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My Digital Farmer Podcast
282 The Secret to Turning Small Actions into Big Commitments: How to Make Customers Stick
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In this episode, we dive into the powerful psychology of consistency and how small commitments can lead to bigger, lasting customer actions. Inspired by Robert Cialdini’s principle of consistency from his book Influence, we explore how getting your...
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Corinna Bench
How do you make your customers stick? Not just your customers? How do you get a prospect or a lead to become sticky and want to continue to move forward in your brand journey? Well, we're going to talk about one of the ways to do that. It's a little principle known as consistency to commitments. This is a powerful psychology principle at play, and you'd be surprised how often you're probably using it. We're going to show you how it works. Let's get started. Hey there. This is Corinna Bench, and welcome to the My Digital Farmer Podcast. In today's market, it's not enough to just grow your product. You've got to know how to sell it, too. Welcome to the My Digital Farmer Podcast, where we reveal online marketing strategies and tips to help farmers like you get better and more competent at marketing. We learn how to find more customers, increase your sales, and build a strong brand for your farm. Let's start the show. Welcome to episode 282 of the My Digital Farmer Podcast. I am your host, Corinna Bench, one of the farmers at Shared Legacy Farms out in Elmore, Ohio. I'm also the founder of mydigitalfarmer.com, which is all about trying to help other farmers like you get more confident in your marketing and sales strategies so that you can grow a profitable business. How's everyone doing today? Welcome back to the show. Big shout out to all of my regular listeners, my binge listeners, and if you're new to the show, I'm really glad you're here. Welcome to the community. Make sure that you subscribe to the podcast, you're going to want to do that, and then go check out some of my back issues. You can scroll through. I've got over 250 of them now, and I'm sure you can find something there that piques your interest. If you're really new to the marketing space, though, and you need kind of a 101 crash course, I recommend that you go listen to the first 10. Or even better, get onto my email list because when you do, I'm going to send you a weekly email for like three months. That's going to walk you through the marketing jungle and kind of get you onboarded into what you need to know. And you can do that by going to mydigitalfarmer.com subscribe. I get really good reviews for that, so definitely take advantage of that. Today's episode is sponsored by my friends at Local Line. Switch to Local Line and grow your farm to new heights. This season. Localline is the most comprehensive sales software built for farmers and food hubs. Its features include e commerce, automated inventory management, subscriptions, a website builder, point of sale, and more, helping you increase your sales and streamline your processes. So whether you're a CSA farmer or you sell meat, you run a food hub. Or maybe you sell wholesale or offer a herd share, localline has the tools and features that you need to succeed. We're a big fan. Are you looking to switch to a sales software that does it All Subscriptions start as low as $49 a month with no setup fees or sales percentages. That's huge for me. Plus, if you join localline today, your onboarding manager will migrate your storefront at no cost so you can be up and running in no time, even in the middle of the season. As a bonus, if you are a podcast listener, localline is also offering a free premium feature for one year with your subscription when you use my coupon code MDF2024 so go to mydigitalfarmer.com localline and then enter the coupon code MDF2024. Make the switch today. And now back to the show. Have you ever agreed to something small and before you knew it you were in way deeper than you expected? This happened to me recently when I was asked to volunteer for something at my church. Raise your hand if this has ever happened to you. At first it seemed like a small thing and I was just helping out for a couple of hours. And then somehow I found myself in charge of organizing a much bigger part of the project than I had anticipated. That tiny, low pressure ask to volunteer quickly spiraled into a major commitment because I felt obligated to do that. Has this ever happened to you? Once I said yes, I felt obligated to stay consistent with that decision. And this is a classic example of what I want to talk about in today's episode, how small commitments end up leading to much bigger ones. We are going to talk about how you can apply this same principle in your farm business to turn small customer actions into lasting loyalty and into bigger sales. Ultimately, I'm thinking about this principle right now and I'm actually intentionally activating it as I strategize my Early Bird Renewal campaign promotion campaign for my CSA members. This is my annual promotional launch where I get my current members to renew their commitment to me for next summer for 2025 and I try to get them to sign on the dotted line and pay me here at the end of 2024. And I usually run this promotion during the second to last week and last week of my CSA season. So that means that right now I'm actually in the process of building out