Your AI Market Research Assistant + Guide: 12 Prompts for Smarter Insights

Stop misunderstanding your market, competitors, and customers. Leverage 12 AI prompts, deploy a data-backed market research agent, and don't fall behind your competitors.

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Market Research has Never Been Easier

A few years ago, how did your company conduct market research? Maybe you spent thousands outsourcing to an agency. Or maybe your team pulled up their sleeves, sifted through spreadsheets, and tried to piece together hundreds of disconnected data points.

Those days are over.

Using AI tools, it has never been easier to conduct market research to understand your customers, analyze your competitors, and build your campaigns.

This resource walks you through modern research methods powered by AI, including 12 prompts and an expert-trained market research GPT strategist. All of this enables you to go from question to insight faster than ever before.

A blueprint.

Step 1: Understand Your Industry

Before you analyze competitors or customers, start with the big picture. Understanding your industry’s landscape helps you identify where to play - and where to win.

A simple way to do this is by running Porter’s Five Forces Analysis, a classic framework that AI can now accelerate. These five forces reveal the pressure points that shape every market:

  • Competitive Rivalry: How crowded is the field? Who dominates, and how do they differentiate?
  • Threat of New Entrants: How easy is it for others to join your space?
  • Buyer Power: How much influence do customers have over pricing and demand?
  • Threat of Substitutes: What could replace your product or service entirely?
  • Supplier Power: How dependent are you on a small group of vendors or partners?

AI Shortcut: Ask ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini: “Analyze the [industry name] market using Porter’s Five Forces. Include key players, market share trends, and potential disruptors.”

A chess piece with a shadow.

Step 2: Understand Your Competition

Once you’ve mapped the market, narrow in on who’s shaping it. A SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) helps you uncover your positioning against competitors.

AI can now generate a working draft of this analysis using public information, which you can then refine with internal insights.

  • Strengths: What gives your brand a competitive edge?
  • Weaknesses: Where are your performance gaps or vulnerabilities?
  • Opportunities: What trends or openings could you capitalize on?
  • Threats: What external risks could impact your market share?

AI Shortcut: Ask ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini: “Compare [Your Company] and [Competitor] on key differentiators such as product features, pricing, and brand perception. Then summarize the SWOT for each.”

Three customers above three stars.

Step 3: Understand Your Buyers

Every great campaign starts with a deep understanding of your audience - what they value, what they struggle with, and why they choose (or don’t choose) your product.

Start by building buyer personas that capture goals, pain points, and purchase motivators. Then, use AI to surface insights you might miss manually.

AI Shortcut: Ask ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini: “Based on this persona, what motivations or fears are most likely to influence their buying decisions in 2025?”

You can also feed in customer reviews, survey responses, or social listening data for a more nuanced view of your audience. AI tools can cluster recurring themes and sentiment patterns in seconds - something that once took hours.

How to Design a Smart Survey

Surveys remain one of the fastest, most scalable ways to gather buyer insights. But a survey created without good research fundamentals won’t give you the rich insights your organization needs.

When structuring a survey, mix quantitative questions (e.g., multiple choice or rankings) with short, open-ended questions that capture the why behind answers. Avoid long essays (save that for focus groups).

Break your survey into these sections:

  • Demographics: Quick details that define context (age, role, location, company size).
  • Business Background: Understand the buyer’s environment — their industry, responsibilities, and pain points.
  • Competition & Industry: Ask which brands come to mind first, and how loyal they feel to them.
  • Your Brand: Test awareness and perception. (“Have you heard of [Brand]? How do you perceive it?”)
  • Your Product: Identify perceived strengths and weaknesses. (“If you’ve used [Product], what stood out most?”)

Context:
 You are a market research strategist creating a customer survey to better understand audience demographics, perceptions, and purchase behavior for [product or service].

Language:
 Use a clear, professional tone suitable for marketing or product research. Avoid jargon and keep questions concise.

