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LET'S TALK MARKETING Author: DR Tucker What is the difference between Advertising and Marketing? Advertising is the booking of an ad in a newspaper or magazine, a commercial on television or radio, mail shots (direct mail) or e-mails via the Internet to sell specific product(s) or service(s). Marketing is about raising awareness and promoting your business - what it does and what it offers. It encompasses public relations, research, product costing and pricing and even community involvement. Marketing means communicating with your potential customers to raise your profile and in due course, to sell your produce to them. Remember everything you do, everything you say, every leaflet, flyer and your packaging will communicate something about you to your customer. MARKET RESEARCH IS IMPORTANT
WHO ARE YOUR CUSTOMERS? This is for you to decide WHAT PRODUCT DO THEY WANT? Why not ask, this is simple market research. Ask neighbours, friends, your local villagers, and even your local shop. To begin, you may simply decide to offer your produce in its original state as, say, cuts of meat. Later, you may choose to 'add value' by further processing this and produce sausages, or burgers even pies. Of course this requires additional time, cost and effort, but the financial rewards are greater. As time goes on, you will build relationships with your customers and they may start requesting other products which you could provide. WHERE ARE YOU GOING TO SELL IT? FARM GATE You may decide to sell directly from your property as 'farm gate sales'. This is the easiest and most cost efficient form as it requires little outlay. You must, of course, ensure that you adhere to any specific regulations that may cover your produce, but apart from that, you choose a price to sell you product for and then start selling. Customers can either come at set times, or they may have to ring and arrange a time to come and collect their purchases. If you have a small shed or barn, you may decide it is worth creating a small shop in this, this is slightly more costly, but you may decide it is worthwhile especially as you may like to offer other, related, produce – pickles, or chutneys etc. FARMERS MARKET The next obvious opportunity is via the growing number of Farmer's Markets. But do spend some time doing your homework, it would be foolish to pitch-up at a market selling the same range of produce as say, four other stalls. So do try to identify markets where you would either be the only one providing this produce or one of only a couple. Some markets actually limit by produce type anyway. Do remember that this will require organisation and some costs. Your produce needs to be well displayed and look inviting, you will need to ensure you have enough produce as well and it will need to be kept hygienically and cool when transporting it to the market. Make sure that you have plenty of advertising material with you and that your produce has your business name and contact details clearly marked on it, You want customers to know whose produce they are eating and to be able to contact you easily again when they want more. LOCAL SHOPS, RESTAURANTS, PUBS, AND BUTCHERS As already mentioned make sure you meet all regulations that cover your produce this is especially important if you are selling to a producer who sells on. If you do decide to go this route for selling your produce, do remember that you will effectively be selling at trade prices as all of these customers will need to make a profit when they sell on. However these may provide a useful and regular income stream for little effort. HOW ARE YOU GOING TO SELL IT? So you've decided who you are going to sell to, now how are you going to achieve this? Will you sell in large quantities only or will you sell single items. Will you be adding value and further processing your produce? Will you sell it as is - doubtful, or will you package it in some way? How much will you charge for your product(s)? Will you arrange delivery? SO YOU'VE IDENTIFIED YOUR CUSTOMER
You know who your customers are, so how do your reach them and tell them all about your products? MAIL SHOTS Mail Shots can be expensive if you don't plan this properly, you should think carefully about what you want to get across, what information about you and your produce. Our website, FarmsDirect.org may help as we have raised some benefits of local produce (click here), local, healthy, eco-friendly, minimum food miles, supporting the local community. Make sure that your business name, contact name, address, phone number, e-mail address, website and opening times are clear, easy to read and to find. Consider having photographs of your produce in its natural setting, livestock in the fields, standing/drinking from a river, lambs, calves, piglets, hens, vegetables etc. Make sure that pictures of your finished product are clear, bright and look inviting. A piece of beef that looks grey is not going to tempt your customers to try it nor will vegetables with drooping leaves or foliage. For cheese, why not consider having pictures of your cows, then an arrangement of cheeses on a cheese board with biscuits and a bottle of port and glasses in the picture. Remember that your leaflet can be used for many other situations, for example as a hand-out at Farmer's markets, to display in local shop windows, to hand out in your local village, to have on the counter of your local pub or even in the local doctor's surgery. One thing you shouldn't do is to print the prices on your leaflets. If well designed, your leaflets may last you a couple of years, but you may wish to increase your prices. So have a simple price list on your PC that you can easily amend and print off whenever you wish to add or amend your prices. The price list should also specify what you have to sell as well, like sausages, beef burgers, cream, cheese, vegetables, fruit etc. Once you have your leaflets and your price lists, how are you going to get them to your customers?