the promotional launch. I'm thinking about what is my offer going to be, what's the early signing bonus, what are the new prices going to be? Am I even going to continue with all of my add on share vendors? I'm kind of walking through that whole process. And this is a step by step launch formula that I've used for the last, I don't know, six, seven years. It works like a charm. And I have consistently gotten between 70 and 80%. There was one year that I hit 95% of my current members to sign up again and write checks for me. Yes, we still write checks here at the CSA. They write pro state checks for me for January 1st. And it's just a pretty amazing system. And one of the things that I have learned as a part of doing this again and again is how important it is to stoke the fire before I actually ask them to buy again. And there is a whole psychology behind this called consistency to commitments. And that's what we're going to talk about today. One of the things that I'm doing here in the next few weeks is what I call the pre launch Runway. I intentionally strategically place certain activities in the docket in our event schedule and in our social media group schedule to try and get my customer into a certain frame of mind so that when I ask them to renew their share a few weeks later, they've sort of been primed and they're ready to say yes and they feel really good about it. And so we're going to talk through what some of those kinds of things can look like in your business. So the principle at play here is called the theory of consistency to commitments. This is not something I made up. This is actually something that is studied and talked about in many psychology studies. But there's one particular book that I learned it from by Robert Cialdini. It's called the Psychology of Persuasion. And if you are in my accelerator group, you read that book with me. We did a book study on it and it's really, really good. Highly recommend it to you. I'll put the link in the show notes. It's one of the top five marketing books that I recommend because it teaches you the psychology behind sales in case you want to leverage some of those. And there's an entire chapter dedicated to the theory of consistency to commitments. So let me just define it for you so that you know what it means. And then we'll just flesh it out for the rest of this episode. So the theory of consistency to commitments states that once people make a decision or take a stand for something, they feel compelled to act in ways that are consistent with their previous commitment with that stand that they just took. There's this drive to maintain consistency, and it stems from a desire to appear reliable to others, to avoid internal conflict. And it makes them more likely to follow through on future actions that will align with that initial choice. Now, you can see this in the political sphere, especially strongly right now in the United States, as we are going through an election cycle. And there are commitments that are made publicly to candidates or to platforms. And even when the candidate in question says something really ridiculous or something that maybe you don't agree with, or outright just egregious and impossible, we still stand by them because of this principle of consistency to commitments. We don't like to backpedal from a prior commitment. If we've said something and we've said that we value something, or we said that we believe something, we stand by it. And it's really hard to get people to change their mind once they've made a commitment. Now, are you connecting the dots here? Can you see the power of this psychology and how it can be used in sales? We have to be really, really responsible about this because this is a thing that our brains just do. And you can manipulate people if you're not careful to do things that they probably shouldn't do just by leveraging this principle. So this stems, this principle stems from a psychological need that we have to align our behavior with our previously made choices or our values or beliefs. And research shows, I mean, there are like studies done, laboratory studies done. I'll actually share one example with you in a minute. That once individuals commit to a decision, especially if they make it publicly, like they speak it out into the world or they write it down, or they post it on social media, that counts too. They are more likely to follow through with actions that are consistent with that prior commitment. So we don't want to look unreliable. Right. There's a social pressure. Other people have heard us say something. We don't want to look like we're wishy washy. We don't want to contradict ourselves. And these studies done by Robert Cialdini and others demonstrate that even small initial commitments can lead to larger behavioral changes because people will rationalize their actions to stay in alignment with that sense of self they have. It's really interesting. So One of the most famous examples in the book, in the book written by Cialdini called Influence. I'm going to see if I can explain this. That demonstrates this principle of consistency is what's called the foot in the door experiment. And in this study, researchers approached homeowners with a small request. They had volunteers knocking on doors and they said, hey, can we place a small postcard sized sign in your window that says something about how you support safe driving? And so a large majority agreed to this very small, insignificant request. And later on, a few weeks