To grow your business, you must understand your market.
But how?
Start by conducting a market analysis.
In this post, you’ll learn what a market analysis is and why it matters.
You’ll also discover eight tools to help you perform a market analysis and dominate your niche.
Let’s start.
What Is Market Analysis?
Market analysis is the process of evaluating a market in a specific industry.
It helps answer questions like:
- How large is the market and how fast is it growing?
- Which companies are the major competitors in the market?
- Who are the customers and what are their online behaviors?
- How can you attract your ideal customers within this market?
Conducting a market analysis is essential for any business that wants to grow and succeed in a competitive environment.
But how can you conduct an accurate and reliable market analysis?
Tools can help.
1. Market Explorer
Semrush’s Market Explorer tool lets you analyze your market and uncover crucial insights for your business.
The tool provides a top-level overview of the market landscape.
Want to identify who leads your market? The tool can show you.
Want to see the total size of your market? The tool can show you.
Want to find the best marketing channels? Market Explorer can show you that as well.
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 valuable information.
Focus on:
- Market Consolidation: Indicates how competitive your market is. High consolidation means a few big players dominate. Low consolidation means the market is more fragmented.
- Market Domains: Shows the number of websites in your market
- Market Traffic: Shows total traffic received by the websites in your market
- Market Traffic Cost: Shows the combined estimated cost of all market domains to rank for organic keywords over the month specified
- Market Size: Helps evaluate the scalability of your market
- Total Addressable Market (TAM) shows total potential sales based on market demand
- Serviceable Available Market (SAM) shows sales potential within the segment of your TAM that’s ready and able to buy
The “Market Summary” section lets you analyze market competitiveness, traffic, cost, size, and sales potential.
The “Growth Quadrant” section classifies competitors into four groups:
- Game Changers: Domains with low traffic but high growth
- Leaders: Domains with high traffic and high growth
- Niche Players: Domains with low traffic and slow growth. Niche players are possibly new or losing momentum.
- Established Players: Domains with high traffic but low growth. Established players are experienced in the industry.
Market Explorer helps you understand each competitor, learn from them, and strategize to outperform them.
The tool also shows how much traffic in your market comes from each channel, which can help you prioritize marketing channels.
Use the “Traffic Generation Strategy" section to identify if traffic comes from organic search, social media, paid ads, or direct visits, etc., then adjust your marketing budget as needed to use those channels.
You can also see the top five countries that generate the most traffic for your market.
Seeing traffic by country reveals your market’s global reach and shows potential opportunities in different areas.
You can also see the evolution of market traffic over time, which helps you assess whether your market is growing, declining, or stable.
Pricing
Market Explorer is an add-on to Semrush’s suite of marketing tools. The free version offers limited functionality.
To access the full potential, subscribe to a Semrush paid plan and the .Trends add-on.
Semrush’s Pro plan costs $139.95 per month. The .Trends add-on costs $289 per month.
2. One2Target
Semrush’s One2Target reveals your target audience and their attributes.
Knowing your audience is important for success in your market, and you can use the tool’s insights to tailor your marketing strategies.
Open the tool, enter a competitor’s website, and click “Analyze.”
(Use a competitor’s website because you and your competitors often share a very similar audience; the data will reflect your audience’s characteristics, too.)
You’ll see extensive audience information.
The “Demographics” tab shows information about your audience’s age and gender.
Use the data from the “Audience” section to tailor your marketing messaging.
For example, a younger audience may prefer a casual tone, while an older audience might want a more formal approach.
The “Socioeconomics” tab shows audience household size and income level.
The “Socioeconomics” tab also shows employment status and education level.
If many high-income earners comprise your audience, consider creating premium offerings. If many are students, focus on budget-friendly options and discounts.
The "Behavior" tab shows digital behavior, including which social media platforms your audience uses.
Platform information helps you focus your social media marketing efforts.
The “Behavior” report also shows the types of websites your audience visits and their preferred devices.
Adjust your device targeting and partnerships based on the data you see.
With Semrush’s One2Target, you understand your audience and learn how to engage them, convert them into customers, and dominate your market.
Pricing
One2Target is freemium with limited data—a sample report is available.
For full access, get a Semrush paid plan and the .Trends add-on—$139.95 per month and $289 per month, respectively.
3. Traffic Analytics
Traffic Analytics shows which marketing channels work for your competitors.
If those channels work for rivals, they may work for you. And you can invest in the channels your competitors use to find success in your market.
Open the tool, enter a competitor’s website, and click “Analyze.”
