3 AI tools to get your market research off the ground 🤖 🚀

Hey, newsletter fam!

Between you and me, market research can be almost as exciting as actually launching your product.

You’re in that heads-down research mode where you’re gathering insights, scouring social media conversations, and figuring out what people say they need.

But this phase can also be tough, especially if you’ve never done it before and feel like you don’t know where to start.

When I sat down to begin my own research for a wine brand I was hyperfixated on starting (at the time), I wanted to make sure I was gathering information from my ideal customers. I wanted to understand what they felt was missing in the space, what drew them to competitors, what they didn’t like about competitors, how much they’d be willing to pay for a new product, and so on. I was designing a survey and wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing any key questions, and I also wanted it to be well-coded.

FINALLY, the $80 textbook on qualitative research methods I got for grad school was going to come in handy.

Except, it was still at my parents’ house in Queens…

So instead, I turned to the internet and AI to help me get the ball rolling on my market research efforts—and I’m sharing them with you below.

3 AI tools to get your market research off the ground 🤖 🚀

Pollfish

Pollfish generates survey questions for you—all you have to do is input what you’d like to use the survey to discover and it pops out potential questions.

The platform also organizes the results from your survey for you in a digestible way.

The survey it generates is a good start and can help inspire additional questions. I do wish that it automatically generated questions to collect information on your participant demographics so you can make sure the survey is reaching your target audience.

When I included an additional prompt for questions on demographics, I kept getting told to try again later.

ChatGPT

At this point, ChatGPT is a classic, free and easy-to-use tool for brainstorming. When I tried ChatGPT, I prompted it to provide me with 10 survey question ideas (on the same coffee brand example I used above) and I was surprised that it generated a few questions that other platforms like Pollfish didn’t generate.

I thought some of those questions really hit on a bit of the essence I was trying to capture with this survey.

Of course, with ChatGPT, if you just ask it to give you survey questions, that’s all it will do. If you want it to provide easily code-able answer options, you need to prompt it to do so. Pollfish and other platforms automatically provide you with this based on a single prompt.

You can also ask it for insights into what makes your competitors stand out. There’s also room to play around with your prompting to get answers that are as in-depth as possible. But, it’s not a cure-all and you’ll have to do a more in-depth analysis yourself.

TLDR; ChatGPT is a great, free tool but you have to make sure you’re inputting the correct prompts.

Brand24

Brand24 automates the process of social media listening for you. Manually hunting around competitors’ social media pages and gathering consumer sentiments on products in your market is a tedious process. It could take you days to find patterns in what people are saying about a product.

Brand24 quickly scrapes social media conversations, podcasts, and news involving the keywords and competitors you input into the platform. It populates those conversations so you can easily go through them and hear what people are saying.

You can filter conversations to only view negatives or positives (or keep it neutral). This can be a defining feature to help you tackle a SWOT analysis.

The platform does take some getting used to since not all features are as intuitive as features on other platforms.

As someone who’s been a writer and reporter for over half a decade, storytelling comes naturally to me. I love learning more about peoples’ experiences and I believe the VC and startup spaces can be united through thoughtful conversation—in a space where there’s no pressure to pitch and no pressure to invest.

Also, success stories can be fascinating to read about but I’m even more interested in hearing about founder experiences while they’re still on their journey to achieving huge success—not just after.

So I’m launching a series within this newsletter called Building in Public. I want to interview consumer startup founders and showcase their stories here every single week.

This is a chance for other founders and operators to learn from their experiences, get inspiration for growth tactics, and hear about the resources that are changing the game for others.

But I’ll need your help if I’m going to successfully get this off the ground.

I’m looking to interview founders in the coming weeks. So if you’re a founder—or know a founder—sign up for a call with me.

You MUST:

• Be a consumer tech or CPG startup founder

• Be available for a 30- to 45-minute call so we can conduct our interview

• Consent to having your experiences published in my newsletter and promoted on social media 

Book your interview today by clicking over to my Calendly.

And if you’re helping me out by spreading the word, I want to just say thank you A TON! 🫶🏽 You’re helping me build the resources we all want to see in the world and that means a lot.

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I love hearing from you! Whether you have a question or comment, are looking for a peer to bounce ideas off of, or want to offer me a job * cough, cough * (just kidding…but not really…) I’m just a few clicks away. Find me on LinkedIn and X, or email me at [email protected].

Let’s talk soon!

–Jasmin Suknanan, Founder & EIC of Momentum

About me

Jasmin started her career in media as a writer and reporter gaining expertise across several verticals, including lifestyle, commerce, Consumer Finance, and FinTech. Her expertise extends far beyond content and media. She decided to focus on the venture capital space and gain skills as a product marketer to continue helping companies solve consumer-focused problems. She has evaluated over 100 startups across FinTech, Wellness, EdTech, and AI and is also deeply passionate about consumer packaged goods. She holds a Master’s degree in Behavioral Economics and excels in market research and competitor analysis. Currently, Jasmin is part of Cohort 3 of the Venture Institute Program and a participant in the Pegasus Angel Accelerator University & Scout Program. She’s also on the leadership team of VC Unleashed where she plans and hosts events across NYC.