Rogers Online Business Management for the Agriculture Community

Posts Tagged ‘agriculture’

So your Harvest Fest has been in full swing for a couple of weeks now….What do you mean you didn’t even put a Harvest Fest together for this year? Seriously?????

It really don’t take much to dot the fields with pumpkins of every shape and size. Offer special treats as you invite the public to view your corn maze or other demonstrations such as making Kettle Corn…let them pick their own ear right off the stalk and take it home to pop in the microwave.

Idyllic days in the sunshine. Ruby liquid in sparkling glasses. Merry picnickers and live music.

It’s these moments – drinking your wines and visiting your vineyards – that your customers remember. But even the best memories can fade.

Email marketing can remind your customers what they’re missing. It can invite your visitors back. It can inspire your fans to go buy that favorite bottle again.

Once you build up a sold list of subscribers, you’ll need some creative ideas to spark your customers’ memories and bring them back for more.

Here are some ideas:

Pairings and Recipes

• If your chardonnay sparkles with scallops, let your customers know. Pair your wines with complementary dishes and share the recipes.
• If your Burgundy is excellent in beef stew, share that, too. Original recipes for dishes cooked with your wines are even more valuable. If you have an online store, make sure to link up the wines.

Seasonal Gifts

• People are always searching for unique gifts. Show them what you have to offer, whether it’s festively wrapped wines for the holidays, wine and chocolate sets for Valentine’s Day or picnic baskets for Mothers’ Day.

Fun Facts

• Identify wine myths vs. facts. Quote some trivia your readers will want to quote themselves. Feature a rotating glossary fo wine-making terms.
• Your customers may not know why racking wine does not mean putting bottles into wine racks. Tell them why. Give them more than just discounts – give them an education. With insider information, they’ll feel good about themselves and grateful to you.

New Merchandise

• Giddy tasters and frequent visitors alike bring home the winery experience with glass charms, drunken olives and other goodies. If you add a new must-have item, email your list – they’ll be sure to keep an eye out for it next time they visit.

Video Footage

• Videos show off your winery even when your doors are closed. They also let you share more content than the typical email can hold.
• Use video for educational demonstrations, “meet our team” introductions and sweeping panoramas of your estate that call visitors back. Post them to YouTube and link to them with clickable screenshots in your emails.

New Releases

• Stir up some excitement! Introduce new vintages with fanfare. Tell your subscribers where they can find the new wine, and let them know that you can’t wait for their reaction!

Special Discounts

• As faithful readers of your content and proclaimed fans of your winery, your subscribers might deserve a little extra once in awhile. Reward subscribers (and keep them coming in) with email-exclusive discounts and offers.

Events

• Live music performances, tastings, tours of your production area, grape stomping festivals, wine education classes with guest speakers – if you host these, get the word out!
• Send an invitation to your subscribers early enough for them to plan ahead, but not so early that they forget!

Rate Your Wines

• Your wines may wind regional awards, but aside from recognizing this as a maker of quality, customers may not have much reaction. Instead of telling them someone else’s opinion, ask theirs.
• Have visitors to your tasking room rate your wines. Periodically invite your readers to send rating to your “from” address. Announce the winners in an email that subscribers will check to see – Did their favorite win?

Wine Classes

• If you offer wine education classes on-site, make sure to invite your local subscribers (try segmenting by location). Summarize the best points from the class afterward so the rest of your list can benefit as well.

Images

• Don’t forget pictures! Ambiance is an important part of the wine lifestyle, so extend yours to your newsletter.
• Show the grapes being crushed, the wine being bottled. Feature your winemakers, bartenders and grape pickers – give your readers faces to recognize when they visit.

***Don’t forget to watch out for minors! Make age a required field on your sign-up form. Marketing to those under-age could result in fines.

As a winery, what content do you send your subscribers? Do they respond? Do they mention your messages when they visit?

These ideas can easily translate to other businesses. Hotels and restaurants can use images for ambiance. Fitness bloggers can highlight fun facts. Galleries can announce new shows.

What kinds of content can you create from these ideas?

