MJM Farm Marketing

Understanding Features vs Benefits: Which should you use to market your farm?

Mallaidh Mleziva — Tue, 03 Jan 2023 17:36:13 +0000

Have you heard about the concept of marketing features vs benefits?

Understanding this difference is integral to effective marketing. Let’s explore the difference between a feature and a benefit and talk about which you should focus on marketing.

What is a feature?

A feature is a characteristic or quality of a product or service. It describes what the product or service does and how it works.

For example, a car has many safety features such as airbags, locking seat belts, and blind spot sensors.

The products from your farm also have features. Your eggs may be from free-range chickens, your pork GMO-free, or your flowers organically-grown.

Your processes can also be considered features. Perhaps you practice no-till or rotational grazing.

There are also features with the services you offer or include with your products. If you have a CSA, do you deliver? Are boxes customizable? Do the boxes include vegetables, herbs, meat, or eggs?

What is a benefit?

A benefit, on the other hand, is the advantage or outcome that a consumer will gain from using the product or service. It describes how the product or service will improve the consumer’s life or solve a problem they have.

First, let’s look at the car example. Your car has airbags and locking seat belts, but the dealership may say “Get your family from here to there safely.”

Now, let’s look at your farm’s eggs from free-range chickens. Your eggs are much more nutrient-dense than the alternatives found in the grocery store, including significantly more vitamin D. But these are still features.

What is the benefit?

A healthy, hearty, and delicious way to start your morning and give you lasting energy for your day!

Other benefits include extra freshness, supporting local agriculture, and promoting sustainability.

Take a feature and continue asking “So what?” until you arrive at a benefit.

To find a benefit from a feature, continue asking yourself “So what?” until you have drilled down enough to find the benefit.

Your chickens are free-range. So what? They can express their chicken-hood. So what? They are able to scratch for bugs, eat lots of fresh greens, enjoy the sunshine and fresh air, and experience less stress. So what? Their eggs and meat are much more nutrient-dense, making them healthier and tastier for you!

It’s helpful to put yourself in your potential customer’s shoes and ask “What’s in it for me?” This is typically what people are asking themselves when looking at products.

What’s in it for the customer in our CSA example?

If you deliver that saves the customer time and effort grocery shopping and brings fresh food straight to their door. If you include recipes in your boxes this makes preparing dinners quick and easy for customers and eliminates the stress of meal planning.

Why do we tend toward sharing features?

Sometimes we communicate features more than benefits because the benefits seem obvious to us. But keep in mind that just because you know how your products will improve your customers’ lives doesn’t mean they do!

Another reason we tend to communicate features more often is because that’s what we as farmers are focused on. We spend a lot of time and effort every day developing great products and the best systems. As a result, we often think these are the most important things.

But often these aren’t the most important to our customers.

You may spend much of your time mulching because you have eliminated tilling. Although this may be good to explain in your Instagram stories or on your Principles page on your website, you probably don’t want to write it on your whiteboard at the farmers’ market. These potential customers are looking for “delicious organic carrots”. They often care about themselves and what they will gain, and that is okay!

Put yourself in your customers’ shoes and ask “What’s in it for me?”

However, it’s important to know your customers (more on that in a second) because people looking to purchase from small farms often care about the benefits beyond themselves.

Some customers simply care about the taste or the nutritional value of your products, which are benefits for them. Others value the benefits to the environment or the better animal welfare practiced by small farms, which are benefits for others.

Which should you sell?

So should you market and sell features or benefits?

Well, it somewhat of a complicated answer…

Ultimately, consumers are driven to make purchases by the benefits they will receive.

They may purchase from your farm because you offer better tasting and healthier food, because buying local supports the local economy, or because your methods are better for the environment.

These are just some of the benefits you should communicate in your marketing.

You must know your ideal customers and what they value. This is the precursor to all marketing activities.

However, the answer to “Should I market and sell features or benefits?” is more complicated because features are also important to your costumers.

There are two aspects that make sharing features critical.

1) Education

Saying your farm’s products are “healthier” is pretty vague, so including some details is necessary. Give specifics on what makes your free-range eggs, pastured pork, or grass-fed beef healthier than the conventional agriculture products.

