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Attracting & Retaining Buyers with Long Lane Farm
628 Plays10 months ago
In this week's episode, Janelle talks with Camille from Long Lane Farm in Rhode Island. Camille discusses how their Farm attracts and retains Buyers for their products.
Building a Farm brand enables you to better serve Buyers in your local community. Understand buying habits, ideal package sizing and consistently communicate with customers to build a strong base.
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to the Direct Farm podcast, the go-to resource for farms across the US looking to grow and manage their business. Tune in weekly to hear tips and tactics from our most successful farmers on how to increase sales, access more customers, and save time and money. We'll also speak with industry experts, business leaders, and partners to share the latest farm business trends selling direct to market.
00:00:27
Speaker
Welcome to the Direct Farm Podcast.
Meet the Host and Guest
00:00:29
Speaker
I'm Janelle, CEO of Varnedor and your host for today's episode. As many of our listeners may be aware, Varnedor offers an all-in-one business solution for farmers selling direct online and in-person. I'm happy to speak with Camille from Longling Farm in Rhode Island today. Camille is a part of our Farm Advisor Network and has success in offering subscriptions and more to buyers in her area. Welcome Camille.
00:00:55
Speaker
Thanks for having me. I think this is the third pass. That's great. Well, good. Then people can go back to our resources page and find more podcasts or wherever they list podcasts, they can just look you up and listen to the other two. Before we start, because I think it'll really be helpful to our listeners to
Camille's Farming Journey Begins
00:01:13
Speaker
get a little bit of a sense of where you're at in your farming journey because it's been an interesting one, if that's fair to say. And you, in particular, correct me if I'm wrong Camille, but you started with a business partner friend, but you had two parcels that were quite far apart. And so you got to the point recently where you're like, these should maybe be two separate farms because life driving between was just too much. And then really you had to quote unquote start over then,
00:01:42
Speaker
and then do rebranding and sort of build from scratch. And that was pretty recently. Yeah, it was this season that it happened. So this was our first season farming as Long Lane Farm. Before that I was farming under Little River Farm and we started that in 2013. I started that business partner and then in 2020 we were able to purchase land.
00:02:05
Speaker
And before that, we were just on rented land. So our plan was, yeah, we'll just manage both and the reality of sitting an hour and a half and rush hour traffic each way. And also just the bringing supplies back and forth. It was like, okay.
00:02:21
Speaker
down there and then these vegetables up there. So it was around this time last year that I really came to the realization that if I wanted to be able to not only keep going, but also just keep my passion for farming, I needed to make a change and just simplify my life. So this year was the first year I just got to farm where I live.
00:02:45
Speaker
That's big. It was really big. Just walking out my door and being able to go to work was huge. It was definitely a building year. We had to put in a well, build a fence, upgrade electricity. We're putting in high tunnels, planting all the beds for the first time. So it definitely feels like starting over again. But the nice part is I have all the knowledge from starting over from starting the first time. So now I know
00:03:13
Speaker
what to do and what not to do a little bit more.
Transformation and Vision for Long Lane Farm
00:03:17
Speaker
Yeah, I think most farmers who are just getting started would trade their right arm for 10 years of prior farming experience, right, going into it, but still a ton of work. You do such a nice job on Instagram, like giving tips to people. You're like, here's the tips to do this well and to do this well and to do this well. And I love that. But I also noticed, and I think it was almost a year ago,
00:03:40
Speaker
you said you hit a wall and you were just like I kind of hit a wall like in terms of like farming and regrouping and getting your passion back what would you attribute to getting over that hump because I feel like you're there again.
00:03:54
Speaker
Yeah, definitely just being able to regroup and get some of my time back. And also my stress level was so high. So it was really just improving my quality of life. I knew that I wanted to keep farming, but it wasn't working in its current sense. So.
