Customers

Christmas has not been canceled for 2020! The September 2020, issue of the Mastering Marketing newsletter featured tools for holiday planning.This article builds on those tools and features making specific marketing strategies for the 2020 Christmas season.

For two beautiful days in mid-September, I had the opportunity to join Penn State Extension’s Annual “Are You Crazy?” Retail Farm Market Bus Tour. This year, guided by Penn State Extension Educators, Brian Moyer and Carla Synder, the tour provided participants with an opportunity to visit premier retail farm marketing/agritourism enterprises to see new things, get ideas to use at home, learn from each other, and build a network of contacts.

Target Marketing involves breaking a market into segments and then concentrating your marketing efforts on one or a few key segments. Having a good grasp on your target market makes the promotion, pricing and distribution of your products and/or services easier and more cost-effective. It provides a focus to all of your marketing activities.

Unreasonable customers are always a pain, but they're especially prevalent and stressful during the holiday shopping rush. To help you cope with difficult shoppers this holiday season, consider these seven tips from customer-service experts.

How, when, and where should you start your marketing efforts? The process can be overwhelming- should I market my brands, what about social media posts, and who will buy my products? To help you organize your marketing steps, it is vital you have a marketing statement. You may have heard this statement called, “Your Elevator Speech”.

While the holiday season may seem a ways off, the line between when customers shop and when they take offense to holiday décor in stores is becoming a blurry one. The National Retail Federation reports that every year, about 40 percent of customers begin their holiday shopping before Halloween.

“Networking” and “Word of Mouth” referrals are the most effective way to reduce out of pocket costs and cultivate a clientele. The valued opinion of influential customers is the most important and cost effective promotion that a business can develop. Surveys show that new customers recruited by existing customers are more loyal and profitable. In fact, studies show that 85% of Likes through social media and purchases are made through referral marketing rather than from advertising.

Meal kits and delivery services seem to be the current “hot button” trends in direct farm marketing. Food tech is big these days. Blue Apron and the Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods are just two examples of current of companies with pretty web design and polished communication strategies. But there are still questions about profit margins with the current delivery systems due to the perishability of fresh foods. Also, imagine possible food safety concerns over meal kits sitting on a hot front porch.

Everyone likes to point to “Millennials” as the customer base we must now tailor our products, services, and delivery logistics to satisfy. No doubt, their purchasing preferences have heralded in a demand for more convenience in their shopping options (online versus brick-and-mortar stores), more diversity in their menu selections (nose-to-tail meat options or only plant-based “meat” imitators), and to-their door, in a box, or ready-made meals and kits.

Selling locally grown farm meats and poultry to hospitals can be both challenging and rewarding. The hospital food service industry reached $34 billion in 2010, according to Market Research.com Trends in U.S. Hospital, Nursing Home and Residential Facility Foodservice. In May 2011, Michigan launched a ground‐breaking statewide healthy food initiative which requires hospitals to commit to purchasing at least 20 percent Michigan‐ grown, produced and processed foods.