3 Free Tools to Forecast Your Consumers' Needs

Over the past decade, marketing has shifted intensely from focusing on companies and their products to focusing first on consumers, and what type of products they demand. Popular consumer brands lead the way when it comes to understanding exactly what consumers are searching for now and also what people will be consuming in 1 or 2 years.

Once a brand or a company understands what products their audience would happily pay to have, it becomes easier to deliver products that meet those needs.

Here are 3 free sources of useful consumer insights:

1. Google Trends

This tool provides a comparison between search terms across different locations, showing a clear view of the popularity of these terms over time.  
Another use of the platform is measuring the effectiveness of advertising campaigns. Peaks in popularity are usually attributed to ad campaigns focused on brand awareness. In the example below, Asus launched a ​new phone and advertising campaign​ a few days before the peak registered for the term “asus phone”.

2. Free marketing materials from the best in the game

Content marketing has become a powerful strategy used by several successful brands. This means there are teams of talented people delivering relevant content for free on a daily basis. Here are the top sources to be aware of from the people dictating the market today.

• WGSN
• McKinsey Quarterly
• JWT thinking
• PwC - CEO Survey
• Think with Google
• Hubspot Academy
• Typeform blog

3. Field Research

Sometimes the most valuable insights are simply the result of curiosity and asking a lot of the right questions. By observing how consumers behave in everyday life, it becomes easier to define how to create better experiences for them.  

Here​ is a template that can be used by businesses targeting end consumers across all industries.

Bonus

Many times after gathering consumer insights, brands are inspired by new ideas and dive into launching new products. However, before going all in, we’ve found that creating an MVP test often mitigates a lot of the risks involved in launching something new.  

The complexity of an MVP test usually depends on a brand’s identity and how it interacts with their target audience. Even so, the core idea of an MVP test is to keep it as simple as possible.

We use design thinking processes to select the best ideas, then communicate it to the brand’s client base, analyse client response, and advise to proceed in launching the product only if enough people show purchase intent.

‍