The cheapest method is to go out yourselves and push then through peoples doors. An alternative is to speak to the local paperboy/girl and offer them some extra money if they deliver your leaflet when they
deliver the paper. Slightly more expensive is to speak to your local newsagents and ask them how much they would charge to give all the paper delivery people a pile of leaflets and get them to deliver them. This is not a one off task and you need to ensure that you regularly revisit shops etc to ensure that they still have your leaflets available. When someone buys something from you, make sure that you get their contact details saying that you will keep them informed of new products, or special offers as they are available. This way you start to build your own database of customers that you can target directly. Start a simple database on your computer so you can easily mail them. E-MAIL ADVERTISING This is another way of reaching your customers, assuming that you ask for customers e-mail details, you can have a bi-monthly, quarterly, six monthly or annual newsletter. This can be something quite simple but keeps you in-touch with your customers and reminds them that you are still there and thinking of them. At Christmas, send them a e-Christmas card, this costs you nothing, but again reminds your customer about you ADVERTS Depending on your market, adverts may or may not be a good idea. Sometimes you need to test the water, talk to your local newspaper and see if they would include a small article on your farm if you were to book an advert with them. Never pay the quoted rate, always negotiate and remember that an article is worth more than your advert. Radio and TV advertising is only for the big players and these are expensive. However, don't ignore your local radio station, they may well be prepared to do an interview with you especially if you are just starting, or have a newsworthy story. This is free advertising and worth a great deal. WORD OF MOUTH This is one of the most effective ways of getting your name and product(s) known when a happy, satisfied customer
recommends you to their friends. So, why not encourage existing customers to tell their friends? This can be achieved relatively easily by offering your existing customers a voucher – value to be
determined by you, to be spent on your products when their friend makes their first purchase. A simple leaflet is all you need where your customer fills in their name and the name of their friend. When the
friend first shops with you, they give you this leaflet and you send a voucher to the customer whose name and address is on the form. This also gets you a record of an existing customer and the details of the
new customer. Make sure you keep these and add them to your database of customers. INTERNET One of the most cost effective marketing and sales tools is a well-designed website
with good descriptive meta names that help potential customers find your site. Costs of developing sites have dropped considerably over the past ten years and a basic website can cost as little as £300 including
registering your website name, known as a domain name, (ours is FarmsDirect.org) and hosting for a year. Hosting is where you pay a company to 'host' your website on their computer which is connected to the
WorldWideWeb hence www. The website may even be designed to provide full on-line ordering and payment via credit card, providing your potential customer a full on-line ordering system and yourselves a
resource-free sales and processing system available 24 hours a day 7 days a week. What other medium offers you such a cost-effective way to make sales. As already mentioned, the internet provides an excellent sales and marketing tool especially via your own website. But don't forget there are on-line directories where you may list your details and website, www.FarmsDirect.org is the obvious one for the type of business that sells produce directly. Many towns and villages have directories as well, ours is www.ilminsterforum.co.uk and these often have directories of businesses which you may have your details added to. Hints & Tips As hopefully we have demonstrated, advertising needn't be expensive, but you do need to think through how to go
about it, and how best to reach your target market. Don't forget your own business journals and magazines, Farming Weekly, The Smallholder, NFU and many others are all well worth contacting to see if they will run a small feature on you and your new enterprise. Remember this is all good publicity and helps raise your name. Try and develop a relationship with your local paper which may lead to the odd news story. Perhaps you decide to have an 'open farm' day where you will be selling your own produce and produce from other local producers. You can simply invite other local producers along so that the paper has a news worthy story about a local produce day. Local schools are always willing to have local businesses come in and talk to the children. Why not
take along your produce and explain how you produce it, what goes into it, what you have to do to ensure it is the best available. Have examples as well, pieces of cooked sausage, or burgers to try, some fresh
fruit or vegetables are all going to help the children remember to tell their parents about their experience. Take along your leaflets (remember how they can be used for many things) and give each child one to
take home to their parents. The longest journey starts with a single step - Lao Tse DR Tucker
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