Marketing #5: Ensuring Your Marketing Works

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There is so much literature available to help us determine if marketing efforts are making a difference. However, small businesses really don’t need that level of metrics. The bottom line for a small enterprise is whether sales are improving. That’s really it.

It’s good to know what marketing endeavor helps the most, though. Now is the time to ask your customers, both old and new, where they heard about your business. Don’t just stop there, though. Ask them what compelled them to visit you. That may actually be a much more important aspect of your marketing than what periodical they read. Understanding their motivations let’s you be more specific with your next round of marketing. (Oh yes, marketing is a constant, just like the seasons or the fact that any household appliance will only break when you need to use it.)

Good luck! Let me know if this marketing tutorial helps, and what your experience is. Your feedback will help me improve this over time.

Marketing #4: Your Message

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We’ve talked a bit about understanding your customer and knowing what they want. This is quite important, actually. By learning what motivates your customer, you can craft your message to help them meet their needs. Let’s take the example we postulated earlier – the young couple who’ve just had their first baby. They are concerned about giving their child and, I hope, themselves, clean, wholesome, local foods.

So, what do you say to them? You could ask a question and answer it: “What’s the best food for you and your baby? Come find out at our farm, home of the finest organic fruits and vegetables.” You could start with a statement: “Here’s to better health! Find the best organic fruits and vegetables at our farm.” With this scenario, you can emphasize the health people will experience from eating the food you produce.

Let’s try another scenario. Suppose you want to reach people who are interested in finding new tastes. Your message can emphasize some of the unique crops you are growing: “Purple carrots? Of course! They taste really great. Come enjoy them on the farm.”

Your message should be short, yet informative, targeting the audience you want to reach. Targeted messaging is the key to capturing your customers’ attention.

Marketing #3: Vehicles and Media

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Understanding how your customer learns about your business.

You know what your business is. You know who your customers are. Now, how do you reach them? In other words, you need to discover how your potential customers get information, especially information about the types of products or services you sell. This is where a “Use Case” comes in handy.

A use case is an example of how a customer might react to your marketing campaign and engage your services. It gives you some idea of probable outcomes. Let’s look at an example:

A young couple has their first child and want the very best for that child. This means the best nutrition, the best childhood experiences and the best chance at a good start in life. They have to go somewhere to find information and that’s where you want to be. What do they read? Where do they go for local information? Is it online or in print? Do they attend classes? You need to think like they would. Once you have some idea of how parents are learning about local foods, you can start to put together a marketing plan.

So, go back to the list of what you discovered about your customers. Create some use cases using the types of customers you are trying to reach. Think about how you can reach them. Do that first and then come back for this second part.

Vehicles: What do you use to reach people?

Let’s explore some common tools you can use to market your business. Some are free, others will cost you a bit.

  • Web sites – These are a great place to showcase your static information, such as your company mission, basic photography, address and other contact information, etc. Web sites can be expensive, depending on your comfort level in administering one. Sites, such as Wix.com, Godaddy.com, or Squarespace.com can give you low prices and good templates that you can populate. It takes a bit of time to do it, though.
  • Social media – This is where you can place your dynamic, quickly-changing information. It’s free, but requires constant monitoring, just like an ongoing conversation. I use Twitter to share links to sites or articles or to make quick announcements. I use Facebook for longer postings. They each also can reach different audiences. Other platforms have different purposes, such as Pinterest for sharing pictures.
  • Print media – Look for local media that is distributed for free. It’s amazing how effective these can be. They usually are inexpensive to advertise in.
  • Don’t forget networking! Working alongside other small businesses can lead to opportunities for cross-marketing. A tack shop can promote your stable while you promote their products, or a group of businesses can promote themselves cooperatively, reaching a wider audience.

Don’t let online marketing scare you if you haven’t done it before. We all started exactly the same, needing to learn how it works. There’s not really a wrong way to do it.

Okay, on to the next step.

Marketing Your Farm #2: Customers

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Now that you’ve had ample time to consider why you do what you do, we are going to take a look at the type of customer you need to attract in order to continue doing what you do. You want your customers to not only return, but to become enthusiastic proponents of your business.

If you haven’t already, watch Seth Godin’s TED Talk on The Tribes We Lead. Yes, go ahead. I’ll wait…

There are a group of people out there who believe just as you do, that locally-grown food can change the world, or that horses can teach kids great skills, or that your business will provide the best customer service. But traditional marketing methods really won’t work to reach them and will cost you entirely too much. Let’s explore how to find that group and interact with them.

Start with your current customers, if you have them. Why and how did they start buying from you? Do you know? What keeps them coming back? Ask them and see how they answer.

If you are trying to start a business, you won’t have current customers to rely on. Start instead with some deductive reasoning. Let’s take the example of a specific rural business – a horse stable. Stables have a number of possible services available for horse owners and those who wish to learn more about horses. If I were the owner of this establishment, and wished to increase the number of young people taking horseback riding lessons, how would I do this?

