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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

Release Date: 10/23/2024

364 CSA Buy Down Offers: Marketing Case Study with Thirsty Fruit Farm show art 364 CSA Buy Down Offers: Marketing Case Study with Thirsty Fruit Farm

My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers

In this episode, I sit down with Krista Barzen-Hansen of Thirsty Fruit Farm (one of my students from Farm Marketing School!) to break down how her farm marketing has evolved and strengthened over the past year. In this farm marketing case study, we unpack: how customers discover her farm, how she nurtures leads, how she's constantly optimizing her "gateway" product what content she creates, how she thinks about onboarding, the systems she’s building, and how she’s learning to approach marketing with confidence and experimentation instead of overwhelm. Krista’s primary sales model...

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363 Find Your Farm’s Proof Sentence (That Helps Customers Say Yes Faster) show art 363 Find Your Farm’s Proof Sentence (That Helps Customers Say Yes Faster)

My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers

What if one sentence could help your customers trust you faster? In this episode, I’m introducing a powerful marketing tool called a proof sentence — a simple line that helps your customer think, “Yeah… this is probably going to work for me, too.” A proof sentence doesn’t just describe your product. It shows what happens after someone buys it. We’ll talk about why promises are so powerful in marketing, how to identify the transformation your farm product creates, and how to build your own proof sentence using a simple formula. Because your customers aren’t just buying...

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362 How to Groom Your Farm Website During the Season show art 362 How to Groom Your Farm Website During the Season

My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers

Is your farm website reflecting what’s happening on your farm RIGHT NOW… or is it stuck in last season? A few weeks ago, our farm was featured in the Toledo Blade newspaper during asparagus season, and suddenly we had a wave of new people discovering our business online. There was just one problem… Our website wasn’t ready for them. The homepage wasn’t talking about asparagus. There was no mention of the newspaper feature. And there wasn’t a clear next step for new visitors trying to figure out how to buy from us. That experience sparked a huge realization for me: Farm websites are...

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361 The Missing Piece in Your Farm Business: The Success Path show art 361 The Missing Piece in Your Farm Business: The Success Path

My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers

May 13, 2026 There’s a missing piece in most farm marketing funnels, and it lives after the sale. If your customers feel overwhelmed, unsure what to do, or like they’re “failing” with your product… they don’t come back. In this episode, I’m breaking down the concept of a Success Path -- the intentional roadmap you build to guide your customer from confusion → confidence → transformation. When you build this well, you don’t just create repeat buyers… you create loyal fans who trust you, stick with you, and tell others. What You’ll Learn: What a Success Path actually...

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360 What to Do with Your Farm's Greatest Hits show art 360 What to Do with Your Farm's Greatest Hits

My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers

I own every single album by the Indigo Girls. I’m a true fan. I know the deep cuts. The obscure songs. The ones most people have never heard of. But the album I reach for the most?...Their greatest hits. The one with all the favorites. The songs I already know I love. And it got me thinking… What if your farm had a “greatest hits album”? Most farmers are sitting on their most powerful sales tool… and not using it. Your best sellers—the products your customers already love—are doing more work than you think. But if you’re not intentionally leveraging them? You’re leaving...

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359 Are You Tracking This Number in Your Farm Business? show art 359 Are You Tracking This Number in Your Farm Business?

My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers

What if the growth you’ve been chasing… isn’t actually about getting more customers? In this episode, I’m introducing a simple (but incredibly powerful) metric called Customer Value. And once you understand it, it will completely change how you think about your farm’s revenue, your marketing, and your growth strategy. Most farmers are focused on the wrong lever. They’re trying to bring in more people… when the real opportunity might already be sitting inside their current customer base. Inside this episode, I’m going to show you: What Customer Value actually is (and how to...

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358 Timing is Everything: The Best Time to Sell Your Farm Products show art 358 Timing is Everything: The Best Time to Sell Your Farm Products

My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers

I walked into the grocery store this week… and it felt like Easter punched me in the face. Everywhere I turned, there were Easter baskets, chocolate bunnies, pastel packaging, even M&M’s rebranded as “eggs.” It wasn’t just a reminder that Easter was coming—it was a full-on invitation to buy like it was Easter. And here’s the weird part… I found myself wanting things I didn’t even plan to buy. If your farm products aren’t selling, it might not be your pricing… your offer… or even your marketing. It might be your timing. In this episode, I’m breaking down the 5...