00:04:10
Speaker
Really this year, one, not having to drive was huge, but able also to cultivate what I want as a farm, which is really being a city place. We have a farm stand here. We do a plant sale. We have a lot of orders and CSA pickups here. So it's definitely my dream with my wife that we can just make this farm an amazing
00:04:32
Speaker
place for people to come and to be part of the community. So being able to really start seeing that dream through has, has definitely a huge part of adding it back. And kudos to you. I mean, I think it's so awesome and important for people to realize and you know, like, Hey, I love this, but my stress is too high and there's things logistically not working. And the fact that you're like, how can I fix it? How can I change that? Because I do love farming and I do want to do this. And it was really,
00:05:02
Speaker
Why is it of you to take a deep hard look? And it sounded like it was very hard to do, but worth it. Yeah. Usually I find the hardest things to do make you better and happier after doing it, but taking that step to make any type of change, even just a change to your fulfillment, sir, not going to market something you know is just going to help you, but may really disappoint some of your favorite customers. Like even those things are so hard to do sometimes.
00:05:31
Speaker
And yeah, I really appreciate that. I think a lot of firms also probably would appreciate that advice, right? Like it's okay to say no, and it's okay to make a change. And in the end, it'll be good. It'll be good for everyone, yourself and your customers, which is good. I have a question. Would you say you're restarting a firm? Are you moving from like hob, you're full-time farming, right? Yes. Yes. Okay. So it's full full-time. And then what are your goals for your farm? It's one year and if you were going to fast forward,
00:06:01
Speaker
two or three years, what does that look like?
Financial Sustainability and Growth Plans
00:06:04
Speaker
Yeah, we're really trying to grow our farm stand business. We're trying to grow our CSA on our farm, doing it with some you pick, adding in flowers, which is something I've said a while and just have never done it because I don't know much about it. So finally giving that a try. And then we cultivate a farm that can be an example for other farmers in our region and be able to host workshops.
00:06:32
Speaker
And we do a very big plant sale, so continue to not only increase how many people are coming to plant sale, but start building out courses as well for that. Maybe online, maybe in person, maybe a combination, but definitely just trying to pair being a farmer with also being kind of a teacher for other farmers as well as people in our community while also being profitable. That's definitely something I think a lot of when I think about
00:07:02
Speaker
people who get to go to work for someone else. The main thing that they have that I don't is a 401k and all these things. I'm going to be 34, which isn't that old, but I know it's the point of time that I also have to say, I really have to make this farm work financially and be able to save for my future because I know I can't forever.
00:07:27
Speaker
Way to be focused. Wow, that's wonderful. Thank you for sharing that, by the way. I also love that you're so keen on helping other
00:07:35
Speaker
potential farmers be successful. I know there's a lot of hunger out there for that as well. And I know that's extra over and above everything else that you're doing. Thank you for all of those future farmers that you're going to help. That's wonderful and very inspirational. And I think in that vein, you have this great lens of hindsight, but also having just restarted. And I do know there are many farms out there that are trying to move to full time or are
00:07:59
Speaker
wanting to get started or are successful and would love some great tips and I know you have them because you also have 10 years under your belt. So I'm hoping to just dig into a little bit of the nitty gritty so the other farmers out there listening to this can come away with hey these wow those are some good ideas I can maybe apply some of those to my farm or make the changes I need to make or try something new.
Farming Products and Market Strategies
00:08:21
Speaker
And sometimes we run through the different peas. There's peas that, you know, we love letters, right? So a couple of things that start with a pea that keeps us in the rails in terms of our conversation, but really basic is products, right? I mean, tell the world out there what you grow. You mentioned plant sale, obviously. And I think you have some high tunnels and you have some acreage outside, but tell the folks here in case they might be able to relate directly and or want to be trying something new.
00:08:49
Speaker
what products it is that you're good at and growing right now.
00:08:54
Speaker
Yeah, so we're a pretty small farm. We only have about an acre and a half. We do have four pretty large high tunnels. So we focus a lot of our vegetable growing in there. So we're growing all organic vegetables and then microgreens as well. And our main products are beans, so salad, spinach, arugula, and then really focus on tomatoes as well as our main crops. And then we try to have enough diversity to
00:09:24
Speaker
supply our farm stand and our CSA, but because we're so small and we're not that mechanized, we're a no-till farm. We have steered away from doing those heavier storage crops that take a lot of
00:09:36
Speaker
acreage and space and heavy lifting, like wash potatoes. So that kind of stuff I'm just pairing with other farms, buying it in and selling it online in the farm stand and then to CSA. So really a lot of baby greens, looking for that stuff. What greens are great, but they also, you need to move that product, right? There's a bit of a shelf life there that we're talking about, right? Any tidbits on that in terms of how to make sure that those are coming off the shelf in a timely fashion?