  1. Make sure you engage with the real customer. Where kids are concerned, the true customers are the parents.
  2. Put yourself in the parents’ shoes. Why should they let their child sit on top of a potentially dangerous, thousand-pound animal? Children who learn horsemanship are better able to creatively solve problems, they become better with communication, they gain confidence, and, in many circumstances, become more outgoing. (Okay, maybe that’s just what it did for me, but I digress…)
  3. Find parents who are concerned about teaching their kids to be more self-reliant. They are going to be the ones who are active with their kids in sports, scouting, music, etc.
  4. This is where you get to do some detective work. You’ll need to discover where these potential customers get their information. What drives them? What do they feel is most important? This is going to be the toughest step, especially if you’re more of an introvert. It’s something you just have to do.

Armed with this information, you can start to put a marketing plan together. So, the next step is determining how to reach people. What method do you use? How can you be sure people will see your marketing materials? Will they be effective?

 

Marketing Your Farm #1: Why?

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Welcome to the first installment of Marketing Your Farm. Just to reiterate, here is the agenda I’m following:

  1. Who are you?
  2. Who are your customers?
  3. How can you reach them?
  4. What do you want say?
  5. How do you know that what you’ve said is working?

Today, I’m going to talk about you. Who are you and, most importantly, why are you doing what you do? Knowing “why” will bring you to “what” and “how” in later installments of this series. First, make sure you’ve watched Simon Sinek’s TED Talk on leadership.

Go ahead. I’ll wait…

“People don’t buy what you do. They buy why you do it.”  Essentially, your communication plan needs to be based on your purpose for what you do. What drove you to start farming? Why do you raise livestock? Try to remember the first time you grew something. What was that feeling?

I remember the first time I ever rode a horse. I had been begging my mother for years to let me take lessons, since I’d seen horses and riders on television and I knew people who had horses. She finally agreed and one Saturday, I was standing in an arena holding the reins of a big dabbled palomino mare named Sun. I learned only the very basics that day, but spent the best hour of my 10-year-old life. When I had to leave, I cried all the way home. Knowing that I was going to have another lesson in just a week was no consolation. I wanted to be around horses all the time.

And now I have two. They make me very happy. Horses have been one of the main drivers of my life. I bought this little farm because of my horses.

Think about why. What’s the main thing that drives you? Is it the tastes of well-produced foods? Is it the healthy soil? Is it the community? Is it the health these foods provide? What caused you to start? Was it growing the perfect carrot? Take some time to consider this and write down the reasons. Usually, it’s much more of a feeling than it is a specific idea, so I know this can be difficult to capture. Just remember, it’s the one thing about your business that makes you happy. It’s unique to you.

Here are some examples:

  • Adalyn Farm – a CSA farm in Stanwood WA: “Building community through food.”
  • Apple – For Apple, it’s all about the design and usability. There’s not a saying that encapsulates it, but one of my friends suggested, “It just works.”
  • TED Talks – “Ideas worth spreading.”
  • Aspire Foundation – “Empowering women and girls.”

For next time, capture some of these ideas about why you do what you do on paper (computer program, post-it note, blackboard or whatever works for you). Don’t be detailed. Instead, capture your instinctive feelings. My favorite way of doing this is to think about it and then either go do something completely different or sleep on it. Capture your thoughts in writing (or, for those more artistic, try a drawing). We will revisit these ideas each time we work on the next steps. “The goal is to do business with people who believe what you believe.”

Also, watch Seth Godin’s TED Talk on The Tribes We Lead. Next time, we’ll talk about our customers and who they are.

Marketing Your Farm Series

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Now that I’m finally moved and (almost) all the boxes are unpacked, it’s time for me to get writing again. I’ve been thinking about how to apply marketing precepts and processes to small farms without them having to spend too much money. The perfect opportunity to do this as a series just came up.

I volunteered with the Aspire Foundation to mentor a woman who owns a small farm in an area that does not have any real support structures in place. It doesn’t take much of my time, about 6-7 hours over 6 months, but the responsibility of being a mentor can be quite serious. I want her to succeed.

To that end, I’m starting a series about marketing small farms (or other small, rural businesses) without incurring too much cost. Yes, that means free or extremely low cost tools that you can find online. They are out there, but how do you use them?

Here’s the framework I’m going to follow to help you create your marketing plan:

  1. Who are you?
  2. Who are your customers?
  3. How can you reach them?
  4. What do you want say?
  5. How do you know that what you’ve said is working?

It sounds rather simple, but it really isn’t. How you view yourself and how you approach your potential customers is a tricky proposition at best. (Billions of dollars are spent on advertising every year trying to crack this.) It can be done, but it must be thought about first.

So, to kick this off, I suggest watching Simon Sinek’s brilliant TED talk on How Great Leaders Inspire Action. It will get you thinking about your business and why you do it.

(Seriously, go to the Aspire Foundation site and see what an amazing program it is. Their goal is to mentor a billion women and the work they’ve already done has changed the lives of women all over the world.)

 

A Whole New Farm

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I’ve been offline and not writing over the last few months because I’ve been in the process of buying a little place of my own. For the past 13 years, I’ve been renting a small 100-year-old house on my sister’s farm. It has afforded me the chance to become debt free and to save enough to buy exactly the place that I want. About a month ago, I found it, a small 6-acre farmette and I quickly put an offer on it. Tomorrow, I sign the papers and by Wednesday, it will be all mine.