Many people may not know the differences between what you grow/raise/make and what is in the big box stores. You will need to educate them on what makes your products better, which will require you to share features.

You may need to share resources about your nutrient density of your products or the environment impact of your methods.

Additionally, it is good to educate your current and potential customers on the negatives of conventional agriculture’s products.

2) Validation of Benefits

Some of your potential customers already know why products raised with your methods are healthier for them and better for the environment. So they will be looking for organic, no-till, pasture-raised, grass-fed, or another practice.

In this case, it’s important to share the terms that describe what you do.

Keep your pulse on what the current terms are.

Maybe you describe your farm as “organic and sustainable”. Is this what people are looking for? Or are your potential customers using the term “regenerative”? If this is the case and you are using the practices outlined by regenerative farming, be sure to use this term!

Benefits drive sales, but features educate and validate claims.

Remember that there’s a lot of greenwashing and humanewashing out there and corporations are using these valued words to dishonestly describe their practices to grab more consumer dollars. To prove that you are truly following certain methods, you can share your daily activities authentically through your social media and other marketing channels.

You should also share your mission and your principles so people can see your farm’s heart and the true intentions behind your practices.

What is a good balance of features and benefits?

It’s essential to remember the difference between features and benefits in marketing. While features describe what a product or service does, it’s the benefits that describe that your customers will gain.

You must identify both the features and benefits of each of your product and the methodologies you practice. Then you must determine what your potential customers value and clearly communicate these features and benefits with them.

This is key to driving sales.

So what is the perfect balance of features and benefits to use in your marketing efforts?

Unfortunately, I can’t answer this question for you. The balance is unique to every business and their customers.

You must find the answer through experimentation, talking to your customers, and keeping an eye on competitors and how they are finding success!

Would you like some help with finding this balance or describing the features and benefits of your products?

I can help! I work with farmers on everything marketing, from strategy to implementation.

Let’s chat about how we can work together. Fill out the form on my contact page.

The post Understanding Features vs Benefits: Which should you use to market your farm? appeared first on MJM Farm Marketing.

Setting Business Goals to Guide Your Farm’s Marketing

Mallaidh Mleziva — Mon, 05 Dec 2022 22:43:49 +0000

Setting goals is integral to business and marketing success. As the end of the year approaches, it’s time to look over the goals from this year and set your goals for the new year!

Why Setting Goals is Important

In order to make any forward progress as a business, you must have a vision for the future. Then that vision should be broken down into specific goals and steps to achieve these goals. This creates a roadmap for you.

Goals not only help you work toward your dream, but they also help align your internal team and can help you get other stakeholders to invest in you and your business.

Accounting to North Dakota State University, “Owners who have specified their personal and business goals find themselves better able to explain their objectives to others. Discussions and documents that indicate where the business is headed allow others, including lenders, investors, purchases of output, input suppliers, and possibly regulators, to decide whether they want to be part of the future of the business.”

Now that we’ve established goals are imperative to your success, let’s explore how to craft meaningful goals that will guide your marketing efforts throughout the year!

Start with Your Intentions

Remember why you are farming when you are setting goals.

Your reasons may be to improve the land, to care for animals, or to provide healthy, whole foods for consumers. Maybe it is all three!

Your motivation guides many of your operational goals.

But your reason can also be to make money. It is okay to want to make an income from your farm, and you should!

I believe farmers often feel guilty about making money from selling food because we believe everyone should have access to healthy food. Unfortunately, we often feel guilt about raising prices even when abstaining from doing so would put us at a net loss.

But the reality is that farming can’t be charity work.

In You Can Farm by Joel Salatin writes: “Dad’s famous phrase, ‘You might as well do nothing for nothing as something for nothing’ is certainly true. If I’m not going to be decently compensated, I may as well take a no-risk job in town that I can leave any time I want… If I’m going to take the responsibility for a piece of ground and a small business, then I do not think it arrogant to seek professional-status compensation.”

You deserve to make a living and you deserve to be able to take care of yourself and your family.

Your hard work produces a product far superior to that in the grocery story, so don’t be afraid to price accordingly!

Set financial goals, including product quantity, business revenue, and personal net income goals.

Writing Meaningful Goals

The first rule of goal setting: Write your goals down!

