew up, TV was the medium advertisers used to get our attention. Today, we watch less TV than ever. But the web is always on. This is where more consumers go to when they want to research a new product. Where do they hear about new trends? Looking on the web is a start, but you have to dig deeper and see where on the web they congregate and how they interact. Status Anxiety – We all want others to respect us. We might deny this in public but in private we’re concerned with what our peers think of us. Note that I said peers not everyone. Many consumers, especially those that are more brand conscious, invest in products to raise their social status. It’s about positioning themselves within their social bracket.

Download Now for only 14.99!

5. Remember Pink iMacs?

When the iMacs were first released, there was a run on pink.

Not red, blue or green. Pink.

Pink sold out in a flash.

But not to teenage girls like you’d think.

Instead, it was up-market Indian families who bought them in droves. Many were never used but strategically placed as exclusive objects in their living rooms, no doubt to generate envy in less well-off (or more pragmatic) guests.

Status anxiety explains many irrational behaviour in consumer buying habits .

The iPad is another example.

It can’t multi-task and is very expensive.

More expensive than most large size laptops, which can multi-task and come with other great features.

But… such is the strength of Apple’s fanbase that the product is a best seller, regardless of price and limited functionality.

Well, it looks great for one thing and… most people can’t afford it.

In the coming weeks, we’ll look at other physiological triggers that influence the way consumers behave.

6. What Jose Mourinho Taught Me About Market Research

Do you think Jose Mourinho knows much about market research , brand segmentation, and customer profiling?

Think again…

Spreadsheets , surveys and focus groups may not be his specialty but he does know his market (the opposition) and does endless research. Ask anyone who’s worked with him at Chelsea, Barcelona or Real Madrid. Mourinho is notorious for gathering information about the opposition team, analyzing the data, and briefing his players. The results are impressive. When interviewed for the Chelsea vacancy, he prepared PowerPoint presentations showing where and how he would develop the team. Board members were blown away. Mourinho looked at the league table that way a General would a battle field. He assessed his troops (team), reviewed the enemy (Man United perhaps), and drew up plans to undermine the opposition. And it worked.

And the same can work for you.

Prepare for Battle

Market Research Planning is simple.

People make it complicated. Some make it complicated to make themselves look clever. It’s not.

The key to effective market research is to follow stick to the basics and define your goals.

What do I want to get out of this piece of work?

Write it down. It should be one sentence. No more.

I want to know…

To get to that point develop a Market Research Plan, which is a framework for getting to that answer.

5 Painless Ways to Kickstart your Market Research

Here are five ways to start your Market Research Planning activities.

Assess the Competition – Can you compete against the market leader? How many competitors are there in the marketplace? Could you partner with other companies and deliver a superior product offering? Mourinho identified three main threats and then went after them. One by one, they were dismantled. 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. Mourinho said that his midfielders had to be 5’8’ minimum. Why? He was blessed with one of the best midfielders in the world with Claude Makelele (5’5’) and wanted to balance his lack of height with taller, more robust players. Other mid-size players were sold and powerhouses brought in. Determine 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? The difficulty with pricing strategies is that what works in one country, or even one city, may be over-priced in another. How do you strike a balance? Sales channels – What’s best approach to selling the products ? Over the web, in the high street, through partners, direct mail? When I started my business, I sold training programs through the post. But I had to stop as shipping fees reduced my profit. Now I sell all my goods online with eJunkie and Clickbank. While I still get requests for hardcopies, I have to decline the offer as the time and effort would wipe out the profit margin. But, it’s not an easy decision. Who wants to say No to money. Volume – 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?

Looking for an example of how your luck can change?

Audible.com was facing bankruptcy a few years ago. No one was buying digital downloads. Then the internet gained traction. Mp3 players spread like wildfire. Suddenly the demand was there.

The next problem was how to keep up with demand .

Nice problem if you can get it.

