Upsell, cross-sell & grow that LTV: 5 AI tools to deepen your customer insights
- Olivia Jesse
- Apr 30
- 3 min read
Updated: May 5
Understanding your customers is the cornerstone of successful sales and market research. But sifting through mountains of data can be overwhelming.
Enter the power of free Artificial Intelligence. These intelligent tools can analyze information, giving you a clearer picture of your customer demographics, preferences, and behaviors.
This listicle explores five free AI-powered (or heavily free-featured) tools that can help you deepen your customer insights:
Adsgency
Answer The Public
Exploding Topics
SimilarWeb
Sprout Social
AdsGency helps you find hidden advertising opportunities by analyzing ad creatives and performance data. It reveals successful strategies and emerging trends so you can create more effective campaigns and maximize ROI.
Key features include ad creative analysis, competitive insights, and campaign optimization.
This tool can help you refine your targeting by identifying the demographics and interests of audiences engaging with successful ads in your niche. This allows you to tailor your campaigns to reach the most receptive segments of your potential customer base.
Freemium model: Offers free version with limited data
Paid Plans: Starting at $350/month for a Startup account and $599 for a Brand
AnswerThePublic is a freemium tool (meaning it has a free version with limitations) that helps you understand what questions people are asking related to your keywords.
This is invaluable for market research, as it reveals the specific concerns and interests of your target audience.
Understanding these questions allows you to create targeted content that addresses their needs, improving your sales and marketing effectiveness.
For example, if you sell project management software, this tool might reveal questions like "How to choose project management software," "Best project management software for small teams," or "Project management software integrations."
This allows you to create blog posts, articles, or even videos that directly answer these questions, attracting potential customers who are actively seeking information.
Freemium model: Offers free version with limited searches.
Paid Plans: Starting at $11/month for Individuals, $99/month for Pro, and $199/month for Expert.
Exploding Topics (also freemium) helps you discover trending topics before they become mainstream. This is incredibly valuable for market research, allowing you to get ahead of the curve and capitalize on emerging trends.
Identifying these trends early can give you a significant competitive advantage in sales and marketing. Imagine you're in the food industry. Exploding Topics might reveal a growing interest in plant-based diets or sustainable packaging.
By recognizing these trends early, you can adapt your product offerings and marketing messages to cater to this growing demand.
Freemium model: Offers free version with limited access to trending topics.
Paid plans: Starting at $39/month for Entrepreneur, $99/month for Investors, and $249/month for Business.
SimilarWeb offers a free service with limited data that can provide valuable insights into your competitors and their audience. You can analyze website traffic, identify top referring sites, and get a glimpse into audience demographics.
While the free version has limitations, it can be a useful starting point for market research.
Understanding your competitors' traffic sources can inform your own marketing strategy:
Are they getting a lot of traffic from social media?
Are they investing heavily in paid advertising?
The data this tool provides can help you identify opportunities and reach your target audience through different channels.
Freemium model: Offers a free version with limited access to trending topics.
Paid plans: Starting at $125/month for Starter, $333 for Professional, and “Custom” option for aTeam.
Sprout Social is a comprehensive social media management platform that uses AI to amplify its capabilities, particularly in social listening and analytics. It allows you to monitor social media conversations for brand mentions, relevant keywords, and industry trends.
Sprout Social's AI-powered sentiment analysis helps you understand the overall tone of these conversations, identifying whether they're positive, negative, or neutral.
This real-time feedback is invaluable for understanding how your audience perceives your brand and allows you to react quickly to any potential PR crises or emerging trends. It also provides valuable demographic data about your social media audience. Imagine you launch a new product.
By monitoring social media conversations, you can quickly gauge customer reactions, identify any issues, and address concerns proactively. This real-time feedback loop is essential for product development and marketing optimization.
Paid platform: Starting at $199 per seat/month for Standard, $299 per seat/month for Professional, and $399 per seat/month. Includes a customer option for Enterprises.
About the Author
Hi, I'm Olivia Jesse, a dedicated digital marketing student at Baldwin Wallace University.
My passion for digital marketing ignited during my sophomore year and has been growing ever since. With a minor in Social Media Production, I'm well-versed in the latest trends and tools to create engaging content and drive results. Connect with me on LinkedIn.