In the “Traffic Journey” tab, see how traffic is distributed across various channels.
If organic search drives traffic for rivals, consider investing in SEO. If paid ads dominate, consider investing in pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns.
Traffic Analytics guides you on which marketing channels matter in your market, making it a top tool for market analysis.
Pricing
Traffic Analytics is part of Semrush’s .Trends toolkit. Free accounts have limited data.
For full data access, get a Semrush subscription plus a .Trends add-on—$139.95 per month and $289 per month, respectively.
4. EyeOn
Semrush’s EyeOn tool helps you monitor your competitor’s online marketing moves and gain market insights.
Open the tool, enter at least one competitor’s site, and click “Start monitoring.”
The “Google Search Ads” tab shows the entered competitors’ latest search ads.
By looking at your competitors’ 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 your rivals’ newly published blog posts.
Monitoring newly published blog posts can provide insight into what type of content your competitors are publishing, and you can use this knowledge to build your own content strategy.
The “New Pages” tab shows what new pages the entered competitors have added.
Analyze the new pages to uncover their purpose, and decide whether you should make any adjustments.
The “Social Media” tab shows your chosen competitors’ latest posts on Facebook, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter).
Monitoring your competitor’s social media activity can reveal great insight into how they engage their audience and what trends or tactics work best.
By seeing your competitors’ latest ads, social posts, and blog updates, you gain valuable insights into what works (and what doesn’t work) in your market.
Pricing
EyeOn is a freemium tool. The free tool offers limited functionality.
Get full access with Semrush’s paid plan along with a .Trends add-on—$139.95 per month and $289 per month, respectively.
5. Exploding Topics
Exploding Topics helps you discover new trends in your market.
Identifying new trends before they become mainstream is a key part of market analysis.
By spotting trends early, you can create relevant content, products, or services that align with emerging customer interests to improve your competitive advantage and help attract more customers.
Open the tool and browse thousands of trending topics across various categories and time frames.
For example, the image below shows design trends that emerged over the course of a few years:
If you find an interesting keyword, click on it.
For example, we’ll select “Generative AI”:
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 promising ideas in your market.
By using the insights you uncover, you can innovate faster and stay ahead of competitors.
Exploding Topics is one of the best market trend analysis tools.
Pricing
Exploding Topics offers both a free and paid version.
The paid version, Exploding Topics Pro, starts at $39 per month (billed annually).
6. Census Business Builder
Census Business Builder provides access to U.S. consumer data that’s especially useful for brick-and-mortar businesses seeking new geographic markets for expansion.
To get started:
- Open the tool
- Browse and select your business type
- Choose the data type you want to see
- Input the location you want to analyze
You’ll get consumer-related data, such as:
- The annual household spending on your business category in that area
- The annual spending compared with other states
- The median household income in the area
- The percentage of consumers who have completed high school or degree education
- The number of businesses that sell related goods in the area
- The homeownership rate in the area
Use the tool’s data to evaluate a location’s business potential.
For example, high spending on your category may indicate strong demand for your product or service in the chosen area.
And a high median household income indicates a location where people have more disposable income.
Pricing
Census Business Builder is free.
7. Statista
Statista provides market data across 170 industries and more than 150 countries, which means you can use this tool to understand your market size, trends, and opportunities.
Analyze the data you gather to make informed decisions about your products or services.
Open the tool and enter your market. Then, click “Statista Search.”
You’ll see various data sets related to your market, as shown below:
Open a data set to gain deeper insights.
You can also download the data as a PDF or a PPT.
Statista is useful for discovering key drivers and trends that shape your market.
Pricing
Statista offers free access with limited features.
Paid solutions start at $79 per month (billed annually) and provide unlimited access to all statistics and additional features.
8. Jungle Scout
Jungle Scout helps ecommerce businesses conduct market analyses and focuses on measuring product demand and profitability.
Download the Chrome extension and run it on any Amazon product results page to get valuable information, such as:
- Monthly sales and revenue estimates for each product
- An opportunity score that indicates a product’s potential based on demand, competition, and listing quality
Use the tool’s data to find and launch profitable products on Amazon and grow ecommerce sales.
Pricing
Jungle Scout is a paid tool.
Subscriptions start at $49 per month (billed monthly) and go up to $129 per month (billed monthly), depending on the plan.
Conduct a Market Analysis Today
Doing a market analysis is essential if you want to succeed in today’s competitive landscape.
By performing a market analysis, you gain insights that can inform strategies for business growth.
Semrush provides multiple tools for running a market analysis.
Sign up today!