Direct Farm Tactics #4: Tips from our FANs
In this episode of Direct Farm Tactics, Our Farm Advisors from all across the USA and varying product categories, they will offer up their own tips on how they communicate and stay in touch with their customers. If you'd like to learn more about our Farm Advisors or anything else mentioned in this episode, check out the show notes below.
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Sebastian: 0:25
Hey, Welcome to the Direct Farm Podcast, everyone. My name is Sebastian. I'll be your host for today's episode. As you may have already read from the title. This episode is the next installment of our Direct Farm Tactics series. If you're new to the podcast, Direct farm tactics is a series where we talk about tips and tricks that farmers can immediately apply to their direct business. Usually the information that we share on the series comes from industry best practices, market trends that we see in the farming industry, or data that Barn2Door captures from working with the thousands of farms that we do. However, for today's episode, we'll actually be featuring farmers from our Farm Advisory Network, sharing some of the tips that they have used to help them grow their businesses. If you're interested in learning more about our Farm Advisory network, stay tuned until the end of the episode where you can learn more about our connect program. Moving along ahead to hear the tips that our farm advisors have to share today are all centered around staying in touch with your customer base and communicating value to them. First up, we have Amy and Will from Old Rich Valley Farm. They own a pasture protein farm out in Virginia, and they will share how they communicate with their customers.
Will: 1:32
You know what one of the benefits to farming is that we're out here. We love working outside and working with life and animals, but if we're going to market directly, that takes a lot of time and work too. We're also going to have to prioritize that time. So yeah just knowing what it costs to produce, whatever it is you're selling and making sure that we're communicating that value. And not just the value of your product, but your values as a producer, because at the end of the day, it's, that's what it is.
Amy: 1:54
So when we decided to start selling directly to customers we had to come up with a way to get the meat to them, and so we first started through Facebook and so we had a Facebook page and we were communicating with people of how we were raising the cows and what their life looked like. About our processors and the finished product, what the steak looked like and the ground beef. And so people were really interested and they were wanting to buy it, but we had we were getting orders coming in through our personal email, our farm email, our personal Facebook messenger and farm messenger and text, and just coming in from everywhere. And it was just kind of chaotic, trying to keep up with all the orders and make sure I get them to the right place and schedule pickup times or delivery times with each person. So we knew we needed a website and I tried probably four times to build us a website unsuccessfully and so we were looking for help on building the website and came across Barn2Door. And they just built a beautiful website for us that we could have never done ourselves. And not only that, but it has the farm store in it. And so people can easily purchase through the farm store, pick their drop, or pick up location that I have scheduled there. Every order comes through there, and so I'm not getting the texts and emails and all that anymore. And it just makes my life so much easier and it makes pickups for the customers easier. Even just knowing what's in stock, the inventory is there and they know what what we actually have available. So that has really helped. And we still communicate through Facebook and Instagram with our customers, but we also know that we are not always going to have a total control of Facebook or Instagram, and we don't understand all the algorithms and how everything works. So, just the last couple of years, we have really tried to collect as many email addresses as we can
Will: 3:37
And use those email addresses to point people to our website.
Amy: 3:40
Yeah. And so we have a MailChimp account and that helps get those email addresses. And then we can communicate with them that way. Which we can control, unlike Facebook, and so we know that they're getting that information and then we're also directing them, to our website as much as we can where we're hopeful that they'll order something.
Will: 3:57
At the end of the day. It allows us to, to spend more time farming, which is what we want to do. That's what we are passionate about. And we were spending a whole lot of time just trying to get everything organized and, with the different ways people are putting in orders and we were just, weren't keeping up with it. And now with with a website and stuff in place, we can spend less time doing that stuff and more time farming and it's made our lives alot easier and allowed us to continually focus on the quality of our products.
Sebastian: 4:25
Next. We have Josie, Director of Operations at Dan and Debbie's Creamery in Iowa. For Dan and Debbie's Creamery. Milk is not just milk and differentiating their product from any other regular commodity has played a key role in their success. Here's Josie, to elaborate more on that.
