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My Digital Farmer Podcast
284 Holiday Promotions: How to Prep Your Farm's Online Store for the Holidays
01:21:46
With the holidays coming, are you preparing any farm promotions to finish Q4 strong? If not, this episode is for you. I've invited my friend Christina Marbury (the marketing director of Taste the Local Difference -- a marketing agency for farmers) to...
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- [00:01]
Corinna Bench
Today we're talking about holiday promotions. Do you typically make an offer to your customer base for the Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Christmas season, heck, even New Year's? Well, in today's episode, we're going to show you how you can do that and how this is a prime time for you to earn revenue because our consumers have buying habits around these two months. So let's tap into those and learn how we can build promotions to drive revenue for our farm. 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 confident at marketing, learn how to find more customers, increase your sales, and build a strong brand for your farm. Let's start the show. Well, welcome to episode 284 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 localline. Switch to localline 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. All right, I'm back. I'm excited about today's episode. But before I introduce my guest, I want to make sure that I let you know about Farm Marketing School because it's going to be opening up in a new way here in the month of November, which is in just a few weeks. If you haven't heard the message yet. I have decided not to do my small group coaching program accelerator this fall. I'm taking a break. That was a hard decision for me because I love, I really love that program a lot. But I decided I wanted to take one season where I really dialed in to FMS and tried to figure out the perfect way to set up that program. So I want to kind of play around with Farm Marketing School, play in the sandbox, so to speak, for several months and interact with those members a bit more and try to find kind of this hybrid version of the very DIY Farm Marketing School and the more hands on accelerator. So over the months of November, December, January, February, I'm going to be playing around with Farm Marketing School in the sense that I will be much more active than I typically am. I'm going to be running some book studies, I'm going to drop a few new programs live into the program, interacting with the students, reaching out to them, seeing how I can support them, trying to do a few group calls together where we can build a Community and really do a little bit more coaching of the members inside to get you to your finish line. Now, if you're not sure what Farm Marketing School even is, this is my monthly membership program where farmers come in and learn how to build their marketing system for their farm. And I think it's ideally suited for newer farmers who don't have a farm marketing system at all and maybe for slightly like intermediate farmers who have been working for a while in business, again, have a fairly decent setup, but they're looking to automate some of their marketing now and they want to get those systems in place and built so that they don't have to do as much hand holding and they can kind of set in and forget it. And they're just a few things that they're doing on a weekly basis live. So the way Farm Marketing School works is you come in and you work on these different elements of your marketing machine. I teach, you know how to build the homepage of your website so the messaging is really good. I have a project that's all about writing great weekly emails and learning what, what those should look like and practicing that skill for a while. There's a project on building a promotion calendar which is a great one. I recommend that you do a in the month of January and my favorite one is the sales audit. The funnel. The sales funnel audit where you actually audit your current sales funnel, see what you're doing and then you design it so that it's more optimized. You kind of have your vision for. Here's how I want my sales and marketing to actually work. Anyway, there's over 14 projects in there right now. And the idea is that you subscribe to marketing school. You take the assessment that's the first step and kind of discover what's working well and what's missing in my marketing system right now. And then you start going through the projects. These are 30 day project builds that live inside of the Farm Marketing School. They're diy. They're designed for you to watch the video. I have a resource folder that has the templates, kind of the startup kit that you need to get going so it's faster for you. And then you start building it and putting it together and it's a. Most of them are done within 30 days and then you move on to the next one. So this is normally a very DIY type of school. But like I said, in these off season months I'm going to be much more active. I'm going to be helping you, I'm going To be checking in, answering questions, doing some extra support things, book studies, to just grow our community and help you get to the other side. I'm really proud of it. And a lot of the farmers who join end up staying for like the average stay time is like six to seven months, which is pretty cool. Which means that people are going in there, they're enjoying it and they're actually building things. So if you are interested in joining, like I said, the, the fun is going to start. You can go right now. But we're really going to start getting active in there. In the month of November you can go to mydigitalfarmer.com FMS It's a month to month membership so you can try it out for a month. You can cancel anytime if you like it, you don't do anything at all. It just charges your credit card again the next month. But there's no commitments. You can just jump in and jump out whenever you want. So I'm hoping to gather a group of people that are gonna sort of make a commitment to one another for a few months to build a community. Like I said, I wanna try and do like a hybrid version of Accelerator and the DIY FMS and just kind of play around with it. So I'm looking forward to working on this project this coming winter and I hope that you'll join me and we can get to know each other and I can support you and learn from you too. All right, so mydigitalfarmer.com FMS if you'd like to join. Let's jump into today's topic and this is going to be a good one. I think this is going to be a topic that will, people will come back to a year from now because we're talking about holiday promotions. And I invited a friend of mine from Taste the Local Difference, which is a marketing agency up in Traverse City, Michigan to be the expert on this particular topic. She is going to discuss the different kinds of ways that we can monetize during this holiday season. You know, people spend money in November and December, don't they? I mean this is one of the most profitable and lucrative times of years. Time of the year for most businesses. Most retail businesses, like Christmas is where they make a big chunk of their revenue. And so that's because we have consumers who have buying habits. They are trained to spend money in the months of November and December for Christmas and for the holidays. And so how can we tap into that, especially as food producers? We have these two magnificent feasts every year November, there's Thanksgiving in the United States and then of course, Christmas, there's even New Year's Eve. That's really three major meals that people will want our food. And so how can we create products that will entice people to want to buy? This is a great money making opportunity. So she's going to talk about some of the different kinds of offers you can build. She's going to talk about how to set up your e commerce store so that it's really optimized. And we're also going to talk about how do you market and promote this to maximize your revenue. You're going to get a ton, a ton of ideas. And she's in a unique position because she works with so many different farms as a marketing agency for farmers. She has seen lots of different ways that farmers do this during the holiday promotion time and so she can see the patterns and she brings that to the table. So I think you're going to get a lot out of this. I'm going to read her bio so you can kind of learn a little bit about her and then we're going to jump right into the interview. Okay, here we go. My guest today is Christina Marbury and she is the marketing director at Taste the Local Difference. At Taste the Local Difference, Christina and her team support farms and other local food businesses to reach their goals with specialized marketing services designed just for those businesses. So from website design and e commerce system setup to graphic design to strategy and implementation for social media or email marketing and search engine optimization, TLD aims to make marketing work efficiently and effectively. Christina fell in love with local food while attending the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and has since spent her career working with and supporting local food businesses of all types. From farm work to bakeries, retail and food services. She's been in the thick of it, which brings an understanding of these businesses to her work in marketing. When Christina isn't working, you can find her in her garden. We're boiling maple syrup, baking up a storm, and soaking in the incredible waters and landscapes near her home in Leelanau County, Michigan. Without further ado, please join me in welcoming Christina to the show. Well, Christina, welcome to the show.
- [12:51]
Christina Marbury
Thank you. It's really wonderful to be here.
- [12:55]
Corinna Bench
I want you to start out by introducing yourself and kind of the scope of your work. So tell my listeners a little bit about yourself. I know you work at Taste the Local Difference. Maybe you can talk about what Taste TLD is all about. Taste, Local Difference, who you help, what you do, just the scope of Your work wherever you want to start.
