277 Blackberry Pond Farm: See Their Elegant and Simple Sales Funnel
My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers
Release Date: 09/04/2024
292 My End of Year Housekeeping Tasks for Farm Marketing
My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers
As the year winds down, it’s the perfect time to take stock and set yourself up for success in the year ahead. In this episode, I’m pulling back the curtain on the 10 essential housekeeping tasks I tackle every December to keep my farm marketing game strong. These aren’t just mundane chores—they’re strategic moves that help me reflect, refine, and refresh my business for the new season. Curious? I’ll walk you through each of these tasks step by step. From evaluating my marketing efforts with a critical eye to organizing the chaos of my digital workspace, I’ve got a checklist...
info_outline
291 Debrief: My CSA Early Renewal Campaign Results!
My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers
What does it take to run a wildly successful CSA renewal promotion? In this episode, I’m breaking down the results of my recent early bird campaign and sharing my biggest takeaways. With 80% of my members renewing and nearly $300,000 in revenue generated, this campaign was one for the books! But what made it work so well? Tune in as I reveal the strategies, insights, and lessons learned during this promotion, so you can apply them to your own CSA renewal campaigns. Whether you're looking for ways to spark excitement or wondering how to handle your own post-promotion debrief, this episode is...
info_outline
290 I Threw Together This Farm Marketing Promo in ONE HOUR
My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers
Ever feel like you don’t have enough time to create a great marketing campaign? What if I told you it’s possible to throw together a full week’s worth of promo content in just ONE hour? That’s exactly what happened to me yesterday. In this episode, I’m sharing how I turned a simple promo post for my Fish Holiday Sampler Boxes into a full-blown 7-day marketing campaign. All it took was a little inspiration, some quick thinking, and leveraging the content I already had in my back pocket. You’ll hear the behind-the-scenes of how I pulled from existing resources like customer photos,...
info_outline
289 How to Quickly Qualify a Farm Lead or Prospect
My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers
Are you struggling to identify and prioritize your best customers? Ever felt like you’re just throwing spaghetti at the wall, hoping for a sale to stick? What if there were a proven framework that could help you qualify leads more effectively, saving you time and energy? In this episode, we’re diving into the B.A.N.T. formula—Budget, Authority, Need, and Timeline—a powerful tool that top sales professionals use to zero in on their ideal customers. But how does this framework apply to selling directly to consumers, especially when they’re deciding whether to commit to a CSA membership...
info_outline
288 How Much Longer?... The Value and Purpose of Waiting in Business
My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers
Ever feel like your farm business goals are taking too long to materialize? In this episode, we explore the often-overlooked value of "waiting" in business and why those seemingly stagnant moments are vital for growth. Drawing from my own journey through a long waiting period, I unpack the hidden benefits that emerge when we embrace the "in-between" times. Whether you're waiting to go full-time, reach a new revenue milestone, or snag that big wholesale gig, there's a lot happening beneath the surface—and it's all happening for you. In this episode, we discuss: Why waiting is a...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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:...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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....
info_outlineSeptember 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 passion
- creating community with your customers
- practicing patience as you coach your customers to new buying habits
- inspiring your customers to turn into VIPs and super buyers
Sue's strategy isn't full of bells and whistles. It's actually pretty simple and elegant. Learn how she does it, and what some of her "marketing lessons" were along the way.
Remember, if you need help building this piece into your marketing system, you can take over 10 marketing projects inside of Farm Marketing School. I coach you through the step by step process for how to create each piece of your marketing sales machine, from lead magnet creation to weekly emails, promotion planning, website home page design, testimonial pages, offer builds, and more.
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
Meet our Podcast Guest: Sue Miller
Sue Miller is the co-owner of Blackberry Pond Farm located in west TN that specializes in growing fresh and delicious vegetables hydroponically. They are in production year round and offer a CSA box quarterly. They are Organic Certified by OnMark Organic Certification with the USDA. The farm started in 2015 in the kitchen windowsill. This was a small hydroponic system to grow herbs and salad greens for Sue’s use in the kitchen. They expanded to the porch with 3 gallon buckets to grow cucumbers and lettuce. Eventually they built a greenhouse, followed by MORE greenhouses, and the rest is history.
Currently, they run a quarterly 100 member CSA from January-November, sell at the Martin Farmers market, wholesale to chefs and run a roadside stand from our 7 greenhouses and 2 fields of crops on 36 acres in Martin, TN. We are involved in community education about the impact of food on health. The farm is truly a family affair! Drs. James and Sue Miller who own and started the farm are physicians. James is a full time hospitalist at the local hospital and designs and trouble shoots the hydroponic designs. Sue is a full time traveling ER physician who does all marketing, social media and customer service for the farm. Much of the planting, transplanting, daily care harvesting and delivery is done by sons Chris and Junior and daughter in law Chelsea.
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 - Want to work with me? Join 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. New projects added regularly so we keep you up to date.
Find my marketing Facebook group for CSA farmers!
Follow me on Instagram for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer