A few days ago, I had a spontaneous idea...  I needed to set up my coupon codes in my e-commerce store. (Local Line recently announced that they were adding coupon codes as a free feature to the platform). But I was dragging my feet to get it done. "I know!" I said.  "I'll create a challenge for farmers. That will make me do it!" And thus, the 4-Week Coupon Code Challenge was born.  The goal of this challenge is to expose you to different coupon code styles that you can use in your farm...

COUPON CODES!!  Are you using them? If you have an online store, these are a great way to entice your customers to come on over and buy. They're also a great way to turn prospects into buyers.  I recently heard from Local Line (my ecommerce platform) that they would adding coupon codes as a basic feature at the end of May. This made me jump for joy and throw a party. AND it made me research different ways coupon codes have been used to drive customer behavior.  There are SO many great...

May 22, 2024 Are you using SMS in your  marketing? SMS is "code" for text messaging. It stands for short message service. And in today's podcast, my guest, Ari Memar, is going to give us a basic tutorial in how we can be using texting in our farm marketing strategy. Turns out there is a LOT of money to be made when we leverage this tool, because the open rates are ridiculously high. But it can also be used for customer support and onboarding. Ari is the founder of FarmHand, a virtual...

Raise your hand if you want to find more farm clients... I often hear farmers lamenting that they can't find enough customers. Maybe the people you are attracting don't live in your local area, or they DO live in your area, but they aren't buying. You have an attraction problem. If you're a new or younger farm business, this is one of the earliest challenges you will face -- growing your audience. But even as a seasoned farm, there should be a system to make sure you're pulling in new...

May 8, 2024 This week, I have two farm projects that feel like a heavy lift. And because these decisions feel hard, I'm not taking action.... (Does this sound familiar?) I feel like I need more information. I'm worried I'll make the WRONG decision that will upset clients. And finding a solution would require several hours of time that I don't have right now. I want it to be the BEST solution possible, and the current options just don't feel right. So I do nothing. Today on the show, I'm...

When I first started learning about farm marketing years ago, there was SO MUCH. I felt overwhelmed. I really wanted a framework to help me stitch it all together and give it a rhyme and a reason. Then, one of my mentors shared an acronym that I found really helpful. That acronym was: TLC. Here's what it stands for: T = Traffic L = Leads C = Conversion I later added the letter "F" for Fulfillment, because I found that this element was one of the key drivers behind customer retention. ...

April 24, 2024 As life would have it, I've been in a season of long-term illness this winter. These health issues have been so distracting, that I've had to pare down my farm marketing to the absolute bare bones. What's interesting is that I haven't noticed a huge difference! I'm often asked by farmers, "If I only have 2 hours of time a week for marketing, what should I be doing with it?" I feel like I can answer that now because I'M DOING IT. My circumstances forced me to decide what the...

Is your online store confusing? Last month, I was doing a one to one coaching call with one of my farmer Accelerator members. They came to me with a problem: "Help us figure out why hardly anyone is buying from the online store." They had recently received a boost in traffic to their website thanks to some free media/press. They had hoped it would translate to many new buyers and sales. Unfortunately, the conversion rate was abysmally low, and they wanted to know what was wrong. As we sat...

Every one of your farm products has a conversion rate. The question is: do you know what it is? I used to scream and rail and raise my fists to the heavens in frustration, when I couldn't get more people to buy my CSA box. What was wrong with me? Maybe nothing... It just has a lower conversion rate. Today, I want to introduce you to the concept of the conversion rate, and I want you to start TRACKING what they are for your most popular (and signature) products. How can we get our...

April 3, 2024 Do you have a customer retention problem? If so, I bet I know one of the major factors behind it. In this podcast, we take a deep look at the critical customer management system that should be firiing RIGHT AFTER a person buys. It's called "customer onboarding." I know. Not very sexy. But if you're missing this piece, a lot of confusion is happening for your customer as they get your product. How do I get it? What do I need to do to prepare? What do I watch out for? What do...

Today it's time to review the marketing basics. When I was a volleyball coach years ago, I used to say, "We spend 80% of our time focusing on the basics." If you can't serve a ball over the net, you'll never score points. If you can't bump the serve into the air to pass to the setter, you'll never score a point. The basics matter. The same is true in farm marketing. There is a FRAMEWORK on which ALL of marketing is based, and you need to know what it is! If you don't have the basics in...

How do you market a flower subscription CSA? That's the topic of today's podcast, which is actually a recording from ANOTHER show I was on last week. I was interviewed for the Dirt on Flowers podcast, and the episode turned out SO good that I asked if I could share the recording of the episode with MY podcast audience.  Tune in as co-hosts Shannon Allen from Bloomfield Farm and Lyndsay Biehl of Wildroot Flower Co. grill me on how to find the perfect customer avatar for a flower farm, what...

