285 Boost Your Farm's Revenue with Value-Added Products: Insights from Kendall Ballantine
My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers
Release Date: 10/30/2024
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...
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277 Blackberry Pond Farm: See Their Elegant and Simple Sales Funnel
My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers
September 4, 2024 Today's podcast guest Sue Miller shares her inspiring story of how she built a thriving farm business in rural Tennessee from growing simple hydroponic butterhead lettuce on her windowsill to serving hundreds of families in her community through CSA, farmers market, wholesale, and online store. And it all happened in just 5 years. We cover marketing principles like: finding your unique niche identifying and leading with your gateway product cultivating vendor relationships to offer more products listening to your customer to build out your business sharing your...
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276 Ten Ways to Repurpose a Video in Your Farm Marketing
My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers
So you're creating videos in your farm marketing. Wonderful! Now how do you get the most mileage out of them? If you're like most businesses, you spend a lot of time making the video, recording it, posting it, and then it falls into the black hole -- never to be seen again. But what if you could re-purpose that content and have it do double-or-triple duty for you? For example, you film the process of packing your CSA shares in the pack shed for an Instagram story. Well... what if you took that series of clips an sticthed them together into a reel? What if you then uploaded that reel...
info_outlineAre 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 convenience, flavor, or functionality compared to their raw form. These products often allow farmers to increase their profit margins and diversify their income streams.
In this episode, Kendall Ballantine from Central Park Farms dives into the world of value-added products and how they transformed her direct-to-consumer farm business into a thriving operation. Discover how these simple innovations can create new revenue streams, support business growth, and help farms stay afloat during the off-season.
Tune in to learn:
- How Kendall turned chicken bones into bone broth, chicken pot pie, and over 40 other freezer meals for her online store.
- Where to start with value-added products.
- How to come up with value added product ideas.
- Creative marketing tips to entice buyers to buy your value added products.
- Common mistakes farmers make when they first start out with value-added.
- How to price your value added so you remain profitable.
This conversation is packed with actionable insights to inspire your own farm business!
Today's Guest: Meet Kendall Ballantine.
Follow Kendall's marketing tips at www.instagram.com/
Her website: www.onlinemarketingforfarmers.com
Workshop: Increasing Revenue with Value Added Products
Workhorse Collective, Kendall's Coaching Program
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:
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