- [13:15]
Christina Marbury
Perfect. Yeah. My name is Christina Marbury, obviously. I'm the marketing director here at Taste the Local Difference. And I'll share a little personally and then go into everything that TLD does. So my background is really an interesting mixture of food systems and marketing, which leads me to this work that I do now that is really just the perfect fit, I think. So I've spent time doing everything from working in the field on farms, to managing farmers markets, to working in bakeries and kitchens in front of house and in food service places. So I really kind of covered a whole gamut of the food system on that side of things and then also have some background in marketing with some bigger, like four national brands sort of marketing agencies. But now I spend my time, and I have for quite a while now, the past four years, full time and even before that freelance, worked for a business called Taste the Local Difference. And we are a marketing agency for farmers and local food focused food businesses. So we work with farmers, restaurants, retailers, specialty producers, all sorts of folks within the food system to improve their marketing. And that looks often like helping them set up their systems, doing things like design work and website building and really taking them through the process of setting up a marketing system that will work well for them. And like I said, we work with folks, you know, all across the food system. But I'll be, I'll be honest to say farmers are my favorite to work with just because it's really where my heart is. And one I think really unique thing about what we do is that we not only offer services that are paid for by the farms or food businesses, but we also partner with a lot of really incredible organizations to be able to offer subsidized services. So things that somebody else is paying for the service for the farmer, and a lot of those are for folks in, you know, historically disadvantaged communities. But there are programs across the board to support different folks. So.
- [15:28]
Corinna Bench
And you're located where in the country?
- [15:30]
Christina Marbury
I am located in Traverse City, Michigan. For you know, it's up in the, the northwest lower peninsula of Michigan, right along Lake Michigan. Beautiful place, beautiful food.
- [15:42]
Corinna Bench
But people who may want to work with TLD can be from anywhere in the country, or is this predominantly a Midwest thing?
- [15:53]
Christina Marbury
They can be from anywhere in the country. Taste the Local Difference started actually as an, a part of a nonprofit in Traverse City, Michigan. And we kind of grew to serve the state of Michigan. And now we've taken it a step further in recent years to work with folks anywhere in the country. So really our niche is that it's, you know, farms mostly direct to consumer farm. Some folks do wholesale and things like that and local food businesses, but it's really location independent.
- [16:21]
Corinna Bench
Yeah. What I loved that you said in your intro, you use the word system a lot and that you help farmers set up their systems, their marketing systems. And I think that farmers at the big if they're often in the beginning stages, they don't realize that they have to build a system for marketing. They, they realize, oh yeah, I have to build systems for production and all these other things. But there really is the need as you scale, if you want to kind of be a healthy business that isn't worried too much about cash flow and revenue, like you do need to build a system that draws in sales. So do you feel like that's not always something that farmers think about or realize?
- [17:03]
Christina Marbury
I do think it's not always something farmers think about or realize. Obviously you've probably talked about this a lot, but farmers are busy in the fields. Just, you know, growing or raising their product is a full time job. And so marketing is something that gets added on top of that. In addition to sales and bookkeeping and hr, if you have staff and all of the various things that come into running a farm and if you can set up a system where you know, okay, this is what I'm going to do each week to market my business. I'm going to set aside this time I have these templates or I have some things that are automated. Then you know, when you have a plan to follow and it doesn't feel like this thing that's like every week all of a sudden, oh, I need to do something to market my business. I have to think of that thing.
- [17:52]
Corinna Bench
Yes. So when farmers reach out to you, what's usually the main reason? Do they get to a certain point where they hit a wall or like what's that trigger moment that causes them to be like, I think I need to ask for help?
- [18:07]
Christina Marbury
Yeah. I think that often it's people who have been trying to like DIY everything themselves or have friends help them and then they, they get to a point that they realize they don't have either the skill set or the time. So it might be like, oh, I'm really capable of doing some of this stuff. But I realize that I really don't have time and I need some extra support or they realize like, yeah, I have this website that I built or my friend or my cousin or whatever buil but it's really not working for me. The person who did it isn't somebody who really knows what effective website looks like and what, you know, the calls to action and the flow for the user should be and all of those things. So usually it's because they kind of know they, they're ready to level up and get to a next step and that they, they realize they don't have those skills.
- [19:00]
Corinna Bench
I remember I had that experience like a year and a half ago when I was trying to level up my SEO for my farm's website. And I mean, I'm into marketing, everyone knows that. But I didn't want to take the time to like really dive into the weeds with that. And so I just sort of did that comparison, cost comparison, and I just didn't want to do it either. Like, I was not excited. SEO is not exciting to me at all. And so I just said, you know what, I'm going to hire someone to do it because it's going to get done faster. Right. It felt like a shortcut. So sometimes the things that you guys build are a one time build, right? And it's not like, oh, they're going to be doing it for me forever and I'm quote unquote, trapped in this relationship forever. It's like, no, I just need them to get this one part of the machine built because it's important and I just don't want to do it.
- [19:52]
Christina Marbury
Yeah, that is so true. It's not that we won't do ongoing services for folks, but the majority, almost everything that we do is we come in and create some things to get them set up. Like you said, it's a one time bill. It's not like an ongoing forever thing.
- [20:09]
Corinna Bench
Yeah, well, I know we'll talk about that at the very end. We'll go into a little more detail about what the process is for working with you, if people want to do that, and what the different steps are. But I wanted to start with one more intro question before we dive into the topic of the day. You've worked with hundreds of farmer clients and different food system kind of businesses, Right. And I'm curious, what do you see are the biggest mistakes that these farmers and clients share in common when it comes to their messaging or their marketing, maybe even just how they're running their business.
- [20:53]
Christina Marbury
I think the number one thing that comes to mind for me, especially on the marketing side, is people not thinking that they have a meaningful story to tell. I, you know, start working with a lot of people who are, you know, we're talking about their website content or what they should share on social media or put into their emails. And they. They often originally think they don't really have that much to say. But then when you start digging in to find out a little bit more about, like, what. What exactly they do and why they do it, and how they got to the place of raising food, which is not, you know, a straight path for many, they start to realize that they are doing something really incredible and that they do have a story to tell. And often I think that that is the most important baseline for having an effective marketing strategy, because the type of customers that are interested in shopping locally and supporting local farms, they want to do that not just because they want to support this, like, nameless brand. They do it because they want to support the people who are behind the business, who are members of their community. So really helping people through that process of telling their story, I think is. Is really meaningful and is something that people often come to the table thinking it isn't important. And it is important in my mind.
- [22:14]
Corinna Bench
Yeah. Is there anything else that's a really good one? Is there any other mistake that jumps out at you?
- [22:19]
Christina Marbury
Yeah, the other. This is like a very random one, but something I see over and over and over again is people who have a website that does not clearly state where they're located or how to buy the products. So they might have, you know, some general information, like, here's who we are, we have a farm, this type of farm, blah, blah, blah. But they don't tell people where they're located, which is so important when it comes to. To, you know, a localized purchase. But also when it comes to something like SEO, which you mentioned, if. If you're not sharing where you're located, then you're not gonna show up in the search results for people in that area or people searching for businesses in that area.
- [23:01]
Corinna Bench
That's so good. That's a little thing. But, yeah, I actually fell into that trap myself a few weeks ago when, I mean, I just post all the time on my social media about get on my email list for our online store, right. I'm constantly talking about the offers in our store. And I had this woman call me and she wanted to buy, I think, some of our celery. And I was like, well, you can get on our online store list. And we were about to, like, do the deal. And then I was like, where. Where do you live? And she's like, I live in Cleveland. I'm like, that's like an hour. That's like two hours away. Are you sure you Want to be one of our regular customers. I mean, if you really want to come and get like a one time big shot of celery, great. But. And she's like, oh, I didn't. That is kind of far. And then it just was like a reminder to me. Like, Corinna, you need to be making sure you tell people even in your social posts, right? Like where you're located. We're in the metro Toledo area just to like weed out because I've got people following me from all over the place.
- [23:56]
Christina Marbury
But yeah, yeah, definitely. And if you are like in a very rural area, calling out, what are those metro areas that you serve? Like what markets do you go to if you have some sort of delivery or you're in retail stores, like, where are those stores?
