Case study: LECTURA Surveys streamlined data collection for Social Farming Research at HSWT

For survey research, reaching the right respondents is just as important as collecting enough responses. People with relevant industry experience can provide meaningful research data with the potential to generate actionable insights.

This was the focus of a recent cooperation between LECTURA and Hochschule Weihenstephan-Triesdorf (HSWT). As part of the research project SoLaBay – “Social Farming: Examining Potentials in Bavarian Agriculture, Building Cross-Sectoral Networks and Deriving Practice-Oriented Recommendations”, the university wanted to reach more agricultural businesses with its online survey.

LECTURA supported this project by distributing the survey through the LECTURA Specs platform, which is visited by around one million people every month, and by connecting the client with the target respondents.

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Reaching a relevant professional audience

Reaching professionals who are actively engaged in the relevant industry helps ensure that responses are grounded in real-world experience.

LECTURA Specs is used by professionals who actively search for machinery specifications, compare equipment and research machines across agriculture, construction, transportation, lifting, material handling and other heavy equipment sectors.

This gives research projects access to a neutral, professional audience across these and related sectors. LECTURA Specs users access the platform independently to research machinery and equipment, bringing a genuine interest in the industries and topics relevant to their professional activities.

Previous survey projects have already shown that LECTURA users are willing to take part, share their opinions and contribute their own experience. The cooperation with HSWT provides another strong example of this. As Susanne Honold from Thorwart Consult, who stands behind the cooperation, explains:
 

“Even during harvest season and a period of very hot weather, farmers took the time to participate in the survey. For me, this shows that farmers are willing to share their perspective when they are approached in a relevant and respectful way. Reaching farmers is not only about reach – it is about understanding their reality and choosing the right moment and channel.”
 

This proves the platform to be a valuable channel for universities, research institutions and companies looking for respondents outside their usual networks.

A simple setup

The technical setup was kept straightforward.

LECTURA's role was to focus on creating awareness and bringing the survey to the right audience in the initial recruitment phase. To achieve this, a pop-up campaign was launched on the LECTURA Specs platform, introducing the research objective in a concise and accessible format, supported by a short hook and a visual aligned with the research topic. At this phase, the visibility of the pop-up was already narrowed by category and location.

HSWT then managed the subsequent stages of the research process, including data collection, storage and analysis. A simple click on the pop-up directed interested LECTURA Specs users to an official landing page featuring the survey questions in a dedicated survey interface.

Guido Cremerius, Research Associate at Hochschule Weihenstephan-Triesdorf and Scientific Project Researcher for SoLaBay, said:
 

“The direct collaboration was straightforward, highly accommodating and technically well executed. Thanks to this support, significantly more agricultural holdings were reached than would have been possible through other channels. We explicitly recommend LECTURA for similar research and survey projects.”

From audience reach to research value

This project demonstrated that LECTURA Specs, as a high-traffic platform, can be utilised for more than just advertising purposes.

The industry professionals in the website's audience can not only act as recipients of content, whether native or advertorial, but also as active contributors to the continuous development and refinement of industry knowledge, thanks to their expertise and experience.
 

“What makes the LECTURA audience valuable for research is not only its size. These are professionals who actively use our platform and are willing to share their own experience and opinions. This helps us connect research projects with relevant respondents in a neutral and practical way.”
[Darja Kočárová / Market Research Analyst at LECTURA]
 

The cooperation with HSWT is a good example of how LECTURA can support universities, research institutes, associations and companies with survey respondent recruitment for specialised industry research.

Whether the objective is academic research, market analysis or identifying industry trends, effective survey research starts with reaching relevant respondents.