To grow your business, you need to understand your market.
But how?
Start by conducting market analysis.
In this post, you’ll learn what market analysis is and why it matters.
Plus, you’ll discover eight tools that can help you perform market analysis and dominate your niche.
Let’s start.
What Is Market Analysis?
Market analysis is the process of evaluating a market in a certain industry.
It helps you answer questions like:
- How big is your market and how fast is it growing?
- Who are the big players in your market (aka your competitors)?
- Who are your customers and what are their online behaviors?
- How can you attract your ideal customers in your market?
Market analysis is crucial for any business that wants to grow and succeed in today’s competitive world.
But how do you conduct market analysis accurately and reliably?
That’s where tools come in handy.
1. Market Explorer
Semrush’s Market Explorer tool lets you analyze your market. And helps you uncover crucial insights for your business.
Think of the tool as a drone. It provides a bird's-eye view of the market landscape.
Want to identify who's leading the pack in your market? No problem.
Want to see the total size of your market? Easy.
Or maybe you're looking for the best marketing channels? Yep, it can help with that, too!
To get started:
- Open the tool
- Select “Analyze Category”
- Select your desired location
- Choose your market from the drop-down
- Click “Research a market”
You’ll see lots of valuable information.
Look at:
- Market Consolidation: This shows you how competitive your market is. A high consolidation means the market is dominated by a few big players. A low consolidation means that the market is more fragmented and diverse.
- Market Domains: This shows the number of websites in your market
- Market Traffic: Total traffic received by the websites in your market
- Market Traffic Cost: The cost of generating paid traffic if you’re targeting the organic keywords your market’s players rank for
- Market Size: This helps you evaluate the scalability of your market
- Total Addressable Market (TAM) shows the total sales you can generate based on the demand for your product or service in a given market
- Serviceable Available Market (SAM) shows the total sales you can generate based on the segment of the TAM that can afford and is ready to buy your product or service
In short, the “Market Summary” section helps you analyze your market and get a comprehensive overview of its competitiveness, traffic, cost, size, and sales potential.
Moving on to the “Growth Quadrant” section, you’ll find your competitors classified into four types:
- Game Changers: Domains with low traffic but high growth—above the market average. Watch out for them.
- Leaders: Domains with high traffic and high growth—above the market average
- Niche Players: Sites with low market share and slow growth. They could be new or losing momentum.
- Established Players: Domains with high traffic but low growth. They are well-known and experienced in the industry.
Market Explorer helps you understand each competitor, learn from them, and strategize to outperform them.
What’s more, it breaks down how much traffic each channel contributes to your market.
To help you prioritize channels for marketing.
Understand where the majority of traffic flows from. Is it organic search, social media, paid ads, or direct visits? Then, adjust your marketing budget to leverage these channels.
You can also see the top five countries that produce the most traffic.
This gives you an idea about the global reach of your market and the opportunities for your business in different countries.
That’s not all.
You can also see the evolution of market traffic over time. This helps you assess whether your market is growing, declining, or staying the same.
Pricing: Market Explorer tool is part of Semrush’s suite of online marketing tools. The free version of the tool lends limited functionality.
To use Market Explorer to its full potential, subscribe to Semrush’s paid plan and the .Trends add-on.
Semrush offers three paid plans: Pro, Guru, and Business. The Pro plan is the most basic one and costs $129.95 per month.
The .Trends add-on costs an additional $200 per month and gives full access to Market Explorer.
2. One2Target
Semrush’s One2Target reveals your audience and their unique attributes.
Understanding your audience is important if you want to succeed in your market.
Use the insights from the tool to tailor your marketing strategies.
Open the tool, enter your competitor’s website, and click “Analyze.”
(We use a competitor’s website because you and your competitor often share a very similar audience; the data will reflect your audience’s characteristics, too.)
You’ll see lots of information.
The “demographics” tab shows how their (and your) audience is distributed across age and gender.
This can help you tailor your marketing messaging to resonate with the demographics that comprise your audience.
For instance, a younger audience might prefer a more casual tone, whereas an older audience might appreciate a more formal approach.
The “socioeconomics” tab gives insights into your audience’s household size and income level.
As well as their employment status and education level.
If you find that a large portion of your audience is composed of high-income earners, consider creating premium-priced offerings or upsell strategies.
Conversely, if your audience consists mainly of students, budget-friendly options and discounts might be more attractive.
Moving to the "behavior" tab, you’ll see your audience's digital behavior.
This shows which social media platforms they use the most, which can help you decide where to concentrate your social media marketing efforts.
You'll also learn about the types of websites they visit, which can help you identify potential partnership opportunities.
Plus, it reveals whether your audience prefers browsing on their desktop or mobile devices.
So you can set device targeting to show your ads on the devices your audience frequents.
With Semrush’s One2Target, you're not just understanding your audience.
You're also learning how to engage them and convert them into customers. And, ultimately, dominate your market.
Pricing: One2Target is a freemium tool. The free version shows a sample report.
To use the tool to research your market audience, sign up for a Semrush paid plan and the .Trends add-on. They cost $129.95 and $200 per month, respectively.
3. Traffic Analytics
Traffic Analytics gives you insights into the marketing channels that work for your competitors.
If something is already working for your competitors, it will likely work for you, too.