later, these same homeowners were approached with another request, this one was a little bit larger, to install a large, unattractive billboard in their front yard that advocated for the same cause. And what this study showed is that remarkably, those who had already committed to the small sign were significantly more likely to agree with the larger request compared to those who had never been asked to do anything before. So this experiment highlighted how even little minor initial commitments can create a pattern of consistency that leads people like us to agree to much larger commitments later on. All in an effort to align ourselves, our actions with what we previous set previously said was important to us, or, you know, what we said we would do. I remember this happened quite a bit when I served on the local school board. And I found myself kind of a quote unquote victim to this principle where you, you know, you're sitting there in a public meeting and you're discussing a particular issue. And there's a part of me that didn't really agree with the decision we were going to all collectively make. But I felt like I needed to stay in line with what I had said before, the way I had voted before, the way I thought before. And sometimes I would feel really compelled to kind of stick with my prior commitments. I would also use this to some degree to help my cause when I was trying to get a particular initiative passed. I remember I was in charge of trying to get Chromebooks for our whole district because we didn't have any technology in the classroom back in those days. And that was my big contribution while I was on the board was kind of helping our whole district move into the digital age and trying to convince the board to support that because that was a huge financial investment. And so how do I convince these other board members to support that when they were very tight with the purse strings? And so I remember thinking this through, like, okay, this, the way to do this is to cultivate a relationship with them, right? But also get them to declare the commitment to the value you know, behind the idea of bringing digital into the classroom and computers in the classroom so that every student had their own device. I was trying to get them to declare that publicly because I knew that that would make that would be kind of the way to ease into them eventually saying yes to this initiative. And that took me several years, but that was sort of my strategy. So I kind of used this principle in action here to try and influence people to make a decision. So today I wanted to spend a little bit of time with what we have left here, talking through how a farmer can use the psychology of consistency to commitments to kind of make your business a little bit stronger, to grow your customer's loyalty to you and to get your customer to take the actions, the desired actions that you want. And really what this is about is we want to try to find a way to get our potential customers to make small, low risk commitments to not just to our brand and to our business, but also to the beliefs and the values that we have as a business first. And if we can get them to state that, it's a much easier next step to ask them then to sign up for our e newsletter, for instance. Right. So I'm going to share with you just a few examples of what this can look like. You're probably doing some of them and you don't even realize that the reason why it's working is because of this, partly because of this principle of consistency to commitments. And I'm hoping that as you listen to this episode, you are going to be seeing some opportunities for little small tweaks that you can do in your messaging prior to the the time that you want to actually pitch something, but not just in your messaging. It might also be specific actions that you want your customer to take that you coach your customer to take because you know that in doing so, it's going to help them feel better about saying yes to a request later on. It's going to feel like it's in alignment with what you want them to do. So here's just a small example of when this is at work, when you ask somebody to sign up for your email newsletter, that is actually an example of a type of consistency to commitment. So if you can get them to say yes to that, then it is much easier for them to say yes a few months later or a few weeks later when you actually pitch them a product because they've already said yes and shown buy in and shown you that, yeah, I'm interested in you. And now they want to continue to stay consistent with that commitment and they want to now take the next step and do the next thing to support you. Okay, so that really small first step that I always talk about, like, hey, you need to get people on your email list or hey, you need to get someone to comment on your social media post or comment on a video. Like even that could be a first initial step that allows that potential customer to show that they are in alignment with your brand. And then the next step might be, okay, now we want to try to get them onto our newsletter. And that's another micro commitment, right? Another example that I see used a lot at the farmer's market is when you ask people for to try a free sample. That is the consistency to commitments thing going on. So you get them to say yes to a free gift or a free sample. And now when you offer them something else or you offer them that product again the next time, they want to either reciprocate or they want to