Be sure to take a look at our service packages as we can help you with all your marketing ideas, including shooting the video for your online ad and submitting it to the search engines to get you in the top ten ranking!

Source: AWeber Auto Responder Service

Ever have trouble talking to potential customers about what you do, and why they should buy from you?

You may not want to hear it but choosing a niche is one of the simplest (and least expensive) ways to grow your farm business. It’s easy to know what to say and how to say it when you know who you’re talking to.

Here’s why: Marketing is about 2 things – communication and creating a relationship. And the way we approach those 2 activities varies, depending on whom we’re dealing with and the topic of our conversation.

I define niche to mean not only the type of people you work with, but also what you do for them. So “picking a niche” is the way to get really clear on who you’re talking to and what you’re talking about.

First, identify your Core Customer. Ask yourself, “What group/kind of people are interested in what I have to offer?” Next, clarify your Core Solution. Ask, “What challenge is my Core Customer facing that I can help with?”

Then fuse the two answers together to identify the niche you occupy.

In order to outsell your competition your marketing needs to blow them away.

Create a hook, market your product in a different way than your competitors. Find out what the hot topics are in your market. What complaints do they have and how can you offer them a solution.

For example, if you’re going to offer a webinar on a new method you discovered for fertilizing your grape crop that saved you money, even though you are not selling a physical product, your hook should convey that you’re going to help them save time and make more money with a better product on an ongoing basis.

You need to be creative in how you market this. Let them know that you may not have a degree in this area but that you learned from trial and error on your own farm.

People want to know that you share their pain and frustration.  So by you letting them know that you are a real honest to goodness farmer just like them then they will automatically share a bond with you and will be interested in your informational product.

I have been receiving a lot of questions about how can you research a subject for your Ebook before you spend a bunch of time writing something that no one may be interested in.

The fact is that you want to tap into people’s greatest desires. People like to make money, save time and are passionate. Your goal with your Ebook is to help people pursue their goals.

One of the easiest ways to do your research is with your own readers. If you are already doing business online and have a website and a mailing list, you have your very own research center. Get to know your readers and what they want…and then sell it to them. Ask them questions and really get to know them and how they respond to different mailings and bits of information you give them.

It is so much easier selling to someone who is already a customer then to go out and look for other customers. That is why I limit my products to my main market. I already have a decent list of customers, why would I go create an information product on something completely different when it would be just that much harder to sell to them?

But if you don’t have a list or a website with much traffic, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t start creating information products. We all had to start somewhere so if you’re just getting started there are plenty of research tools available.

Tools:

Google Suggest: http://labs.google.com/suggestfaq.html
 - As you type into the search box, Google Suggest guesses what you’re typing and offers suggestions in real time. Google Suggest uses data about the overall popularity of various searches to help rank the refinements it offers. Just write down the suggestions that come up and then later enter them into a spreadsheet to keep track of them.

Google Zeitgeist: http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/zeitgeist/index.html
 - Several tools that give insight into global, regional, past and present search trends. These tools are available for you to play with,  explore, and learn from. Use them for everything from business research to trivia answers.

After you’ve done some keyword research, you should:

1. Look for other products on the same topic. If there is no other information product or book on the same topic, don’t get discouraged. Usually this would mean that the idea may not be profitable but in our case the agriculture industry has been untouched by this new way of marketing. Think of how you can blow your competition right out of the water by creating information products in this way.
2. Promote similar products as an affiliate. Sign up for the affiliate programs for these type of products and sell them on your website, blog, or through a Google Adwords campaign.

I really want to encourage you not to be afraid of this new way of marketing. The agriculture industry needs to look for ways to make things better than what has been out there. You need to make yourself stand apart from the rest of the crowd…differentiate yourself from the competition and outsell them!!!

The hardest part of writing a book is the first sentence. When you look at the whole project, it seems like an impossible task. That’s why you have to break it down into manageable tasks.

First, figure out your ebook’s title. Jot down a few different titles, and eventually, you’ll find one that will grow on you. Titles help you to focus your writing on your topic; they guide you in anticipating and answering your reader’s queries. Aim for clarity in your titles, but cleverness always helps to sell books as long as it’s not too cute. For example, Remedies for High Energy Bills: twenty different ways to cut costs and save the environment. Or: Get off that couch: fifteen exercise plans to whip you into shape.