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357 How I Built a Spring Plant Sale Launch That Sold Out in 48 Hours show art 357 How I Built a Spring Plant Sale Launch That Sold Out in 48 Hours

My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers

We just sold out our entire Spring Plant Sale in 48 hours… and I had to shut the store down five days early. I don't think it was luck. This year, I approached the plant sale differently. I built it like a launch. And in the process, I uncovered a few new strategies (and a few surprising insights) that I haven’t shared before. If you’ve ever run a promotion and thought, “Why didn’t this sell as well as I hoped?”... this episode is your behind-the-scenes look at what actually moves the needle. I’m walking you through the anatomy of this year’s Spring Plant Sale launch -- what I...

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356 Inside a Farm Marketing School Coaching Call with MacKenzie Wright from Jones Brothers Farms show art 356 Inside a Farm Marketing School Coaching Call with MacKenzie Wright from Jones Brothers Farms

My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers

What actually happens inside a Farm Marketing School coaching call? In this episode, you’re getting a rare, behind-the-scenes listen to a real 1:1 strategy session with MacKenzie Wright from , serving the Louisville and Northern Kentucky area with home-grown tomatoes, produce, and beef. In this conversation, we dig into social media strategy, what’s actually working, and how to think about content in a way that builds your email list—not just your follower count. We also explore what it looks like to step more fully into your role as the “face” of your brand… even when that feels a...

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355 The 3 Mindset Blocks Behind Selling Your Farm Products show art 355 The 3 Mindset Blocks Behind Selling Your Farm Products

My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers

You don’t have a marketing problem. You have a hesitation problem. I see it all the time. Farmers build the offer. They may even grow the list. They do the marketing prep work. And when it’s time to promote?... They pull back. The question is why? This episode aims to uncover those beliefs quietly running your marketing. If you’ve ever thought: “I don’t want to be annoying.” “If they didn’t buy, maybe it’s me.” “Good products should just sell themselves.” You’re not alone. We dig into the three mindset blocks that keep farmers from selling confidently. We...

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More Episodes

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 three holiday feasts (Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years), there is ample opportunity for farms to pitch their products. In this episode, Christina will share what types of products and offers work well for this time of year. She also gives tips on how to set up your online store so that more people will buy those offers. AND, we talk through some marketing pointers so that your customers find out about those great offers living on your e-commerce platform.

My challenge for you is to listen to the episode with your key decision makers and then brainstorm a holiday offer (or two!) that you will pitch this season. Let us know how it goes!

Who is Christina Marbury?
Marketing Director at Taste the Local Difference

At Taste the Local Difference, Christina and her team support farms and other local food businesses to reach their goals with specialized marketing services designed just for those businesses. From website design and e-commerce system setup to graphic design to strategies and implementation for social media, email marketing and search engine optimization, TLD aims to make marketing work efficiently and effectively.
Christina fell in love with local food while attending the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and has since spent her career working with and supporting local food businesses of all types. From farm work to bakeries, retail, and food service - she's been in the thick of it, which brings an understanding of these businesses to her work in marketing. When Christina isn’t working, you can find her in her garden, boiling maple syrup, baking up a storm, and soaking in the incredible waters and landscapes near her home in Leelanau County, Michigan.
 

Podcast Sponsor:

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

Download the Guide we mention in this episode: E-Commerce Optimization for Farms here. It's an overview of the key elements of this episode, put together by Christina for you!

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 parts of your marketing system: 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, writing great weekly email promotions, nurture emails, onboarding emails, 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.

Early Bird Campaigns that Convert --  In this week's episode, I mentioned that I am currently in my final week of the CSA this season. In fact, I'm in the middle of my "early renewal promotion" to get my CSA members to sign up again. IF you want to learn my system for how I do this every year, I offer my step by step online course to help you get it done. This course will teach you how to build a compelling offer that gets your current members to decide to renew during your promo campaign. I show you the emails to write, the posts to create, and the ENERGY you need to generate in the week before you launch.

Find my marketing Facebook group for CSA farmers!You'll find my video trainings for the Early Bird Challenge inside here for a few more days.

Follow me on Instagram for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer

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