13 Unmatched B2B Audience Research Tools for 2024

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Your B2B audience research quality will impact the speed of your business’s growth. Using the right tools is the easiest way to enhance this quality.

Good audience research tools will help you:

  • Gather, analyze, and compare trends in your market
  • Clarify B2B customer needs
  • Define critical competitors in your market
  • Map potential economic factors impacting your industry
  • Understand how your customers see and buy your products/services

In this article, we’ve gathered 13 B2B audience research tools that will help you at each stage of the process — from gathering data to drawing conclusions and making data-driven decisions.

Tools for B2B Market Trends Analysis

Let’s start with analyzing the key trends in your industry. This will help you get a quick overview of the current “hot topics” in your B2B market — and find interesting content topics.

Exploding Topics:

Exploding topics is one of the most powerful B2B Audience Research Tools

This tool delves into rapidly growing trends and topics across various industries, allowing you to stay ahead of the curve. Its free plan offers limited searches, while paid subscriptions starting at $97/month provide more in-depth insights. Key features that aid in B2B audience research include:

  • Trend tracking: Monitor how search interest in specific topics is evolving, helping you understand what your B2B audience is becoming increasingly interested in.
  • Breakout categories: Analyze which industries or categories a trend is starting to gain traction in. This can reveal new potential markets or segments for your B2B products or services.
  • News analysis: Exploding Topics examines relevant news articles related to a trend, revealing underlying drivers and context that can fuel your content and communications.

Google Trends:

This free tool is indispensable for understanding how interest in specific topics changes over time. It provides valuable insights for B2B audience research, including:`

  • Search volume visualization: Track search interest for keywords relevant to your industry, allowing you to assess market demand and identify seasonal peaks or declines.
  • Geographical insights: See where in the world particular topics are searched most frequently, helping you to tailor marketing efforts to specific regions.
  • Related query analysis Explore questions and concerns related to a topic, providing excellent input for long-tail keyword targeting and content that directly addresses your audience’s pain points.

Tools for B2B Market Analysis

Now, it’s time to dive deep into your market, using data available from multiple sources already gathered by other entities (also known as third-party data). Here are 2 tools that help with it:

Semrush Market Explorer:

B2B audience research tool from Semrush: Market Explorer

This powerful tool is designed for comprehensive market analysis and competitor insights. Paid plans start at $119.95/month. Here’s how it assists with B2B audience research:

  • Market size and trends: Understand the overall potential of your market, identify growth areas, and gauge the competitive landscape.
  • Audience insights: Provides demographic and behavioral data for your target audience, helping you build a detailed picture of ideal customers.
  • Competitor traffic analysis: Analyze your competitors’ website traffic patterns and sources, revealing their most successful marketing channels.
  • Growth quadrant visualization: See where you and your competitors stand in the market, facilitating data-driven decisions on where to focus your efforts.

Databox Benchmarks:

This tool helps you benchmark your company’s performance metrics against competitors within your industry. Databox offers a free plan for this in exchange for connecting your data sources. It empowers your B2B audience research by:

  • Curated benchmarks: Access a wide range of industry-specific benchmarks, giving you a clear reference point for measuring your own success.
  • Customizable dashboards: Create tailored dashboards to track the specific metrics that are most important for understanding your audience and competitors.
  • Integration with your data: Connect Databox with tools like Google Analytics, HubSpot, and others, streamlining the process of comparing your performance to the market averages.

Tools for Conducting B2B Customer Interviews

Any good B2B audience research needs to include… well — insights about your audience. So, here are tools that will help you gather, analyze, and draw conclusions from audience data:

Typeform:

This versatile tool allows you to create visually appealing and highly customizable surveys and feedback forms. While a basic version is free, paid plans starting at $25/month offer more features crucial for B2B audience research:

  • Advanced question types: Utilize rating scales, open-ended text responses, and opinion scales to capture rich insights about your audience.
  • Conditional Logic: Craft survey paths that adapt based on a respondent’s answers, leading to more targeted questioning and deeper insights.
  • Professional branding: Customize the look and feel of your forms to align with your company’s image, increasing professionalism and encouraging participation.

Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk):

This platform provides access to a vast pool of potential participants for surveys, research, or data collection tasks. Pricing is pay-as-you-go based on task complexity and additional Amazon fees apply. Here’s how MTurk helps with B2B audience research:

  • Target specific demographics: Filter and select participants based on job titles, industry expertise, company size, and other factors, ensuring you’re reaching your ideal audience.
  • Scalable data collection: Quickly gather responses from a large number of potential customers, accelerating your research process.
  • Cost-effective: MTurk can be a cost-efficient way to conduct market research, especially for small to medium-sized B2B companies.

ChatGPT:

This powerful language model from OpenAI can assist in qualitative data analysis, saving you time and effort in your audience research. Currently free (with a premium plan offering much more complex functionality for $20), ChatGPT can:

  • Summarize customer interview transcripts: Quickly extract core themes and insights from lengthy interviews or focus group discussions.
  • Identify sentiment: Detect positive, negative, or neutral sentiment within feedback, helping gauge customer satisfaction with your brand or offerings.
  • Generate summaries: Receive concise summaries of large amounts of qualitative data, aiding easy pattern and trend identification.

Tools for Website Data Analysis

You can (and should) gather a lot of data passively – through sources like your website or app. Those two tools should make it easier:

Google Analytics:

This industry-standard tool is a cornerstone of web analytics. While the basic version is free, a paid version (Google Analytics 360) provides enhanced features. Its key functionalities for B2B audience research include:

  • Detailed traffic insights: See how people arrive at your website, which pages they visit, and how long they stay – all indicators of audience interests.
  • Audience demographics: Gain insights into visitor age, gender, and location, helping build a comprehensive audience profile.
  • Goal tracking: Set goals (form submissions, content downloads) and see how different audience segments navigate your site and interact with your content.
  • Custom reports: Create reports tailored to your specific research goals and monitor key metrics over time.

Plausible Analytics:

A lightweight, privacy-focused alternative to Google Analytics, providing key website metrics. Plausible offers a basic plan for $9/month and higher tiers based on website traffic volume. Here’s how it assists in B2B audience research:

  • Essential Data: Access core visitor metrics, including traffic volume, sources, top-performing content, all in a clear and user-friendly dashboard.
  • Privacy-centric approach: A strong selling point if your B2B audience is sensitive to data tracking or you aim to comply with strict privacy regulations.
  • Open-source: As an open-source platform, it offers transparency and the potential for customization if your company has development resources.

B2B Audience Research Tools: Final Thoughts

Choosing the right tools simplifies and supercharges your B2B audience research. By understanding your market, customers, and competitors, you’ll create marketing campaigns that resonate, attract qualified leads, and drive sustainable business growth.

Remember, B2B audience research is not a one-time project but an integral part of your marketing strategy. Regularly reviewing and updating your insights ensures you remain aligned with the evolving needs of your target market.

If you’re looking for a reliable team to execute your B2B audience research project or help you craft a data-driven marketing strategy, book a call with StoryAngled. Our experts specialize in crafting in-depth B2B audience analysis to help you make informed decisions and achieve your business goals.

Kuba Czubajewski

Kuba Czubajewski

CEO and Content Marketing Strategist @ StoryAngled. He helped multiple SaaS companies from various niches generate organic leads with SEO and content. In his free time, he works on his own YouTube channel about the science of creativity. Huge fan of product-led content, cats, and baking.

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