Developing Canadian market insight reports on a budget

I recently worked on a market insights report for a client that required me to analyze Canadian digital media trends. Because I am a small business owner, I couldn’t afford to spend tens of thousands of dollars on multiple reports from consulting and market research companies. So, I used my super Internet detective skills to find alternate sources of free data and information.

I figure that there are thousands of other small technology businesses out there that need to find the same kind of data to help them put together market insights and business intelligence reports.

Here are some of the best Canadian digital media industry reports and sources that I found for free online:

• PwC Canada’s Global Entertainment and Media Outlook: 2010–2014
• Mary Meeker & Matt Murphy’s Top Mobile Internet Trends 2011 – find market data that compares Canada to other countries
• eMarketer Newsletters – there’s tons of free Canadian eMarketer data in those newsletters for those of us with shallow pockets
• comScore’s Canadian 2010 Digital Year in Review – just fill-in your business information to download the whitepaper

SlideShare.net is a great way to search for presentations created by your industry peers who may have already created a similar document. In addition, I found that Twitter was more useful to me than Quora for crowd sourcing information. I guess it depends on your follower numbers on these tools.

Do you have a favourite free resource for Canadian digital media trends? If so, please share and I’ll add it to the list!