- [24:10]
Corinna Bench
Yeah, yeah. Well, today I invited you onto the show because I wanted us to talk about the holidays coming up. November, Black Friday, Christmas season. This is a key revenue generating time in any business, including farm businesses. When we look at our Overall like the 4/4 of the year, I know that Q4 is a big one that brings in a lot of revenue for many farms because of these last six weeks of the year, eight weeks of the year, maybe even. And so I thought it would be fun to have someone kind of an expert in marketing to come onto the show and just talk us through, like how can you be preparing your online store and maybe even just your marketing strategy. Right. For E commerce success during the holiday shopping season. Never really talked about this before, but there are so many opportunities to leverage this during the season. And so I asked you to kind of prepare some notes for me to do a little teaching session. So this is for those of you who are listening. I'm going to kind of turn over the interview a little bit to her and Christina's gonna kind of share some of her insights and I'm gonna have a conversation with her. I'm gonna interrupt you, so be prepared. I'm sure I'll have some, some comments or some follow up questions, but we just want to have a discussion here about like, what does this look like to build a really great holiday revenue plan and marketing plan, promotion plan, specifically with E commerce. Right. That's kind of where we want to focus. So where do we even start? What's our kind of our first thing?
- [26:00]
Christina Marbury
Yeah, as you were introing that, I thought I'm going to start in the middle of my notes, which makes sense. But I realized that I, I think the first important thing to talk about is what are those products that you would offer as a holiday offering. Because I think that might be a reason that many farms don't think of this big spending season as a season that's highly relevant to them. So the first, like, I think easiest, most obvious thing maybe is that many farms will do a like holiday box, holiday package of, you know, produce or meat, whatever it is that they offer, dairy, cheese that is focused specifically around those holiday meals. Right. So you could have a Thanksgiving basket, a Christmas basketball basket. You could do things for other holidays during that season as well that think about what are kind of the traditional foods people eat at those meals. And it's all the potatoes and sweet potatoes and brussels sprouts and pumpkin and such that you might need for a Thanksgiving meal as an offering, kind of a standalone basket. But then on top of something that is really meant to feed the people for those big feasts. There are a lot of ways that farms can offer gifts because this is right the gifting season. And a lot of people are thinking about what they should buy for those, those folks in their life. And I think there are a lot more people who are, you know, not as interested as in buying material things and looking to buy experiences or ongoing gifts and things like that. So depending clearly on what you grow or raise, there are various things that might fit into this bucket. But if you create any value added items with your products that are more shelf stable, those make an incre incredible like gift basket sort of thing that you could promote talking about them as gifts. Sometimes it's just a matter of planting that idea in people's head that this could be a gift. Similarly, if you have any sort of subscription or a csa, those can be really great gifts for people. They might not be something that, you know, they're going to get a physical thing immediately during the holiday, but it's gonna, you know, pay off throughout the year. And I think that that can be a really beautiful gift for folks. And you can always pair that with something like if you have one small value added item, you could, you know, offer that as an add on. So they have something physical to gift with. Then you know, a little card that says what the ongoing thing might be.
- [28:38]
Corinna Bench
Yeah. Or even a gift certificate. Yep. Are really, really popular. But then to include a physical, tangible thing with the actual card, that can be kind of fun too.
- [28:50]
Christina Marbury
Yeah, exactly. So gift certificates, and then the other big one is trying to partner with other local businesses. Whether you have fol that make things out of your products or just people who have products that are, you know, fit well Together with your business, you could, you know, create those baskets or have that little physical thing be something that another local business makes if it's not something you have to offer from your farm as well.
- [29:15]
Corinna Bench
I love that.
- [29:16]
Christina Marbury
Yeah.
- [29:16]
Corinna Bench
I have a couple of other things to share here, if that's okay. That just came up as you were chatting. Like, I don't have evidence that this actually sells, but like, I'm thinking of things like Advent calendars. Like there's sort of these template style of gifts that you see when I go into the grocery store now every year. I didn't used to see them, but now I feel like I see Advent calendars for cheese, advent calendar for beer, for wine. Like, can you take your product and turn it into an advent calendar? Like just, you know, think about that. Because that is, you know, raising your average cart value now too. Right? Because you've got 24 items basically in a box as opposed to just one. So something to think about also. The 12 Days of Christmas is another thing that kind of falls into this. So once Christmas hits, could you create like a package that's basically like people buy this thing that people open up a little mini present for every day of the twelve days of Christmas after, you know, after Christmas eve, there's those 12 days. So that, that was another thought that I had. Do you put like New Year's Eve into this category of holiday as well?
- [30:18]
Christina Marbury
I totally would. And people often are. Yeah, doing a big meal, especially I think like folks who raise beef. A lot of those, like celebratory cuts can make really great New Year's Eve meals or New Year's Day. If you're in the south and you grow black eyed peas or collards, you know, all of those pieces that are like a classic piece of those meals.
- [30:41]
Corinna Bench
Yeah. Okay. So the first step is just to identify the products and almost like build the offer. Right. Like, what could I offer? Free. Free gift wrapping or you know, what's. How can you. How can you create perks around it? I love that. Anything else around that, I think those.
- [30:59]
Christina Marbury
Are the main things. The other piece kind of as we like get started thinking about the nuts and bolts, is just considering who your audience is. Clearly every farm is going to have a bit of a different audience, but I like to, you know, think about it in terms of the holiday shopper because that's going to be a slightly different approach than your everyday, you know, people who are just buying food to feed their family. And I think, you know, really it's the people who are eager to support local farms or who have people in their life that appreciate local food, could be a great audience for this. So whenever we do any sort of marketing, I'm always encouraging people to think about who they're talking to before they start, you know, writing descriptions and building out offers and things like that.
- [31:46]
Corinna Bench
Yeah, I love that. Okay, so that's sort of step one. What's the next thing we need to be thinking about?
- [31:54]
Christina Marbury
So from there I. This time of year, I think is the perfect time of year to be optimizing your e commerce experience. So making sure that your online store is set up for success. Set up to encourage people to keep browsing and to make those purchases and to add those things to their cart. So of course it's really important that you have, you know, a pretty streamlined user experience, like bigger picture, always important. All of these things will serve you for the whole year, not only for the holidays. So making sure it's easy for people to get to your shop when they come to your website or if they're on your social media or in your email, it's easy for them to get to that point of adding something to their cart. You know, that can involve things like SEO as well. I think that that's likely something you're more likely to focus on earlier in the year if you're looking towards a holiday campaign because it does some time to. To be most impactful, but making sure you know that you've got the navigation of your products organized so your products are organized into clear categories. A lot of people at the holidays will create a gift category specifically. So then if, if you're doing any social or email promotions out there about gifting, you can direct people to that category in your shop and then they've got all the gift options from your business right there in front of them.
- [33:21]
Corinna Bench
Yeah, I wonder, I wonder if you can even, like, in some software systems, I wonder if you can even like set the default category to be the gift category. Yeah, for a season there. I don't know if every E commerce platform does that, but that's another thought. If you can't, you can give them a direct URL to it, I'm sure too. But like, for people who just show up kind of organically to the store.
- [33:44]
Christina Marbury
Yeah, definitely. Or depending how your E commerce and your website are integrated, if they are, you know, all together in one on your homepage, you could create a section about GIFs, you know, that's really close to the top, maybe right under your header so that people who are landing on your website are getting that idea in their mind.
- [34:04]
Corinna Bench
Oh, I love that. So before they even go to the store part like they go to your homepage and there's almost like a widget section that's like holiday gifts this season are our best selling gifts. So that. Yeah. So then they can click on the item there and take them to the store. That's good.
