191 Evaluating Your Year & Setting New Goals for Your Business (My Process)
My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers
Release Date: 12/21/2022
376 What Should I Call This? How to Name Farm Products (So That They Sell)
My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers
Could changing one word on a sign or product listing make a product sell better? Last week at our Farmer's Bag Toledo pickup, I noticed something strange happening with two kinds of onions sitting right next to each other. Customers kept choosing one—and passing over the other. Then one of our volunteers made an observation: “I wonder if it's the name.” That comment made me think, "Oh I've got to do a podcast about this!" Because as farmers, we often name our products based on what we call them -- i.e. the variety in the seed catalog, the technical name of the cut, or whatever makes...
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375 The Five Transformations Farmers Really Sell
My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers
What if your customers aren't actually buying your vegetables? In this episode, Corinna shares a personal story from her son's Air Force Basic Training that reinforced a key marketing principle, and it has nothing to do with farming. If you've ever struggled to know what to say in your emails, on your website, or in your social media posts, this episode will help you uncover the deeper reason people choose to buy from your farm. Eventually all business owners realize that customers don't buy products... they buy the life those products help create. You'll learn how to identify the...
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374 Behind the Launch: How Farmer's Bag Toledo Went From Idea to Sold Out
My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers
How do you go from a random idea... to selling out a brand-new food access program in just a few days? In this episode, I'm pulling back the curtain on the complete behind-the-scenes story of launching The Farmer's Bag Toledo. You'll hear how one unexpected meeting planted the seed, how the right partnership changed everything, why we chose to beta test instead of trying to make it perfect, and all the practical work that happened behind the scenes -- from pricing and logistics to technology, funding, naming, messaging, and launch strategy. If you've ever had an idea sitting in your notebook...
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373: The 7 Essential Offers Every Farm Business Needs
My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers
Imagine asking the first runner in a relay race to carry the baton from the starting line all the way to the finish. No winning team would do that. Yet many farm businesses unknowingly expect one offer to do exactly that. In this episode, I introduce a simple framework that completely changed the way I think about marketing: The Offer Portfolio. Instead of relying on one offer to attract new customers, create first-time buyers, build loyalty, increase order value, and generate referrals, you'll discover the 7 essential offers every farm business should consider -- and the unique role each one...
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372 Dealing with Dread: The Hidden Marketing Obstacle That's Keeping Farmers Stuck
My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers
Have you ever found yourself putting off the very marketing task that could help your farm grow? Writing the email. Launching the promotion. Recording the video. Raising your prices. Building the sales page. You know it needs to get done... but every time you think about it, you feel that heavy sense of dread. In this episode, I share a personal discovery that is challenging the the way I think about procrastination, marketing, and business growth. After catching myself avoiding two important projects this month, I realized something surprising: I wasn't avoiding the work. I was avoiding the...
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371 Re-Broadcast: Use This Weekly Checklist to Sell More at the Farmer's Market
My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers
This podcast is for all of you who go to farmer's markets!! This episode is a rebroadcast! I first recorded it two years ago, and I decided to share it again, because it needs repeating! Do you want to walk away from the market feeling like you did everything you could to maximize sales that day? Here's a fact: You're going to sell more at the farmer's market if you do a little bit of preparation in the sales strategy department. In this episode, I'm sharing my checklist of "things to make sure you do" before you hop into the truck and head to market. Things like: create a weekly special...
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370 Finding the Friction That's Costing You Sales
My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers
Every farm has friction. The question is… can you see it? Friction is anything that makes buying from your farm harder than it needs to be. It shows up in every business—often in places we've become blind to because we know our own systems so well. The good news? You don't have to eliminate every point of friction to see results. Sometimes removing just one obstacle can make a meaningful difference. In this episode, I'll introduce you to the concept of becoming a Friction Detective. Together, we'll explore the most common places friction hides in a farm business, the questions you...
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369 The One Metric That Tells You if Your Farm Leads Are Actually Worth Anything
My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers
What is a lead actually worth to your farm business? Most farmers know how many email subscribers they have. Far fewer know what those subscribers are actually worth. And that can lead to some very bad marketing decisions. In this episode, I introduce a simple metric called Earnings Per Lead (EPL) that helps you measure the value of the people entering your world -- i.e. whether they came from a Facebook ad, a farmers market, a farm tour, a referral, or a lead magnet. You'll learn how to calculate EPL, why it's different from Cost Per Lead, and how it can help you decide which marketing...