Next, write out a thesis statement. Your thesis is a sentence or two stating exactly what problem you are addressing and how your book will solve that problem. All chapters spring forth from your thesis statement. Once you’ve got your thesis statement fine-tuned, you’ve built your foundation. From that foundation, your book will grow, chapter by chapter.

Your thesis will keep you focused while you write your ebook. Remember: all chapters must support your thesis statement. If they don’t, they don’t belong in your book. For example, your thesis statement could read: We’ve all experienced high energy bills, but there are twenty environmentally friendly things you can change right now to lower your energy consumption.

Once you have your thesis, before you start to write, make sure there is a good reason to write your book. Ask yourself some questions:

• Does your book present useful information and is that information currently relevant?
• Will your book positively affect the lives of your readers?
• Is your book dynamic and will it keep the reader’s attention?
• Does your book answer questions that are meaningful and significant?

If you can answer yes to these questions, you can feel confident about the potential of your ebook.

Another important step is to figure out who your target audience is. It is this group of people you will be writing to, and this group will dictate many elements of your book, such as style, tone, diction, and even length. Figure out the age range of your readers, their general gender, what they are most interested in, and even the socio-economic group they primarily come from. Are they people who read agriculture magazines or book reviews? Do they write letters in longhand or spend hours every day online. The more you can pin down your target audience, the easier it will be to write your book for them.

Next, make a list of the reasons you are writing your ebook. Do you want to promote your business? Do you want to bring quality traffic to your website or maybe to your farm? Do you want to enhance your reputation?

Then write down your goals in terms of publishing and promoting your business. Do you want to sell it as a product on your website, or do you want to offer it as a free gift for when they visit your farm or for ordering a product? Do you want to use the chapters to create an e-course, or use your ebook to attract affiliates around the world? The more you know upfront, the easier the actual writing will be.

Decide on the format of your chapters. In non-fiction, keep the format from chapter to chapter fairly consistent. Perhaps you plan to use an introduction to your chapter topic, and then divide it into four subhead topics. Or you may plan to divide it into five parts, each one beginning with a relevant anecdote.

Here is how I usually start: I take an hour of my day and come up with 3 different topics I want to write about. I then think of a bunch of different ebook titles to go along with those topics. My next step is to say the titles out loud and in diffenent tones of my voice. This lets me experiment in how people might read the title so I want to make sure its one that seems to be catchy. When one sounds good to me I choose that one and start my writing.

Next time I’ll tell you how to make your ebook “user friendly”.

Ok I know I’m jumping ahead here but I wanted you to know this before you start asking yourself how this is going to work.

Getting your ebook out to the agriculture community is going to be your focus once you’ve finished writing it, just as it is with print books. People will hesitate to buy any book from an author they’ve never heard of. Wouldn’t you?

The answer is simple: give it away! You will see profits in the form of promoting your own business and getting your name out. You will find affiliates who will ask you to place their links within your ebook, and these affiliates will in turn go out and make your name known in their own marketing efforts. Almost every single famous ebook author has started out this way.

Another powerful tool to attract people to your ebook is to make it interactive. Invent something for them to do within the ebook rather than just producing pages that contain static text. Let your readers fill out questionnaires, forms, even crossword puzzles geared to testing their knowledge on a particular subject. Have your reader hit a link that will allow them to recommend your book to their friends and associates. Or include an actual order form so at the end of their reading journey, they can eagerly buy your product. My favorite in any ebook is a link that allows me to download even more free information related to the topic.

When people interact with books, they become a part of the world of that book. The fact is just as true for books in print as it is for ebooks.

That’s why ebooks are so essential. Not only do they provide a forum for people to learn and make sense of their own thougths, but they can also serve to promote your business at the same time.

Hope this eases that little question running through your head about how this is going to help you make some extra income. If you think that you may want to set up an affiliate program for your products, you can always contact our team of experts for a consultation meeting.

Today lets look at one way you can have your first informational product–Create an Ebook!!!