- [34:19]
Christina Marbury
Yeah, I love that. Yeah, exactly. And then the next piece is really just making your online products look really nice. And that to me means both having a photo that is of the actual product they're going to receive that is, you know, I think great photography can be really impactful. I know that it can also be expensive for farms to take on. So if you can't hire a photographer to, you know, do a cool holiday shoot of all your gifts, at least get them into good light, get them set up in a place, you know, that they, they look like something that's nice and inviting and that people will be excited to receive and take those photos so people know what they're actually purchasing and then creating those product titles and descriptions so making sure that you have really accurate and detailed descriptions of what you're offering that are also written in a way that makes your product seem really like welcoming and exciting and like someone would want to purchase it. You for example, like we just did an example product description and some marketing we were doing for ourselves that was the example of chamomile tea. And the basic description is like chamomile tea grown on our farm. Like yes, that's true, that's accurate. But the better description goes into how you can have calming, relaxing evenings with this special hand harvested chamomile tea. You know, making it really feel warm and welcoming and like a special thing that people would want to gift to somebody.
- [35:57]
Corinna Bench
Yeah, I'm going to just interject here that I, I've started using ChatGPT so AI tools to help me write better product descriptions. So I'll plop in like in the prompt box, I'll, I'll kind of coach AI to say take on the identity of an expert copywriter for a farm direct to consumer farm online store. And I would like you to write a product description for da da da da. Then I kind of give some of the basic properties and you know, I want it to be under this many words and make sure you include some examples of recipe, whatever, you know, like I can not recipes, that's a bad example. But I'll give some prompting and then I, I just get really great starter like product descriptions from there and then I can kind of tweak it. So that's just another little hack you guys. If you haven't explored chat GPT, that's one way you can use it.
- [36:50]
Christina Marbury
Yeah, definitely. And if you use a platform like Shopify, I'm trying to think of what other ones have it. That's the one I've used most often. They have like an AI description generator do they where you're putting the the product together in.
- [37:06]
Corinna Bench
Okay, it's already in the, in the platform. Awesome. I don't use Shopify. It's cool. All right.
- [37:11]
Christina Marbury
Yeah so some of the. I don't think many of the farm specific E commerce platforms have those sites types of features but a lot of the more general ones do so keep an eye out for it if, if you use one of those platforms.
- [37:22]
Corinna Bench
Yeah what about like using a video as part of you know one of the images if they to see the unboxing of it or like if again if the platform allows you to.
- [37:32]
Christina Marbury
Yeah an unboxing of it a like showing it in use any of those videos I think can be really helpful. Again obviously that's a time consuming thing to create but if you feel confident in in taking quick videos you can do it on your most phones take really incredible video. As long as you've got some nice natural light there it's gonna look beautiful. Yeah, highly recommend videos for all things. Yeah, people love to see the videos.
- [38:01]
Corinna Bench
Well I watch them like I found myself when I'm looking for products online. Like if there's a video I'm like yeah, let me see what it does. Let me see how that dress flows as they walk or like you know, whatever.
- [38:13]
Christina Marbury
So yeah, definitely. So those that's kind of the like okay, you've got your E commerce platform set up in a way that it's going to be most impactful for you. I guess the other piece I will call out there is just making sure it's easy to get to you know if you have a website platform that is separate from your E commerce store, making sure that Shop now button is like all over the place. You know you want it in your header, you want it like one of the first things when you land on the homepage and then you know sprinkled into other places around the site as well just to make sure that people can always easily get to that shop and the same if they're integrated. You know if you can have you know maybe you have a page about your livestock and then at the bottom you can put in a little section that is like explore our products or favorite favorite products from our herd or whatever it might be. So anywhere people are navigating around your website, they get that, that reminder that they can shop online with you.
- [39:17]
Corinna Bench
What I like about that heading you just gave like favorite things to shop, like it, it almost simplifies from all the choices too. If you can counsel people when they get to the store like these are the best sellers, you know, put a big badge or this is the number one product of the year. Like help people with that social proof badge realize, oh, that's out of all of the cheeses you sell, that's the one everyone likes. Okay, that's probably the one I'll get then. And you'll be amazed at how that one small thing, that one small badge or that categorization that you give it will help simplify, take away some of all those choices that people have and just help them zone in on like, okay, these are the three I'm going to get then.
- [40:03]
Christina Marbury
Yeah, somebody on our team has been repeating a phrase to us a lot lately which is the confused mind says no. Which I think is a really valuable lesson of like if you give people all the options, they often get overwhelmed and don't take the next step. Whereas if you kind of guide them and point them in the direction of what they might want, they get to that point much, much quicker. Yeah, anything you can do to guide people. Also Corinna, something you said about social proof reminded me that another piece of a great product set up on a website, particularly for gifts, I think is to have a testimonial on the product. If your platform allows you can have leave reviews directly on the product that show up, you know, which you've probably often seen in, in any online shopping you do. But many platforms have the ability to let people leave those reviews and if it doesn't, you know, collect testimonials from your customers and put a little call out in the product description. Because people respond very well to that social proof. To know that it's not just you saying it's incredible. Other people think it's incredible too.
- [41:08]
Corinna Bench
Yeah. Or having it flow into your website itself. So I mean I have something called embed social on my website and it just is constantly pulling in the latest Google reviews so that if someone is shopping my CSA product or whatever it is that I'm featuring on that page, people are going to, are going to be looking for social proof for some of those higher selling products too. And they'll want to know that it works. So that's often all they need to see is oh, other people like this.
- [41:37]
Christina Marbury
Yes, exactly.
- [41:39]
Corinna Bench
Okay, awesome. So anything else on that category of optimizing?
- [41:44]
Christina Marbury
No, I think that store, the main part of optimizing, like the front facing store, the next thing I thought we could chat a little bit about is more on the logistics side of things. So I think that gifting opens up this like new window of people who are buying. Maybe it's somebody from far away who's buying something for someone who lives in your community or someone who's buying something they want to ship to somebody. So making sure that you have clearly outlined how your delivery works because for many farms, delivery is different than a typical like everything I buy on your website can be shipped to me sort of setup. So making sure, you know, it might be in the product descriptions or elsewhere on the site that it clear when a product can be shipped or when it needs to be picked up in person. And then you know, the typical, managing an e commerce store, making sure that you're paying extra close attention to your inventory and products that are available. Making sure all of that is streamlined so that when people start ordering, you don't end up overselling above what you have and are really giving people a clear look into what you have available.
- [42:59]
Corinna Bench
Right. There's nothing worse than having to tell someone, I can't give little Johnny that present. I'm so sorry.
- [43:07]
Christina Marbury
I know, right? And if that does happen, just try to tell them as soon as possible.
- [43:12]
Corinna Bench
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [43:14]
Christina Marbury
So go ahead.
- [43:16]
Corinna Bench
So that made me think about the process of you talked about, you were talking about shipping. I had two thoughts. First of all, sometimes you can build an offer that includes free shipping, which not only helps, I think remove some friction, but it can also. Or maybe it's not free shipping. Maybe it's like you have to spend a certain amount to get the free shipping. So now you're encouraging them to spend more with you. But it also makes them realize there's a shipping policy. Right. It's like gives you an excuse to make them learn the, the ins and outs of how the shipping's going to work. So that's just one thought I had. But I also wanted to bring up the. It's not just like how does shipping work? But like how do I even buy, like how do I buy in the store? That might off actually go back with the previous point a little bit. But making sure a customer knows before they get there to the checkout point they should kind of understand step what what's going to happen here? Like, so that they don't get all the way through checkout and then realize what shipping's gonna be $40, you know, and then they are like, forget it. Like, have you explained kind of the big picture brushstrokes of how you actually buy from the store in the step prior, Whether you've got a spot on your website or maybe it's in the social post where you're talking about the offer and you kind of just remind them, hey, this is how you place orders in our store. Right. So that, that's, that's kind of there. Or hey, there's a minimum order again before I. This is happening to me right now. It's why I'm laughing. Like, people are coming to my store and like, they can't check out and I'm getting emails like, your store's not working. And I'm like, well, the minimum order is $20. Do you have $20? Oh, no. Or the, the ordering window closes on Monday at 6am for that site and on Wednesday, 6am for this site. I know that's super confusing, but like, you know, oh, yeah, I am after that deadline, I'm like, yeah, because we've already harvested. We're like packing stuff right now. So you can't order right now. Right. So stuff like that is like, how do you, you got to explain that stuff sometimes for some of these kinds of products that are like mine. That are. Yeah. That are perishable. Like, I can't just go whip out a bunch of produce for you two hours before pickup.