show, yeah, I'm going to support this farm like I did last time, right? I don't want to just turn my eye away. So that is another great tactic that's often used in sales and marketing. And one of the reasons it works is because of this particular principle. Once customers have made that initial commitment, they're much more likely to follow through with a larger purchase, like when you ask them to buy a full product offering or maybe join your csa. Another example, all of you who are CSA farms like me, the preseason deposit is a type of tool that leverages this principle. So when we ask members to place a small refundable deposit to reserve their spot early in the season, which is what I'm going to be doing here in a few weeks, that initial financial commitment makes people more likely to follow through and pay the full membership when the season begins. Now, are there people that back out? Yes, there's always a few, but it's a handful. Right? So this act of asking people to put a deposit down is actually making it much more likely that they will remain consistent with that commitment and follow through later. This is also why loyalty programs work. So raise your hand if you have a loyalty program in your business or you are a part of another business or you're a customer of a business that uses one. I'm thinking of the little cards that are in my wallet right now to my coffee shop, for instance, or my, I have an auto mechanic, I get a free oil change after I've done so many with them, things like that. So offering a punch card or a loyalty program for market or farm stand customers, where after a certain number of visits or purchases, they get like a discount, maybe they get a free item that encourages consistency. And once customers start filling out that card, they're motivated to keep shopping with that farm because they want to reach that reward. They want to stay. Also just consistent with, like, yeah, I'm showing that I believe in local agriculture, so I want to keep doing this. I want to stay true to what I've stated is important. So social media challenges. This is another example. Like, I do a lot of challenges with my CSA members. I don't do this as much as I used to on my public facing Facebook business page. I used to do a lot of challenges out there to grow my audience, but now it's. I use mostly use this for my internal audience. But a farmer could launch a social media challenge like, like, we just did a veggies for breakfast challenge. You could do an herb challenge, you could do a freezer challenge where you're trying to get people to freeze as much stuff as possible from your produce and put it away for the winter. Anyway, this is where participants publicly commit to some kind of a small action, like, I'm going to incorporate more vegetables into my meals, my breakfast meals. And this public commitment then creates accountability because there's other people in the group who've watched them make it. And then participants are more likely to continue to participate throughout the challenge, reinforcing their connection to your brand, to your farm as well. So that's why I love social media challenges. But one of the reasons they're working is because of this principle of consistency to commitments. It's pretty amazing when you kind of think about the psychology of this and how it's kind of everywhere Referral incentives. So anytime you encourage customers to refer friends in exchange for a small reward or maybe they get a discount, that usually starts with the initial commitment of simply sharing their experience with their friend. Right? And once they have made that verbal commitment and said, I really like this farm, oh, it's so great, you should totally do it, blah, blah, blah, now they're more likely to promote your farm consistently and they're more likely to stay a member or continue to support you because they put their testimonial out there and so they've got to stay true to it. They've got to continue to be a super fan like they just said they were. And they have to do the things that super fans do and be in the club to show that they belong. So they can continue to hold that little title. It's interesting. This year I've instituted a title of VIP. Like there's a VIP class now in my CSA membership and it's not super public. My VIPs are aware that they have this title. I they haven't made a big deal about it, but they have somehow become aware that they have it. And some of them have even asked me how did I get this VIP title? And then I kind of share with them. I have some different reasons why, but it's really interesting because now I see these people once I told them kind of why they were given that status, I see them living up to that behavior that initially qualified them. It's really fascinating. So they want to remain consistent with that image that I have given them and that they have been, you know, anointed with. Sort of like I placed a mantle on them and now they feel like they have to continue to earn it. It's really interesting. Today's podcast is sponsored by Farm Marketing School. This is my monthly membership where farmers can come in and build marketing assets one at a time in special 30 day build projects that I've created for you. There are currently over 14 different projects inside of our marketing school, including your website homepage, building a promo calendar, building a promotional email challenge testimonial and reviews how to build a better offer, your email nurture sequence, your lead magnet. There's