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Direct Farm Tactics #4: Tips from our FANs
165 Plays4 years ago
Description:
In this episode of Direct Farm Tactics, Our Farm Advisors from all across the USA and varying product categories, they will offer up their own tips on how they communicate and stay in touch with their customers. If you'd like to learn more about our Farm Advisors or anything else mentioned in this episode, check out the show notes below.
Show notes:
https://www.barn2door.com/resources
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Transcript
Introduction to Farm Success
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to the Direct Farm podcast, the weekly listen for farm selling direct. We'll talk about the four levers for farm success, which are quality, brand, price, and convenience. We'll hear from outside industry experts and producers like you to delight your customers, save time and to increase your direct farm sales and business. We're glad you're here.
00:00:25
Speaker
Hey, welcome to the Direct Farm Podcast everyone. My name is Sebastian and I'll be your host for today's episode. As you may have already read from the title, this episode is the next installment of our Direct Farm Tactics series. If you're new to the podcast, Direct Farm Tactics is a series where we talk about tips and tricks that farmers can immediately apply to their direct business.
00:00:44
Speaker
Usually, the information that we share on the series comes from industry best practices, market trends that we see in the farming industry, or data that Barnador captures from working with the thousands of farms that we do. However, for today's episode, we'll actually be featuring farmers from our farm advisory network, sharing some of the tips that they have used to help them grow their businesses. If you're interested in learning more about our farm advisory network, stay tuned until the end of the episode where you can learn more about our Connect program.
00:01:13
Speaker
Moving along ahead to hear the tips that our farm advisors have to share today are all centered around staying in touch with your customer base and communicating value to them.
Communicating Product Value
00:01:22
Speaker
First up, we have Amy Will from Old Rich Valley Farm. They own a pasture protein farm out in Virginia and they will share how they communicate with their customers.
00:01:32
Speaker
You know, one of the benefits to farming is that we're out here. We love working outside and working with life and animals. But if we're going to market directly, that takes a lot of time to work too. And we also have to prioritize that time. So yeah, just knowing what it costs to produce whatever it is you're selling and making sure that we're communicating that value and not just the value of your product, but your values as a producer because at the end of the day, that's what it is. So when we decided to start selling directly to customers, we had to come up with a way to get the meat to them. And so
00:02:02
Speaker
We first started through Facebook and so we had a Facebook page and we were communicating with people of how we were raising the cows and what their life looked like about our processors and the finished product, what the steak looked like in the ground beef. And so people were really interested and they were wanting to buy it, but we had, we were getting orders.
00:02:20
Speaker
coming in through our personal email, our farm email, our personal Facebook messenger and farm messenger and texts and just coming in from everywhere. And it was just kind of chaotic trying to keep up with all the orders and make sure I get them to the right place and schedule pickup times or delivery times with each person. So we knew we needed a website and I tried probably four times to build us a website.
00:02:44
Speaker
unsuccessfully and so we were looking for help on building the website and came across barn to door and they just built. A beautiful website for us that we could have never done ourselves and not only that that, but it has the farm store in it, and so people can easily purchase through the farm store.
00:02:59
Speaker
pick their drop or pickup location that I have scheduled there. Every order comes through there. And so I'm not getting the texts and emails and all that anymore. And it just makes my life so much easier and it makes pickup for the customers easier, even just knowing what's in stock. The inventory is there. So they know what, what we actually have available. So.
00:03:18
Speaker
that has really helped and we still communicate through Facebook and Instagram with our customers but we also know that we are not always going to have total control of Facebook or Instagram and we don't understand all the algorithms and how everything works so just the last couple years we have really tried to collect as many email addresses as we can and use those email addresses to point people to our website
00:03:40
Speaker
Yeah. And so we have a MailChimp account and that helps to get those email addresses. And then we can communicate with them that way, which we can control unlike Facebook. And so we know that they're getting that information and then we're also directing them to our website as much as we can, where we're hopeful that they'll order something. And at the end of the day, it allows us to, to spend more time farming, which is what we want to do. That's what, you know, that's what we are passionate about. And we were spending a whole lot of time just trying to get everything organized.
00:04:09
Speaker
And with the different ways people put in orders and we just weren't keeping up with it. And now with the website and stuff in place, we can spend less time doing that stuff and more time farming. And it's made our lives a lot easier and allowed us to continually focus on the quality of our products.
Building Customer Loyalty with Content
00:04:25
Speaker
Next we have Josie, director of operations at Dan and Debbie's Creamery in Iowa. For Dan and Debbie's Creamery, milk is not just milk and differentiating their product from any other regular commodity has played a key role in their success. Here's Josie to elaborate more on that.
00:04:41
Speaker
I think one of the things that makes us unique is just our ability to create and share content that really creates a loyal customer. So we have a quality product. We know that we put a lot of time and energy into creating a quality product. But how do we convey that to our consumers?
