280 Marketing Raw Milk Herd Shares with Katie Miller
My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers
Release Date: 09/25/2024
287 The Corporate Transparency Act Deadline: What Every Farmer Should Know
My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers
Have you filed your CTA report yet? (Do you even know what that means?) This is a fairly "new" (and unknown) legal requirement and I'm discovering that a lot of farm business owners have no idea about it. As a business, you may have to file a report, and you have until December 31, 2024, to do so (or face some big fines). In this episode, I break down the Corporate Transparency Act and its implications for business owners, especially small farms. With insights from my lawyer Richard Chamberlain, we dive into the federal reporting requirements designed to identify your beneficial owners...
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286 What's Your Farm Lead Worth? Farm Metrics: Understanding your EPL (Earnings Per Lead)
My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers
November 6, 2024 by Corinna Do you know how much each lead is worth to your farm business? In this episode, we dive deep into the concept of Earnings Per Lead (EPL) and how it can transform the way you approach marketing for your farm. I’ll explain exactly what EPL is, how to calculate it for both paid and organic campaigns, and why this metric is critical to understanding the value of each lead. By tracking EPL, you'll learn how to make data-driven decisions to boost your farm’s revenue, whether you’re running a CSA, selling farm products, or hosting events. Listen in to discover:...
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285 Boost Your Farm's Revenue with Value-Added Products: Insights from Kendall Ballantine
My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers
Are you creating value-added products and selling them in your farm business? After hearing this episode, you may decide to get started! "Value-added" refers to any agricultural products that have been processed or enhanced in a way that increases their market value. This could involve transforming raw farm products into something more convenient, shelf-stable, or unique, thus making them more appealing to customers. For example, turning fresh vegetables into pickles, making jams from fruit, or creating bone broth from animal by-products are all considered value-added because they offer more...
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284 Holiday Promotions: How to Prep Your Farm's Online Store for the Holidays
My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers
With the holidays coming, are you preparing any farm promotions to finish Q4 strong? If not, this episode is for you. I've invited my friend Christina Marbury (the marketing director of Taste the Local Difference -- a marketing agency for farmers) to share her expertise in building holiday promotions that sell. Christina has the advantage of working with hundreds of farms across the Midwest on their marketing strategy, and she has seen the types of offers that work well for the Thanksgiving/Christmas seasons. Your consumer is "trained" to buy this time of year. Between gift giving and the big...
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283 CSA Early Renewal Promotions: My Process
My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers
Are you a CSA farmer that has to get their members to "renew" every year and it always feels like a STRUGGLE? I've got you, my friend, because in this episode, I share my process for setting up my CSA early sign "renewal" promotion every fall in the final week of my CSA. I give them only 7 days to make up their minds. I've used the same sales system for the last 7 years, and I consistently get 75-85% of them to renew. Here is an overview of the steps that I walk through in more detail in the episode. Use this as your checklist for running your own campaign: Set the three key dates....
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282 The Secret to Turning Small Actions into Big Commitments: How to Make Customers Stick
My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers
In this episode, we dive into the powerful psychology of consistency and how small commitments can lead to bigger, lasting customer actions. Inspired by Robert Cialdini’s principle of consistency from his book Influence, we explore how getting your customers to take small, meaningful steps—like participating in social media posts or attending a farm event—can prime them for bigger purchases down the line. We’ll also discuss how this principle helps customers claim an identity and align their values with your farm, creating a loyal, committed base. Tune in to learn how to leverage this...
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281 When to use Fixed Price v. Percentage Discounts
My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers
Fixed Price discounts. You've seen them. "Save $5 when you spend $25!!" Percentage off discounts. You've seen those too: "Get 20% off when you spend $25 or more!" But which one is more effective? If you were going to build a coupon code in your online store, or offer a promotion at your farm store -- which one will lead to more sales? Well... it depends. As it turns out, there are best practices surrounding the use of the fixed price v. the percentage off discount. And it all revolves around sales psychology. Our brains just "feel better" when we use one over the other -- in certain...
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280 Marketing Raw Milk Herd Shares with Katie Miller
My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers
When it comes to selling raw milk to the public, farmers face legal and health challenges that make it really hard to provide this product. Luckily there is a work-around. It's called the "herdshare." The problem is, it's awfully hard to explain. In today's episode, I'm interviewing a second generation dairy farmer, who is moving her product line to raw milk. She has faced these communication and sales hurdles head-on, and she shares her unique sales strategy that is slowly but surely getting new customers in the door. We discuss: the public perception of raw milk the obstacles she has to...
