Every market research project starts with a question that sounds qualitative and turns out to be countable. How many independent cafes operate in Melbourne? What share of mid-sized logistics businesses run a particular booking platform? Which agencies in Sydney were founded in the last three years? Guessed answers to those questions cost real money - in strategy built on them, in media plans sized from them, in pitches that lean on them.
Counting is cheaper than guessing. That is the case for doing market research on a business database rather than a search engine, and the counting part of KnowFirst is free.
A segment is a set of filters
The Businesses search takes the question and turns it into filters, and the result count updates as you tighten them:
- Industry from 3,500+ ANZSIC classifications - the same classification the statistics bureau uses, so your segment definitions line up with published data.
- Location by state, or around a postcode with a radius in kilometres.
- Size as a staff count range, for when a market only makes sense at a certain scale.
- Founded year, to separate the established players from the new entrants.
- Tags and technologies, when your segment is defined by how a business behaves rather than what it registered as.
Set the filters, read the count, adjust, repeat. The back and forth is the work - a market definition that survives a few rounds of tightening is one you can defend in a deck.
Then meet the segment
Counts are the skeleton; the 3M+ business profiles behind them are the flesh. A business profile carries 18 views, and for market research the interesting ones are the marketing views: Organic Search and Paid Search for how a business courts demand, Social Media and Directories for where it shows up, Websites for its domains. Tech Stack answers the "who already runs a competitor's product" question directly - which turns a total addressable market into a switch list.
When the analysis needs to leave the browser, an export packages the segment with the fields you chose, and the credit estimate shows before anything is spent.
Keep the number current
A market sized once is wrong within a quarter. Businesses are founded, move, take funding, add staff and change platforms, and a research number that cannot see that drifts quietly out of date. Two habits keep it honest: re-run the Saved Search behind the segment whenever the number matters, and read the feed of latest changes on the businesses that define the market. New entrants appear in your filters the moment they match them.
None of this needs a research budget to start. Search is free - sign up with 20 free credits and size your first segment today.