00:05:03
Speaker
It's really important that to drive buyer loyalty, we share the why about our products. Why do we do this with our product? Why do we think our product is better? If you can answer that, then you can really set yourself apart from others. I had somebody come into our store not too long ago and they said, milk is milk. And I got into thinking about that.
00:05:30
Speaker
And for me, milk is not milk. The things that we do on our farm, the way we raise our crops, the way we raise our animals, how we care for our animals is done in a way that is unlike any other. And each farm has their own story to tell. Each farm has their own way of doing stuff that makes it unique. And how we do our stuff is unique as well. And I truly stand by and believe that
00:05:57
Speaker
The things that we do on the farm side leads to a higher quality, more premium milk that's not like every other milk out there on the market. And I hope that I can convey that to all of our customers by sharing all the little stories as to why we do things, how we do things. I hope that they too see that our milk is not like the other brand on the shelf. The uniqueness about selling direct to buyers or direct to consumers
00:06:22
Speaker
is that you have the ability to communicate with them. And so for me and for our business, we try to lay out some different highlighted points that we want to try to convey in all of our tactics, whether it's when people come into our store to buy stuff, when we're delivering products to people, or when we're just communicating with them via our social media channels and newsletters.
00:06:44
Speaker
So some of those key points that we share with our consumers and our customers is just that they're getting an all natural premium ingredient. It sounds easy to say, but again, I go back to the why. Why is our product all natural? Why is it premium? What makes it that way? It's a single source, but what does that really mean? How do we educate our consumers and our customers and let them know
00:07:09
Speaker
about that quality. If you can hook them and if they feel like they're understanding exactly what it is that you're trying to offer, loyalty comes on its own. Again, if you can sit down, think about your farm, write down those different things that you feel set you apart and why your product or offering is quality and different than the person down the street, then you're going to have great success in your business.
00:07:36
Speaker
Great advice from Josie. If you're having trouble figuring out what sets your farm apart, try to take some time and write out what separates you from say products you can find in a grocery store or highlighting how you raise your farm products because chances are you're doing something uniquely different than your neighbors or your competitors.
Expanding Delivery Services
00:07:54
Speaker
Third up on our list, we have Liz Mason with Honey Bee Hills Farm in North Carolina. She and her husband run a produce farm that has been doubling in size year over year for the last four years. And they will share how they grew their home delivery business and pre-orders. Here's Liz.
00:08:09
Speaker
So the home delivery expanded naturally at first, originally from our harvest market customers and then into a broader audience. But then the other thing that we saw a huge demand for, we decided to start operating free orders. Um, and so letting people order from the farm and advance, they could grab their bag and go.
00:08:25
Speaker
They didn't have to wait in line. They could come before the market. They could come after the market. They could avoid the crowds and the rush where there were ones. And so we had a segment of our customers who were really interested in pre-orders. My very first iteration of attempting to do these things was a Google form and it was fine, kind of.
00:08:45
Speaker
I then used Square for a while to organize our sales through their online platform. And it was okay. But when we started looking at making home delivery and pick up a permanent part of our business, we really needed a software that was flexible and understood the nuances of farming. And I looked at a number of different softwares and board the doors by far the best fit for the things that we wanted to do. And so now a year and a half later, I have five different pickup sites, different types throughout the
00:09:13
Speaker
week, we went on to social media and advertised specifically the communities around the few markets that were closed. And out of that process, we had people coming and asking, Oh, well, I'm not at Hillsborough. I'm at Durham. Can you deliver to me? And we're like, sure, we'll do that. We grew our audience through social media for a while. And then we've done a little bit of advertising on Facebook. And then we also advertise last year on our local NPR station.
00:09:39
Speaker
Next we have another farm also from North Carolina, Jessica Evans with Evans Family Farm.
Capturing Farm Stories with Email Marketing
00:09:44
Speaker
Jessica has been selling direct for quite some time now and she has some great advice on how to capture content to share with her audience.
00:09:52
Speaker
So I try and always have my phone on me around the farm to take just little random pictures of things that may seem tedious to me, but that I have a farm follower is going to find interesting. So we share just a little piece of our story every day. I do a profile post probably two or three times a week. I use my stories a lot more. Kind of a way to beat the algorithms too is they don't filter your stories. So anybody who follows your stories will see your stories versus I think you only get maybe 30% of your audience on your profile posts.
00:10:18
Speaker
And we keep our customers and leap on what's going on through our email marketing as well. So that's been huge, not just our social media, which is glamorous, but email work giving has been really, again, that key connection to that existing customer. So we send out order reminders every single week. I might always get hits on those, even though they say in personal or tedious, it always results in sales when I post those reminders.
00:10:39
Speaker
And then twice a month, I try and send on a newsletter through MailChimp. Again, just pictures for maybe people that aren't on social media. What's happening on the farm, maybe a favorite recipe in my network. I found a couple of local food bloggers that'll share recipes with me. Sometimes I exchange that for product because they'll use our product name in their recipe postings too. So that's another way to build your brand.