Invest in the same marketing channels to find success in your market.
Open the tool, enter your competitor’s website, and click “Analyze.”
In the “Traffic Journey” tab, you’ll see the distribution of their website traffic by various channels.
If you see your competitor getting traffic from organic search, consider investing in search engine optimization (SEO).
Or, if you see paid search and display ads make up the majority of your competitor’s traffic, they’re using pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns.
The Traffic Analytics tool is your secret weapon to understanding what works in your market. And using that knowledge, you can strategize your marketing investments smartly. It’s one of the best tools for marketing analysis.
Pricing: Traffic Analytics tool is part of Semrush’s online marketing toolkit. A free account gives access to some data.
To access more data, you’ll need a Semrush subscription and .Trends add-on.
Get Semrush for $129.95 and buy .Trends add-on for $200 per month.
4. EyeOn
Semerush’s EyeOn tool helps you keep tabs on your competitor’s online marketing moves and get market insights.
Open the tool, enter your competitor’s website, and click “Start monitoring.”
The “Google Search Ads” tab shows their latest search ads.
By looking at your competitor's latest ads, you can find out what messaging works best in your market and use it as inspiration when crafting your own ads.
The “Blog Post” tab shows their newly published blog posts.
Monitoring newly published blog posts can provide insight into what type of content your competitors’ are publishing. You can use this knowledge to build your own content strategy.
The “New Pages” tab shows what kind of webpages your competitor is adding to their website. Analyze these pages to discern their purpose.
The “Social Media” tab shows their latest posts on Facebook, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter).
Keeping tabs on your competitor’s social media activity can reveal great insight into how they engage their audience and what trends or tactics work best.
When you can see your competitors’ activities—from their latest ads to social media posts to blogs—you're tapping into a gold mine of information.
This allows you to see what works (and what doesn't) in your specific market.
Pricing: EyeOn is a freemium tool. The free version has limited functionality.
Get full access with Semrush’s paid plan and .Trends add-on. The cost is $129.95 and $200 per month, respectively.
5. Exploding Topics
Exploding Topics helps you discover new trends in your market.
A large part of market analysis is identifying new trends before they take off.
By spotting trends early, you can create new content, products, or services that match the emerging needs and interests of your ideal audience.
And gain a competitive edge and attract more customers.
Open the tool and browse thousands of trending topics across various categories and time frames.
For example, below are some of the trends that have emerged in the design space in the last two years:
If you find an interesting keyword, click on it. For example, let's click on the "Generative AI" trend.
You'll see a chart showing the keyword's volume, growth, and trend graph:
The tool also shows other related topics that are trending.
Exploding Topics helps you find new and exciting ideas in your market.
Using that knowledge, you can innovate faster and stay ahead of your competitors. It’s one of the best market trend analysis tools.
Pricing: Exploding Topics offers both a free and paid version of the tool. The paid version of the tool, called “Exploding Topics Pro,'' starts at $39 per month (billed annually).
6. Census Business Builder
Census Business Builder enables you to access U.S. consumer data.
If you’re a brick-and-mortar business searching for new geographic markets for expansion, this tool is for you.
It’s easy to use:
- Open the tool
- Browse and select your business type
- Choose the data type you want to see
- Input the location you’re interested in
You’ll get consumer-related data, such as:
- How much each household spends annually on your business category in that area
- The annual spending comparison with other states
- The median income of households in your area
- The percentage of consumers who have completed high school or degree education
- The number of businesses that make or sell goods in your area
- The homeownership rate of consumers in your area
All this information helps you evaluate the business potential in your target location.
For example, if you see that customers spend a lot on your business category in a certain area, that means there is a high demand for your product or service there.
Or, if you see that the median income of households in your area is high, that means people have more disposable income.
Pricing: Census Business Builder is free.
7. Statista
Statista gives you access to market data across 170 industries and 150-plus countries.
If you want to understand your market size, trends, and opportunities, this tool is for you.
Use the data from this tool to make informed decisions about your product or service offerings.
Open the tool and enter your market. Then, click “Statista Search.”
You’ll see various data sets related to your market, like this example.
Open the data set to get deeper insights into your market.
You can also download the data in different formats, such as PDF and PPT.
Statista is useful for discovering key drivers and trends that shape your market.
Pricing: Statista is free to use. But it also offers paid solutions. These give you unlimited access to all statistics and other features. The pricing starts at $79 per month (billed annually).
8. Jungle Scout
Jungle Scout helps you conduct market analysis for ecommerce businesses. Specifically, you can measure product demand and profitability.
Download the Chrome extension. It runs on any Amazon product results page and gives valuable information, such as:
- Monthly sales and revenue estimates for each product
- Opportunity score that indicates the product potential based on demand, competition, and listing quality.
Use this information to find and launch profitable products on Amazon and grow your ecommerce sales.
Pricing: Jungle Scout is a paid tool. Subscriptions start at $49 per month (billed monthly) and go up to $129 (billed monthly), depending on the plan you choose.
Conduct Market Analysis Today
Market analysis is essential if you want to thrive in today's competitive landscape.
By conducting a market analysis, you can gain valuable insights into your target market that fuels strategies to grow your business.
Semrush offers various tools that can help you perform market analysis.
Sign up today!