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279 Inside a Farm Marketing School Coaching Call with Alan Laird
My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers
September 18, 2024 What if you could brainstorm your personal marketing strategy for a new enterprise in a 1:1 call with another farmer? Well, that's exactly what happens in today's podcast. You get to be a fly on the wall, listening in on my monthly Farm Marketing School Zoom call, that turned into a 1:1 coaching call with one of the members. This month, Allan Laird was in the hot seat, and he and I work out how to build up a clientele for his goat's milk soap line. This is a brand new enterprise for him and he wasn't sure how to get started. So we built out his short term game plan in under...
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278 What to Post on Social Media (and Why)! Ideas for Small Farms
My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers
What do I post on social media? If you're a small farm in your first 3 years, you're likely spending a fair percentage of your "marketing time" doing social media. But are you using that time wisely? Social media has its place in the marketing funnel, but only if it's strategic. In this episode, I share with you the 5 "goals" for social media, and I list of 10 different categories of post content that should regularly be in your monthly social media rotation. If you're doing social, start off by scheduling these 10 styles of posts in your Business Suite, so you know they're covered. THIS is...
info_outlineWhen it comes to selling raw milk to the public, farmers face legal and health challenges that make it really hard to provide this product. Luckily there is a work-around. It's called the "herdshare." The problem is, it's awfully hard to explain. In today's episode, I'm interviewing a second generation dairy farmer, who is moving her product line to raw milk. She has faced these communication and sales hurdles head-on, and she shares her unique sales strategy that is slowly but surely getting new customers in the door. We discuss:
- the public perception of raw milk
- the obstacles she has to overcome when it comes to messaging this product
- what types of customers want raw milk
- the unique questions she must answer in order to make someone ready to buy
- legal restrictions -- what you are and aren't allowed to do when it comes to selling raw milk
- how a herd share works
- her scrappy, brilliant sales method that closes the deal almost 100% of the time
- what she focuses on in her messaging to drive sales
- mistakes she's made along the way
Even if you aren't ever going to sell raw milk (raising my hand here), you'll hear some great beginner-farmer marketing tactics. Katie may not realize it, but she has built a few pieces of a marketing machine that will eventually be able to scale. Come take a listen and see where you can find your story in hers.
Who is Katie Miller?
Katie Miller is the owner of Positively Grown Farm in the small town of Hopkins, Michigan. She’s a 4th generation Dairy farmer following in her dad’s footsteps who has been farming for 35 years. She is the first to pursue the Raw Dairy industry and have one successful year under her belt with no slowing down in sight. When she’s not milking cows she enjoys riding her Harley with friends, going to Festivals and being a mom to 4 Emus, a duck, 3 cats and her Lab/Pit Ruby
This podcast was sponsored by Local Line, my preferred e-commerce platform for farmers. Are you looking for a new solution for your farm? I can't recommend it enough. Easy to use inventory management, great customer service, continuous improvement, and a culture dedicated to equipping farmers with marketing expertise, Local Line should definitely be one of the e-commerce solutions you consider as you switch. Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code: MDF2024. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline
Some of the resources mentioned in this episode:
Join my free email list! I have a great "Crash Course in farm marketing" 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. Subscribe at https://www.mydigitalfarmer.com/subscribe
Farm Marketing School - my monthly online marketing school membership just for farmers. Farm Marketing School is an on-demand library of marketing workshops and project plans that will help you build some of the most important marketing elements in your farm business like: building a promotion calendar, setting up your Google Business Profile, auditing your sales funnel, updating your home page of your website, building your first email nurture sequence, acquiring and deploying testimonials, and practicing different types of offers. You get to chose what you want to study and build each month. These projects are designed to be completed in under 30 days, so that you slowly build your marketing system piece by piece. Use the step by step project planner and resource folder to help you jumpstart your work. Take advantage of my new marketing crash course inside or take the onboarding assessment tool to help you identify where your funnel is broken and what project to do first. To see what courses are currently inside of FMS, or to try out Farm Marketing School for a month at mydigitalfarmer.com/fms Start and cancel your membership anytime.
Join my CSA Academy Library -- this is my digital cooking resource library that I provide for my CSA members to help them learn how to become a better home chef and cook the CSA way. It includes a Beginner's Guide to CSA mini-course, Vegetable University (A to Z video tutorials for every veggie); Canning Club (canning videos); Exit Strategy videos; Instant Pot tutorial, and my Recipes and Resources pages (with weekly CSA box recipes and unboxing videos). Farmers can subscribe for a monthly fee to have access to these resources to help them support their own CSA members.
Find my marketing Facebook group for CSA farmers!
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