6. Rocket Science

As you can see, there are many factors to consider when launching a product. Interviewing, running surveys and polls 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 have to run different surveys or workshop until you begin to see specific trends emerging, for example, that the price is too high for customers in France but fine for those in Seattle.

Or the user interface confuses customers and makes them leave the site.

Did you know?

More than 55% of customers who start the buying process (i.e. Click the Buy button) leave the site before they get to the Confirm button.

Wouldn’t you like to know why?

That’s where a discrete survey will help.

‘What’s the one thing on my Shopping Cart that you’d change?’

Or a poll. Or a focus group. Or a questionnaire.

It depends, doesn’t it?

SAD TUT aka USA TDT

I’ve made up a new buzzword to address this. SAD TUT. Or USA TDT. Whichever you prefer!

For small projects, you should be fine with Competitor Analysis Worksheets , spreadsheets, forms and checklists. You can use these to run surveys, ask questions, and gather feedback.

If you need more detailed information, then you’ll need to develop a Market Research Plan . This is ideal when you want a 360 understanding of how customers perceive your company, brand or customer service. It depends on your needs, budget and resources.

Assess the current marketplace.

Determine if there is a real need for your product or service. While you may feel that people MUST want to buy this, the research may show otherwise.

Size up the competition . Who are your main competitors? How can you beat them? Price, Innovation, and Customer Service are three starting points. Understand your Customers. Learn more about their shopping habits. What triggers them to make decisions? How much they usually spend on these types of products? What is their weekly disposable income , i.e. what’s left over when they pay the bills? Monitor Trends – understand how the market is shaping up. Are there new trends you need to watch? What has become passé? Define Achievable Targets – and, of course, you need to define your sales targets. How many of these do I need to sell in the next 12, 24 or 36 months to justify the decision to launch this product?

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 progress.

In a nutshell

After you have completed the Market Research planning phase, you will have the answer to the question you identified at the start of the project.

For most of us, this is: who will buy my product, for how much, and why?

9. The Mystery of the Seven Sided Market Research Plan

Market Research is like a heptagon. Ok, that’s a bit pretentious. But, it is actually and here’s why.

The seven stages in the Market Research Plan look at:

• Why are you doing this?
• Who are you researching?
• What tools will you use to gather the information?
• Where will you collect the data?
• When and how will you analyze it?
• How to Report your findings?
• What Decisions will follow from this?

Market Research Templates, Forms and Tutorials

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.

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

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Marketing Research

1. executive summary, 1.1 purpose of the research.

The primary objective of this marketing research report is to deliver a thorough and actionable analysis of the current market environment, consumer behavior, and competitive landscape to [Your Company Name]. By understanding these elements, the company can make informed strategic decisions to enhance its market position, optimize product offerings, and improve overall business performance. This research is crucial for identifying growth opportunities, evaluating market trends, and addressing competitive challenges.

1.2 Key Findings

The research uncovered several significant insights:

Market Growth: The market for eco-friendly consumer products has seen a robust annual growth rate of 15% over the last three years. This growth is largely attributed to heightened consumer awareness and an increasing preference for sustainable solutions.

Consumer Preferences: A substantial 70% of surveyed consumers place high importance on sustainability and ethical production practices when selecting products. This trend is especially pronounced among younger demographics such as millennials and Generation Z, who are more inclined to support brands that align with their values.

Competitive Landscape: The market is becoming increasingly fragmented with a surge in the number of new entrants offering niche and innovative products. Established competitors are focusing on enhancing their digital presence, utilizing advanced marketing strategies, and engaging with customers through various online platforms.

1.3 Recommendations

Based on the comprehensive analysis, the following strategic recommendations are proposed:

Product Development: [Your Company Name] should diversify its product portfolio to include a range of eco-friendly and sustainable options. This move will cater to the growing consumer demand for environmentally responsible products and help the company establish a competitive edge.