00:10:06
Speaker
Yeah, we usually have two harvest days, if not three a week, just so we're keeping those fresh. So if we're doing a Tuesday delivery or CSA pack up, it's harvested Monday. So definitely shelf life.
00:10:21
Speaker
just giving it to them as fresh as possible. Out of the field, how you treat it is really important. But the third step is following your sales trends somehow. Also following how much are you getting out of a bed? When? Because that can change with the different seasons, especially with greens that hate the heat, but love the cold. But everybody wants to eat them when it's hot out. So you have to crack all these different things.
00:10:49
Speaker
reduce your waste and hit the spots where you need to have them, more of them and less of them. Do you sell a lot of microgreens and do you sell just to consumer or do you also sell to chefs and other businesses?
00:11:03
Speaker
Yeah, I've definitely done both. I would say about two years ago we were up to 300 trays a week and we were selling to mostly small grocery stores was one of our main accounts for those. And then we have
00:11:19
Speaker
some customers who come to our stand and who order online who just love microgreens. They're not a product for everybody. So it's not really something that I put too much in the CSA of because I just know some people love them. Some people just don't get the point of them. So this year, we know it's something we want to expand again. So for 2024, we've already started reaching out to grocery stores to see what they can use on a weekly basis for those.
00:11:48
Speaker
Awesome. It sounds like locking in some commitments there helps. Is it primarily subscriptions then that folks are buying from you? For the microgreens, not so much. I did try to sell a microgreen CSA and I just didn't get a ton of interest, but I also didn't market it that hard. But with the grocery stores, I am trying to get them on a more subscription or pre-order.
00:12:12
Speaker
level with, because the thing with microgreens is they're really profitable, but if you start throwing them away, you're just wasting a lot of money and time and resources because they, a lot of soil and seeds and we have to sanitize all the trays to make sure they don't get to see. So I'm trying to move more to a subscription model all around with the, there's less waste. Yeah. I would think that consistency would be helpful, especially for planning.
00:12:41
Speaker
Right. And that sounds like a pretty intensive planning situation, which is awesome. Okay. So the next P is packaging. So packaging. And one of the ways people think about this from just the marketing perspective is you're not going to sell 400 different items. You might not just sell one because in both cases.
00:12:57
Speaker
You might overwhelm your buyers if there's too many things to choose from. But also, if you have a limited amount, they might want something different than you offer, right? So how do you think about keeping good options for your buyers to choose from and the right amount, right? The right mix. Also, you probably have some people who are single or a couple. You probably have families. Do you think about that? You're thinking about size of the units and mix of product in your packaging.
00:13:26
Speaker
Yeah, I definitely think of our retail customers. People come to our stand or order online. There's two kind of customers, the one who just wants a small amount. So we do usually a half pound bag for the baby green, and then a little bit smaller for the microgreens, because those you don't need as much. But then I noticed online, we were having some customers who were buying five of those bags. So I put up a family size bag, I call it. That's one pound.
00:13:56
Speaker
also get a discounted price on that. So for those customers, that seems to work. And then when it goes to wholesale, if we're doing bulk, it's usually more like a three pound bag or a case of something. And with those with the baby greens, I do try to match the size of what the big farms that are in grocery stores are usually doing. So usually that's a five ounce. That's smart.
00:14:21
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, look, you're like, I want to look as, as much like that. And then I think it helps the grocery stores too. Cause we can all be priced more or less the same. Obviously ours is going to be a little more expensive, but I think it can help just make sales for them and for us by doing that.
00:14:40
Speaker
Yeah, it's fun when you're watching how grocers or even other farms do it, but especially a grocery store, if they're doing certain packaging and pricing, they've certainly done a lot of research, right? So they're probably headed in the right direction and definitely a good benchmark or something to compare to in terms of unit sizes. I love the bulk bags because I was immediately like, oh, I love spinach. I would totally buy like the larger quantity of spinach because once you saute that down, it goes pretty small.
00:15:10
Speaker
right, but it's such a powerhouse from a nutrition perspective and so it's great like if it was me buying, I'd probably, my favorite ones, I'd buy larger quantities but I'd also want a mix of greens.
