Thread by @KateBour

The best marketers are customer-obsessed

Here are 6 free tools to help you better understand your audience and market smarter (even if you’re not techie) 👇

Let me preface this by saying that if you really, REALLY wanna understand what works with buyers, you should

*Wait for it*

Talk to actual buyers

Buyers are the best source of contextual insights. Period.

That said, if ya need a quick hit of inspiration these tools can help...

Let’s explore each tool using an example

Imagine that you work for an ad agency that just signed Skims—Kim K’s shapewear co

Kim is in the middle of an expensive divorce so she demands that your team grow sales FAST

There’s just one problem: you know *nothing* about shapewear

If you can’t figure out what works with buyers—and fast—you’re fucked

Time for some quick research, right?

Luckily an incredibly helpful research tool is hiding in plain sight...

Tool #1: Google Autocomplete

When you type something into Google, it will automatically suggest popular searches

Typing: “Skims vs” will show you who your top competitors are in the minds of buyers

Tool #1: Google Autocomplete Con’t

And if you want to understand the types of solutions people are searching for...

Search “Shapewear for” and presto—you now have some clues about the different use cases for your product

(Who knew that even Olympians want shaping support?)

As a former Google Engineer wrote in his book:

“Google searches are the most important dataset ever collected on the human psyche”

Which brings us to our next free tool...

Tool #2: @answerthepublic

AnswerThePublic is sort of like Google auto-complete on steroids

You can enter a keyword and it will reveal what people are searching for that’s relevant to that topic

Apparently buyers are looking for “shapewear with butt pads” — interesting 🍑

With summer coming, you know shapewear will be topical and you want to follow the conversation

Enter tool #3: @TalkWalker Alerts

Setup a free alert for your brand name or keywords

Now you’ll know when you’re mentioned in blogs, forums, websites or Twitter and you can eavesdrop

Tool #4: @sparktoro

SparkToro helps you discover your audience’s sources of influence

A free search reveals that people who follow Skims also describe themselves as “wives” or “mothers” and use the hashtag #euphoria

I bet some 🔥 content ideas are already brewing, huh?

Tool #5: Facebook Ad Library

You know Spanx is a top competitor from your “Google vs” research

You can use Facebook Ad Library to search and see all the ads that they are currently running

The longer an ad has been running, the better it’s probably performing—cool, right?

If you’re looking for some quick inspiration and your audience hangs out on Twitter, check out:

Tool #6: Twitter Advanced Search

Weirdly, you can’t easily access the search form within Twitter

But you can Google it or go there directly and bookmark it for later

Tool #6: Twitter Advanced Search Con’t

It’s a great tool for finding popular tweets from competitive brands...

Like this one from Yitty—a popular shapewear brand for plus sizes

Tool #6: Twitter Advanced Search Con’t

Searching for relevant keywords—like “shapewear”—and filtering results by popularity can reveal interesting insights... like this one from @TheYelitsa

I bet a lot of spapewear brands are making this mistake without knowing it

TL;DR?

Use these 6 free tools for oodles of inspiration:

• Google autocomplete
• @AskThePublic
• @TalkWalker Alerts
• @SparkToro
• Facebook Ads Library
• Twitter Advanced Search

These tools are super rad but...

They’re not a replacement for real buyer research

If you wanna market smarter you must go deeper

What you really want are *buyer stories*—that’s where the gold is buried

The problem?

Marketers often can’t get buy-in from clients/teams to gather buyer stories

On that note...

Me and @coreyhainesco are working on something new

We’ll teach how to use scrappy research methods + targeted experiments to quickly figure out what works with buyers

You won’t need permission & you’ll look like a badass in the process

Interested? Comment “👀” for early access

Did you find this thread helpful?

Follow me for more scrappy research tips → @katebour

And if you’d re tweet to share the love, I’d be so grateful 🙏

https://twitter.com/katebour/status/1518606683563515905