Digital Strategy: It is recommended to amplify investment in digital marketing channels. This includes leveraging social media platforms, engaging in influencer partnerships, and optimizing online advertising campaigns to enhance brand visibility and customer engagement.

Customer Experience: To build and retain a loyal customer base, develop a robust customer loyalty program that includes personalized offers, exclusive rewards, and a seamless shopping experience. This will not only improve customer satisfaction but also drive repeat business.

2. Introduction

2.1 background.

This research was initiated to address [Your Company Name]’s need for a deeper understanding of the market dynamics and consumer preferences impacting its business operations. The consumer goods sector, particularly the eco-friendly product segment, has undergone significant transformations due to shifts in consumer behavior, technological advancements, and increased competition. By examining these factors, the research aims to provide actionable insights that will support strategic decision-making and long-term growth.

2.2 Objectives

The research objectives are:

Market Trend Analysis: To identify and assess the current and emerging trends within the market that could impact [Your Company Name]’s business strategy.

Consumer Insights: To gain a comprehensive understanding of consumer needs, preferences, and behaviors that influence purchasing decisions and brand loyalty.

Competitive Evaluation: To evaluate the strengths, weaknesses, strategies, and market positions of key competitors within the industry.

Opportunity Identification: To identify and prioritize potential growth opportunities, including market segments, product innovations, and strategic partnerships.

2.3 Methodology

The research utilized a mixed-methods approach to gather and analyze data:

Quantitative Research: An online survey was administered to a sample of 500 respondents representing various demographics, including age, gender, and income levels. The survey comprised questions related to purchasing habits, brand preferences, and attitudes towards sustainability.

Qualitative Research: In-depth interviews were conducted with 20 industry experts and focus groups involving 30 participants to gain nuanced insights into consumer attitudes, market trends, and emerging opportunities.

Secondary Data Analysis: Existing market reports, industry studies, and academic literature were reviewed to supplement primary data and provide a broader perspective on market dynamics.

3. Market Analysis

3.1 market overview.

The consumer goods market is experiencing notable growth, with a total market size of $150 billion in 2050. Projections indicate that the market will expand to $180 billion by 2055. This growth is driven by several factors, including increasing consumer demand for innovative and sustainable products. Key market segments are as follows:

Eco-friendly Products: This segment, valued at $30 billion, is experiencing a significant growth rate of 20% annually. The surge in consumer interest in sustainability is a major driver for this segment.

Luxury Goods: Currently valued at $50 billion, this segment exhibits a moderate growth rate of 5% per year. The market for luxury goods remains stable, driven by high-income consumers seeking premium products.

Health and Wellness Products: Valued at $40 billion, this segment is growing at a rate of 10% annually. The increasing focus on health and wellness among consumers is fueling the expansion of this market segment.

Table 1: Market Segmentation and Growth Rates

3.2 Market Segmentation

The market is segmented into various consumer groups, each with distinct characteristics and preferences:

Young Professionals (Ages 25-34): This demographic is characterized by a high level of environmental awareness and a willingness to pay a premium for eco-friendly products. This segment represents approximately 35% of the market.

Families (Ages 35-54): Families prioritize value and convenience. This segment is focused on products that offer practicality and cost-effectiveness. They account for about 40% of the market.

Retirees (Ages 55+): Retirees tend to prioritize product quality and health benefits. This group is less price-sensitive and represents 25% of the market.

Table 2: Market Segmentation by Demographics

3.3 Market Trends

Several key trends are shaping the market:

Sustainability: There is an increasing consumer preference for products that are environmentally friendly and ethically produced. This trend is reflected in the growing market for eco-friendly products, which now accounts for a significant portion of total market revenue.

Digitalization: The rise of e-commerce and digital marketing channels has transformed the retail landscape. Online sales have grown to represent 40% of total market revenue, and digital platforms are becoming increasingly important for consumer engagement and brand promotion.

