One of the best ways to learn about your market and customers is by asking questions. When you ask the right market research questions, you can identify opportunities to improve in your marketing strategy, operations, and industry.

You can gain insights that help you:

• Attract your target audience
• Stand out from competitors
• Improve your products and services
• Better serve your customers

To ask the best questions, it helps to break down your market research questions into the following categories:

• Market research questions
• Questions to ask your target market
• Questions to ask your customers
• Questions for competitive analysis
   

Some market research questions will require research to find the answers. For example, you may want to know, “How do our competitors drive traffic?” Other questions you can directly ask your customers. For those questions, you can survey or interview customers to find answers and insights.

Here some examples of questions you can ask for each type of marketing research.

Market Research Questions
General market research aims to help you learn about your market size and potential to connect with customers. Great qualitative market research questions include:

• How big is our potential market?
• Will this market grow or shrink in the future?
• What other products and services are similar to ours?
• Who are our top competitors?
• What market share do our competitors own?
• What share is available for us to own/take?

To find answers to these questions, use sites for market research that help you find information on geographic locations, industry competitors, and economic conditions.

Market Research Questions to Ask Your Target Market
Questions to ask your target market include demographic market research questions that help you get to know who your customers are. Here are some examples:

• What is your age?
• What is your gender?
• What is your education level?
• Where do you live?
• What is your profession?
• What is your household income?
• What is your household size?

These questions can go deeper and uncover psychographic segmentation details that help you learn about the interests, attitudes, and needs of your customers. Examples of these questions include:

• What are your hobbies and interests?
• Where do you spend your free time?
• What are your biggest challenges?
• What are your primary goals?
• What is most important to you?
• Where do you go for information?
• How do you like to make purchases?

To gather these details, you can survey or interview your customers. You can also use Alexa’s Site Overview Tool and Audience Overlap Tool to discover insights about who your customers are, what sites they visit, and what interests them.

Market Research Questions to Ask Customers
Existing customers can provide great insight about your business, products, and services. Market research questions to ask clients or customers include:

• How likely are you to recommend our brand to a friend?
• How long have you been a customer?
• What problem does [product/service] solve for you?
• How does the [product/service] fit into your daily workflow?
• How well does [product/service] meet your needs?
• What do you wish the [product/service] had that it currently does not?
• What do you like [most/least] about [product/service]?
• What made you choose us over a competitor?
• How would you rate your last experience with us?

You can gather this information through audience analysis, in-person interviews with your customers, or online customer surveys.

Pro Tip: It’s important to collect information from customers who are advocates of your product/service, but also those who did not have an agreeable experience. Asking infrequent or lost customers for their feedback is an excellent way to surface gaps in your product/service and identify opportunities for improvement.

Market Research Questions for Competitive Analysis
Once you assess your industry and customers, start asking market research questions about your competitors. Some questions to ask include:

• How is our brand doing compared to our competitors?
• How do our competitors effectively attract customers?
• How much website traffic do our competitors receive?
• Which keywords are driving traffic to our competitors?
• What sources are driving traffic to our competitors?
• How many inbound links do our competitors have?
• What type of content is performing well for our competitors?

Get Better Answers to Your Market Research Questions
Asking the right market research questions helps you uncover insights to improve customer satisfaction, business operations, and marketing strategies. But asking questions is only half the process. You also need to make sure you’re collecting the most accurate and authentic answers.

Use the market research questions in this post to direct your inquiries to your business, customers, and industry. Then get additional tips in our post How to Do Market Research Better Than Your Competition, and sign up for a free trial of Alexa’s Advanced Plan to get access to a suite of competitor, industry, and audience insight to get access to a suite of competitor, industry, and audience insight tools to help you research.