Writing goals down serves several purposes.

First, physically writing goals forces you to stop and take time to write the goals. This is an intentional time of reflection and planning.

And don’t worry, this time will be worth your while.

Second, having goals written down and displayed serves as a motivation and reminder to you as you go about your daily business. Place goals in a prominent location.

Finally, you simply won’t remember your goals if you don’t write them down! Schedule time throughout the year to revisit your goals. During this time you can refine them, if needed.

Meaningful goals are SMART. You’ve probably heard this acronym before: specific, measurable, achievable (some say actionable), realistic (some say relevant), and time-bound. I internally roll my eyes at this every time I read it because I’ve seen it so much and have been told to write SMART goals since high school.

Regardless, this acronym is useful!

Since you’ve probably read about SMART goals before, I’ll keep my remarks short. (If you haven’t seen the acronym before, a quick Google search will give you a plethora of explanations).

Goals must absolutely be measurable. This usually manifests as a metric, whether that is a specific number or a percentage is up to you.

Goals must have a time frame. For your 2023 goals, your time frame may just be the calendar year or you can break down goals by seasons or months.

It is also important to make goals challenging, but realistic. If your goals are too difficult, you may be overwhelmed to the point where you won’t even try. But on the other hand, like Michelangelo said “The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.”

So make your goals challenging but realistic.

Rutgers provides a nice guide for writing SMART goals.

Types of Goals

You can also break goals into categories. One idea is personal goals, production or output goals, and operational goals.

If you have employees, you can also work with them to set goals in their departments.

You may also have long term and short term goals. In business, short-term goals are under one year and long-term goals are one or more years.

Personally, I keep life goals, ten year business goals, and annual goals for life and business. Each month I break down my annual goals into monthly steps.

Where to Start When Writing Goals

One of the first steps you should take as a business is analyzing your financial situation.

Start on a high level. The very, very first step is calculating how much you need to live. How much would you like to net? How much does that mean you must gross?

From there you must get more granular with your data and work backwards.

How much did you gross this year? How much did you net? What was your COGS (cost of goods sold) of each of your products? What was your best seller? What is the profit margin for each product/service? What has the best margin? Etc.

With this information, you will be able to have a target for your marketing efforts.

Marketing Efforts Guided by Goals

Marketing is about establishing a brand and selling products. (There are many different facets and benefits of marketing, but we’ll confine it to this purpose to keep it simple.)

How many of each product would you like to sell? Which products do you want to sell more of this year? Which products do you need to move quickly (i.e., products that aren’t shelf stable or that have a lot of money tied up in them)?

These are some of the questions you want to ask yourself.

Let’s say you grow vegetables and herbs. This last year you developed some salves from your herbs. These were profitable value-add products for you with the highest profit margins! As a result, you want to sell more this year.

From this you may set this goal: “Sell 160 2oz tins of salves at the farmers market (average of 8 tins per Saturday market) and 100 2oz tins online in 2023”.

From here you can set up marketing efforts to support these goals. To make more people aware of your salves and boost orders both in-person and online, you plan two giveaways on social media for the year. During the holiday season at the end of the year, you plan to create a gift bundle with your salves, another farmer’s all-natural soy candles and goat milk soaps, and another gardener’s home-grown loofahs.

Tip: Don’t forget to set some goals that you can control!

With marketing online, we often set metric goals that we can’t control. This is particularly true with social media were there are endless algorithm updates and trend changes throughout the year. When we don’t reach the goals we set, it can be disheartening and we may be so discouraged that we don’t want to put any effort in at all.

For these types of initiatives, set goals that you can control!

Instead of “Reach 500 followers on Instagram”, it’s better to set the goal of “Post 2 times per week on Instagram for the entire year, including at least 3 reels per month.”

This goal will give you a steady presence on Instagram throughout the year and help you foster (and most likely grow) your community.

“Having repeated base hits on the marketing side is oftentimes preferred to a single home run.” ~Unknown

Follow Through With Your Goals

Throughout the year, hold yourself accountable.

Remember to work toward your goals! This is your livelihood and your passion, so act on your goals and remember to track your progress and revisit them throughout the year.

When you accomplish a goal, celebrate your success!

