Market research automation: A marketer’s guide for 2024

You’re probably well aware of the AI buzz that’s been taking the world by storm—and maybe even wondering how you can keep up with this rapidly evolving technology. There’s a lot of confusion about AI’s role in marketing and how to harness its power effectively. 

The good news? Market research automation has come a long way, and using AI to help you collect and interpret data has never been simpler. 

Imagine handling your marketing tasks in just a few clicks. No more mindless time spent filling out a spreadsheet—automation takes that off your plate so you can focus on what you do best.

Automation also allows marketers to automatically collect data about their audiences, improving accuracy and freeing up time and resources for other tasks. In this guide, we’ll cover the latest capabilities of market research automation, some of its limitations, and how Typeform can help you stay ahead of the AI curve. 

What is market research automation?

Market research automation is the practice of using AI to collect and analyze market research data. Traditionally, marketers send out surveys via mail, email, phone calls, or other forms of communication, collecting and analyzing the data with their teams. It certainly gets the job done, but it’s expensive and prone to human error.

Research suggests that over 80% of data breaches are caused by human error. Using automation can reduce that risk, improve accuracy, and provide new insight into collected data that marketers might miss. 

Another key advantage is the flexibility. In traditional market research, marketers need to evaluate the data before adjusting their collection methods or surveys. However, generative AI can suggest changes to make research more effective earlier, saving time and resources. For example, if it becomes clear early on that young adults aren’t a good fit for your product, AI can spot this and suggest devoting resources to reaching other age groups.

Time is money, and traditional research can take a long time to complete. Previously, marketers would work with other teams for data collection and analysis. With automation, marketers merely supervise as AI conducts those processes, making market research more engaging and giving marketers full visibility at every step of the process. 

However, there are still some concerns about the limitations of automating market research. AI has advanced significantly over the past few years, but there are some key concerns you shouldn’t ignore:

• Creativity: AI can help pull key insights from datasets, but you still need a human touch to properly interpret and present these insights.

• Bias: AI models can be trained by imperfect or biased data, which means it replicates these biases. Professionals should be wary of AI bias and QA automated outputs.

• Privacy: AI models require large amounts of data to train the technology, raising concerns over where that data comes from. 

The role of automation in market research

Automation is all about making things more efficient. Here are some common solutions AI can provide for marketers:

• Parses data: AI automatically sorts and interprets responses based on set filters and research goals, so you can wave goodbye to wasted time sorting through responses.

• Reduces human error: AI is less likely to make mathematical errors than people, making your data more accurate.

• Eliminates bottlenecks: AI reduces the back and forth needed to move traditional research along, keeping your schedule on track. 

• Creates data dashboards: AI creates automatic dashboards and data visualizations from the most important insights to guide decision-making and make sharing these insights with stakeholders easier.

• Improves time to value: AI turbocharges your data processing compared to traditional market research, streamlining and speeding up the entire process.

These capabilities translate to saving your company time and resources while letting marketers focus on the more creative (and dare we say—more fun) aspects of market research.

Take Avocode, a small tech startup that helps turn design into code, as an example. It was difficult for the company to know what customers needed because it had to conduct qualitative research to find out. 

Typeform helped Avocode launch a one-two-punch survey, asking smaller pools of respondents for qualitative responses and then validating those insights. This validation process used quantitative options, such as Likert scales, distributed to thousands of users. Typeform’s ability to help Avocode create these surveys enabled the company to launch more new features while spending less on market research.

Survey routing

Dynamic surveys are essential to getting the most data from respondents while reducing dropoff rates. Surveys on Typeform use conditional and skip logic, so you can change what questions your survey asks based on prior responses. For example, if your first question asks for the respondent’s age, you can route them to a specific survey based on their age group.

Typeform’s conditional logic allows you to create more personalized surveys with fewer resources. This simplifies the survey creation process, improves respondent experience, and allows users to create endlessly with their surveys.

For a prime example of how survey routing creates endless possibilities, let’s take a look at how an educational resource app called Modulo harnessed Typeform to create its prototype. Manisha Snoyer demonstrated Modulo's value by using a conditional- and skip logic-based Typeform as her prototype. This prototype simultaneously collected data to show potential investors that there was a real demand for her app while demonstrating how the app would work, providing different resources to educators depending on how they responded to the Typeform.