Personalization: Consumers are seeking personalized products and experiences. Advances in technology and data analytics enable companies to offer tailored products and services, which is becoming a key competitive advantage.

3.4 Competitive Landscape

The competitive landscape in the consumer goods market is evolving with several notable players:

Competitor A: Known for its premium eco-friendly products, Competitor A has established a strong brand presence and commands a 25% market share. The company's focus on sustainability and high-quality standards has positioned it as a leader in the premium segment.

Competitor B: Specializes in value-oriented products with a broad distribution network. Holding a 20% market share, Competitor B is known for its cost-effective solutions and extensive market reach.

Competitor C: Focuses on health and wellness products with innovative features. With a 15% market share, Competitor C is recognized for its commitment to quality and health benefits.

Table 3: Competitor Market Share

4. Consumer Analysis

4.1 consumer profile.

The target consumer profile for [Your Company Name] includes:

Age: Predominantly aged between 25 and 54 years, with a focus on younger consumers who are more likely to prioritize sustainability.

Income Level: Middle to upper-middle class, with annual incomes ranging from $50,000 to $150,000. This demographic is willing to invest in higher-quality and eco-friendly products.

Education: Well-educated, with at least a bachelor’s degree. Higher education levels correlate with increased awareness and concern for sustainability.

Occupation: Includes professionals, managers, and business owners. This group is typically more informed about market trends and brand reputation.

4.2 Consumer Needs and Preferences

Consumers have expressed the following needs and preferences:

Sustainability: A significant 70% of consumers indicate that they prefer products made from recycled materials or produced using environmentally friendly processes. This reflects a growing trend towards ethical consumption and environmental responsibility.

Convenience: 60% of consumers value products that offer ease of use and time-saving benefits. Convenience features such as easy packaging and accessibility are important factors influencing purchasing decisions.

Quality: 55% of consumers prioritize high product quality and performance. They are willing to pay a premium for products that meet or exceed their expectations in terms of durability, effectiveness, and overall quality.

Table 4: Consumer Preferences

4.3 Buying Behavior

Key insights into consumer buying behavior include:

Purchase Channels: The majority of consumers (60%) prefer shopping online due to the convenience and variety of options available. However, physical retail stores remain important, especially for high-value purchases where consumers want to inspect products before buying.

Decision-Making Process: Consumers typically follow a multi-step decision-making process, including research, comparison, and evaluation of product features and prices. Social proof, such as reviews and ratings, plays a significant role in influencing their choices.

Brand Loyalty: Brand loyalty is influenced by factors such as product quality, customer service, and alignment with personal values. Companies that effectively address these factors are more likely to retain customers and foster long-term relationships.

5. Competitor Analysis

5.1 competitor overview.

The competitive environment in the market is characterized by a mix of established players and new entrants. Key competitors include:

Competitor A: A leader in the premium segment, known for its high-quality and sustainable products. The company has a strong brand reputation and a significant market share.

Competitor B: A value-oriented competitor with a broad product range and extensive distribution network. Known for its cost-effective solutions and wide market reach.

Competitor C: An innovator in the health and wellness segment, focusing on product innovation and quality. The company is recognized for its commitment to health benefits and quality standards.

5.2 SWOT Analysis

A detailed SWOT analysis of key competitors provides insights into their strategic positions:

Table 5: Competitor SWOT Analysis

5.3 Competitive Strategies

Competitors are employing various strategies to maintain and enhance their market positions:

Competitor A: Focuses on product differentiation through premium quality and sustainability. The company invests heavily in brand building and marketing to reinforce its market leadership.

Competitor B: Emphasizes cost leadership and broad distribution to capture a large market share. The company leverages economies of scale to offer competitive pricing and attract budget-conscious consumers.

Competitor C: Prioritizes innovation and product development to stay ahead in the health and wellness segment. The company invests in research and development to introduce new and improved products.

6. Data Analysis

6.1 data collection.