Now I just have to make updates to it, move everything and then figure out how to move my blind horse. I also need to get him a friend. Oh, the monetary outlay!

I am excited and terrified all at once.

One thing that’s almost shocking is the change in broadband options. I’m just moving a small distance, but my broadband speed is going from 11 Mb to 110 Mb. And, it’s substantially cheaper! Yes, I’m changing companies.

It’s amazing how very patchwork our interest access is around the country. Within an hour’s drive of the main Microsoft campus, and Amazon’s Seattle multiplex, there are still those without broadband. Yet in some of the most remote towns scattered across the west, you’ll find pockets of exceptional internet speed. Small companies are stepping up to try to fill the gaps, but they are limited by so many issues. The big companies can’t maximize profits across larger distances, so they don’t try.

The poorest counties in the United States all have inadequate or non-existent broadband access. The only large-sized company aggressively building out broadband access in rural places is Frontier. They have consistently met their promises to bring connectivity to their new customers. I’m sorry to leave them, but they don’t provide service at my new house.

Oh, the things I’m going to do with 110 Mbs…

A Little Trip East

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When I travel, I am always curious to discover how small farmers are doing in the regions I visit. I try to go to the Farmers Markets or even to the farms themselves, if they are open to the public. On a recent trip to North Carolina and Tennessee (yes, the family reunion was afoot), I found a great reciprocal relationship between local restaurants and local farms. Each was helping the other deliver a great food experience to their customers.

Depending on the season, a restaurant will work with several local farms, picking two or three items that are currently being harvested. They will use those ingredients to create a unique dish which they feature on that night’s menu. The names and places of the farms are then displayed on the menu. Customers visit the restaurants knowing that they are supporting local businesses and that they are going to eat really well.

After doing this for several seasons, customers now specifically patronize these restaurants because they feature local farms. Patrons routinely ask which farms have contributed to that night’s meal. As the restaurants have been educating their customers about local farms, customers have come to expect great food from them. The restaurants still serve a regular menu year-round, sourcing their ingredients from multiple places, but the locally-sourced ingredients are what are pulling customers in.

I stopped at a pizzeria that was featuring locally-produced mozzarella from an organic dairy. When in season, they also included farm fresh vegetables from a different producer. In other words, they had at least something from a local farm on the menu all the time. The quality of their pizzas and the volume of patrons they had in their restaurant on a Monday night were amazing. I certainly had more slices than I probably should have.

Building relationships between growers of food and creators of cuisine can lead to a more robust economic environment for both parties. In the southern Appalachian Mountains, I found this system to be not only mutually beneficial, but quite tasty, too.

Net Neutrality: There’s More to the Story

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Last Thursday, the FCC voted on regulations to ensure the open internet or “net neutrality”. You’ll hear a lot about that in the next few weeks and months, much of it from those who really know very little about how the internet actually works. You’ll hear about what a catastrophe it’s going to be from some of your ISPs or, conversely, how it’s going to save us all. Neither, I believe is entirely true. It is a set of regulations to ensure that we get our internet content the same way we always have, free of bandwidth throttling or extraneous charges to content owners. It makes ISPs a utility, just like electricity.

From a rural broadband perspective, there was a much more important vote taken right beforehand. It is the Municipal Broadband ruling. This allows municipalities to provide internet services to underserved areas outside their city limits. Many states have set severe limits to what towns and public utility districts can provide, even in areas not served by an ISP. Nearly 30% of the United States does not currently have access to broadband and for-profit companies are not interested in serving those communities. Someone needs to step in.

I believe the New Yorker has some of the best writing on this subject. Enjoy!

Frugal Innovations

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TTED2echnology – it’s not for just the rich anymore. Ravi Nadjou’s TED talk on Creative problem-solving has some really innovative and very low-cost tools that we, in rural America, can use right now to get our small farms and business in the red. The two that I found quite fascinating are gThrive and Be-Bound.

gThrive is a system of soil monitoring that uses basic technology to provide an amazing amount of real-time data, at a much lower cost, to farmers. It let’s you know the nutrient levels of your soil so that you can properly correct for them, instead of over fertilizing. In drought-stricken areas, understanding the moisture content of your soils could help you conserve water. Where I live, the fields are saturated with flood waters for most of the winter. Knowing when the soils are dry enough for proper germination is critical to ensuring that seed is not wasted on soggy soil.

Be-Bound frees your phone (phablet or cell-enabled tablet) from those cell dead zones. Essentially, it lets you use a number of applications, such as Twitter, from almost anywhere in the world, even when there is very little cell or Wi-Fi service. What this means for those who travel, is that you won’t necessarily have to use Verizon to get in touch with people in rural places. You may be able to go with a $35 plan and add Be-Bound. (That’s my plan, anyway.) Calls won’t work through it but texting, mail, and Twitter do. It’s currently only available for Android phones, but they are developing it for other platforms. It’s available at the Google Play store.