You’re a manufacturer of high-quality products, specifically made for families and small enterprises. You don’t have a huge advertising budget. How do you get the word out to a specialized market that you have something they’ll want? You do what Grain Maker has done.

First, Grain Maker designs and manufactures an all-steel grain mill that can be run by a hand crank, direct-drive motor, or by bicycle power. I was able to play with it while visiting their Montana shop and was really impressed with how it worked. It’s a very solid, well-crafted machine that turns out beautiful bread-making flour quite quickly, even with my slow cranking. (It actually grinds all kinds of things, including legumes, dried onions, and even peanut butter, but I just played with the whole wheat.) It comes in two sizes: one with a 6-cup hopper and one with a 10-cup hopper.

Second, advertise in the print media most associated with your target audience. In this case, they use periodicals that cater to small farms, bakers specializing in whole grains, and families interested in healthy foods, sustainability, and self-sufficiency.

Third, create an online presence that includes a website, http://www.grainmaker.com/ complete with an online store, and information on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. Last, but not least, have someone in-house handling all of the online information, coordinating website updates and responding quickly to social media input. That’s how you get the word out. It seems to be working since sales are good.

Oh, and the Grain Maker mill comes in my favorite color, red. You can have any color you like, so long as it’s red. Red’s a good color.