a sales funnel audit, there's a ton of good stuff in there and I'm adding new material every couple of months. Plus you get a monthly zoom meetup with the whole group in the middle of the month and we'll be doing some book studies off in the fall. I'm really there just to try and empower you and help you get your marketing assets built. So the way this works is you subscribe from month to month. You can cancel whenever you want. You go in, you take the assessment. There's also a crash course in marketing that you can watch to just learn the lingo and the vocabulary and the framework and then you get started building your first marketing asset. Every project includes a hour long tutorial, a resource folder that gives you lots of templates and examples to help make the process of actually building your own version really fast. And also a project planner to help you time it out and make sure you get everything done. If you want to learn more about how to join Farm Marketing School and try it out, you can go to mydigitalfarmer.com F M S this is my new kind of flagship offer my community that I'm going to really be pouring myself into over the next six to 12 months, really excited about it. So I'd love to interact with you. Join@mydigitalfarmer.com FMS and now back to the show. Asking a member to volunteer once or twice. So when I say member, I'm a csa, right? So I always think in terms of membership. I get a ton of volunteers this way. Actually. This is why I have no trouble staffing my farm the way that I've done it. This is a gift I think I have, because when I was a youth minister, I was crazy good at building teams, and I would have people in the church. Historically, the church has a hard time finding volunteers. I don't know if you know that, but that's just the case. And yet in my particular youth ministry program, I had so many people, and everybody wanted to be if they were going to volunteer. People wanted to be on my team. Not all of them, but a lot of them. It was pretty easy for me to find people. And one of the things I learned was that I would ask a person to come in and just hang out with us. I would sort of tease the idea to them and I'd be like, why don't you just come out and see what it's like? And so they often would, and they would realize just how fun it was and how rewarding it was. There were a few things that we did in our programming that were actually really spiritually powerful too. We do this thing called Sabbath Time. It's like a meditation thing, a prayer, basically, like prayer stations. And that was the reason our program was growing. It was just really, really cool. And so many of the people who would come and volunteer were like, that was amazing. They would want to volunteer just so they could have that experience every week. It was pretty funny. But I kind of learned, huh? That's the secret. I need to ask them to come out and just participate. And that was a micro commitment, right? And then it was a lot easier for them when they would say things like, that was amazing. It was a lot easier for them to say yes to the next ask, which was, well, why don't you just come out every week and you can be a mentor to one of these small groups and you get to participate in the whole thing all the time. And that seemed like an easier step for them to take, right? So I do this with my volunteers here on the farm. So I will. I will reach out, I will personally enroll people. I will contact individuals and say I could really use some help bagging Corn for the CSA boxes on this day, would you be willing to come out? It takes an hour and a half, and I hardly ever have someone say no. And so when they come out, they usually have a good time. And then I say, well, could you do this one more time? And they'll be like, yeah, sure. And then the next year I ask them to do it again, and they do it two more times, and I fill out my docket. You know, that way some of those people really shine and I'll reach out to them and kind of probe and say, hey, you know what? I really see something in you. I was wondering if you'd be willing to try helping out at our site and passing out boxes, because you just have some really good people skills and it's really fun. Our team's really fun. So they come and try that out. I see how they do. And then I just keep asking them to come and volunteer and fill in for people, right? And then all of a sudden I'm like, at the end of the year, if I have a vacancy, I'm like, you know what? Why don't you just come back next year on the team? Would you like to be like a permanent person? And, you know, we can barter. That's how I find my people. And it's this consistency to commitments concept where I just slowly move them along by making these small yeses. Okay, so that's another. Another place where I. I use it and where you could probably use it too. That has nothing to do with sales. Okay, a couple more examples. Public affirmations in social media. Okay, this is something I do intentionally. I discovered this by accident three years ago during my early bird CSA launch. And this is what I'm gonna. This is actually what inspired the episode because I wanted to talk about this one thing. So for those of you who are CSA farmers, if you do a pre launch where you try to get people to renew here in the fall, I want you to do this because this is really powerful. I actually did an entire episode. I think I'll see if I can find it and link in the show notes on the specific questions that I used. But it's a special