00:15:23
Speaker
Yeah, I'm actually amazed how many greens some of our customers eat. They're ordering seven or eight one pound bags every week. And it makes me feel bad about what I'm eating. Cause I'm like, I think I eat a lot of vegetables, but I'm not eating that many greens, not even close. So that's awesome. Do you ever ask them what they do with all those greens in my head? I do. Are they sharing or are they just living off salad? And if so, this person is.
00:15:52
Speaker
So absolutely healthy and set. I love that. I love that. That's good. Okay, so in your CSA's you have other vegetables besides just green so that you're pulling into your CSA's or is it mostly green?
00:16:04
Speaker
Oh no, we do a wide variety. So in addition to what I said already, peppers, zucchini, cucumbers, carrots, beets, radishes, those are just more of the items that I know I can't scale to a wholesale level. My focus with the CSA is continue to make it as diverse and great for these customers. If you say you're going to get these items that nobody else is getting because we're growing them just for you.
00:16:33
Speaker
Yeah. And so those are primarily consumers and you offer multiple sizes of DSA boxes. This year I just offered one, but I just put out a survey and one of the questions I asked was how would you rate the size of the bag? Were you finishing it? Did you need more? Most people said just right, but there were some people who could use a bigger share. So I'm going to make like a family size, much bigger share that they can get.
00:17:00
Speaker
And then there's also some people who are like, I'm just one person. If I could get a smaller share or just get it biweekly, that would be great. So I think instead of making three sizes, I'm going to just make a biweekly option. I'll probably get a little more limited than our main one, but does make your numbers change back and forth a little bit more. So there's some room for that, but yeah, just trying to get feedback and make it as good as possible.
00:17:29
Speaker
I love that. I'm going to repeat this because it was a great piece of advice in case anybody missed it, which is put a survey out to your buyers. If you really want to know, hey, is this working? Are these sizes working? Is this cadence working? And you're willing to make some slight changes to accommodate even a greater number of buyers. It doesn't hurt to ask them. Was it an email or a form? How did you do that?
00:17:53
Speaker
Yeah, I just did it through Google form and then just with my weekly newsletter to my CSA, I just put it in there and we have 65 members. I got 35 responses, which is a really good amount. Wow. Every marketing department across the country is now jealous. This was great. That's awesome. That's called a loyal customer. That's amazing. It makes me very happy.
00:18:18
Speaker
So continuing on again, all these great tidbits. Thank you for that payments. People do love, I mean, we're kind of trained by the online, you know, like subscribe and we subscribe and we're done. We have saved credit cards. We love to buy that way. It's super easy, which is good, right? If you can be the supplier of that, it's wonderful.
00:18:36
Speaker
But part of it in today's age is we find, and I suspect you'll agree, is that people have different buying habits in how they like to pay. So sometimes they love, they'll save credit card. And I think, don't you with your CSA offer, you offer a lot of different options for people to pay, whether it's credit card, cash and check, right? And even upfront or as pay as you go, are these some of the options? If I'm a buyer from you,
00:19:04
Speaker
Where am I buying? You've mentioned a couple of times that online or in person, all of the above, but then what are the different ways I can pay?
Customer Engagement and Distribution Methods
00:19:12
Speaker
Yeah, so we do an upfront and then a reoccurring payment and this seems to really capture the different type of people who are out there. So for the upfront, I do give a slight discount because definitely when we start selling these subscriptions in January, having some upfront payments is really great.
00:19:31
Speaker
But then I know there's also people who paying that 600 or $500 at once too much. So they're just set up on the weekly payment. And it's pretty nice with that too, because every week you look at your bank account and you know, okay, I at least have this baseline of payments. Right now, I think I just have it set up as credit card payments. As much as I think it would be great to get it all through checks and not have to pay the processing fee.
00:20:01
Speaker
pretty aware of the world that we live in and chasing people down for all that stuff. I don't even know if people all still have checkbooks. Many do not. We've done polls. We've done polls. I will say the younger set of generations rarely have a checkbook.
00:20:18
Speaker
And even the middle-aged folks like myself, thank you very much. Like we're like, where is the checkbook? I haven't used it in years. So even though we know how to use one properly. However, and I think it's interesting because
00:20:32
Speaker
A cash-in-check can be fabulous. Like in person, you're getting it and you don't have to chase it down, right? And so there's something about not having to chase it down that's going to be an extra amount of stress and time. Like talk about keeping stress down. I would say people paying you upfront or having automated recurring payments probably reduces stress.
