Plant-based Consumer Research Expert and Co-Founder of Moonshot Collaborative Che Green discusses the growing flexitarian market and the fine points to effectively reach them.
We discuss
- What plant-based companies are doing wrong when it comes to marketing research,
- What questions should they be asking?
- What should they be testing for?
- The many types of flexitarians in ther marketplace and the importance of consumer research in an expanding market,
- The trouble with self reporting and the trappings of mis-reporting,
- What kind of testing can be done for the early brands that don’t have a budget and can can research can they do on their own,
- Words of advice for companies as they wrap their minds around marketing research.
Below is a short clip from our above long-form conversation. Che gives marketing research tips for entrepreneurs who don’t have a budget. Critical learning – for free! Plus, he shares how young entrepreneurs can impress investors.
Elysabeth: What would like to say to the person who is a first-time entrepreneur? They’ve got their product, they’re about to do some marketing research, any specific tips for them?
Che Green: Yeah, just start small, if needed, but start somewhere. Again, going back to your mother’s best friend example, just do not rely exclusively on your own feedback or your partner’s feedback or something along those lines.
Research is all about just getting outside of our own heads and getting feedback from those who we’re eventually trying to reach, whether it’s an advocacy message or a product or a service. And so, as you roll the product out make sure that you’re baking in external feedback. Whatever that looks like, bake in that external feedback to your process at the product development phase, at the rollout phase, even when you’re an entrenched company, think about it then, as well. That comes from the fact that I know many companies are just not even considering research at these early stages, perhaps because they assume it’s cost prohibitive which for some of them it will be, but certainly not for all.
And so again, with some of the low-cost techniques we talked about earlier, start small if you have to, but certainly start somewhere. And it’s not just for your own information, that certainly should be the main goal, but increasingly, and I know this for a fact from talking to many companies, increasingly investors are looking for data as part of pitch decks. They’re looking for actually some hard numbers to validate your concept before throwing money and those investors are getting a lot more opportunities to throw money around these days. So, in order to stand out and to really show that you’ve nailed down your concept, showing that validation and that research in your pitch deck, I think is incredibly important.
Elysabeth: 100%. Ultimately you want to be the most educated person on your product on the planet and market research really helps you be that. So, to sort of do your brand proud, if you will, you really can’t skip this step.
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