- [45:36]
Christina Marbury
So anyway, you don't just have a cooler full of produce that's ready to package up at any moment. You're harvesting for the orders you have or for the market. Yeah. They think that's a unique thing about farm products. Right. And you know, when you get into, you know, anything that needs refrigeration, I think people don't often think like, oh, I ordered cheese online. Yeah, it has to be packed in an insulated box with an ice pack and it has to be shipped, you know, today. So it's going to be more expensive than Amazon shipping.
- [46:12]
Corinna Bench
Right, Right. Or I might not get it shipped out today because it's at the bottom of the pile now because It's. There's like 30 orders in front of it that were on time, you know.
- [46:22]
Christina Marbury
So, yeah, Especially if you do have a busy store, I think it can be really helpful to put some of those, like, hey, we ship orders on Tuesdays and Fridays or something, you know, exactly what to expect. Or, you know, we're busy with holiday orders. If you get overwhelmed, put a little note at the top of your website that says, hey, expect it to take seven days for your product to ship out. So people know what to expect. Because we do live in a world where people expect everything to be instant. And small businesses aren't often able to be instant.
- [46:55]
Corinna Bench
Yeah, I don't know if this was in your notes, but this brings. This makes me think of abandoned cart like emails too. So if your software system has the ability to you just turn that feature on, that's another way to like stimulate the sale too. If they got overwhelmed or they had to leave their desktop or their phone and you can just kind of poke them and remind them like, hey, your. Your order deadline's coming up. Or like, you know, like, do you still want that thing? So just.
- [47:23]
Christina Marbury
Yeah, I think a lot of us are used to getting those sorts of emails from like big businesses, but many people don't realize that most. I'm gonna maybe hesitate to say most because some of the farming.
- [47:34]
Corinna Bench
I don't know about most, but some.
- [47:36]
Christina Marbury
Yeah, ye customizable in this way. But a lot of platforms allow you to send abandoned cart emails. So if somebody's gotten to the point of putting their email address in, but they didn't actually complete the order, it will send them an email. You can, depending on the platform, sometimes you can set like, how long after that happens do you want to send it? And you can often customize the content of those emails too. So if you know what those main three reasons that people abandon their cart might be, if it's the shipping cost or, you know, they didn't realize something about the process, whatever it might be, you can send them some of that information in the email to help streamline and make them aware of what.
- [48:15]
Corinna Bench
Or give them a coupon code and be like, hey, you know, $5 off if you order a buy tonight, or so that. That can sort of sweeten the deal. I know Local Line just added that as a feature to their. To their thing, which has been awesome. The average like cart abandonment rate is like 70%. Apparently. It is so high. And when you think about that, like. And the recovery rate of abandonment emails is. Is pretty decent. Like there's a calculator that I use that I've been given that I kind of sometimes look at. I'm like, wow. And it's proven to be true for us.
- [48:48]
Christina Marbury
Even like 10 of those abandoned carts.
- [48:51]
Corinna Bench
It can. You're making impactful on your. You're making bank. Yeah. And especially because it's automated so there's, it's nothing you have to do except click a toggle a button sometimes, you know, or set up the system, write those two emails. But like. Yeah, it's pretty cool. All right, I'm interrupting you keep going.
- [49:05]
Christina Marbury
Automated email systems I think are one of the like best things that people do to kind of put things on auto and not have to deal with them but still be reaping the rewards of it.
- [49:16]
Corinna Bench
Yeah.
- [49:17]
Christina Marbury
The one other thing in kind of the logistics piece that I wanted to call out is just having an understanding if you think you're gonna have an increase in demand at the holidays. I know if you've never done holiday promotions before, it can be hard to know what that might be. You can always use language of like, like limited supply order now to make sure you get yours, that sort of thing if you don't think you're going to have a significant supply. But this time of the year is great to be scaling production if you, you know, maybe you make like a dried herb mix or something like that that you're able to make a little bit extra of to have on hand. And I think that's particularly helpful for people who have like a value added product that is shelf stable that they're not making it and then you know, worrying that it won't sell.
- [50:02]
Corinna Bench
Yeah. Do you see farms using deadlines at all to help them move?
- [50:07]
Christina Marbury
Sometimes the big holiday deadline things that I see are like if you, if you are, say you're doing like a Thanksgiving food box, you know, have that deadline set of when you need those orders by so that you can fulfill them the week before Thanksgiving or the week of whatever it might be. And then if you know what your like typical shipping time to get something from when you put it in the mail to when it arrives, arrives for the furthest distance and then you know how long you need to prepare those orders, you can put out like a. Okay, if you're ordering a gift for Christmas and you want it to arrive by Christmas, this is the drop dead date to order by. And I think that that can be really helpful. You know, starting a few weeks before that date, starting to communicate that to people so they know.
- [50:59]
Corinna Bench
Yeah, I've even seen, go ahead. Yeah, I haven't seen necessarily farms do this. I'm sure there are some that do but other businesses when it will give like a continuum almost updates. So they'll say order by this day and you know, we can guarantee that it'll get to you by Christmas. Here's the price. If you order after this day, between these days, like we'll get it to you by Christmas, but at this price and you just, you see the shipping fee almost basically go up, up. Yeah. And so that was just a thought I was going to ask you about too. Like, is the shipping a potential place where a farmer could make revenue? You know, where you could kind of. I'm thinking like ebay. Like I just know, I just know that they, they put a shipping price on there that's not the true shipping price. Right. They're like adding a few extra bucks but like.
- [51:50]
Christina Marbury
Yeah.
- [51:51]
Corinna Bench
Is that an option that's open to us where we can in this season when we know demand is high and there are people who are going to be laying great or we can just, you know, tack on some extra dollars to the shipping fee because we know it'll work.
- [52:04]
Christina Marbury
Yeah, yeah, I know there are, there are places that do get like a rush order is like, hey, when your order comes in, I'm gonna pack it immediately. I'm not gonna wait till the, you know, whatever.
- [52:13]
Corinna Bench
I love that. Yeah. And that's even a separate fee. Sometimes it's not even the shipping, it's like a pack fee plus the ship, you know, or like what.
- [52:21]
Christina Marbury
Yeah. And I do, I like giving people shipping options. If your platform allows, you can choose, you know, overnight or two days or you can choose the slowest, cheapest shipping so that those last minute people who aren't worried as much about the shipping price are able to place those orders with the faster shipping so that they can, can get those orders in time. Also a lot of platforms that are built for shipping have the ability to add like a shipping and handling fee. So I know, I always recommend if people have a product they're shipping that requires as like specialized packaging or even just if Your boxes cost 50 cents and it takes you 20 minutes to pack each order, like charge people an extra dollars on top of their shipping to account for that time. So that's typically listed as like a handling fee. And you can often do a dollar amount or a percentage depending on the platform of course. But that can be a nice way to recoup some of those costs. Costs too.
- [53:21]
Corinna Bench
Yeah. I know that sometimes that ends up becoming a reason though that people will abandon the card at the end. Right. If you don't warn them that there are going to be these fees, they're, they're like surprised by these, these multiple things that have been tacked on to the prize and they're like what? This is a $12 item and now I'm paying $40 for it or whatever. Right.
- [53:39]
Christina Marbury
Happened.