00:20:53
Speaker
It definitely does and I've honestly found because there's the tips or you can label it as help cover fees now a lot of people opt into that so maybe the
00:21:05
Speaker
If they pay upfront is $20 on the $600 share, but then they're giving $30 tip to the farmer. So it all seems to equal out. And yes, not having to worry about who's paid and who hasn't and track all that manually is worth it for me.
00:21:26
Speaker
Oh, that's so great to hear. And thanks for a mention. I have to shout out because I remember when our product manager was putting together the experience of what the engineers would build so that through the platform, you can offer like for your buyer to do tips, but changing the words was a really neat idea for farmers instead of saying tips, because that can be uncomfortable. It can say things like, what did you say? Help cover fees.
00:21:49
Speaker
Yeah, there was a new one. I think I just saw it a few months ago and I was like, yes, I'm definitely going to change to that. And we do do a donation program, so it does help with stuff like that. Our delivery driver is getting paid what he needs on top of the delivery fee is great. That's awesome. And then the other thing that farms probably think about or wonder about too is procurement. In other words, if I'm your buyer,
00:22:17
Speaker
How do I buy your food and how do I get your food, right? Which it sounds silly, but it actually matters to buyers. How easy is it for me to buy from your farm, right? And that's a big deal. There's different ways to get your food in front of people or to, in many cases, some people do door-to-door delivery. And are you doing farmer market right now? How are buyers getting your food all up? Because I know not everybody does farmer's markets.
00:22:41
Speaker
Yeah, we definitely chose not to do farmer's markets at one point. With Little River Farm, we were doing three a week and it just really took a toll on me. So I knew I didn't want that. I wanted my weekends free. So right now you order online. We have about 65 subscriptions. I'd say about 40 of them do get delivered. So it's definitely something that we continually think about because the delivery is incredibly popular.
00:23:08
Speaker
Yeah. That doesn't surprise me. I'm the worst. I'm like, but do they deliver if they deliver done? I don't even care if it costs me extra money for a delivery fee. I'm that buyer. That's for sure.
00:23:20
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. That was one question on the survey. Only get the CSA if it's delivered. And a lot of people said yes. So definitely something we're looking at for next year. I think our radius is still a little bit too big, especially because other farm was in a whole different part of the state. So we have a lot of customers who are still supporting us. But we're kind of like, can we go this far forever? We had this amazing delivery driver this year.
00:23:49
Speaker
who just never missed the day and we feel like we got spoiled by that as well. That's awesome. And I would suspect, I think a lot of people, a lot of firms like farmers markets or go to them or go to them for a while, but were you nervous when you were like, okay, we're not going to do that because it is a big time commitment, right? And so were you able to replace that revenue, right? If not immediately, and it might be over time, right? So how do you think about that?
00:24:17
Speaker
Yeah, I'd say every farmer, I think location makes a really big difference. So we were lucky to buy a farm on the outskirts of city. It's suburban, mostly. So our farm is right in these neighborhoods on the way down to this huge beach community. So
00:24:37
Speaker
We have a farm stand and that gets a lot of business. So we have that ability to say, why would we drive anywhere with our products and have to do that on our Saturdays when we can just go out to the farm stand. So for me, that really helped making that decision. And I think I would have anyways, but I can understand if some farms, if they're a lot more rural, maybe going to a farmer's market for a little bit, at least is helpful. I will say.
00:25:05
Speaker
having those farmers markets in the beginning years was helpful just to let people know about us and some of our most loyal customers were farmers market customers. I think they can be good in the beginning, but if you get to the point where it's just really not serving you or making you happy, then you can look at other things as well.
00:25:25
Speaker
Once you've established yourself, it's definitely a theme that we've heard from many farms that we work with, that especially at the beginning when you're there, you're in your community and you can collect emails.
