277 Blackberry Pond Farm: See Their Elegant and Simple Sales Funnel
My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers
Release Date: 09/04/2024
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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_outline
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...
info_outline
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_outline
275 Tips for Using Video in Your Farm Marketing - Getting Started
My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers
Are you doing video in your farm marketing? If not... why not?! Video is my go-to content creation method. Perhaps it's because I'm a natural public speaker, but I find it to be the easiest and fastest way to communicate with my leads and customers. It's also the best way to build connection and trust, to grease the wheels and move people towards buying. And yet, for many farmers, video remains an elusive skill. It feels scary and the fear of looking unprofessional is real. In this episode, I'm sharing some of my best practices when it comes to video, including my list of "gear" (it's not very...
info_outline
274 Scaling Your Marketing: What Farms Do Differently at Each Level - Interview with Andrew from Local Line
My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers
Today we're talking scaling. I've always wondered "What does an established farm do differently than a beginner farm --when it comes to marketing and sales?" If you could break up the development of a farm business into stages, what would be the key identifiers? How do those business owners practice business differently? Do they think differently? Do they believe certain things that are hard to believe early on? Are they doing certain things that they didn't do in an earlier level? If being an entrepreneur means breaking a glass ceiling every now and then, what does that ceiling look like? As...
info_outline
273 What the Oshkosh Air Show Taught Me About Building Brand Community and Culture
My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers
A few weeks ago, I drove my two boys up to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, for their annual weeklong Air Show. The EAA Venture Air Show in Oshkosh is the largest air show in the world, and for seven days, it also becomes the busiest airport in the world. Hundreds of thousands of people visit this air show every year. We first discovered the event a few years ago when my son Jed first started getting into aviation. Everyone told us, "You need to go to Oshkosh." Well, they were right. If you're an aviation enthusiast, you eventually end up at Oshkosh. In fact, I would argue that it's almost the equivalent...
info_outline
272: Ten Ways to Show Social Proof in Your Farm Marketing
My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers
Are you in that stage of business where you are aggressively looking for new customers? Here's something important for you to know: New customers need to know that your product works before they buy. They need proof. Period. You HAVE to have a social proof element in your marketing system somewhere in the messaging sequence. As a marketer, our job is two-fold: to increase desire and possibility and remove doubt and fear. The social proof piece is what does this second part. In this episode, I share 10 ways you can show social proof in your marketing system. You don't need to do them all....
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