Josie: 4:41
I think one of the things that makes us unique is just our ability to create and share content that really creates a loyal customer. So we have a quality product. We know that we put a lot of time and energy into creating a quality product. How do we convey that to our consumers? It's really important that to drive buyer loyalty, we share the why about our products. Why do we do this with our product? Why do we think our product is better? If you can answer that, then you can really you know, set yourself apart from others. I had somebody come into our store not too long ago, and they said milk is milk. And I got to thinking about that. And for me, milk is not milk. The things that we do on our farm, the way we raise our crops, the way we raise our animals, how we care for our animals is done in a way that is unlike any other. And each farm has their own story to tell each farm has their own way of doing stuff that makes it unique. And how we do our stuff is unique as well. And I truly stand by and believe that the things that we do on the farm side leads to a higher quality, more premium milk. That's not like every other milk out there on the market. And I hope that I can convey that to all of our customers by sharing all the little stories as to why we do things, how we do things. I hope that they to see that our milk is not like the other brand on the shelf. The uniqueness about selling direct to buyers or direct to consumers is that you have the ability to communicate with them. And so for me, and for our business, we try to lay out some different highlighted points that we want to try to convey in all of our tactics, whether it's when people come into our store to buy stuff. When we're delivering products to people or when we're just communicating with them via our social media channels and newsletters. So some of those key points that we share with our consumers and our customers is just that they're getting an all natural premium ingredient. It sounds easy to say, but again, I go back to the why, why is our product all natural? Why is it premium? What makes it that way? It's a single source, but what does that really mean? How do we educate our consumers and our customers and let them know about that quality, if you can hook them. And if they feel like they're understanding exactly what it is that you're trying to offer. Loyalty comes on its own. Again, if you can sit down, think about your farm, write down those different things that you feel set you apart and why your product, or offering is quality and different than the person down the street. Then you're gonna have great success in your business.
Sebastian: 7:36
Great advice from Josie. If you're having trouble, figuring out what sets your farm apart, try to take some time and write out what separates you from say, products you could find in a grocery store or highlighting how you raise farm products because chances are you're doing something uniquely different than your neighbors or your competitors. Third up on our list. We have Liz Mason with Honey Bee Hills Farm in North Carolina. She and her husband run a produce farm that has been doubling in size year over year for the last four years. And they will share how they grew their home delivery business. And pre-orders. Here's Liz.
Liz Mason: 8:09
So the home delivery expanded naturally at first, originally for our farmer's market customers and then into a broader audience. And then the other thing that we saw a huge demand for, we decided to start offering pre-orders and so letting people order from the farm in advance, they could grab their bag and go, they didn't have to wait in line. They could come before the market, they can come after the market, they could avoid the crowds and the rush, where there were ones. And so, we had a segment of our customers who were really interested in pre-orders. My very first iteration of attempting to do these things was a Google form and it was fine, kind of. then used square for a while to organize our sales through their online platform. And it was okay. But when we started looking at making home delivery and pick up a permanent part of our business, we really needed a software that was flexible and understood the nuances of farming. And I looked at a number of different softwares and Barn2Door was by far the best fit for the things that we wanted to do. And so now a year and a half later, I have five different pickup sites at different times throughout the week. We went onto social media and advertised specifically the communities around the few markets that were closed. And out of that process, we have people coming and asking, "oh, well, , I'm not in Hillsborough, I'm in Durham. Can you deliver to me?" And we're like, sure, we'll do that. Well we grew our audience through social media for awhile. And then, we've done a little bit of advertising on Facebook. And then we also advertised last year on our local NPR station.
Sebastian: 9:39
Next. We have another farm also from North Carolina, Jessica Evans, with Evans valley farm. Jessica has been selling direct for quite some time now, and she has some great advice on how to capture content, to share with her audience.
Jessica: 9:52
So I try to always have my phone on me around the farm to take just little random pictures of things that may seem tedious to me, but that a farm follower is going to find interesting to, we share just a little piece of our story every day. I do a profile post probably. Two or three times a week. I do. I use my stories a lot more kind of a way to beat the algorithms too, is they don't filter your story. So anybody who follows your stories will see your stories versus I think you only get maybe 30% of your audience on your profile posts. And we keep our customers in the loop on what's going on through our email marketing as well. So that's been huge, not just our social media, which is glamorous, but. Email marketing as men really, again, that key connection to that existing customer. So we send an order reminders every single week. Now my always get hits on those, even though they seem impersonal or tedious. It always results in sales when I post those reminder and then twice a month, I try and send on a newsletter through MailChimp. Again, just. Pictures for maybe people that aren't on social media, what's happening on the farm, maybe a favorite recipe in my network, I've found a couple of local food bloggers. That'll share recipes with me. And sometimes I exchange that for product cause they'll use our product name in their recipe postings too. So that's another way to build your brand out there. And really good communication has been essential to customers. So we drop something at their door. We sent a text right away. If I ever have to substitute an item in an order or a text, the customer, or I give them a call to make sure that's an okay substitution.
