The Link
Marketing: exchanging information that adds value.
November 4, 2025
In some respects we are all masters in marketing. We are inundated with marketing messages every day. Cattlemen intuitively understand the value of marketing, but marketing is rarely a top priority. In fact, in many cases it is an afterthought.
From an individual ranch standpoint, marketing was understandably a mid-tier priority at best in a traditional commodity market. We were all taught that in a commodity business producers were price takers, not price makers, and, as such, there wasn’t much of a role for us to play in marketing our cattle. Instead, we focused on price discovery.
It is amazing how much things have changed in the last 20 years in our business. Genomics and improved selection tools have enabled the industry to make significant strides. Average carcass weights have increased by 150 pounds (lb.). The amount of Select product produced has fallen by 75%, while the amount of Certified Angus Beef® (CAB®) and Prime products has increased by more than 400%. Rising input costs have increased the value of efficiency of production, and increasing price spreads and premiums based on quality and product differentiation have gone a long way to obliterating the myth of beef being a commodity.
Some worth more
The relative importance of marketing has shifted, as well. The future of our industry in the 1980s and most of the 1990s was bleak, as every year we were experiencing declining demand, declining per capita consumption and declining market share.
Marketing is about understanding what your customers want and helping them get it.
Certified Angus Beef and the National Beef Checkoff stepped into the marketing role and helped change the demand trends for our industry. They showed everyone that marketing — when combined with a quality product — could reverse the downward trends and create additional value and opportunities. They were so effective in doing so that, according to CattleFax data, every calf in America is worth about $900 per head more at today’s demand levels than it would have been at the demand levels of the late 1990s.
This increased demand created price differentiation and has led to a major shift in how we view price discovery. Price discovery today is not only dependent upon competition, but on information and marketing.
Marketing in its most simplistic form is getting the right cattle in front of the right people at the right time, but the definitions of both right and quality have been reshaped by information. Buyers can’t differentiate prices, and the marketplace can’t create value without objective, reliable information upon which to make purchasing and management decisions. That information determines who the right people are and what the right time is, as well.
Obviously, this kind of dramatic shift is not always welcomed. Change is not always seen as positive. The people who have figured out how to win consistently at a game rarely want to see the rules changed. Yet, there was simply too much value captured by exchanging this information to ignore it.
Documenting merit
In essence, the AngusLinkSM program was simply created to respond to the need to have objective, reliable information on genetic merit at the point of sale while maintaining price discovery and price transparency. Like expected progeny differences (EPDs) on seedstock, it is a cost-effective way of giving buyers the information they need to buy with confidence. It expands our ability to market our cattle more effectively.
Marketing is about building trust. Marketing is about understanding what your customers want and helping them get it. Marketing is about exchanging information that brings more value to a product. Marketing is about creating value.
Today’s price levels are occurring because of the value that producers have been able to create. The AngusLink program’s role is simply to help producers more effectively market their cattle by helping them to provide the information their customers need.
Marketing is the lifeblood of any industry, and the AngusLink program is designed to help producers in improving their marketing strategy and programs. Give us a call at 816-383-5100 to get your cattle enrolled today.
While we are confident we can improve the prices producers receive on the front end, the long-term value is significantly higher, as it builds relationships for the long term.
Editor’s note: Troy Marshall is director of commercial industry relations for the American Angus Association. For more information about AngusLink, click here.
Angus Beef Bulletin EXTRA, Vol. 17, No. 11-A
Topics: Business , Marketing , Management
Publication: Angus Beef Bulletin
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