Rogers Online Business Management for the Agriculture Community

Posts Tagged ‘farm’

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

Here is a marketing idea that we used for one of our local clients…

Everybody wants their 15 minutes of fame, right? So our client emailed everybody on his list that were local to his business and asked them to email him if they wanted to appear in his commercial.

If they responded back saying “Yes”, he told them to show up on a certain day and time to his farm and be ready to be part of his commercial. If they showed up they all got a great big basket filled with all kinds of goodies from his Country Store. And he got to make a commercial that looked like his store was busting at the seams with happy customers!

Being a supplier for one source for your crop is not a wise business decision. Your “single source” may not always be there and you may find yourself scurrying to re-establish your supply lines.

It is wise to have a steady flow of income coming into your farm. You don’t need to search very far to have that happen. You can take processes that you have developed for your farm and make them into an informational product that other farmers are willing to pay for. You can get involved with your local tourism and have tours of your farm, or hold seminars on your farm.

The possibilities are endless. Don’t let your lack of knowledge of the Internet hold you back from marketing your farm. Here at Rogers Executive Administrative Services, We can help you with your online marketing needs. Just contact us at information@easmyworkload.com

If you are confortable with the Internet, You can start off with making a short video that will lead them to your sales page for your product on your website. Then upload the video to YouTube and other video submission sites.

A blog is a must for every Farm; whether you have a website for your Farm, your Farm is just another place in the Country, or if your Farm-related business is only on the Internet. If you are in any type of Agriculture business at all, you need a blog.

Blogging has become the way to drive new traffic to your Farm, whether the Farm-related business is on the Internet or in the Country. This is because people connect personally to you through your blog, even if it is a blog about your Farm.

Through writing blog posts your readers, subscribers and customers get to know a little bit about the person behind the Farm. And as long as you’re posting quality, trustworthy content your readers will come to trust you. Therefore, they will then begin to purchase your products or retain services that you offer.

Your blog should reveal a little about the person behind the Farm, but it should never be too personal. Having an “About” page on your blog is a good place to display a little about your personal life, but not too much. Keep it professional, but let your audience know who you are as a business person, as well as a Farmer. The “About” page is also a great place to display your qualifications, merits and credentials.

Once your blog is up and running, you will then use it to connect with people on the Internet through stories, talking about promotions or sales, and letting the public know your Farm exists. Having a blog is the most important marketing tool your Farm should have. If you don’t have a blog yet, and don’t even know where to begin, hire a virtual assistant to start one for you. A VA could even then maintain and manage it for you if you feel you don’t have the time. But, by doing whatever it takes to get a blog started now, soon you will see an increase in your Farm traffic and more traffic means more sales.

We offer a number of different packages for your blog setup to enhance your marketing campaign here at Rogers Executive Administrative Services. Contact us at information@easmyworkload.com with your questions about getting started.

Social network marketing is becoming the way to market in this day and age of the Internet. With the Internet, businesses are able to reach people throughout the world with their products and services and social networking is the key to reaching more and more people.

If you are not familiar with social networking on the Internet, here is a little explanation. Social networking is basically interacting with other people on the Internet through various sites and platforms.

How to make social networking work for you consists of a few key elements. When you incorporate them into your farm marketing plan your farm traffic will increase and more traffic means more sales.

First of all, you need to know which social networks are popular and join them. Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Delicious and Stumble Upon are all huge right now with millions of members each from all over the world. Obviously you don’t want to, and won’t be able to, reach all of them, so you will want to target specific groups or persons; basically you want to reach all of the people who are going to be interested in what you have to sell or offer. Which brings me to my next point.

Next you will need to know your target market. Is your target market farmers, industries, mother’s, dad’s, cattle ranchers, etc? Once you know your target market, begin connecting with them by adding them as a friend or follower. It helps to know one person in your target market who is already a member of the social network to introduce you to new people in your niche.

One thing you will find about social networks is there are millions of people. You will get people adding you that will never buy from you or become regular readers of yours, but they may be a friend or follower of someone else who will. But don’t add people simply to have a huge number of friends or followers. If that is your goal, then that is all you will have. The idea is to build relationships with these friends and followers so they get to know you and trust you and then perhaps they will become regular subscribers to your blog.

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.

I go around and around with people about my pricing and today I was directed to a blog post by Johnny B. Truant, called “You’re worth more than you think.” Ok, so I stole his title and changed it around a bit but I wanted to get your attention. So I hope it worked.

Johnny talks about what you do is not a commodity. I quote, “This may seem obvious, but it’s worth really thinking about, so think about it: Creative services are NOT A COMMODITY.”

So how am I relating this to farmers? As a farmer you are always being creative and you need to realize that there are other farmers out there that want and need this information. You can share your creative ideas with farmers all over the World and you know what, you can even get paid for it…and at a handsomely rate…24/7!

Your creativity and your knowledge is worth a lot to others who want to know how to do what you did. You need to…no let me rephrase that…you owe it to them to tell them how you did it.

You need to take all your knowledge and know how and put it into products that you can sell on the Internet. These products are going to bring you that extra income you need to help you and your family survive the tough times.

My advice to you is learn how to use the memo feature on your cell phone; or text yourself at your email account while an idea comes to you; or while you are in the middle of developing a new method for your farm. This is also a great way to have documentation on how you did it so you don’t forget any steps. And then start putting it all together into ebooks, podcasts, videos, articles, and more. You need to start today and make what you’re really worth!

Did you know that the week of October 11 through the 17 is Getting the World to Beat a path to Your Door Week?

Well here’s a great marketing idea to make that happen and promote your business…Personalized Stamps!

Personalized stamps are a great way to get noticed. Have stamps of your farm logo, your products, or even yourself made and use the stamps for promotional mailings. It’s a very creative way to catch someone’s eye and make a lasting impression. You could also have them made for your best clients and use as a thank you gift for referrals and their business.

Make your mail memorable with PhotoStamps: the exciting new way to turn photos into real US postage!

There is no better way to market yourself than excellent customer service. Be easy to work with. Go above and beyond. Appreciate what your customers do for your success.

I recently stopped at a local Farmer’s Market and I have to tell you how disappointed I was in how the vendors were marketing their products. Well actually let me re-phrase that–how they were not marketing their products.

What do I mean by that? Well, as I walked around the market I had no idea what farms were being represented. There was only one booth that had a banner on the front of it’s table and that was a local restaurant. No other table had a name attached to it and even more crazy, only one had prices on the produce.

I really don’t like the idea that I have to go from table to table and ask the same question over and over again. I don’t buy my produce on price alone so it really doesn’t matter to me if you’re going to have the best price or not. But in these tough times many families are pinching pennies and price does matter. You need to have your prices visible for your customers. And please don’t just write them out on a piece of paper and plop it in front of the produce. Take the time to print the price list out on your computer. If you don’t have a computer at home then find a friend who can do it for you. Appearance is everything and that hand-written piece of scrap paper just isn’t that appealing to any one.

Now lets get back to the sign for your business. You don’t need to have a big banner running across the front of your table. Just go to your local office supply store and purchase a table top sign display. Print off a colorful flyer with your farms name and proudly display it on top of your table. And don’t forget to print off some business cards with the information on how the customer can reach you if they have any questions for you…like maybe they want to know if your going to be back next week so they can buy some more snap peas from you.

So all I’m suggesting is just take a little bit of time and represent your farm in a positive way. People notice the little details and sometimes that’s what makes their decision for them of whom their going to buy from. You put a lot of time, money and effort in order to get your product this far so don’t stop now when this could be a very profitable moment for you.