Data collection methods included:

Surveys: Conducted an online survey with 500 respondents to gather quantitative data on consumer preferences, purchasing habits, and attitudes towards sustainability. The survey included a mix of multiple-choice and open-ended questions to capture a broad range of responses.

Interviews: Conducted 20 in-depth interviews with industry experts to gain qualitative insights into market trends, consumer behavior, and emerging opportunities. Interviews were structured to explore specific topics in detail and gather expert opinions.

Focus Groups: Organized three focus groups with a total of 30 participants to discuss consumer attitudes towards new product concepts and marketing strategies. Focus groups provided valuable feedback on product features, pricing, and marketing messages.

6.2 Data Analysis Techniques

Data analysis techniques used:

Descriptive Statistics: Employed to summarize survey data and identify key trends. Techniques included calculating means, frequencies, and percentages to provide an overview of consumer preferences and behaviors.

Regression Analysis: Utilized to examine relationships between variables, such as the impact of sustainability on purchasing decisions. Regression models helped quantify the influence of various factors on consumer behavior.

Thematic Analysis: Applied to qualitative data from interviews and focus groups to identify common themes and patterns. This analysis provided deeper insights into consumer attitudes and market trends.

6.3 Findings

Key findings from the data analysis:

Consumer Trends: A significant 70% of respondents expressed a strong preference for eco-friendly products, indicating a growing demand for sustainability in the market. Digital channels are increasingly important, with 60% of consumers preferring to shop online for convenience and variety.

Market Dynamics: The competitive landscape is becoming more fragmented with new entrants offering innovative products. This has led to increased competition and a need for established players to adapt their strategies to maintain market share.

7. Conclusion

7.1 summary of insights.

The research provides a comprehensive understanding of the current market environment, highlighting the importance of sustainability and digital engagement in driving consumer behavior. Key insights include the growing demand for eco-friendly products, the shift towards online shopping, and the evolving competitive landscape with increased market fragmentation.

7.2 Implications for [Your Company Name]

To capitalize on these insights, [Your Company Name] should focus on:

Expanding Product Offerings: Incorporate a range of sustainable and eco-friendly products to meet the growing consumer demand. This will enhance the company's competitive position and appeal to environmentally conscious consumers.

Enhancing Digital Presence: Invest in digital marketing strategies to increase brand visibility and engagement. Utilize social media, influencer partnerships, and targeted online advertising to reach a broader audience and drive sales.

Improving Customer Experience: Develop a comprehensive customer loyalty program to foster repeat business and strengthen customer relationships. Personalize offers, streamline the shopping experience, and provide exceptional customer service to enhance satisfaction and loyalty.

7.3 Next Steps

To implement the recommendations:

Strategy Development: Create a strategic plan that outlines specific actions for product development, digital marketing, and customer engagement. Establish clear goals and metrics to measure progress and success.

Implementation: Roll out initiatives to integrate sustainable practices, enhance digital marketing efforts, and improve customer loyalty programs. Monitor progress and make adjustments as needed to ensure effectiveness.

Monitoring and Evaluation: Continuously track market trends, consumer feedback, and competitive activities to stay informed and adapt strategies accordingly. Regularly review performance metrics and adjust strategies to maintain a competitive edge.

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Take Back Your Time With These 10 Ready-Made Spreadsheet Templates (And Our Top Tips and Time-Savers)

One of our cultural values at Buffer , is to live smarter, not harder.

We like to think this extends into our workflows as well.

This is why marketing spreadsheets have been such a boon for us, helping us to track important social media metrics , see our blog growth , and get more work done in less time.

That being said, spreadsheets are not always easy. Finding or building the right ones and figuring out how best to use them can be time-consuming tasks. We’d love to help.

To give you a hand with managing spreadsheets in Excel and Google Sheets (and hopefully save a great deal of time), we’ve pulled together a list of essential spreadsheets, templates, formulas, and shortcuts that are handy for every marketer to have in their locker.