five day daily question challenge, and I do it two weeks before I open the cart for renewals. So this is part of my pre launch Runway where I'm greasing the wheels and this is where I ask every day. There's a different daily question in our Facebook group for our CSC members, there's a prize for one person at random who Comments. Okay. And then I always post the winner and it's a pretty cool like it's like a 10 prize. It might be like some fancy honey or something like that. And the question is designed to get people to state their values. Okay, so here's an example of one. What was your favorite part of the CSA this past season? And people leave all kinds of answers. And not only do I get fun data that way, but I'm actually doing it because I want them to think about their last, their past season. I want them to reflect, I want them to make a value judgment and say to themselves, this was a great part of being a CSA member and actually have that association and then type it out and put it out into the world so that in a couple of weeks when I asked them, well, don't you want to do this again? Well, they've just stated to the whole world that they love the csa. They told very specifically what their favorite part about it was. They said it and their farmer read it and they know their farmer read it. Right. So there is this kind of pressure to like, well, I, I need to make sure that I continue to support my farmer. I said that I really loved the csa. So each of these questions is really designed to kind of do some of this pre framing and get them to declare a value or a commitment to our farm before I ask them to renew. But it's, you know, it's just a game and it's just a fun contest too. And they all enjoy reading one another's comments and some of them, as they're reading other people's comments are thinking in their heads, oh yeah, that too. I loved that part of the season. Oh, and that too. And now they've just reaffirmed in their head five different reasons why they loved our csa. Five different favorite moments of the season because they were reminded of them by other people and they saw that other people in the group feel the same way. Right. So it's, it's just this huge social proof kind of moment that makes everyone feel like, well, of course I'm going to do this again. So something to think about. Doing a five day challenge. I will try to find what that episode was and I'll link it up in the show notes. You can go listen to it and find out what were the questions that I used because they're all really good. Okay. And then the last one that I wrote down was hosting a field to table farm dinner. I know that many of you this. I actually have a whole training inside of Farm Marketing school for how to put together an amazing field to table dinner. Like, all the details. What I want you to think about, though, is the timing of when you do this dinner. I could do it any time of year, but I have learned to time it so that it is in the weeks before I ask people to renew. It's usually the week or two before the renewal date opens. And this is intentional. It's a perfect example of getting your customers to make a memorable commitment, deepen their connection, their emotional connection to your farm. So you give them this really unique immersive experience, right? You reinforce their loyalty. You create a positive memory and association with your farm, and it becomes one of the last memories, powerful memories of the season. They come off riding that high, and then two weeks later, you're like, do you want to do it again? Heck yeah, I want to sign up for that again. Last year was pretty cool because our field to table dinner was outside. There was glorious weather. It was in. In October, I think it was late September, actually. Beautiful, beautiful day. And no joke, but the satellite, the Starlink went over our farm that night. So as it was getting dark, I did not know this was gonna happen. Somebody starts pointing and it's like, what is that in the sky? And we all, like, look up and it's just this line of lights trailing across over the night sky, literally over our tables. And it was so magical. And I'm like, oh, my gosh. And people were snapping pictures like once in a lifetime. Like, what are the odds of that actually happening? And. And going over my little farm, right? And I. I just looked over at Kurt and I was like, this is going to be the thing that they remember. And how cool is this, right? So little moments like that that you can't. You just can't replicate, those are powerful moments. So I know I can't find a way to get Starlink to go over your feel the table dinner. I had no idea that was going to happen. But that just totally reinforced everyone's amazing experience. So when I ask for my members to renewal, to renew a few weeks later, they're way more likely to say yes because they want to remain consistent with that positive experience, that connection they had to the farm. Right? Those are. Those are two. Those last two things I just mentioned are two very specific, specific actions that I build into my marketing strategy. They're part of the pre launch Runway, and I do them because I know about this principle and I'm leveraging it on purpose. How can I create experiences before I ask people, before I pitch people a product. How can I create a positive, feel good experience on the farm or about the farm? How can I get my customer to state something that they value that is in alignment with what I value or with, is it alignment