Did you reach a goal? Congratulations! Take a moment to step back and admire your work. Have a nice dinner out with your spouse or go out with friends for a celebratory drink. Not only should you feel proud of yourself at this time, but it also conditions your brain to link your hard work with a satisfying reward.

Conclusion

Setting business goals is integral to your success as a farm! Not only will they help you work toward your vision and your dream, but they will also align your team and prove your credibility to both current and potential stakeholders.

So, write down your goals and make them SMART. Start with your overall financial goals and work backwards to a very granular level. Think about personal, production, and operation goals both in the short term and long term.

Once you have your goals, you can map out your marketing efforts and initiatives for the year.

As the year progresses, hold yourself accountable to your goals and celebrate your successes!

Most importantly, remember that you are not alone! You have a lot on your plate. It can be overwhelming to plan marketing efforts for the whole year and you may be tempted to dial back some of your plans and eliminate some of your ideas, anticipating the busy seasons to come. Don’t! I offer marketing services to farmers to help you reach your goals. Let me take the marketing off your plate! It’s the best of both worlds! You can continue farming and scaling your business while outsourcing your marketing efforts to me.

Let’s tackle 2023 together!

The post Setting Business Goals to Guide Your Farm’s Marketing appeared first on MJM Farm Marketing.

How to Develop an Ideal Customer Profile

Mallaidh Mleziva — Fri, 14 Oct 2022 00:44:45 +0000

“Everyone” Isn’t Your Target Market

If someone asks “What customers do you target?”, you might be tempted to answer “Well, everyone!”

This is common thinking for many business owners. It may seem like the obvious answer for farmers because, well, everyone eats food! However, this thinking will lead to ineffective marketing.

If you try to target everyone, your messaging will be vague and won’t resonate with anyone. If you use paid marketing and try to target everyone, you will waste precious dollars showing your ads to people who don’t care.

You can’t be everything for everyone.

Although everyone eats food, this doesn’t mean they are all interested in your products. You must find the individuals who value the features and benefits of your products.

This is where ideal customer profiles come in!

An Ideal Customer Profile at Work

To be successful in your marketing and your business, you must identify your ideal customer.

Let’s look at an example:

Nine Oaks Farm raises pastured chicken, turkey, and grass-fed beef. They haven’t used synthetic chemicals on the land in eleven years and all supplemental feed is certified organic. To describe their products and farming practices they use a variety of words: pastured, beyond organic, grass-fed, all-natural, and regenerative. They sell their products at two local farm markets, directly off the farm, and through a 10 member CSA.

Nine Oaks has identified their target market as mothers ages 35-45 in the local area whose annual household income is $65,000-$75,000. They describe this group as “health-conscious”, caring about both nutrient value in food as well as being aware of the harmful effects of synthetic chemicals, particularly on young children.

How did Nine Oaks come to this conclusion?

When Nine Oaks was starting out, they did some research. They found that women make 85% of the purchasing decisions in the U.S. despite being only 51% of the population. Women are twice as likely to own the task of grocery shopping for a household. 80% of mothers with children and a spouse report primarily taking on the task of meal preparation. On average, women spend more time and money on a grocery shopping trip than men. (Stats compiled by Lexington Law.)

Anecdotally, they knew from friends and family that women were the primary grocery shoppers and cooks. Furthermore, the women in their lives were more concerned with local food and more frequently shopped at farmers markets and subscribed to CSAs. Although they observed these trends in their personal lives, they still sought out concert studies and stats.

After their business was up and running for several years and they had a client base, Nine Oaks knew from their sales data that women 35-45 were their primary customers. 8 of their 10 CSA members were women in this age range and mothers to 2 or more children. The majority of customers at the farmers markets were women who appeared in this age range, usually with a husband or young children in tow. 75% of their email newsletter subscribers had feminine names.

They also did some math. If customers were to purchase 70-100% of their meat from Nine Oaks and 10.3% of a U.S. individual’s disposable income was spent on food (according to the USDA) and estimating that 12% of diets are meat and chicken, Nine Oaks calculated what the average annual income of a customer would be.

Additionally, they talked to their customers frequently. The Nine Oaks customers value clean and wholesome food.

With all this in mind, Nine Oaks Farm can use language and images that speak to their target market. With paid marketing channels, they use the ads’ targeting settings to only show their ads to ideal customers.