00:10:59
Speaker
out there and really good communication has been essential to customers. So we drop something at their door, we send a text right away. If I ever have to substitute an item in an order, I text the customer or I give them a call to make sure that's an okay substitution. Last up, we have Ben and Mel with Unconventional Acres in Wisconsin.
Engaging Customers with Social Media
00:11:16
Speaker
They have supercharged their farm business with an unconventional tactic of building and growing out their social channels. Amassing a following of over 60,000 people on Instagram, they'll be sharing some of their tips on how they got there.
00:11:28
Speaker
Melissa wanted to kind of know more of where her food was coming from and I was just interested in sort of the operations side of farming and that's how we kind of kicked things off. We started with goats and chickens, got some cattle and slowly kind of grew from there. I think by slowly he meant quickly. We packed up, moved everything and came to a piece of property that hadn't been farmed for decades. Didn't have any fencing, any outbuildings and we've
00:11:58
Speaker
Literally been growing from the ground up ever since. Linking up social media, specifically Instagram with our website was really important to us. We've grown Instagram over the years to over 60,000 followers. Instagram has been a great platform for us to connect to customers, community, other businesses, other farmers, and just a whole lot of opportunities. So number one is figure out what you want to do and how you want to do it. Keep in mind the platform that you're on. So.
00:12:26
Speaker
When we started out, Instagram was primarily pictures. It's over time evolved to more videos and reels, reels, which are short clips put together that you make a fun video. One key to helping utilize social media to your advantage and to kind of build your customers and build your story is mostly just to be honest and show everything. People are just more interested in that aspect of it and learning more about how your day-to-day goes.
00:12:55
Speaker
Yeah, so it's not just about the highlights, it's about the struggles as well. And I think that's useful too because other people might have a solution for you. And truthfully, more people respond to the stories that are kind of crazy and they want to see kind of that inside of what your life really is like and how you create the products that you're trying to market.
00:13:16
Speaker
One thing to think about when you scroll through Instagram or any of the social medias is what do you focus on? What interests you? What is too long? What's too short? Yeah, because if you're not going to enjoy that kind of content and it's yours, the average person probably won't enjoy it either. They're going to know if you're having fun. They're going to know if you're enjoying it. They're going to be able to see those things. So if you look at our feed, you'll see a whole lot of cattle.
00:13:41
Speaker
Cause I like the cattle, but if you go into that stories as a big part of what we do, that's where we really, I think had the most fun and diversified the most. We do a what you do in Ben every so often Ben takes.
00:13:54
Speaker
a very different role than I do with running the farm. And it's a fun way to show and educate our audience that there's a whole lot that goes into running a farm. Sometimes in stories too, we'll mix it up and we'll do something completely different. Like we did a section where it was Mel's faves, where I went back and it was cold and winter and not a whole lot going on. So I went back through and.
00:14:16
Speaker
Threw up all my favorite summer pictures. We've had some times where I've been off farm, which is very rare, but a couple of times. And during those times we've done a weekend where Ben takes over Instagram since I primarily run Instagram. It mixes it up. It shows a different perspective, a different side gives people.
00:14:34
Speaker
a different pace. And I think no matter what we're posting 99.9% of the time, we're just capturing what we do around the farm. So whether it's chores or fencing or hanging, that's a big part of what we do. Mechanical work.
00:14:51
Speaker
feeding, whatever it is, we capture it because not everybody gets to see what we get to see. Not everybody gets to do what we, we get to do. So some of those things that might not seem like they're a big deal or it's just, Oh, I gotta go do this again. Kind of thing is really interesting and is educational to somebody else. So just making the most of your time and your content and make the most of your time and what you do and
00:15:17
Speaker
Not going out of your way to make something up. That isn't what you normally do. Something to one person may be educational to another. It might be education, entertainment, or it might be, that might be the reason they click on your website to purchase something from you. So.
00:15:33
Speaker
Or it could be all three. Or it could be all three as well. So an important aspect when you're doing Instagram or Facebook or any of the other platforms is just to be transparent. Because at the end of the day, you're representing your product. If people feel you have integrity, people are going to be more likely to kind of click through to your website and purchase something. Although it's difficult to be
00:15:56
Speaker
To be yourself and to be on camera and everything else, it just pays to kind of be yourself and let that shine through. All great tips from our fans. We hope you're able to pick up a thing or two from our farm advisors featured on today's episode.
Invitation to Connect Program
00:16:10
Speaker
If you have any additional questions or would want to talk to any of our farm advisors featured today, check out our Connect program.
00:16:16
Speaker
Our Connect program is all about giving the space for farmers to interact and hear from other successful farmers selling direct. Head on over to barn2door.com slash connect. That's barn2door.com slash connect. And pick a time to meet with any of our farm advisors. To learn more about barn2door, including access to numerous free resources and best practices for your farm, head on over to barn2door.com slash resources. Thank you for tuning in. We'll see you next time.