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368: How to Prioritize Your Farm Marketing When Time Is Tight
My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers
One of the questions I hear all the time from farmers is: "What marketing channel should I focus on?" Or: "If I only have a few hours a week, what's the minimum marketing I need to do?" But I think that's the wrong question. The real question is: Where should I invest my limited marketing time so it creates the biggest impact? In this episode, I share a simple framework to help you decide where your marketing time should go based on the three metrics that actually drive farm revenue: customer count, average order value, and order frequency. We'll talk about the four places marketing time...
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367: Not Every Offer Is a First Offer: A Live FMS Coaching Call with Pigasus Meats
My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers
What happens when you launch an offer that seems like a no-brainer... and nobody buys it? In this episode, you'll listen in on a real coaching call with Lexi from Pigasus Meats. Lexi came to the call frustrated because their Simple Supper Box subscription had only attracted one customer after months of promotion. As we dug into the problem, we uncovered a lesson that applies to every farm business: Not every offer is the right first offer. Many farmers assume that if an offer isn't selling, the offer itself must be flawed. But sometimes the real issue is where that offer sits in the customer...
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It's the end of the year, and that means it's time for the end of year evaluation and goal setting retreat!
Crickets.
Wait... you don't DO an end-of-year evaluation or goal setting?.... LOL.
If not, I SO get it. Don't beat yourself up. But today, I'm going to inspire you to give it another try. I used to avoid this process too -- partly because I didn't have a good process that worked for me.
That all changed when I found these evaluation questions. And in today's podcast, I'm going to share them with you.
I basically use a series of 12 questions. (I share 9 of them with you today). I spend two separate days journaling on them for about two hours each time. That's a total of 4 hours. (Don't worry... if journaling isn't your thing, I suggest another way to do it in the show).
In this episode, I walk you through 9 questions and flesh out examples of what kinds of answers you're looking for. By the time you've really worked through these, I PROMISE YOU that the answers to question #7 "What are your goals for next year" will be pretty clear to you. I love how these questions bring up so many discoveries, limiting beliefs, desires, direction, and clarity for me.
I hope it works for you too.
I encourage you to listen to my episode in its entirety. Then book some time this week to work through the questions -- make the process your own. See what comes up for you. Then tell me what you came up with! I'd love to hear one idea... email me or shoot me a DM @mydigitalfarmer on Instagram.
Here are the questions I journal through:
PART 1 - do these on day one (2 hours)
- List everything that has happened to you in the last 12 months related to your business?
- What are the lessons from those experiences that you can take into next year?
- What do you want to do more of? What do you want to do less of?
- What are you still holding onto from last year that is taking up space? And what will there be room for when you let that go? (Think physically, relationally, feelings, possessions, time sucks, mindsets and limiting beliefs)
- What are your 5% revenue generating activities?
PART 2 -- do these on day two (2 hours)
- What do you want? (Think outside your business. What else do you want for your life?)
- What are your goals for next year? What results do you want to produce? (This could include elements of your personal life too).
- What specific measure will you use to know that your objective has been realized?
- What new habits will you have to adopt to win your game? (Daily? Weekly? Monthly? Quarterly?)
Some of the resources mentioned in this episode:
Join my free email list! I have a great "email onboarding sequence" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better.
Register for my webinar called “The 3 Mistakes CSA Rookie Farmers Make (And How to Avoid Them).” You can register at www.mydigitalfarmer.com/rookie — and select from the time options available each week. This is a free webinar, designed to help “new” CSA farmers learn the framework for a profitable and resilient CSA.
My Accelerator Coaching program -- join my small group of farmers and entrepreneurs as we build one marketing asset for your business each month together, and coach each other to greatness! Includes a group coaching and mastermind element!
Find my Facebook group for farmers!
Follow me on Instagram for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer
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My hope is to feature guests periodically on the show. If you know someone who is innovating in the area of marketing as a farmer, please send me an email at mydigitalfarmers@gmail.com.