Because the social posts, flyers, ads, blogs, website pages, etc. are all designed and written with this ideal customer in mind, Nine Oaks’ target market will think, “That’s just what I’m looking for!” and look more into their products.

The Benefits of an Ideal Customer Profile

1. Speak Directly to Your Potential Customers

Ideal customer profiles allow you to write directly to your target market. By knowing the features and benefits that your customer values, you can write about those things and have potential customers resonate with what you are saying.

In the example of Nine Oaks Farm, they may say: “Our grass-fed beef is lean and doesn’t have the acidity of grain-fed beef, making it healthier for your family!” This speaks to their health-conscious mothers.

2. Spend Your Time and Money Wisely

If you know who your ideal customers are, you can meet them in the media they consume.

If your customers are Gen Z, you know that only 32% are on Facebook (according to Pew Research) because they prefer YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. With this knowledge, you can spend more time creating content for these platforms and not waste your time on Facebook.

Similarly, you will know where to advertise. In this example, Instagram is a better bet than a newspaper. For ads, you can set their targeting to your customers’ demographics, such as age, location, income level, and interests.

3. Better Serve Your Customers

You can expand your product offering to include more items that your target market wants. It is easier to sell more to existing customers than acquire more customers.

If your target market is weight-lifters who enjoy the leanness of your elk meat, perhaps you can also raise rabbits because they have protein-rich lean meat.

By knowing your customers, you can keep them satisfied. For example, if your customers want elk and rabbit, but you only offer one they may decide to go to another farm that offers both so they can simplify their purchasing by getting everything from one place.

You can also serve customers better in non-product ways. If your customers are very busy, perhaps you want to add delivery as a service or send recipes with your products.

Making and Refining Your Profiles

The process of developing ideal customer profiles is integral for a business. It is important to take time to sit down and actually craft these profiles, rather than just thinking through them. Spending time on this will allow you to truly flesh out the details.

This time dedication will pay off in the future!

As you read with Nine Oaks Farm, profiles should be developed at the inception of a business as part of the competitive analysis and marketing research process, but should also be refined as a business grows and changes.

(Note: If you are up and running already but don’t have customer profiles, there’s no time like the present!)

You should create a schedule to revisit and refine your ideal customer profiles. When you are starting out, you should refine your profiles more frequently, perhaps every year for the first five years of business and every other year for the next six.

If you add new products or make a major shift as a business, alter your profiles (or develop new ones) right away.

As you settle into your business and have the same products year-after-year, you can revisit your profiles less frequently, maybe every five years or so.

If you have very different products, you may have several ideal customer profiles. For example, if you raise grass-fed beef, you may sell the fresh cuts to families and the organ meat and bones to dog owners who feed a raw food diet to their pups. These are two different target markets and should have two different profiles.

Details to Include

In your customer profiles, you should include demographics, geographics, psychographics, and behavioral characteristics. Below is a good place to start, but you can expand as you see fit for your business.

Demographics

Demographics are the basics that describe your target market. Think information included in a census.

Age
Gender
Job title
Income
Level of education
Marriage and family status

Geographics

As you can deduce, geographics are the details about your target market’s location. This includes:

Neighborhood
City
Region
Country

Psychographics

Psychographics are your target market’s values. By knowing their values, you will know what drives their purchase decisions and daily activities.

Personality
Daily lifestyle
Hobbies
Pain points
Interests
Values
Life goals

Behavioral Characteristics

Behavioral characteristics describe how your target market makes purchasing decisions and uses products.

Price sensitivity
Purchasing history
Usage patterns
Brand loyalty
Preferred social media
Information sources

Conclusion

Ideal customer profiles are essential for your business. They are devices that help you find your target market, speak to them directly, spend your time and money wisely, and satisfy and retain your customers.

Develop your profiles at the inception of your farm and continue to refine them throughout your years in business. Include demographic, geographic, psychographic, and behavioral information in your profiles.

Remember: Just because your ideal customer profiles are very specific, doesn’t mean people outside of these profiles can’t or won’t purchase your products. This is merely a tool to guide your marketing efforts and make your efforts more effective.

Overwhelmed?