00:25:38
Speaker
Right. Which then later is literally you're building up your customer list. So if you're collecting emails, you're building up a customer list, you're also gaining that loyalty of some FaceTime. You're putting that FaceTime in. And then with that group of customers, especially even online, you can build on that through social media. Right. And in your community. So it plants a lot of seeds. And we definitely have farms who are like, okay, after a few years, I want to maybe not do as many farmer markets, but
00:26:04
Speaker
they've gotten enough of a foothold in a community where it's enough and they can really take on and build on it. Yeah, I think that's all really great advice. And I think for us, one thing we really fried ourselves on is quality. So just being able to set up this beautiful market stand with the colorful vegetables and have people come see those with their eyes in the beginning was really helpful to gain that following.
00:26:30
Speaker
Yeah, I believe it. I totally appreciate that. So let's talk a little bit about promotion, which is another P because we're having fun.
Marketing and Customer Loyalty
00:26:37
Speaker
You are a new brand this year. This is a really big deal. How do you do that? How do you promote your brand out of the gate? How do you think about that in terms of engaging your customers? Maybe you have some tips for folks on that too, because you have certainly the benefit not only of hindsight, but almost hindsight twice.
00:26:54
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. I would say year one of starting my farm. I was not thinking about marketing at all, was not thinking about building a customer list. Definitely started thinking about that maybe year five, year six, much later than I wish I had, but good advice. Yeah. Being able to have that list then when we did make the transition to being two separate farms and starting over was so valuable because
00:27:23
Speaker
Hello everyone, the journey. So I've really just been trying to be very open with people on social media and in the emails just really taking on our journey. I see the best response to those type of emails where I am a little bit more vulnerable and personable.
00:27:40
Speaker
So I try to make that a part of it. And then definitely my goals of this winter is like to take my email marketing to a whole other step and try to just really collect a lot of emails through attractive offers and do a lot more campaigns. So that's where I'm at is really go all in on that email marketing and really try to
00:28:03
Speaker
voice it as much to the ideal customer. And I think that's something we all have to realize and it's the marketing 101 is you're not trying to sell to everybody, not everyone wants what you have. Find them and keep them, right? Yeah, exactly. That's good. I think you're really onto something here with email marketing. Email marketing is a big deal and it's not something you can ignore necessarily if you want to have persistent sales and independent farmers own their business, right? And that means do you have customers?
00:28:33
Speaker
What would you recommend in terms of tips of obviously attracting those emails? And then what does it look like in terms of the cadence of continuing to engage? Because those are two things. One is attracting, like getting customers. And then number two is keeping them.
00:28:49
Speaker
Yeah, the, the keeping them, I think that's where really knowing your ideal customer comes into play. For example, this year with my CSA, I want to really start engaging them 10 weeks before they're even going to get a box of vegetables this year. So awesome.
00:29:07
Speaker
That's going to look like, Oh, Hey, here's some tips to be successful in the CSA, learn how to freeze things to can things or here's recipes, and then just keep letting them hear from me. And I'm trying to use that with all aspects, also doing that with our plant sale, trying to incorporate some type of free resource that they click on and then start them down the journey. Definitely. If they're a new customer who's never bought from.
00:29:35
Speaker
So thinking a lot about all those things, I'm doing a course this winter with another digital farmer who's really good at it just to really learn like what are the marketing basics beyond what I know because barbers, we have to realize like big companies have full departments that do this all day long and you can spend all your time with it. So.
00:29:57
Speaker
I think to actually take a course isn't a bad idea at all. You're going to learn a skill. You pay for it, but it's going to pay you back in the long run. I appreciate that. It's interesting. We introduced the grassroots.
00:30:12
Speaker
marketing academy class through Barn to Door only like four months ago and when we started we were going to do it every other month but it filled up so quickly that we had to start doing it every month and we might even have to do it more because it's exactly that right it's grassroots marketing you have to know the basics and then we have an email marketing one and then we also have one on social media and setting up campaigns on social media so next level stuff but that being said
00:30:38
Speaker
You don't have necessarily tons of time to market, to do marketing, right? But you need some. So would you recommend doing more in this off season? Are you doing more now than you normally would to set yourself up for success? Yeah, I'm going to try to plan out a lot more content and really lean into those automated.
