When it comes to marketing, most of us know some of the basics—putting up posters around town, spreading word of mouth about your business, and indulging in digital marketing. Although that’s just the tip of the iceberg, there’s something farmers must do before they begin marketing their products—and that’s market research.

Many farmers make the mistake of planning their marketing strategy without factoring in the most important element that determines the success of their business: the demand.

As a local farmer, you’re in a position to satisfy the demand of people in your vicinity, which puts you at an advantage. But to do that efficiently, you need to conduct market research.

If you don’t know where to start, delve into the basic of market research with us.

What Is Market Research?

Market research is attaining information about the structure of the market to see if your product matches its needs. It gives you a sense of the demand that you can then use to align your production with the market and make choices that are conducive to your business’s growth.

What Questions Should You Be Thinking About?

The purpose of market research is to equip you with the tools you need to streamline your production process and create a product that serves the needs of your customers. To do this, you’ll need to figure out the answers to a few questions. Some of these include:

• What does my ideal customer group want to see in a product?—do they want local, organic, or affordable products?
• What is my customer’s main priority?
• Are my customer unhappy with the current products in the market? How can my product tap into that and present itself as a better alternative?
• How do I engage customers with my products?

Types Of Market Research

Here are the two types of market research methods you should know of to answer some of the questions we’ve outlined above.

The Demographic Info: Seeing The Bigger Picture

Start by getting information on the population of your area. You can use local resources or the US Census.

Once you’ve obtained this information, you can make a few fair assumptions about your demographic’s consumption, demand, and the size of your market.

Interviews And Canvassing: Understanding The Grass Roots

This step is essential in strengthening your demographic overview with local market information.

There are two ways you can use surveys and interviews to get an understanding of how the market works in real-time—by talking to the people in charge (i.e., those who sell products) and interviewing a few buyers to get an understanding of what they want.

Once you’ve attained the necessary information, you can understand how the market lines up with your production, how you can improve your production capabilities, how to set the right price for your products, and how to leverage the forces of demand and supply to benefit from them.

If you need more help with market research, get in touch with Robinson AG Marketing!

We equip farmers and ranchers with expert industry insights to help them turn their business around and get a much-needed boost in sales. Chris Robinson uses several strategies to create an individualized marketing plan that helps farmers achieve their targets.

We specialize in AG marketing, commodity marketing, and trading marketing in TX. Obtain trade strategy consultation and recommendations with market view reports and a profitable hedging strategy with The Robinson Review!

Subscribe today for a free 30-day trial and contact us for more information.