Social Media

Chapter 3: Marketing challenges and opportunities is part of the online publication "From Surviving to Thriving: Strategies for Urban Farm Success. There are many marketing opportunities for urban farmers. When agriculture can take place literally in the customer’s backyards, this high visibility in a populated area can attract a wide variety of customers. Urban producers still face the challenge of competing with farmers from peri-urban areas that have more land, can produce greater volumes of product, and have lower cost of production.

I have a confession to make. I’m a blog reading junkie. I read five or six blogs every day. Some are about marketing trends, others about sustainable and regenerative farming practices, and some just because I like the writer’s topics and writing styles. I tell myself that this habit broadens my perspectives and serves to improve my skill sets. And they do, but isn’t this habit also part of my busyness every day?

Beware of “pouring money down the advertising hole!” Tailor your advertising and promotions to your current and prospective customers. Evaluate the results so you don’t keep spending money on ads or promotional campaigns that aren’t working.

I recently read that there are 16M new websites launched every month. That means that there are almost 200M new sites launched annually! These all contribute in multiples to the unfathomable amount of information on the Web. To that point - a Google search of the terms “On-line Marketing Tools” yielded 94M results. When I refined the search to the terms “Online Marketing Tools for Direct Farm Marketers” there were still 36M results.

Marketing trends usually address a category of products that are gaining in popularity or address a niche group of consumer wants or needs. While marketing strategies address how to implement your marketing plan to your target customers. The marketing strategies of the behemoth Amazon and our use of our electric devices are changing how we need to think about both our customers wants and needs and how we present our marketing messages to them. Let’s exam these two “effects”.

The USDA’s first survey of Local Food Marketing Practices, conducted in 2015, found 167,009 U.S. farms sold $8.7 billion in edible food directly to consumers, retailers, institutions, and local distributors. Consumers accounted for 35 percent of these direct food sales, and retailers, 27 percent. Direct farm sales include both fresh foods and processed or value added products such as bottled milk, cheese, meat, jam, cider, wine, etc.

Despite months of sales disruptions across every retail category, people are now eager to “get out and do or buy something.” Agritourism activities and events remain popular this year, abet different in activities and protocols. Cashless and online ordering are now the expected forms of purchasing. Holiday shopping for anything from Halloween costumes to Thanksgiving turkeys, and even Christmas gifts, has already begun.

I get lots questions about how to market food and farm products but, the question that always seems to linger unsaid is “How do I get started?” Whether it’s launching an enterprise, getting the training needed to become a successful food entrepreneur, putting together a multi-component marketing plan, or just deciding what to produce, we all seem to struggle with a “starting point”. When tackling a venture of any kind, “we just don’t know, what we don’t know.”

Business’ email service provider, content delivery format is more important than ever. While several social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook are popular for sharing pictures and product promotions, email is still “The King” of online marketing tools.

When the calendar turns to September, everything “pumpkin” begins arriving in the stores and folks are busy cheering on their favorite football team. While it seems like the markets are in a sprint to the end of the year, Fall is actually a good to re-energize your marketing strategies.