Internet marketing research provides businesses with the opportunity to learn much more about their target market. As an online business owner, talent and experience can only get you so far. Learning more about your target market gives you the leverage you need to fulfill their needs, increase sales and develop effective strategies and marketing plans to grow your business.

Online market research is a quick and relatively cost effective way to get the answers you need. Using online search engines, you can easily search billions of websites in just seconds. The market research data you receive can help you find and qualify prospective customers and decide whether to pursue a new line of business, product or service. Online marketing research is an essential part of any business plan, since understanding your customers' needs makes it easier to fulfill them and stay ahead of your competition. This guide will show you:

1. How to gather online market research with surveys

2. How to find business and market research websites

3. How to use news resources as an online marketing resource

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Start your web marketing research by surveying your customers

Using an online marketing research survey is a great way to gather demographic and psychographic information about your target market. It can also be a good way to gauge customer response to a new product you are considering, or to make sure you are meeting customer expectations.

I recommend: Some market research packages are pricey. You can do the general research on your own and still get the information you need. SurveyKey.com gives you the ability to create surveys specific to your company. It's very simple to use and the site protects user-created surveys with 128-bit SSL secure encryption. SurveyMonkey.com is another inexpensive tool to help you create a custom survey in no time. You can even review graph results in real time and publish the results for as many recipients as you like.

Find business and market research websites for your online market research

Business and market research websites can be an ideal way to see what your competitors are doing or qualify potential customers.

I recommend: Hoover's is an effective internet marketing resource providing detailed files on over 50,000 public and private companies, market data, financial information, free business news and additional information for a fee. Dun & Bradstreet also provides information on companies relevant to your business in the United States or abroad.

News sources can be a big internet marketing resource

New sources offer important internet marketing reference tools, sometimes for free. They can provide information about what your competition is up to and changes within your industry.

I recommend: NewsPage offers a free online marketing resource that provides business news for many different industries, allowing you to keep up-to-date on the latest business headline news. Newspage offers a filter feature, which allows you to select a specific news feed by company or industry. Lexis-Nexis is a search database filled with news, demographics, statistics and more. Enter the name of a company and the search pulls together a report containing a photo of the company, relevant news articles, any legal cases and more to help with your online marketing research. The cost to access this database is reasonable, considering the wealth of information it offers.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  Business owners can use a search engine, such as Google or Yahoo!, as a free general Internet marketing research tool. These options allow you access to more than 3 billion websites and provide quality information.