Let’s jump in…

10 Ready-made Marketing Spreadsheets to Boost Your Productivity

For many of the free spreadsheets linked below, you can download as an .xls file to use and customize in Excel or Google Docs. Google Doc users can also go to “File > Make a Copy …” to add the spreadsheet to their account, then edit.

1. A weekly social media report

Track your social media marketing with week-over-week data

Grab a copy of this spreadsheet here >>

This social media report is built in Google Sheets, and it works off of a data export from Buffer (though you can rig it to work with exports from other social media analytics tools as well).

The report will help you keep tabs on your engagement, top posts, and much more.

2. Waterfall chart

Monitor your progress to see if you’re on track

The waterfall spreadsheet template is extremely versatile for keeping pace with your goals. We use it to track many of our OKRs here at Buffer. (Thanks to the HubSpot team for turning us onto waterfalls.)

Here’s an example of it in use to keep tabs on the number of comments we received per post throughout Q2:

This spreadsheet can be used to track your progress on almost any metric. Here are a few ideas to get you going:

• Follower growth on social media
• Newsletter subscribers
• Traffic growth
• Clicks from your social accounts

3. Blog post traffic tracker

Know which posts are seeing the most traffic, and when

This is one of my favorite spreadsheets we use at Buffer and I’m excited to share it with you. The blog post traffic spreadsheet enables us to keep an eye on which pieces of content are hitting our traffic goals and it’s also really great to keep an eye on what topics are performing best, too.

4. Social media marketing baselines

Know right away which social media posts are on track and which are taking off

How can you tell if a certain number of clicks, reshares, or reach is good?

It can be a bit of a puzzle to see your social media results in context. That’s why we’ve gone about trying to set benchmarks and baselines for our social media marketing , using the above spreadsheet as our starting point.

Simply enter your social media data into the spreadsheet.

Then the formulas do the rest, highlighting any update that goes above and beyond your average.

5. Social media audit spreadsheet

Easily track all your social profiles in one place

Performing a social media audit on a monthly basis can be a good habit. Once you get in a good flow, it might only take 15 minutes or less , and you’ll gain tons of benefits with branding, consistency, and perspective.

Here are some of the things we track in the audit spreadsheet:

• Profiles on all social networks
• Active / dormant
• Posting frequency
• Followers and growth
• Engagement and growth

6. Moz’s One Metric

See at-a-glance which pieces of content are performing best

We’ve used the Moz One Metric spreadsheet to track the performance of our blog posts and even re-engineered it to work with social media updates .

It’s a powerfully simple way to measure performance. Here is Moz’s explanation for why they built it:

We need a way to quickly sift through the noise and figure out which pieces of content were really successful, and which didn’t go over nearly as well.

It works by weighing three different points of data and standardizing to make a single score. The data points can be anything you choose. By default, they’re:

• Google Analytics traffic data
• On-page data (comments, thumbs up)
• Social shares

7. Google Analytics heatmap

Find out when your readers visit your site (so you know when to publish/promote)

The folks at Seer Interactive set about to recreate a Google Analytics mobile dashboard look from a desktop spreadsheet. The results are pretty nifty: You can see the times when your site receives its most organic traffic, which might help you plan when to publish new posts or promote content.

To get started, Seer published step-by-step instructions for setting up the spreadsheet with your own Google Analytics data.

8. Social media calendar

Manage and plan your social media marketing content weeks in advance

We were grateful to partner with HubSpot in creating the above calendar template. One of our favorite features: It includes a sheet to store your best evergreen content and updates so that you can quickly grab something to share in a pinch.

9. Social media metrics dashboard

Visualize (and share) all your social media marketing growth from one place

This is the spreadsheet we used at Buffer to track the performance of our social media marketing. It allows us to chart week-over-week growth and month-over-month growth, with sheets for the snapshot overview and each month’s performance.

Now, we use Buffer Analyze to measure, track, and report our social media performance.