- [53:39]
Corinna Bench
Yeah, yeah.
- [53:40]
Christina Marbury
I will say I feel like I've mentioned them a few times but we're when people can make it work. Which I know for farms it does not always make sense but I absolutely love Shopify if its features work for what your business is doing. Because like the handling fee is. Is it just the shipping and handling and has the total cost. It doesn't like break it down separately for you in the checkout. And they also have really good shipping deals. So if you, you get like up to 80% off the shipping cost because they have pre arranged with UPS and the post office to get a discount. So you can put in like the size of the box you're shipping and the weight of the box and then it automatically calculates, calculates the shipping based on where it's starting and where it's ending so it can get people more affordable shipping options, which is really nice.
- [54:32]
Corinna Bench
So you're saying that Shopify has negotiated that on behalf of all the customers. Okay, gotcha.
- [54:37]
Christina Marbury
Yeah, you just buy your shipping label right in your Shopify account and for all your products you put in the weight and the size of the products and your box sizes and then it estimates the cost to ship it and charges the customer that actual cost.
- [54:55]
Corinna Bench
Okay, gotcha. That's cool. I did not know that. Good tip for everyone.
- [54:58]
Christina Marbury
Yeah, but it, you know you can't do like order windows and that sort of stuff in there. So it only works for specific types of products for fun.
- [55:05]
Corinna Bench
Yeah, I know they integrate with like every like SaaS software under the sun. So that's also kind of a nice perk but. Okay, awesome. What, what's next in your kind of.
- [55:16]
Christina Marbury
Training today I will give a quick shout out because we're talking about it that we are just in the process of wrapping up a E commerce guide for farms. So a like yeah, I want to say it's 45 pages long PDF of 13 different e commerce platforms and all the various features that they offer. Some, some breakdowns of it that is going to be released through the Nutrition Incentive Hub. It's a project with them. So keep an eye out in the coming months if you're thinking about farm E commerce for that resource.
- [55:49]
Corinna Bench
Wow. I only know about the one that was done by the CSA Innovation Network. Is this in the Young Farmer, Young Farmers one?
- [55:56]
Christina Marbury
Yeah. So there was a lot of talk about like okay, those were created but they're getting really Outdated. They're outdated because it's been like I think four years since either of them were created. And so they wanted to start something fresh, have a new, a new one out there. So it's, it's coming and we're hoping to be able to update it every year. It seems like there should be funding to be able to keep it updated, which is great.
- [56:20]
Corinna Bench
Awesome. So that's not live yet. It won't be live by the time. Okay, well maybe when it does, let's just you and I remember to come back to the show notes of this episode and put that in there. So if you're listening to this episode sometime in the future, future, it may actually be in the show notes. If you're hearing it first in October of 2024, it won't be in there yet, but soon.
- [56:44]
Christina Marbury
And follow the Nutrition Incentive Hub or the Michigan Farmers Market association, who are that kind of the two organizations now.
- [56:51]
Corinna Bench
Is that going to be a guy that just gives like an overview of the different platforms or is it also like E commerce tips in general? Like what, what's included?
- [56:57]
Christina Marbury
Mostly guides to the platform. There's also some focus on what platforms you can accept snack app through. So where you're able to do EBT cards and it has some CSA specific, like what types of CSAs you can manage on different platforms.
- [57:14]
Corinna Bench
Gotcha.
- [57:16]
Christina Marbury
Yeah. Awesome.
- [57:19]
Corinna Bench
Okay. Is there anything else? I'm going back to my notes.
- [57:22]
Christina Marbury
Yeah, the last section that we were planning to talk about is about effective marketing of your E commerce. So I think you asked me earlier what the biggest mistakes I see. One mistake I regularly see is that people build an E commerce store and expect that because they built it, it will thrive. But you have to tell people about it, you have to market it. So making sure you know that if you're creating these really nice gift offerings and thinking about them as gift offerings, communicate that with your audience over and over and over again throughout the holiday season. So you know, if you want to promote like a special offer to get people to come to your store, whether it's something like the free shipping that Corinna mentioned or it's like buy a 150 gift certificate, get this little special thing to gift with it as, you know, a free add on or something, if you're able to fit it into your margins to do any of those sort of special offers this time of year, people are really looking out for deals and there's a lot of deals out there. And I know that a lot of small businesses aren't able to, you know, offer, offer as extravagant of discounts as many big retailers are. But any little things that you can do to just push people over that last little hump can be very helpful.
- [58:42]
Corinna Bench
Yeah. And I think I would add here too, like to, as you're thinking of the offer, like to, to remember what are your goals, what are some of your revenue goals? And like, we're always trying to get each customer to increase their average order value. Right. So if you can even, can, you know, get everyone to spend 20, 30% more than maybe they would have because of the way you build the offer, like, that's gonna do a lot for you. And so one of the best ways you can do that is to create an incentive like these tiered kind of discounts. So like, if you spend $50, you'll, you'll get this discount. If you spend 75, you'll get this. If you spend a hundred, you get this. So that people will want to climb the ladder and like, they, they're more likely to buy at the hundred dollar level or maybe even the middle level if they see a slight, like, little bit more of a break.
- [59:36]
Christina Marbury
Yeah.
- [59:36]
Corinna Bench
So you got to figure out what those numbers are that make it worth it for you. But that's a, that's a strategy that's worked, real strategy that's worked really well for us, even in the off season or to be like, hey, if you spend 50 bucks, you're going to get a free quarter, quarter plums. I had a, I did that this week and a bunch of people, a bunch of people spend $50 for court for, for plums that I was going to compost. Right. They're just, they just weren't moving. But then I'm like, I'll just give them away along with a recipe for pie tort for a special plum tort. And like, everyone's like, I want the plum tort recipe.
- [60:06]
Christina Marbury
So I just saw that a plum torte is the New York Times cooking's most popular recipe.
- [60:12]
Corinna Bench
Yes.
- [60:12]
Christina Marbury
It's on my list to make this fall.
- [60:15]
Corinna Bench
Yes. That one is really good, by the way. So anyway, that's just something to, to kind of be aware of that the way you build the offer actually can encourage people to do the thing you want them to do, which is put more things in their cart or come back more frequently, you know, to be like, if you, if it's like a little card that if you buy three times or if you send three gifts, we'll give you to three different people. We'll give you something you know, like, just brainstorm.
- [60:44]
Christina Marbury
So, yeah, I've seen people do like gift card discount or deals of like, if you buy X in gift cards, get a bonus this amount for yourself, you know.
- [60:55]
Corinna Bench
Yeah.
- [60:56]
Christina Marbury
As well.
- [60:58]
Corinna Bench
Yeah.
- [60:58]
Christina Marbury
Ways to. To come up with those offers.
- [61:01]
Corinna Bench
Yeah. So your point is like, we have to tell people.
- [61:05]
Christina Marbury
Yeah.
- [61:05]
Corinna Bench
To actually go to the point of sale. Just assume they will think of it or assume they will know how to find it.
- [61:13]
Christina Marbury
Yes, exactly. So whatever marketing systems you have out there, you know, whether it's email or social or flyers in your local community, poster boards, you know, whatever it is, make sure you're promoting specifically those gifting options or holiday offers as well.
- [61:31]
Corinna Bench
Yeah.
- [61:32]
Christina Marbury
And then the last thing I just wanted to call out on that. That side is local partnerships can be so impactful when it comes to local food businesses getting their products exposed to new people. So, you know, maybe it's that you. You get that gift basket into a store that you have a good relationship with so that people aren't just seeing it on your E Commerce, they're seeing it in person as well. Or you, you know, bring products together from a few different businesses to create that holiday offering. And then it's something that all of your businesses are promoting together. So instead of only reaching your audience, you're reaching the audience of all three businesses that are part of this product. Giveaways also on social media can be a really good holiday incentive to get the word out about products as well. Yeah. So just.