Expectation:
 Generate a 10–12 question survey divided into five sections:

  1. Demographics

  2. Business Background

  3. Competition & Industry

  4. Brand Awareness & Perception

  5. Product Feedback
    Include a mix of quantitative (e.g., multiple choice, ranking) and short open-ended questions.

Action:
 Design the survey so it can be easily adapted for tools like Google Forms or HubSpot’s feedback forms.

Reflection:
List what additional data (e.g., customer segment, market region, or lifecycle stage) could make the responses more actionable.

How to Run a Great Focus Group

To gather deeper insights you can’t get in a survey, focus groups are invaluable. They bring in emotions, motivations, and real stories - the humanity of your customers.

Keep these best practices in mind:

  • Ask open-ended questions like “What do you think of [product]?” instead of “Do you like [product]?”
  • Keep it tight: Five to ten strong questions yield better insights than twenty surface-level ones.
  • Encourage follow-ups: When participants spark new ideas, pursue them — that’s where the gold is.
  • Bring a prototype: If possible, let participants interact with your product. Observe how they use it.
  • Ask about price and competitors: Learn not just how they buy, but why.
  • Leave time at the end: Closing questions often reveal final insights or emotional takeaways.

Context:
 You are planning a 60-minute focus group to explore customer perceptions, brand awareness, and product experience for [product or service].

Language:
 Use an approachable, conversational tone that encourages open discussion.

Expectation:
 Develop a discussion guide with:

  • 5–7 open-ended questions about perceptions, needs, and challenges

  • 1–2 questions on price and competitor comparison

  • 1 closing reflection question for overall impressions
    Provide estimated timing per question and any materials or prototypes needed.

Action:
 Structure the guide so it can be used for both in-person and virtual sessions.

Reflection:
Suggest how responses from this focus group could be summarized or visualized afterward (e.g., AI theme clustering, sentiment mapping).

Pro Tip: Connect HubSpot Data to Your AI Tools

Your CRM already holds a goldmine or market data. With HubSpot’s connectors for ChatGPT and Claude, you can analyze that information directly within your workspace.

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Two hands putting puzzle pieces together.

Step 4: Present and Act on Your Insights

After you’ve wrapped your research, the real work begins: turning what you’ve learned into strategy. Make your findings easy to understand and even easier to act on.

A strong presentation typically includes:

  • Background: Why the research was conducted and what questions it aimed to answer.
  • Methodology: Who you spoke to, how you gathered data, and what sources you used.
  • Key Findings: Both quantitative and qualitative takeaways, ideally visualized through charts or summaries.
  • Next Steps: The actions, decisions, or strategies that stem from the research.

AI can speed up this process. You can use it to summarize findings, design data visualizations, and even draft executive summaries.

AI Shortcut: Ask ChatGPT or Claude: “Summarize the top three insights from this research and suggest one actionable next step for each.”

From there, you can turn insights into marketing campaigns, product decisions, or growth experiments backed by evidence instead of intuition.

A survey.

Step 5: Revisit Your Research Every Year

Markets evolve fast. Set up a recurring research cadence - quarterly or biannually depending on how quickly your industry changes - and use AI to monitor trends in real time.

The future of market research centers around a blend of human judgement and AI’s speed. You’ll not only keep your strategy relevant but predict where the market is heading next.

10 AI-Powered Market Research Prompts

Take advantage of these optimized prompts so you can get started on your AI-powered market research. Created using the CLEAR framework (Context, Language, Expectation, Action, Reflection), these are designed for Generative AI tools and can generate insights you can trust, refine, and act on.

Context:
 You are a market research strategist analyzing the [industry name] industry in 2025. Your goal is to identify emerging opportunities, threats, and changes in customer behavior.

Language:
 Use a concise, analytical tone suitable for a marketing audience. Avoid filler or repetition.

