A successful part of any business, whether it’s an insurance agency or a car dealership, is gathering all the information you can about your industry. Trying to achieve commercial success without doing market research is like cooking a new dish without a recipe. To truly get to know your market, you’ve got to do more than look at your competitors’ websites every once in a while. Here are some simple ways to execute market research:

Try surveys: With sites like SurveyMonkey, it has become very easy to put together a survey or questionnaire and get it out to your audience within minutes. However, don’t just throw something together; spend some time figuring out what you want to know and how to best phrase the questions. Most businesses that conduct surveys use their best customers, as you’re the most likely to get quality feedback. And remember that surveys that are too long (take over five minutes to complete) will probably get skipped over.

Consult studies: If there is information about your industry available, use it to your advantage. Businesses can often find valuable information in marketing studies and statistics. However, keep in mind that any primary information that you can generate from surveys will likely be more beneficial in terms of your local audience and prospects.

Keyword research: A big part of optimizing your site is performing some simple keyword research. If your agency has a blog, or you’re re-vamping your product and service pages, you’ll need to figure out what keywords to include in the text to help drive traffic. With a few simple clicks in Google Trends, you can target a specific area and see what’s trending. Google Analytics and the Google AdWords Keyword Planner are also great ways to get some suggestions.

Try to expand on what has worked: When you know something is going well, try to capitalize on your success and use it to drive even more business. If your customers highlight a certain aspect of your business, continue it.

The need for market research is something that technology hasn’t changed, and it’s become easier than ever to find out about your field.