- [62:20]
Corinna Bench
Yeah.
- [62:20]
Christina Marbury
That you're doing the marketing side of it.
- [62:22]
Corinna Bench
Yeah. And. And I'm gonna bring up something. I did a whole episode on this like a year ago, but we collaborated. Well, I guess actually we didn't collaborate with a specific place, but we had the idea to. We call them Thanksgiving feed the need bags. And we just wanted to give our produce away to the. To the local food pantry. But rather than us just bringing thousands of dollars worth of our leftover produce, we're like, let's have our customers do it for us. So we'll just make a bunch of bags and they. They have to buy the bag for a buck. It was like a $30 bag, but we're like, they have to buy the bag for a buck, and then they just come pick it up and we just ask them to give it to a specific person they know in need. Right. And so what that actually ended up doing the first year. We had no intention of this actually being the reason, but it caused. It was our largest sales day in history. Because I think people, I don't know if they felt like a sense of reciprocity, like, oh, I want to do something good, you know, for the farmer. I don't know. I don't know if they just felt like, wow, I'm getting 30 for free. I feel like I should spend some. But there was, it was just huge. We had so many people. Like, maybe it was just the magnet that drew people in because it was a neat, a neat thing, a neat offer. Right. And then they're like, oh, I'll get some stuff while I'm here. They kind of threw stuff in their bag. But that was sort of a collaboration in a way. I'm sure you could do something like that with an actual food bank too. So.
- [63:51]
Christina Marbury
Yeah. Yeah. That made me think about a farm up here in Leelanau county that has a program where they, they donate CSAs to schools. And the schools give them to families in need that are part of their community. And they have a system for people to donate towards that so that they're not just giving away the food, but people in the community are paying for the food that then gets to the people who need it. And a lot of people are looking for ways to, you know, do gifts that are more of a donation gift or, you know, people are looking to spend money in many different ways this time of year. So offering something like that as a gifting option could be a great opportunity as well.
- [64:29]
Corinna Bench
Yeah, I mean, I would argue that people, a lot of people are actually trying to find unique ways to be in this. The reason for the season, which is supposed to be gratitude and giving. Right. Not just getting. And so I want to give them an opportunity, a fun way to give. So let's talk before we leave this topic about when. When do you issue these promotions? Because, you know, there's probably a lot of discussion about that. The holiday. When does the holiday season kind of start? When is the ideal time to monetize? And when is there kind of a drop dead point where, like, now you're too late? Like, what's the ideal? Should we be starting, like, November 1st? Like when I see decorations for Christmas, you know, in August now, it's crazy. I'm not saying do that, but, like, what is, what does that look like for our farm business? When are we starting to pitch things, Things for Thanksgiving, for Christmas? What are your thoughts?
- [65:26]
Christina Marbury
Yeah, I would say if you're planning to do things that are specific to Thanksgiving, starting early November, even if you're just starting by knowing what your offer is, having your system set up and putting it out there that you have something for Thanksgiving, you know, just like dropping it occasionally. And then I'd say really like, like the two weeks before Thanksgiving would be the time to, like, push hard. And obviously some of it depends on what your own order deadlines are like. I generally want people to give it at least two weeks to promote an offer ahead of whatever that order deadline is, because people take time to make those decisions and they often need to hear it more than once and see it in more than one place. And then when it comes to gifting, there are people who will tell you, like, October is the time to start for gifting. I think that you don't need to do that unless you're expecting gifting to be like a huge part of your annual revenue, which most farms are not. And so I would say, you know, looking at, like, just after Thanksgiving being a really good time to start talking about gifts, I know some people will get excited about, like, Cyber Monday, but I think that that is a time that people are really just looking for discounts, not looking for gifts. So unless you have some really awesome deal, I think sometimes it's like shouting into the void on a day like that, when there is a lot of asking going on out there, a lot of ad spend, a lot of emails ending up in people's inboxes. So waiting and starting, you know, just after that period, I think can sometimes be nice as well.
- [67:09]
Corinna Bench
Yeah. I think what you're helping me realize, though, is that every farm business has an opportunity in November and December to make more money. Because if you think about it, there's. There's a buying habit in our culture. Like people are looking for things to buy for their loved ones, and why not put your offer in front of them as one of the options? They might say no, they might choose something else, but. But they'll definitely say no if you don't put an option out there at all. So.
- [67:39]
Christina Marbury
Yeah. And how incredible if like 1% of the American population gifted farm goods for Christmas? How incredible would that be? And how much money would that be in the pockets of our. Our incredible farms?
- [67:52]
Corinna Bench
Yeah. So even if you're a farm like mine that's pretty much like down and out, like we go on vacation hardcore for like three months and we're not really doing anything in December, or this is kind of a challenge to me to think of, well, is there something. Something small that you could offer just to throw it out there, even just to test it for your. That. That isn't going to take a lot of effort on your part just to see if you can tap into your audience. This is also like partly like buying habits. Right. Like we are trying to create offers on a regular basis to train the customer to keep coming back and buy. So. So that's one of the downsides of a business like mine that goes quiet for three months, three or four months. Because now that buying habit has been stopped and it's harder to kind of start it back up again. So when you can have like a rhythm, like even if it's once a month, you show up again. I got something just to keep that, like keep you front and center so people know you're there.
- [68:49]
Christina Marbury
Yeah. And if, if you do, really, if this is a time where you aren't harvesting a lot, you aren't selling a lot, focus on things like CSA shares and gift certificates for the coming year. You know, those are things that you can be selling to bring in revenue, but you don't really have to take any steps immediately in order to fulfill other than, you know, getting them on the list or getting that gift certificate to them, whether it's, you know, just an email within your E commerce platform or whatever it might be.
- [69:19]
Corinna Bench
Yeah, I love that, that. Okay, so what is kind of. Let's just wrap up your call to action. Like if you could walk away from this discussion. What are the things we need to remember?
- [69:28]
Christina Marbury
Yeah, I will say one, that there is a downloadable checklist of all the things that I mentioned.
- [69:36]
Corinna Bench
Oh, that's right.
- [69:38]
Christina Marbury
Which we should have said at the start.
- [69:39]
Corinna Bench
We should have. I'll make sure I bring that up earlier in my, in my bio. I'll bring that up.
- [69:45]
Christina Marbury
Perfect. Yeah. So if you've been listening and thinking, I should have been writing all this down, there's going to be a download in the show notes that has kind of the, the step by step things that we talked about, but the three kind of do these things now. Things that I would recommend that people do are figure out what those offers are. Optimize your products on your site. Even if you just focus on the gift ones to make sure they have a photo and a good title and a good description. And then making sure that your shoplift link, especially if it's, you know, not the link to your website you want people to go directly to. Your E commerce store is available on your social platforms. Make sure that it's, you know, shop now, buy gifts, whatever that CTA might be. Call to action is, you know, in the header of your website everywhere and easy to access for people.
- [70:40]
Corinna Bench
Perfect. Short and Sweet. I love it. Let's just wrap up by if somebody is now like intrigued because they're like, wow, she knows what she's talking about. I might want to work with them. This feels, this feels like a heavy lift. Let's talk a little bit about taste, the local difference and how a farmer could start working with an agency like yours. How do they even know if they're ready to work with an agency?