with my product mix? How can I get my customer to say they like me or they love my farm or they believe in me? Right. How can I get them to talk positively about my farm to someone else? I'm, I'm really thinking through this. This will be a great time. By the way, before you do a renewal to get people to, to do a Google review, try to make that happen in the weeks before you ask them to renew as well. Because you know they have, they, they leave you a testimonial and then you ask them to sign up again a few weeks later. Well, of course, of course I will. I just left you a testimonial. I can't back out now. Now. One of the powerful things about this consistency principle that I wanted to bring up is that it doesn't just influence behavior, it also helps your people claim an identity. This is so important. Identity is so important. When someone makes even a small commitment, they're not just agreeing to an action, they're making a statement about who they are and what they value. I'm a CSA supporter. I'm, I believe in local farms. I believe in regenerative agriculture. I believe in knowing where your food comes from. I believe that food is medicine. Right. Once they have declared that identity, they are far less likely to go back on it. And so as business owners, we want to guide our customers to take small actions that align with their values, whether it's choosing local or supporting sustainable farming or eating healthier. And when they publicly declare those values through their actions, they start seeing themselves as the kind of person who supports farms like ours. Okay? This is about identity. And once they've embraced that identity, they'll feel compelled to continue making choices that align with that identity, like becoming a long term CSA member or supporting your online store regularly. It's about connecting your products in your mission to their values so that it feels like a natural extension of who they are. Okay? So I really want you to think about identity. You need to tap into their identity. You need to find a way to make your products, your mission, align with their identity and then you're unstoppable. So when it comes to asking people to buy your farm products, what I want you to remember is that the real work begins long before the actual pitch. This is huge. This has some implications in terms of how you message, it starts long before the actual pitch. We need to set the stage psychologically by building trust, by engaging them emotionally, by creating positive associations with our brand or our farm. This process is known as pre framing. I've talked about it before on other podcasts, and it helps shape how they perceive the offer when the time comes. So by giving them these small, positive experiences, these small micro commitments, whether it's going to a memorable farm dinner or answering a little question in a social media post, or sampling a free trial product, we're priming them to feel invested, to feel like this is my identity. And so when we finally ask them to buy or renew, it doesn't feel like a hard sell to them. It feels like, well, of course I'm going to do it. It's a natural extension of who they are. It feels like the natural next step in a relationship they already value. This is the whole concept that I teach in for our marketing school of the customer value journey. There is a journey you take your customers on, and as long as you honor the process, every time you ask them to take the next step, it just feels like the natural next step. You can't jump steps. That's when it feels slimy and icky. But when you know what the different stages are and the different steps are, you just build the different pieces in your marketing machine and move people through them so that it's just a natural next step to graduate to the next level and they move through your whole customer experience. So farm marketing school is great because it's not only going to show you the framework and what the steps are, but it's also going to show you how do you build the different pieces of the machine, because you need to have a system in place for each of those parts of the customer journey so that this feels like a natural progression. Now, if you want to dive deeper into the psychology behind why these little small commitments are so powerful, I highly recommend checking out the book that I referenced earlier. It's called the Psychology of Persuasion. It's by Robert Cialdini. I think that's how you say his name. C I A L D I N I. He has a couple of other really good books that I recommend. They're all good. In it, Cialdini is going to explain the six key principles of persuasion. He has a special focus on the consistency principle that we talked about today, but I consider it a must read for anyone looking to better understand how to ethically guide customers toward making decisions that benefit you and benefit them you're going to find a lot of really good examples in there, a lot of science experiments that kind of prove his points. And it's, it's really a fascinating study even in your own mind, like how these principles work on you and you'll notice them working on you when you're being pitched. But I think it's good because you can apply these to your farm business. So I encourage you to go check it out from the library and read it. It's a little dense, but it's really good. It's really good. And all of my accelerator members enjoyed it immensely. So highly recommend that book to you. Here's your homework assignment for this week. I