00:30:57
Speaker
customer journeys as much as I can. So if I do get a new customer, they're going to be engaged in six weeks of emails for me without me having to do anything in the summer when I've put in the work in the winter. Also just have an ideal list going. I think that's so helpful. There's so many times where I'm out in the field where I'm like,
00:31:17
Speaker
Hey, I should post this or here's a great idea for an email. And then I forget. So just trying to have a list I can just go to. I always love just subscribing to other farms or other small business. I think do great ideas with new newsletters. So then I'm getting them in my inbox and I'm grabbing ideas and seeing what they're promoting at different times. I definitely think that's a great idea. Just follow the places, the farms, the other businesses that are doing it really well.
00:31:47
Speaker
Yeah. And you'll start picking up on so many good ideas. That's great. So finding time to put some extra time in and plan and get organized is a good idea. If you set yourself up for success, when you're busy and you're in the middle of your season, what's the sort of minimum? What do you try to do each week, week over week from a marketing perspective? And what does that include?
00:32:10
Speaker
Yeah, I try to show up somehow every day on social media, obviously posts and reels are going to be the best. But if it's just some stories throughout the day, that's fine. So just try to be there every day. And then with my newsletters, at least trying to send
00:32:29
Speaker
them out to my CSA on a weekly basis. And then with the online order reminders, I'm usually doing that once or twice a week for the rest of our customers. So ideally I'm just sending a weekly one out to everybody, but for now, focusing on just making that CSA communication the best it can be.
00:32:49
Speaker
Yeah, I love that. You're like, okay, get in front of it by 10 plus weeks before anything begins. Exactly. Get ready. And social media constantly, but then a weekly email and then probably two other touches a week of just the order reminders. Yeah, exactly. Is about what you're doing. And it sounds like it's working.
00:33:08
Speaker
Yeah, I definitely notice every time I send something out. That's when the emails start coming in that I got an order so you can see exactly how it works. And once you see those results, then you want to find the time to do it. It doesn't feel like a burden. You're like.
00:33:25
Speaker
I need to get it in newsletter out with this information because I know it's gonna bring me a return on the investment of my time, maybe more than going in weeding or doing something outside on the farm is gonna do.
00:33:40
Speaker
I appreciate that. I'm actually really glad that you said that there's a return and you're seeing the results because we've talked a lot about the effort of putting in on marketing. So it's nice for you to be like, no, this really works. It brings in orders and people respond. So that's great. Okay. We're towards the end of wrapping up, but before we go, I want to make sure that you have a chance to share with folks a tip or two about the off season.
Off-Season Planning and Advice
00:34:03
Speaker
We've already sort of covered, take a break if you can, right?
00:34:06
Speaker
But also do some planning. What is the thing you need to work on from a marketing planning perspective to set yourself up for success when you have less time? But is there another tip or two that you do in the off season to set yourself up for success?
00:34:21
Speaker
There's obviously the crop planning nursery seating planning I think that's kind of a given just try to do that as much as possible but our focus this year is like really hiring early and finding a really great crew and part of that is making
00:34:38
Speaker
really good job descriptions. So that's our goal of this winter because we were a little late last season and it was not quite what we needed to take the farm where it needed to be. After that, like I said, taking a break and just feeling okay that you're taking a break. I know I have a really hard time with that. I just feel like I just have to be productive to kind of have worth. So just also saying
00:35:05
Speaker
Our jobs are incredibly hard. There's no other job like this. So taking a day to just actually not work is okay. I love that advice. Farmers are a productive group of individuals and business owners. And when you own your own business, you're doing all the parts, not just farming to your point. So I love that permission to take a break and regroup and recharge is awesome.
00:35:31
Speaker
I want to extend my thanks to Camille for joining us on this week's podcast episode. At Barn De Door, we're humbled to support thousands of farmers across the country that sell to more than a million buyers. We're delighted to streamline the farm sales processes, including subscriptions that Camille uses. If you're eager to sell your farm products direct.
00:35:49
Speaker
online or in person. I want to learn more about subscriptions, other sales options offered by Barn to Door. You can always go to our website Barn to Door.com. Also important, if you want to check out Camille on Long Lane on Instagram, because why not follow her, she's got great ideas too, at Instagram.com backslash Long Lane underscore farm. Thank you again for tuning in today. We look forward to having you join in our next conversation on the direct farm podcast.
00:36:20
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in. For more free farm resources, tips, and tactics that are most successful farms use to grow and manage their business, visit barnadore.com slash resources. Also don't forget to subscribe to the direct farm podcast to automatically download our weekly episodes. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week.