- [71:09]
Christina Marbury
Yeah, I think most farms we, we have a very everyone is welcome sort of way of working and we want to help those people who maybe even don't feel like they're quite ready for it. We, we like to work with people who, who want to improve anyways. Often the people who are like ripe and ready are, I think I said this earlier, but the people who know they need to like take a step and maybe they feel like they have product that they're not selling and maybe part of the reason is that they're not communicating their offering, communicating to their audience correctly. Those are great people to come to us also people who, you know, maybe you've been going to the farmer's market and just selling at market but you haven't, you know, started taking advantage of some of these other ways that you can market your business. Coming to us early on can be really nice because honestly our favorite projects are when we get to like design a fresh logo and coordinate a photo shoot and then build a website and build an e commerce platform and build an email structure that's going to work for you. We love working with people from the ground up anyways. So there are lots of people who I think are the right folks at the right point to come get support from. Taste the local difference. If you just want to kind of get a sense for what we do, you can head to. We have two websites but the one that is focused on our marketing services is, is Simply Local Food Marketing.com and it has some basic overviews of a lot of our products. It also has like starting app prices for everything that we offer. So you know like you can get a website that we built for you for $999. It's a single page website. It's not you know, 18 pages about everything your farm does, but it gets you a great home online that is optimized for people to be able to find you and know how they can then support your business.
- [73:06]
Corinna Bench
I believe you have some like, like a portfolio too, don't you where people can look at.
- [73:10]
Christina Marbury
Yeah. On that site as well. We have some examples of past work different projects that we've worked on and we also have a lot of resources. So we have a blog and some, you know, free downloads and links to webinar recordings that are on our YouTube channel. So if you're just like wanting to read more about marketing, it's a good place to build off of everything you've learned from Corinna as well.
- [73:31]
Corinna Bench
Well, yeah. So if they, if they want to actually start, let's just say they want to work on their website. What is the typical amount of time? I guess if I were someone that was thinking about working with an agency, one of my questions would be like, how long is this going to take? So what is the typical. And I know it depends on the.
- [73:51]
Christina Marbury
Project, but yeah, it does depend somewhat on the project. I will say for like an informational website, usually I'm gonna say two months as well. Those single page 999 websites, as soon as you get us the information, we can have it done within a few weeks. It's like a quick turnaround and then something, you know, like an E commerce store is usually going to be like a two to three month commitment. We try really, really hard to make it as easy as possible on the business owners because we know you're busy. So I will share a little bit about kind of like the steps that we go through for something like a website. We always have a kickoff meeting and we try to gather all the information we need in that meeting, you know, so get what, everything we need to know about your business to write your website content and make sure you know what you need to send us. So generally what we need from the businesses are like your logo files and any branding information you have and photos. And then if you are doing an E commerce site, that detailed product list is sometimes the thing that holds people up because it, if you haven't done E commerce, it takes some time to put together that product list and then we build it from there. We write the content, we send it to you so you can say, great, that looks good. And then we build the whole site and then we share it with you for review. Bigger projects, sometimes we have multiple meetings, but a lot of projects we can do like a meeting at the start, maybe one in the middle and one at the end so we can, you know, try and streamline the amount of time that you need to spend in the project. And then the other big piece of what we do and why we really care about it is that websites specifically, a lot of agencies will kind of hold ownership of your website. And require you to pay them an ongoing fee for them to host it for you. And we think that if you've paid for a website, you should own the website. So whenever we build something, we always make the client the owner of it in the end, after, you know, final invoices are paid. And then we do a training session at the end of. Pretty much every service we offer ends with a training session in order to teach you how to make updates on your own site, teach you if you've signed up for an E commerce platform, teach you how to use that e commerce platform and process the orders and you know, make it work within your business. And then we're always here if you're like, oh, I, I need somebody else to take care of this for me. We have like maybe maintenance plans and such, but they are not required by any means. It's just for people who feel like they need that support.
- [76:23]
Corinna Bench
So is step one like just a console call? Like, is it a free consultation to just figure out if this is a good fit?
- [76:29]
Christina Marbury
Yeah. So we have on our site there's a form you can fill out and if you fill it out, our customer success strategist, Carrie will reach out and have just a quick initial call with you. Usually it's about 15 minutes. And she, she, you know, gets a sense of what you're looking for and what kind of support you might need and what your budget is. And she has a really good understanding of like where things tend to fall within the budget outside of just that, starting at price. So that's the first step. And then, you know, there are depending on your needs, sometimes you can go straight into a project from there. Sometimes, you know, there might be some additional discovery meetings to really get a sense of what you need. If you need something more customized.
- [77:08]
Corinna Bench
Yeah. Well, I know you guys do amazing work. I recommend you. When people reach out to me and they're like, can you do my email sequence for me? I'll always be like, I don't actually do custom work anymore, but I can, I can send you to tld. They do a great job. So I'll make sure that your link is in the show notes. I know we have a collaboration, so I think it's really cool working with you. And then this resource that we've put together is also going to be in the show notes. You want to talk about that a little bit?
- [77:43]
Christina Marbury
Yeah, it is sort of an outline of all the things that I talked about. You know, high level points. It is organized in a way that you can print it off and use it as an actual checklist. So you, you know, if you're want to get ready for the holiday season, you have a step by step guide of all of the things that you need to do.
- [78:01]
Corinna Bench
Awesome. Well, where can people go to learn more about TLD or just follow you?
- [78:06]
Christina Marbury
Yeah, so I mentioned it once but our, our marketing services website is local food marketing.com if you want to learn more about the big picture of all TLD does and what we've done over 20 years, which is a whole lot of things to promote local food specifically in Michigan. That website is local difference.org and then we have the saint same two kind of separations on social as well. We're at local Food marketing on Instagram and Facebook for you know, tips and tricks and information about our services and taste the Local Difference for more consumer oriented content about eating local food.
- [78:44]
Corinna Bench
Gotcha. You have that, that consumer guide that goes out every year. Is that the, the, the second one you mentioned? That's more.
- [78:53]
Christina Marbury
And they're on that on localdifference.org there's also a digital directory of food and farm businesses in Michigan. So if you are, are in Michigan or visiting Michigan, it's a great place to go and you know, look, get.
- [79:06]
Corinna Bench
Your name on there.
- [79:07]
Christina Marbury
I want you get your name listed there definitely. And if you're visiting or traveling, it's a great place to, you know, find a place to eat or find a farm to support.
- [79:16]
Corinna Bench
Yeah, yeah, that, that document is gorgeous like that. It's a gorgeous magazine that comes out every year and if you can get your name in there, that's going to help you with the locals but also the tourists. Well, this has been so fun. Christina, thanks for coming onto the show and I look forward to our future collaboration. I'm sure you'll be on here again in the years to come. So thanks so much for being here.
- [79:43]
Christina Marbury
Thanks so much for having me. It was really wonderful.
- [79:47]
Corinna Bench
I hope you got a lot out of that. Don't forget to go and check out the show notes for the checklist of all the stuff we just talked about. There's a really good resource in there for you to download and you can get that@mydigitalfarmer.com 284 well, thank you so much for joining me today. If you liked this episode, please leave me a rating or a review on Apple Podcasts, would you? I'd really appreciate that. It helps more people find out about the show or go tell a friend about it, another farmer friend in one of your Facebook groups or on your listserv. So more and more people find out about this marketing resource and if you know somebody who would be a great guest on the show. I'm trying to find some people to interview over these next few months during the off season. Please reach out to me and I will follow up with them. We'll see if we're a good fit. I'm also now on Instagram ydigital Farmer. I would love to connect with you there, there. And if you are interested in coming into my community and getting some coaching from me, I'd love to see you inside of farm marketing school. I'm going to pitch that one more time. You can come to mydigitalfarmer.com FMS just give it a shot for like a month and see if you like it. I think, I think you're gonna really like it and get a lot of value out of it. If you need some help finally putting together your market marketing system, this is, this is the place to do it. And so I want to encourage you to make that a commitment in this off season. Give it a few months and I'll help you. I will hold your hand and I'll get you some progress. Okay. So head to mydigitalfarmer.com FMS thanks for joining me today, everyone. I believe in you and I will see you next time. Bye. Bye.