10. Quotes to share

Easy-to-grab, inspiring quotes to share on social media

Some of our most highly engaged social media content is quotes. And when we’re looking for some fresh inspiration, we often turn to this spreadsheet. (Likewise, when we find some quotable inspiration, we add it to the sheet.)

These quotes work great as images also. You can build an image quote in 30 seconds or less using Pablo or other image-creation tools .

5 incredibly handy spreadsheet formulas

1. tidy up spacing.

Have you ever started working on a spreadsheet with some odd spacing going on? A few rogue spaces throughout a sheet can make it difficult to work with the data. Thankfully, there’s a nice, simple formula to help you remove unwanted spaces.

The Trim function works across both Google Sheets and Excel. To use it, simply type the following formula into the Formula Bar:

=TRIM("Your Text Here")

Here’s an example, to remove the unwanted spaces before a name in our spreadsheet. For this, we used the formula: TRIM(“Kevan Lee”)

The following formula can help you to split values within your Google Sheets spreadsheet based on any given character (or delimiter) within the cell. In the below example we used the character ” ” (space) to split first names and surnames from the values listed in Column A.

The formula you need to do this is:

=split(string, delimiter)

And in the above example, we used  “A2″ as the string and ” ” (space) as the delimiter, making our formula:

=split(A2, " ")

If you’re using Excel, this handy guide from Microsoft will help you achieve the same outcome.

3. Percentage difference between two numbers

Back at the start of Q2 2016, we set a goal to boost the traffic to our new posts by 30% in the first 30 days after publishing. To measure this, I created a spreadsheet, and in one column had the target traffic for each post with the actual traffic in another and the percentage difference between the two figures displayed in a third column. This formula helped me see whether we hit the goal on not at a glance, and how far over or under we were.

Here’s a snippet of the spreadsheet (you can see the % difference in the green / red figures in the furthest right column):

To work out the percentage difference you need to use the following formula: =(-1) * (Cell 1-Cell 2)/Cell 2

For example, if we have a target of 3,315 page views and achieve 4,147 page views, this forumla will tell you that you were 25.10% over your target:

Note: Ensure the cells you’re using this formula for are formatted as percentages to ensure this one works.

Autosum can be a really neat time saver in Excel . To use it, simply select an empty cell to the right or below the cells you want to sum, and type Alt + = (or Command + Shift + T on Mac). Excel will then estimate the range of cells you’re trying to combine and in one step give you the total.

Note: If Excel’s estimation is a little off, you can edit the range of cells include in the sum within the formula bar.

In Google Sheets , Autosum works a little differently. First, you need to select the range of cells you wish to add up, then click the Functions button and select the SUM option. Google Sheets will then automatically add the sum of your selected cells directly in the cell below (or to the right if you’re combining data from rows).

Here’s that workflow in action:

5. Add up the sum of cells matching certain criteria

If you wanted to discover the page views on your blog generated by posts written a certain author or count only data from users in a specific cohort, it could take a while to figure these out manually. This is where the SUMIF function comes into play.

SUMIF allows you to add up cells that meet certain criteria. Here’s how a SUMIF works:

=SUMIF (range, criteria, [sum_range])

• =SUMIF: tells the formula it’ll be summing only cells that match the specified criteria
• Range: the range of cells you’re going to add up
• Criteria: the criteria used to determine which cells to add
• Sum Range: The cells to add together

Here’s an example showing how we can breakdown page views generated by post type on the Buffer Social blog using a SUMIF:

In order to calculate the number of page views ‘News’ posts generated we used the formula: =SUMIF(B2:B7,"*news*",D2:D7)

This formula sums the amounts in column D (range) when a value in column B (sum range) contains “News” (criteria) .

More on the SUMIF function:

• SUMIF Function explained
• Using SUMIF if a cell contains text

Bonus: 9 Time-Saving Shortcuts and Tips Used by Spreadsheet Masters

1. add borders to cells.