Have you ever thought about offering a Spring Plant Sale to your customers? You grow veggie startup plants for them for their garden. They pre-order them in early March, you get the revenue in the bag, and then deliver them when they're ready? This has been one of our most popular promotions and offers every year. I've gotten several requests from farmers to "show them how we do it." So this episode is a deep dive into our step by step process. How we set up the offer. What we charge. How to...

March 6, 2024 Have you ever thought about monetizing your farm's YouTube Channel? If you already have subscribers and videos on your channel -- this may as easy as 15 minutes to set up. I recently flipped the switch to make monetize my channel, and it's SO COOL to see passive revenue coming into my business every month. In this podcast, I share my journey on YouTube, including how I used the platform to help me build brand awareness, grow my email list, educate my potential clients, and...

February 28, 2024 In today's episode, I share a case study of one pasture-based livestock farmer, who has spent the last 9 years slowly scaling her business in a way that hasn't required her to take on debt, while also having time to homeschool her two kids. I ask her: "How'd you get here?"  Dana shares the transition process and lessons she's learned along the way. She discusses how she markets her product each week to attract new customers and get her current ones to buy more. We talk...

February 21, 2024 Are you a farm business that uses social media to sell your product? Then today's podcast is a  must-listen. One of the delicate balances of posting on social media is making sure you also honor the rules of the platform. I'm constantly reminding myself that people aren't coming to Facebook or Instagram to shop for my stuff. They're there to engage with friends and family. So how do we post our content without it feeling like an "intrusion" into their world? The answer is...

Today, we talk about the importance of creating habits around your product.  This month, I saw a sign at my local meat/butcher in town. It showed the Daily Lunch Deal for each day for the next 3 weeks.  It was new, so it captured my attention. Tanks Meats hopes that by showing me the "schedule" of daily lunch meals, they will draw me back multiple times in a week -- increasing my frequency of purchase. If I'm already the type of person who buys lunch out 1x per week, I can look ahead and...

February 7, 2024 Do you have a signature product you're trying to get your customers to buy?  I often ask farmers: "Where are you taking people?" Your Answer: All roads in your business lead to ___________? If you answered something like "CSA membership," subscription, side of beef, or some other big ticket item, then I want to introduce you to a powerful marketing asset called the "email sales sequence."  This is a series of emails you write in advance and load up into your email...

January 31, 2024 In today's episode, you're going to hear from a flower farmer who used the "early bird launch sales method" to help her presell 60% of next summer's subscriptions in just 7 days. Megan reached out to me a few weeks after her promotion campaign ended to say, "It worked!!!" (Multiple exclamation points). I use this exact same process to presell about 400 CSA vegetable shares every fall, and I usually get about 75-80% of my folks to sign on the dotted line. I asked Megan onto...

Farm website updates. Ugh. If you're like most farmers, you cringe at the thought of working on your website. It feels overwhelming, time consuming and ultra confusing. What do you say? How do you set it up technically?  How do you even get started?! In today's episode, I interview an actual website designer who works specifically with farmers to design or rebuild farm websites. She has seen it all. We talk through the 3 most important elements that need to be on your farm's website home...

I'm willing to bet that if you're in business, you have some big dreams and goals you want to hit. How do you make sure you reach them? Over the last 3 years especially, I've made some pretty incredible things happen. One day this past year, I was reflecting on the art of "manifesting big things." I decided to catalog a list of things that I would consider "big goals" I had manifested. And then I asked the question in my journal: What do all of these things have in common? Did I see any...

January 10, 2024 Today we do one of my favorite things: we interview a farmer and audit their sales funnel. In today's episode, you'll hear from Adam Henson of Shady Brook Farm. Adam joined my Accelerator program this fall to build out his email nurture sequence and sales sequence for his meat sales. As you listen, I want you to hear how simple his sales funnel is. Sometimes we think that we have to have a lot of irons in the fire, but in reality, in the early years of setting up your...

How do you make more money in your farm business? Answer: make more offers. In our early years as a CSA farm, we struggled to increase revenue because we only had the one thing to sell: our 18-week CSA membership. That's it! Once you paid for that, you weren't asked to buy anything again until the next year, when we asked to renew the membership. Looking back, that was a mistake. In order to maximize profits, your farm will want to sell multiple things to the same customer all year long....

Have you ever wondered what are the primary agents that cause people to buy your product? Turns out there are "laws" in marketing that drive the sales to our products. Do you know what they are? I'm betting that many of these principles are familiar to you. You're probably using some of them without realizing it. But there might be a couple that are new to you. What's REALLY cool is when you can use multiple principles at the same time for a multiplier effect. In today's episode, I want to...

It’s the end of the year, and that means it’s time for the end of year evaluation and goal setting retreat! This is a rebroadcast of Episode 191 -- because it's THAT good, and I want you to repeat the process again! I used to avoid this process — partly because I didn’t have a good process that worked for me. That all changed when I found these evaluation questions. And in today’s podcast, I’m going to share them with you. I spend two separate days working through them for about two hours...