10 proven ways to craft an insightful trend analysis

SparkToro (coughSUPERCOOLcough) helps reveal where your audience hangs out online—what they read, watch, and follow. Set up quarterly (or whatever regular cadence makes most sense for you) reviews of your audience data to keep your knowledge fresh and accurate. You might be operating on assumptions about your audience that were formed years ago. Marketing research cuts through the guesswork to prevent wasting time and budget on campaigns that don’t convert. By analyzing how your audience responds, you can sharpen messaging, target the right segments and improve performance across every channel. This crucial (but often overlooked) part of marketing research ensures ongoing engagement.

Technical indicators like moving averages and Relative Strength Index (RSI) help traders spot entry and exit points. Additionally, trend analysis can be used to predict broader economic trends, helping policymakers and investors make strategic choices. They are excellent for visualizing large datasets and identifying patterns or trends in complex data.

If your NPS score is low, focusing on improving customer service could help increase loyalty and satisfaction. Market research is essential for understanding your market, customers, and competitors. It’s the foundation for making informed decisions and developing effective strategies. In 2025, what once seemed like science fiction is now shaping the shopping experience.

From identifying reliable data to analyzing patterns and validating insights, this process can provide valuable insight and set your brand up for in-market success. The key to both winning the pre-shop phase and maximizing the effectiveness of in-store and online retail media is data-driven personalization. That’s the driving force behind our annual consumer study, aptly named What matters to today’s consumer. Begin by identifying the distinct segments that emerged from your analysis. Most businesses find they have 2-4 primary audience segments, though complex B2B companies might have more.

— The World Resources Institute (WRI)The World Resources Institute publishes research and data on sustainability topics such as climate, energy, food, forests, and water. — Nielson (US Media Audience Measurement)Nielsen is a worldwide leader in audience measurement, data, and analytics. The company website features what Americans are watching and playing, via streaming platforms and traditional TV. The website also publishes the companies spending the most on advertising each month and the video games Americans want to buy next.

When Trends Stay the Same: Horizontal Trends

  • These tools help identify patterns and trends in historical price movements and trade volume data.
  • Knowing what’s trending can give you a competitive edge in your industry and help you stay ahead of the competition.
  • Your team and methods for conducting the analysis might look very different from your competitor’s.
  • With Wynter, you can upload your messaging and get qualitative responses in 24 hours, like what’s confusing, what clicked, and what missed the mark.
  • This will help you stay ahead of the competition and make sure your business is always ahead of the curve.
  • By weaving insights from the future into their strategy, companies can make informed decisions, build resilience, and navigate the ever-changing currents of the market.

This method is often used to study complex behaviors in real-world settings. Common methods include graphical methods, moving averages, regression analysis, and seasonal decomposition. We wanted a method to quickly how to do trend research identify emerging trends and passively track them.

Top 11 Trend Analysis Techniques for Market Research

  • Most businesses find they have 2-4 primary audience segments, though complex B2B companies might have more.
  • Time to market is the length of time it takes for a product or technology to go from an idea in someone’s head to actually being available for purchase.
  • Here you’ll see daily stories on the latest fashion trends, how technology impacts the retail, and what new products are being launched.
  • For example, write two ad headlines emphasizing your software’s cost savings vs. efficiency.

Consumer buying behavior is evolving at a pace that outstrips many retailers’ current capabilities. To stay competitive, businesses must accelerate investments in innovation and adaptability. Retail media networks offer a powerful way to engage consumers, delivering targeted, data-driven ads that enhance relevance and drive conversions. Our philosophy is to research, curate, and provide the best startup feeds and resources to help you succeed in your venture. We are currently ranked as the 13th best startup website in the world and are paving our way to the top. If an individual, their academy offers a variety of ways to learn about trends and even offers certification in Trend Research.

If you’re doing B2B customer research, you can find people to interview through a service like Respondent. For example, if you’re marketing bamboo baby clothing, you might discover on customer research calls that most users received it as a gift from friends or parents. If you already have an audience, you can survey your existing email list to gauge their feelings about a particular trend. If you notice that most people have a negative outlook on most of the top brands in the space, that’s a negative sign that the trend you’re tracking might not be short-term and on its way out. The trend will likely continue to thrive if it is highly effective at solving a pain point and customers are enthusiastic about it.

Awareness Stage: What it is, Strategies + Content Types

It is therefore important to disseminate the results of trend research widely within the company and to initiate a discussion about them. If employees actively engage with the future, a creative process is set in motion that fills the idea funnel with better ideas. For example, if you’re monitoring the trend „ketamine therapy,“ you can track „#ketaminetherapy“ in a tool like BrandMentions. This tool offers a free report that shows the most popular content across the web with that hashtag and other related hashtags.

Social media listening tools enhance this process by offering sophisticated ways to track sentiment and uncover early signals of change. With the increasing use of mobile devices, market research is becoming more mobile-friendly. Mobile surveys, app-based feedback, and social media monitoring are all providing businesses with a constant stream of insights from their target audience. Real-time data allows businesses to make quicker, more informed decisions.

SWOT Analysis: Identifying Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats

Best practices for using surveys include well-designed, relevant, and unbiased questions. Results should be analyzed alongside other data sources for a comprehensive understanding. With the right mindset, resources, and tools, your market trend research can be a lucrative endeavor that pays off for your organization in the short term and beyond.

This type of research provides a broad overview of the market, including trends, size, and growth potential. Secondary research can be conducted quickly and at a lower cost than primary research, making it an excellent starting point for businesses. Secondary research sources include public domain data, industry reports, and academic articles, which can provide valuable insights into market trends, customer behavior, and competitor activity. By analyzing secondary research sources, businesses can identify gaps in the market, opportunities for growth, and potential threats to their business. Trend analysis is a research method used to identify consistent patterns or trends over time within data sets.

At its core, market research involves collecting and analyzing data to uncover insights into consumer behavior, market trends, and competition. It’s not just about asking what people want, but understanding why they want it and how you can meet those needs better than anyone else. To do a trend analysis, you will need to analyze the data or information to identify patterns and changes over time.

Company

Your ability to make accurate predictions and draw meaningful insights heavily relies on the quality and relevance of the data you collect. Understanding these components allows analysts to differentiate between various types of trends and apply appropriate methods for analysis. For example, moving averages can help investors identify trends, while the relative strength index can indicate overbought or oversold conditions. Support levels and stop-loss indicators can also provide insights into potential price movement. It can provide insights into future market movements and help determine the best times to buy or sell stocks.