Automating data collection

As you collect more data, you’ll find that people submit responses that don’t answer your questions, submit multiple responses, or make other errors that negatively impact your final dataset. Data cleaning is the process of filtering out these responses and translating your data to an easily interpretable format, like a spreadsheet.

Traditionally, this would take a long time, with someone manually sifting through the data to clear out invalid responses and create a usable dataset. Advances in automation allow AI to do this as data is collected, saving time and resources so you can immediately put responses to use.

Typeform has over 120+ integrations, so you can decide where your data goes. You may have heard of SwagUp, a company that creates custom swag packs. SwagUp uses over 80 Typeforms to let users build their orders. This feature has generated over $4 million in revenue for SwagUp.

But where do all those orders collected on Typeform go? Well, Typeform’s integration with Trello ensures that each order gets automatically added to SwagUp’s to-do list so the team can get straight to work.

Automating data analysis

AI can look at datasets and pull big-picture takeaways to help marketers interpret and analyze data more effectively. This helps you identify which findings to dive deeper into and streamline market research so you’re not wasting time evaluating insights that aren’t as valuable.

Benefits and disadvantages

Automating market research is a relatively new process, so there are some key factors to consider when deciding if it’s the right move for you. Here’s what you should know:

Pros

• Streamlines the data collection process: AI can launch surveys, collect responses, and record data automatically, reducing effort on your end while maximizing impact. 

• Simplifies collaboration between teams: AI can perform several steps of the market research process so you can focus on higher-level market research tasks.

• Automatically segments respondents: AI can create different survey paths for respondents so you can get more specific data with less effort.

• Creates reports automatically: AI can translate qualitative responses to other formats for easier interpretation.

• Frees up time to edit reports and deliverables for stakeholders: AI frees up your time to work on front-facing tasks so reports are more thorough and well-rounded.

• Speeds up the research process: AI reduces the overall time needed to conduct market research by minimizing the time between data collection and analysis.

Cons

• May need to edit for bias: AI is trained on large datasets and replicates any biases that those sets may contain.

• Can be less flexible depending on AI limitations: The more advanced an AI tool is, the more flexibility it offers.

• May have difficulty onboarding: There’s still a learning curve to new AI tools—some teams might need a more intensive AI training period.

It may seem like a daunting task to set up, but Typeform’s intuitive interface, user-friendly features, and 120+ integrations make it easy to benefit from the best of market research automation—while keeping everything simple enough to onboard without a hitch.

Connect with project management apps to dive into analytics as response data comes in and keep everyone in the loop. Typeform makes it easy to create dynamic surveys that change as people respond, so you leave no rock unturned while launching your research.

Automated market research allows marketing professionals to delegate time-consuming data collection and cleaning. This frees up time and resources for marketers to dive into the data AI has collected and create higher-impact reports for stakeholders.

To effectively implement automation, consider ways to mitigate the disadvantages. Adding bias QAs and properly onboarding your new AI tools are just two strategies to help make the transition easier and reduce friction with your current marketing team.

Automate your market research with Typeform

Typeform harnesses automation to level up your market research and create striking yet effective surveys. Our simple interface makes it easy, all while using the latest AI to gather the data you need.

• Embraces conditional, branching, and skip logic: These features tailor each respondent’s experience in real-time without coding, so your surveys always get right to the good part.

• Automates workflows: Send data to integrated apps as it’s collected so you can enjoy hands-off project management and email follow-ups. 

• Creates reports: Showcase key data from respondents on a clear dashboard so you’re not stuck wondering what the big data trends are.

• Customizes respondent experience: No two respondents are the same. With dynamic triggers, no two surveys will be either.

• Maximizes privacy: Typeforms are HIPAA, PCI, and GDPR compliant. No more sleepless nights worrying about data leaks.

• Provides first-class survey experience: Typeforms walk respondents through one question at a time and even recall past answers, giving everyone the star treatment.

In addition to these features, Typeform is a no-code tool that still offers high levels of design customization, so you can create well-branded surveys without the hassle of coding. Our customers boast higher response rates and a better respondent experience compared to surveys they’ve created independently.

Are you ready to dip your toes into market research automation? Start with Typeform for dynamic surveys that get the job done.