Rogers Online Business Management for the Agriculture Community

Posts Tagged ‘Marketing’

I was doing research this past weekend on the Internet and came across the webstie for the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture. I read that they were having a workshop coming up called Farmers Market Success: A Workshop for Farmers Market Managers and Vendors. So I called today and made my reservation to attend.

Leah Smith told me that they are going to talk about how to set up your stand and show creative ways to display your wares. And they are also going to touch on the new regulations for Pennsylvania.

Gene and I are really looking forward to this workshop and have invited some friends to come along with us. Our friends are thinking about selling at the Farmers Market this new season and don't know where to begin and so they are hoping to come away with a plan. And Gene and I know we'll learn about knew marketing techniques to help out our clients.

So take a look at their website information on the event and give Leah Smith a call to register. And if you decide to go, let me know and we can hook up…

Click Here to go to information on the Workshop

See you there!!!

 Ever have trouble talking to potential clients about what you do and why they should hire you?Choosing a niche is one of the simplest and least expensive ways to grow your business. It's easy to know what to say and how to say it when you know who you're talking to.Marketing is about communication and creating a relationship. And the way we approach those two activities varies, depending on whom we're dealing with and the topic of our conversation.Ask  yourself, "What group/kind of people are interested in what I have to offer?" Next, ask yourself, "What challenge is my Core Audience facing that I can help with?"Then fuse the two answers together to identify the niche you occupy. Now your message is crystal clear and it will be a lot easier explaining to potential clients about what you do.

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.

An effective email marketing campaign requires framework. Successful marketers will always be the first to tell you that their campaigns are the work of careful planning and diligent consideration.

It’s actually much like building a house. There’s no way you can construct a building haphazardly, without direction, and turn out a flawless finished product. The result would be chaotic!

The same goes for email. You can’t randomly send messages to your clients and prospects without establishing expectations and formulating a plan, or they will tune out and unsubscribe due to your lack of organization.

Follow these guidelines for constructing a well built house and you’ll be on your way to creating a profitable and manageable email campaign in no time.

1. You Need a Solid Foundation

The strongest buildings are built from the ground up on a rock-solid foundation. For your email campaign, the foundation is your message content.

The whole point in sending email is to solicit an action. You want readers to click through your messages, buy products and respond to surveys. In order to engage subscribers and inspire those actions, you must consistently send subscribers interesting, relevant and incentivizing content.

• If you are using email as a sales tool, you want to wow readers with your products and your knowledge, and establish yourself as an authority in your field.
• If you’re using email as a retention tool and are primarily sending informational updates and newsletters, you want to create content that builds relationships.

2. Sources for Content

If your business has a blog, you already have one valuable  content resource well within your reach. Try restructuring older posts for your new messages and pick posts with lots of comments – they obviously piqued the interest of your readers and will be relevant and helpful to new subscribers on your email list.

Don’t have a blog? Look through old emails from your customers. If you see the same questions about your product or service over and over again, take that as a hint. You could probably create a whole follow up series addressing the FAQs.

3. Plenty of Windows

Windows let light into your home. They give you different view of your yard and help you keep watch when the kids play outside. They also let your neighbors see in.

Instead of drawing the curtains tight on your email campaign, take the opportunity to give your readers a look inside. Be transparent. Build their trust by making yourself available.

Don’t make subscribers dig for your social networking sites. Instead, purposely link to your Facebook and Twitter pages so that they can’t miss them.

If you put all of the information about your company out there for subscribers to see from the get-go, you will never need to Windex the windows on your campaign or backtrack to make yourself more transparent.

4. Curb Appeal

Anyone who takes pride in their home understands the desire to make your property as clean and beautiful as possible.

You landscape, paint and generally spruce things up from time to time to keep your house in tip-top shape. After all, your home is a reflection of you.

Your email campaign should be an extension of your business in the same way. You should take pride in its appearance, and realize that a neat and approachable design will only contribute positively to the perception of your brand.

Using beautifully designed message and web form templates is the perfect way to put a professional face on your campaign. With hundreds to choose from, there’s bound to be a least one or two that fits your style.

5. An Impenetrable Roof

The roof on your building protects your structure and everything inside. Email deliverability requires the same amount of protection.

There are a few things you can do to safeguard your list:

• Confirmed Subscribers:

Confirmed opt-in ensures that you only send messages to people who specifically request them from you. It also protects you from false spam complaints, and ISPs and spam filters give priority to senders who use confirmed opt-in.

• Get Whitelisted:

Ask subscribers to add your email address to their address books. While emails sent from AWeber customers are already whitelisted on an ISP level, it’s important to reduce the likelihood of your mail being filtered to a junk folder on an individual level.

• Don’t Take Permission For Granted:

Remember that subscribers are interested in a certain type of information, which is exactly what they signed up for when they gave you their email addresses. Send only valuable, relevant information that relates to the topics the reader expressed interest in.

6. A Maintenance Plan

Even impeccably built homes require maintenance. While autoresponders allow you to “set it and forget it,” the best email campaigns have owners that are extremely involved with their clients and their product.

Keep a close eye on the performance of your emails. Split test your subject lines and use analytics to track open and click through rates.

When necessary, do a little spring cleaning. Your campaign can never be to tidy!

My team at REAS can help you get started with your email campaign. You can contact us at information@easmyworkload.com to discuss your needs.

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

Creating videos to market your products and services became much simpler thanks to the introduction of a new set of cloud-based video editing tools from YouTube. Web marketers and content publishers can now build a library of online videos and increase opportunities for brand exposure at the same destination.

YouTube users have the capability to cut from videos, create montages of different clips and add or change accompanying music using YouTube’s commercial library of licensed songs.

If all the editing tools just seem so overwhelming to you, we can help. Contact us at information@easmyworkload.com to discuss your video needs.

The practice of one-page-long sales letters is being used widely today by businesses of various sizes to sell and push their products and/or services into the Internet marketplace.

Long sales letters are really just one long page with focus on selling the product to one prospect. It's like an electronic salesperson on your behalf, and it certainly beats having you to prospect and sell to someone else face-to-face or gamble on sending out hard copy mail (that can span 5-20 pages long when printed) and face the chance of not covering your investment in printing.

Believe it or not, online sales letters consist of mainly the use of words, some images, and now videos. And words are indeed powerful tools; you should consider them as a double-edged sword.

If used correctly, words can sell literally anything. If used improperly, not only would your sales letter suffer in conversion rate, it might just deliver the wrong message and the worse case scenario can be that of offending your prospects (besides not closing the sale).

If your sales letters are currently not producing the kind of conversion rates you want, or this is your first try at wrting a sales letter, perhaps you may want to contact me at information@easmyworkload.com to help you design a sales letter that will produce a decent conversion rate of 2 to 4 percent.

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!