I’m here to help! Schedule a free discovery call today to discuss how we can partner to ramp up your marketing efforts and their effectiveness.

The post How to Develop an Ideal Customer Profile appeared first on MJM Farm Marketing.

Essential Pages for Your Farm Website

Mallaidh Mleziva — Wed, 24 Aug 2022 18:37:15 +0000

Building a website is overwhelming. Maybe you’re struggling to come up with any content to have on your site. Maybe you’re on the opposite end of the spectrum and are having a hard time narrowing down to the most important aspects.

Here is what you truly need on your farm website.

Product Pages

Product pages are essential, especially as a farm and business. Visitors want to know what you offer and the practices you use.

You should have a page for each product or group of products. For example, if you raise pastured pork, you should describe how you raise your pigs and what cuts you offer on one page. But the honey you also sell should have its own page describing your bees and processing methods.

At the bottom every product page link to your online store or your order form so readers can move straight into purchasing your products.

Online Store

If you sell products that can be shipped, you must have an online store. This includes up-to-date product and inventory listings, shipping options, and secure credit card acceptance. After purchasing, customers should receive emails with order fulfillment updates.

If you only sell products that can be picked up locally, host a form on your site so people can place orders without calling. (And be sure to regularly check for orders and send confirmation that each order has been received and is being fulfilled.)

About Us

Customers want to know the people behind the farm they are patronizing. They want to know why you do what you do. Do your values align with theirs?

The main appeal of local food for customers is knowing the farmers behind their food and being able to see the practices that these farmers use. Not only do they want to know the practices, but they also want to know WHY you do what you do.

They want to know what drives you to go out into the fields and move your chicken tractors twice a day. They want to know why you only grass-fed your cattle even when feeding grain could fatten them faster.

Share why you think sustainable agriculture is best for your customers, the animals, and the earth.

Explain what you do and why you do it. People want to know!

Blog

Many people think blogs are outdated, but this is not the case! Blogs continue to be some of the top viewed pages for every website. Neal Schaffer provides some amazing statistics about blogs.

If you have Google Analytics, check it out for yourself. I bet you’ll find some of your blogs as your most popular pages!

Additionally, blogs are a great way to improve your website’s SEO which is especially important if you offer shipping for products. Word-of-mouth likely won’t reach people you live in far away states, but SEO can (if done right)!

Home Page

Planning and writing the Home page of a website is the most difficult. I personally recommend working on the Home page after you have planned all the other content on your website (which is why I have included it last on this list of essential pages).

The purpose of the Home page is to serve as a jumping off point to the other content on your website. Visitors should be able to navigate to the content they are looking for.

First time visitors may want to learn more about you and your farm so they will go to the About page. Perhaps they just want to see what products you sell so they will go to your product pages or your online store if you have one.

Returning customers are probably looking for product updates, your operating hours, or other information so they can purchase their usual orders. They may click on your top menu to go to their desired page, so you’ll have to decide if you want a path for them on your Home page or just let them use the menu.

You’ll want to keep these customer paths in mind when designing your Home page. Many websites outline a challenge and a solution on their Home page that funnels down to a call-to-action (CTA) for people to make purchase or schedule an appointment to discuss services.

Many Home pages have a section near the top that hosts new information and updates. For example, a farm may state near the top that they are now accepting beef preorders, they recently opened a farm stand, or they have new hours.

Home pages require a lot of thought and a solid strategy.

It is also a good idea to track clicks on your Home page to see which content is attracting the most attention and you can make edits from there.

Conclusion

Knowing what and what not to include on your website is difficult. Each business is unique so no two websites will look the same. Not only will you have different products, colors, pictures, and text, but you also have your own voice which should come through to those who visit your website.

If you are looking for some help if your website, I offer SEO, content creation, and other website help. Head over to my Service page to see how I could help you clearly convey your message!

The post Essential Pages for Your Farm Website appeared first on MJM Farm Marketing.

Marketing Isn’t the Bad Guy

Mallaidh Mleziva — Wed, 24 Aug 2022 18:31:41 +0000

It’s a common misconception that marketing is about tricking people into buying your product or service.

We see advertisements that tell us we are need a product to look better or be happier or fit into the cool crowd. We hear of legal battles where companies are accused of claiming their product does something it doesn’t or not disclosing harmful ingredients.