When I work with spreadsheets, I love to use borders to help me break up the data and make a sheet easier to understand. Both Excel and Google Sheets have a button to add borders, but they also have some super-handy shortcuts:

Google Sheets:

• Apply top border: PC: Alt + Shift + 1 | Mac: Option + Shift + 1
• Apply right border: PC: Alt + Shift + 2 | Mac: Option + Shift + 2
• Apply bottom border: PC: Alt + Shift + 3 | Mac: Option + Shift + 3
• Apply left border: PC: Alt + Shift + 4 | Mac: Option + Shift + 4
• Remove borders: PC: Alt + Shift + 6 | Mac: Option + Shift + 6
• Apply outer border: PC: Alt + Shift + 7 | Mac: Option + Shift + 7

PC and Mac (substitute Alt for the Option key on Mac):

2. Format numbers as currency

If you have some data you’d like to quickly turn into currency, there’s a super quick solution to help you out. This shortcut can be particularly useful when you’re working with budgets, revenues or even salaries.

To use this trick, simply highlight the cells you wish to update and press Control + Shift + 4 . Thankfully, this shortcut is universal across Excel, Google Sheets, Mac, and PC.

3. Format as a percentage

Much like formatting numbers as currency you can also format numbers as a percentage using a neat shortcut. To do this, simply select the cells you’d like to show as percentages and press Control + Shift + 5 .

4. Copy formatting

Formatting spreadsheets to your liking can take quite some time. To help speed this process up, you can use the Paint Format button to copy and paste formatting from one bunch of cells to another.

To do this, highlight the formatting you’d like to copy, then click on the paintbrush icon (on both Excel and Google Sheets) and then select the area you’d like to apply the formatting to and click the paintbrush again. Your styling will now be applied to those cells.

5. Start a new line in the same cell

Adding multiple lines of text within the same cell is often a puzzle for spreadsheet users. I can’t even recall how many times I experimented and tried to figure this out before someone was gracious enough to teach me this amazingly simple keyboard command.

Here’s the answer, to add a new line of text in the same cell holding Alt + Enter on PC or Control + Option + Return on Mac , will add a new line inside a cell on both Google Sheets and Excel.

6. Insert date and time

Almost every spreadsheet will have a column for the date or time and the following shortcuts work across Excel, Google Sheets, Mac, and PC:

To add the date, use Control + ;

To enter the current time, use Control + Shift + ;

7. Fill down / Fill right

These shortcuts allow you to quickly copy data from the cell above or the cell to the left, without having to copy and paste. In Excel, to copy a value from the cell above, use Control + D. To copy data from the cell to the left, use Control + R.

Google Sheets works a little differently here, but you can still use a shortcut to fill cells to the right and below. To do this on Google Sheets:

• Highlight the cells you’d like to fill with the top or furthest left cell being the one you’d like to copy
• Press Command + D

8. Show formulas

Occasionally, it can be useful to see all the formulas within your sheet, and what’s even better is being able to do this without having to manually click on each cell to see the formula behind the data. By holding Control + ‘ (on both Mac and PC and Google Sheets and Excel), you can display all formulas within your spreadsheet at once.

This shortcut is particularly useful to help ensure you’re using consistent formulas throughout your sheet.

9. Insert rows and columns

To insert a row above or column into a spreadsheet, you first need to select an entire row or column. Then, on Excel , use Control + Shift and + (on Mac: Control + I) to insert a row or column (columns will be added to the right of the selected column).

On Google Sheets , the command is a little different:

Here are the shortcuts for Mac:

Happy Excel-ing

Thanks for reading! I hope you picked up one or two new tips and tricks for your spreadsheets here.

Further reading:

• 54 Excel Shortcuts You Really Should Know (Exceljet)
• 10 Useful Google Spreadsheet Formulas (Woorkup)

Did you find this article helpful? You might also like our all-you-need social media toolkit.

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