Sebastian: 11:12
Last up. We have Ben and Mel with Unconventional Acres in Wisconsin. They have supercharged their farm business with an unconventional tactic of building and growing out their social channels. Amassing a following over 60,000 people on Instagram. There'll be sharing some of their tips on how they got there.
Ben: 11:28
Melissa wanted to kind of know more of where her food was coming from. And I was just interested in sort of the operation side of farming and that's how we kind of kicked things off. We started with goats and chickens. Got some cattle and slowly kind of grew from there.
Mel: 11:44
I think by slowly he meant quickly, we packed up, moved everything and came to a piece of property that hadn't been farmed for decades. Didn't have any fencing, any outbuildings, and we've literally been growing from the ground up ever since. Linking up social media, specifically Instagram with our website was really important to us. We've grown Instagram over the years to over 60,000 followers. Instagram has been a great platform for us to connect to customers, community, other businesses, other Farmers, and just a whole lot of opportunities. So number one is figure out what you want to do and how you want to do it. Keep in mind the platform that you're on, so when we started out, Instagram was primarily pictures. It's over time evolved to more videos and reels. Reels, which are short clips put together that you make a fun video.
Ben: 12:39
One key to helping utilize social media to your advantage and to kind of build your customers and build your story is mostly just to be honest and show everything. People are just more interested in that aspect of it and learning more about how your day to day goes.
Mel: 12:55
Yeah, so it's not just about the highlights, it's about the struggles as well.
Ben: 12:59
And I think that's useful too, because other people might have a solution for you. And truthfully more people respond to the stories that, that are kind of crazy and, they want to see kind of that inside of what your life really is like and how you create the products that you're trying to market. One thing to think about when you're, when you scroll through Instagram or any of the social media is, is what, what do you focus on? What interests you, you know, what is too long, what's too short.
Mel: 13:26
Yeah. 'cause, if you're not going to enjoy that kind of content and it's yours the average person probably won't enjoy it either. They're going to know if you're having fun, they're going to know if you're enjoying it. They're going to be able to see those things. So if you look at our feed you'll see a whole lot of cattle. Cause I like the cattle. But if you go into that stories is a big part of what we do. That's where we really, I think had the most fun and diversified the most. We do uh, Whatcha Doin', Ben? Every so often. Ben takes a very different role than I do with running the farm and it's a fun way to show and educate our audience that there's a whole lot that goes into running a farm. Sometimes in stories too, we'll mix it up and we'll do something completely different. Like we did a section where it was Mel's Favs, where I went back, it was cold and winter and not a whole lot going on. So I went back through. Threw up all my favorite summer pictures. We've had some times where I've been off farm which is very rare, but a couple of times, and during those times we've done a weekend where Ben takes over Instagram since I primarily run Instagram. It mixes it up, it shows a different perspective, a different side gives people a different pace, and I think no matter what we're posting 99.9% of the time, we're just capturing what we do around the farm. So, whether it's chores or fencing or haying, that's a big part of what we do, mechanical work, feeding, whatever it is, we capture it because not everybody gets to see what we get to see. Not everybody gets to do what we we get to do. So some of those things that might not seem like there are a big deal or it's just, oh, I got to go do this again. Kind of thing is really interesting and is educational to somebody else. So, just making the most of your time and your content and make the most of your time and what you do and
Ben: 15:17
not going out of your way to make something up that isn't what you normally do. Something to one person may be educational to another. It might be education, entertainment, or it might be, that might be the reason they click on your website to, purchase something from you. So
Mel: 15:32
Or it could be all three
Ben: 15:34
or it could be all three as well. So an important aspect when you're doing Instagram or Facebook or any of the other platforms is just to be transparent because at the end of the day, you're representing your product. If people feel, you have integrity people are going to be more likely to kind of click through to your website and purchase something. Although it's difficult to be, to be yourself and to be on camera and everything else. It just pays to kind of be yourself and let that shine through.
Sebastian: 16:03
All great tips from our FANs we hope you're able to pick up a thing or two from our Farmer Advisors featured on today's episode. If you have any additional questions or would want to talk to any of our farm advisors featured today, check out our connect program. Our connects program is all about giving the space for Farmers to interact and hear from other successful farmers selling direct. Head on over to Barn2Door.com/connect that's Barn2Door.com/connect and pick a time to meet with any of our farm advisors. To learn more about Barn2Door, including access to numerous free resources and best practices for your farm. Head on over to Barn2Door.com/resources. Thank you for tuning in. We'll see you next time.