So it’s understandable that many people think marketing is deceitful and deceptive.

What is marketing?

Marketing is about finding people who have the want/need that your product/services fulfills.

Perhaps we should work backwards…

Your rural business fulfills a want or a need.

You grow organic vegetables, fruits, and herbs for people who want local, fresh produce grown without any -cides. You raise pastured chickens, pigs, lamb, or cows for people who want nutritious protein from sustainable sources. You care for bees and trees to make raw honey and real maple syrup to fill someone’s sweet tooth with a healthy sugar-alternative. Your sheep provide wool for high-quality clothes and blankets free of micro-plastics. Your breads, jams, pickles, and pies are the best around and mouths water just at the sight of these goods.

But people won’t know about your products without marketing!

What activities are ‘marketing’?

Marketing is wide and diverse, including:

Direct Mail
Billboards
Print Media
Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Marketing
Social Media
Email Marketing
Content Marketing
Affiliate Marketing
Public Relations
Branding
Advertising
Sponsorships
Word of Mouth

(Many of these activities are grouped into bigger categories, such as print, digital, traditional, non-traditional, guerrilla, outbound, inbound, etc.)

If you never participated in these marketing activities, no one would ever know your products and services exist and you wouldn’t sell a single product.

Benefits go both ways. You want to sell products and services so you can make a living and customers want to fulfill their wants and needs so they should be able to easily find your products!

The Marketing Efforts that Made a Sale

A personal example: Recently, I wanted to make jalapeño poppers with the jalapeños from my garden. To spice it up a bit, I wanted to wrap some in bacon, specifically local, pasture-raised bacon. The issue was I wanted to make them during the week so I couldn’t wait for the Saturday morning farmers market. So I took to the Internet to find a local farm store or farm stand that carries pasture-raised pork, specifically bacon.

If the local farms didn’t have websites and Google My Business profiles, I would never have found them. I then went to their websites to ensure that their pork was pasture-raised and bacon was in stock. Then I looked to ensure I could go to the farm and purchase some there.

As the customer, I wanted: pasture-raised bacon that was available for purchase during the week.

As the farmers, they want to sell their products.

To connect with me, the farm needed a Google My Business profile, a website, descriptions of their farming practices, a product list, a physical location for sales, and a phone number.

All of these things are marketing!

Marketing isn’t the bad guy.

If it weren’t for marketing, the farm wouldn’t have sold some bacon (and a whole chicken, since I was there) and I wouldn’t have been able to make yummy bacon-wrapped jalapeño poppers on a Wednesday!

How can you market your products and services?

Are you looking to develop a marketing plan or ramp up your marketing efforts?

Do you want to branch into new marketing methods like advertising or content creation?

Schedule a call with me to explore what we could work on together to make your products and services known to your target audience!

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How to Choose the Right Social Media for Your Farm

Mallaidh Mleziva — Wed, 24 Aug 2022 18:21:33 +0000

Facebook
Instagram
TikTok
Twitter
Pinterest
Reddit
Snapchat
YouTube
LinkedIn

The list of social media is long and these are just the most popular platforms.

It’s impossible to be everywhere all the time. Your time is already stretched thin as a farmer. You must choose which platforms you want to be on.

How do you choose which social media to use?

The right social media isn’t which ones have the most users or which ones you are most familiar with.

Here are the factors you should consider:

Where is your target market?

First and foremost, you should be on the social media that your audience uses.

This will vary depending on your business model. If you have an e-commerce site and ship woolen crafts across the country, you will have different customers than a beef producer who sells off their farm and at local farmers markets.

Many of my clients had the best engagement on Facebook. The reasons for this vary. For some, Facebook is where they can connect with moms who make the food purchasing and opt to buy organic fruits and vegetables. For others, they started farming when Facebook was one of the only platforms and they had hundreds of friends they were already connected to who would follow and engage with their business page.

Some farmers (and especially homesteaders) are thriving on Instagram and YouTube sharing their daily lives. Customers enjoy seeing how their food is being grown/raised and like to connect with their farmers on a more personal level.

If you have existing customers – Ask them which platforms they use.