want you to think of one small yet meaningful commitment that you could ask your customers or your leads or your prospects to make before you pitch them something bigger. What could that look like for you? I gave you some examples. You could use one of mine, but maybe you can spot something you're already doing or you could think of something new. It could be getting them to sign up for your E newsletter. It could be participating in a social media poll, or joining some kind of a farm event, or agreeing to come out and do a tour. And then at the end of the tour, you pitch your product. They're much more likely to say yes because they've just invested a whole hour with you. The key is to create a moment where they say yes in a small way so that they're more likely to say yes again when it really counts. So take some time to plan it out and try it this week. See if it works. Watch how that initial commitment primes them for the future, for a future engagement and hopefully future purchases, many future purchases to come. All right, now I also mentioned my early Bird CSA renewal campaign in this episode. I want to make sure that you know I have a mini course that teaches you exactly how to build a CSA early renewal campaign. Like a really good one. It is step by step. It is solid. I give you the entire process and framework so that you can come up with a fantastic offer that includes a compelling bonus that's going to get them to want to say yes. I show you all about the the pre Runway, the pre launch Runway, how important that is and what kinds of things you should be mapping out into it so that you get that in place. And we talk about the types of messaging to include in your email promotions as you try to get people to renew, how to set your deadlines. I even share with you like my social media posts that I use in My in my group, I share with you the emails that I use that, that I get that gets sent out every single day for the launch period. So you can just kind of see the, the persuasion and you can feel free to use them, customize them for yourself. It's just a solid, really good course. Gets really good remarks from those people who take it. So if you're CSA vegetable farmer who is looking for some kind of help with that, I think it's super good. If you buy it and you don't like it and you're like, this was awful, just reach out to me and I'll refund you. Okay. I think it's totally worth it. So to learn more about it, you can go to mydigitalfarmer.com forward/earlybird I made it because this was the thing that put me on the map. This is what got me on the Farmer to Farmer podcast many years ago. The the ability to get 80, 85% of people to renew. And it was this launch method and I have used it ever since. I literally rinse and repeat it. I change out the bonus every year, but I'm using the same email copy. I just rinse and repeat it. And it works like a charm every time. Like, once you find a promotion strategy that works, don't change it, just keep reusing it. And for the last seven years, it has worked like gangbusters. I have no doubt it will do so again for me this year. And as I'm putting it together right now, it's just so easy because I, I have the plan in place, so I want to be able to give that to you again. MyDigitalFarmer.com Earlybird it is one of the things I'm most proud of. Okay, today's show notes can be found@mydigitalfarmer.com 282 if you liked today's episode, would you please leave me a rating or a review on Apple Podcasts or if you would go tell a farmer about it in one of your Facebook groups that you're a part of or on a listserv. Make people aware of the show. It really does help more people find out about the podcast and just get this information into the hands of more farmers. Hey, it is almost time for the off season. At least over here. It is at Share Legacy Farms and things kind of toned down for me here. I would love to interview some farmers this winter for the show. So if you know somebody who would be a great guest or if you have an innovation that you'd like to share or maybe you just want me to talk with you about your farm business and we can kind of find the sales funnel in it and share it with the world. I always find a nugget in every interview that I have. Please reach out to me. I'd love to meet you and just get to know you through the interview and maybe it's a match and it ends up on the show. You never know. So reach out to me@mydigitalfarmers gmail.com I'm also just really, really curious to talk to some farmers about what they're looking for in terms of help from from me on the topic of marketing and sales or digital marketing or email marketing. So I'm actually going to find some time this coming winter to do one to one calls, like 30 minute one to one calls with farmers. And so if you are interested in just sharing your ideas with me or I have some questions that I would ask you in that call, I would, I'd love to talk with you and meet you and hear your story because it helps me figure out what I should be talking about on this show and how I can better serve farmers in the next year. So again, you could also reach out to me through email and let me know you want to have a chat with me and we can set something up over Zoom for 30 minutes. Mydigitalfarmersmail.com all right, that's all I got today. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you have a fantastic week and I will catch you next time for another episode. Don't forget, I believe in you. I believe in you. Take care. Bye. Bye.