SurveyMonkey is targeting new global markets with its online survey business tool SurveyMonkey Audience, as the firm looks to offer brands, media-owners and agencies with an “easier and faster” alternative to market research.

SurveyMonkey Audience, which has already been introduced in the US and Australia, is launching in the UK this month – with markets like Brazil, China and India earmarked for future roll-outs.

The company, led by CEO Dave Goldberg, husband of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, has already signed up clients including Procter & Gamble, Samsung, Ogilvy, Huffington Post and NBC as global users of the tool.

It works by allowing businesses to quiz a representative sample over a period of time as short as 24 or 48 hours, with a small donation (50¢ or 50p) to charity rather than to respondents to help generate a more “honest” set of responses.

Speaking exclusively to M&M Global, Goldberg (above) insists SurveyMonkey aims to position itself as “complementary” rather competitive to the market research industry.

“We’re not trying to replace the market research industry, we see ourselves as complementary. We are competing on speed and quality,” said Goldberg. “A bigger market research process slows things down – we can turn things around in 24 or 48 hours. We can do quick pre-testing, competitive analysis, new product ideas testing.”

To mark the UK launch of SurveyMonkey Audience, the firm commissioned a report which claimed that four in ten (39%) business leaders in the country complain their business lacks the customer data to make timely decisions.

The report – called ‘The Democratisation of Insight’ – also argued that nearly three-quarters (73%) of UK business leaders make decisions based on “gut instinct alone” in the absence of “fast, reliable customer insight”.

“We stepped back and looked at the market research industry, including all research stages and the evaluation of results. Where we add a lot of value is in the middle stages, as we’re easier and faster to use,” said Goldberg.

“We can also add value to smaller businesses which can’t afford market research and have usually made decisions based on gut instincts. There is a huge under-served market which can’t access the relevant data. We want to help people to make better decisions.”