If you don’t have any customers yet – Think about your ideal customer and which social media they use. A good exercise is to create an Ideal Customer Profile which forces you to get into the mind of your customers and flesh out details to guide many of your marketing decisions.

You can also look at your competitors and see which platforms they have success on.

How many platforms can you handle?

It is better to choose fewer platforms and show up regularly than choosing too many platforms and not posting anywhere.

Determine how many platforms you can dedicate time to. Perhaps this is 3 or maybe 4.

There are some platforms where you can post the exact same content (and at the same time with no extra clicks), like Facebook and Instagram. There are other platforms where you want a profile but don’t need to post frequently; perhaps this is Facebook or LinkedIn for you.

Which platforms and what content do you enjoy?

This question requires some thought and an honest answer. Don’t quickly say you think TikTok is stupid or that you just don’t understand Instagram or that Facebook is for boomers.

Do you enjoy sharing photos of your ripe berries and thriving vegetables? Do you like the idea of making a video educating people on how to move cattle with low-stress handling methods? Which platforms do you personally enjoy scrolling?

Consider what types of content you enjoy, what you’d like to share, and how you’d like to develop a brand image for your farm.

Next, think about the types of content on each platform. Here are some examples:

Facebook – sharing announcements, achievements, news, memes, and more
Pinterest – blogs with information or aesthetic photos, nearly all images link to websites that host ads or sell featured products directly
Snapchat – unedited photos and clips of your day
YouTube – how-to videos for learning, vlogs about daily life, commentary about topics

Finally, think about what social media you are familiar with, what content you know how to create, and what you can learn.

It will be the easiest to share your farm on the social media you are familiar with, which you can factor into your decision. However, don’t choose social media simply because you know how to use it and don’t avoid social media because you don’t know how to use it.

The same idea applies to content. It is possible to learn anything with a quick Google or YouTube search!

There are some things that require significant time to learn and some that require additional software. YouTube is one of these platforms. You can record videos on your phone and make minor edits quickly. If you want more professional videos with advanced editing and high quality sound, then you will need to invest your time to learn how to do these things and some money to buy the equipment and software. Alternatively, you could pay someone with experience to do these things.

Again, don’t let a lack of knowledge or skills stop you from adopting social media that your audience uses or that you see as advantageous for your business.

What social media do I recommend?

Every business is different so it is impossible to say which platforms are best for your enterprise. Every business has its own offerings, customers, and competitive advantages.

Plus, success on these platforms depends on an individual’s knowledge of trends and platform updates, evaluation of analytics, and effort.

However, I strongly dislike articles that don’t give guidance, even if it is just an opinion. So here is a blind recommendation:

Facebook – Right now, it is good to have a page on Facebook with up-to-date information. It shows up on search engines and nearly everyone above 20 has an account. Even if you don’t get much engagement (and therefore you don’t post often) and even if it becomes outdated eventually, it is good to have a presence on Facebook for now.
Instagram – This platform is all about pictures which is great for farms! From fresh produce to cute animals to lovely sunsets, farming has beautiful sights that the Instagram audience would love to see. Plus, you can share genuine, real-life updates through Stories and Reels.
TikTok – Anything can become popular and viral on TikTok if the algorithm is in your favor. This is especially advantageous if you have an online store or can make money digitally (e.g., online classes).
Pinterest – If you write blogs (which you should!), this is a great place to share them. Unlike content on other platforms that is only seen for a day or two, Pinterest content can get traffic for years! However, customers won’t follow you on this platform and there aren’t locale settings so it is only helpful if you can sell products or services online.
YouTube – YouTube is a great way to share longer form content about your farm, production principles, tips and tricks, sustainable methodologies, daily life, and much more both with your customers and a wider audience. Plus, this is the place to host any and all videos made about your farm which you can then link to on your other social media and your website.

Again, these specific social media won’t work for everyone.

Furthermore, just because you create a profile on platforms and post once in a while doesn’t mean you will grow a huge audience or skyrocket your sales. Social media requires observations, data, perseverance, character, branding, consistency, and more.

If you would like a personalized evaluation of your business and recommendation of platforms, please reach out for a free discovery call!

The post How to Choose the Right Social Media for Your Farm appeared first on MJM Farm Marketing.