Expectation:
 Summarize your findings in three sections:

  1. Key market trends

  2. Emerging opportunities for growth

  3. Potential risks or shifts to monitor

Action:
 Use this research to help a marketing team refine positioning and messaging for the next 12 months

Reflection:
List any assumptions you made about the industry or data sources.

Context:
 You are a competitive intelligence analyst evaluating [Competitor A], [Competitor B], and [Competitor C] using public data sources such as websites, pricing pages, and press releases.

Language:
 Maintain an objective, research-based tone.

Expectation:
 Summarize findings under three headings: Market Positioning, Target Audience, and Differentiators.

Action:
 Highlight how a new entrant could capture market share or differentiate over the next year.

Reflection:
List any data gaps or assumptions that influenced your analysis.

Context:
 You are conducting a SWOT analysis for [Company Name] using publicly available data.

Language:
 Use clear, business-focused language suitable for a presentation slide or brief.

Expectation:
 Create a four-quadrant table summarizing: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.

Action:
 Recommend one strategic focus area based on the results.

Reflection:
Note which areas would benefit from deeper customer or performance data.

Context:
 You are a market researcher analyzing customer feedback, survey responses, or product reviews for [Company Name].

Language:
 Adopt a neutral, data-driven tone.

Expectation:
 Identify recurring themes under three categories: Motivations, Pain Points, and Emotional Triggers.

Action:
 Use insights to refine messaging and improve persona accuracy.

Reflection:
Highlight any potential bias in the dataset or feedback sample.

Context:
 You are building a new buyer persona for [Company Name] using the following data: [insert customer insights, CRM exports, or interview notes].

Language:
 Keep the tone approachable and descriptive, as if explaining the persona to a marketing or sales team.

Expectation:
 Summarize findings in five parts: Demographics, Goals, Challenges, Buying Triggers, and Preferred Content Formats.

Action:
 Use this persona to inform upcoming campaign and content planning.

Reflection:
List what additional data could make this persona more complete.

Context:
 You are analyzing brand positioning across [industry name] by reviewing homepages, taglines, and value propositions from key competitors.

Language:
 Use an evaluative tone suitable for brand strategy discussions.

Expectation:
 Summarize in a table: Company | Core Message | Emotional/Functional Appeal.

Action:
 Recommend a unique positioning statement or differentiator for [Company Name].

Reflection:
Describe how this positioning might evolve with changing market trends.

Context:
You are a content strategist comparing SEO and thought leadership coverage between [Company Name] and its top competitors.

Language:
Use a practical, marketing-focused tone.

Expectation:
List content themes owned by competitors, gaps in [Company Name]’s content, and three new topics to explore.

Action:
Recommend opportunities to strengthen organic visibility and brand authority.

Reflection:
List any keyword or audience insights that could further refine this strategy.

Context:
 You are analyzing customer sentiment from reviews, NPS responses, or social mentions for [Company Name].

Language:
 Use a neutral, human tone that clearly conveys customer emotion.

Expectation:
 Summarize findings under: Positive Themes, Negative Themes, and Neutral Mentions.

Action:
 Use insights to inform customer retention, experience improvements, or messaging tone.

Reflection:
Identify which data sources yielded the most reliable sentiment insights.

Context:
 You are an industry analyst forecasting the [industry name] market for the next 12–18 months.

Language:
 Maintain a professional, forward-looking tone suitable for executive briefings.

Expectation:
 Outline three plausible scenarios: Optimistic, Neutral, and Cautious.

Action:
 Recommend one marketing or product strategy per scenario.

Reflection:
List the data assumptions or trend indicators that shaped your forecast.

Context:
 You are preparing a research summary for a leadership meeting covering market, competitor, and buyer insights.

Language:
 Use a polished, executive-friendly tone.

Expectation:
 Organize your summary into: Market Overview, Key Insights, and Recommended Next Steps.

Action:
 Translate findings into actionable strategies that support growth or differentiation.

Reflection:
Note any additional metrics or research that could validate your conclusions.

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