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My Digital Farmer Podcast
294 The Signing Day Experience: What my Son's School Taught Me About Building Customer Loyalty
00:53:13
January 7, 2025 by Corinna Have you ever had an experience so profound it shifted how you think about connection and loyalty? In this episode, I’m sharing a deeply personal story from my son’s new school—a “Signing Day” event that completely...
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Corinna Bench
How do you turn your customers into lifelong, loyal superfans? I just had an incredible experience at my son's signing day event at his school that showed me exactly how to do this, and I want to share the story and pull out the principles for you, because if you can pull this off, this is powerful stuff. 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. Welcome to episode 294 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 get more confident in their marketing and sales strategy so that you can grow a profitable business. How's everyone doing? Welcome back to the show and Happy New Year. If you are new to the podcast, I'm really glad you're here today. Make sure that you subscribe to the show and go check out the first first 10 episodes. I designed them to be an onboarding ramp into the farm marketing space. Another place to go and learn the ropes is to get onto my email list, because when you do, I'm going to send you an email roughly every five days for about three months. And it's going to slowly drip out. The most important things that you need to know, the principles to follow, the influencers to follow, the tools that you need. It's really good. It gets high marks from my farmers who have joined it. So you can get that by going to mydigitalfarmer.com subscribe and it's totally free. Today's podcast is sponsored by my friends at localline. Imagine all of your farm sales under one roof. Localline is the most comprehensive sales software built for farmers and food hubs, selling direct to restaurants, schools, wholesale buyers, CSA and more. Features include E commerce, automated inventory management, a box builder, subscriptions, point of sale, and more, helping you increase your sales, save time and streamline your processes. Are you looking to switch to sales software that does it? All subscriptions start as low as $49 a month with no setup fees or sales percentages. Plus, if you join LocalLine today, your onboarding manager will migrate your storefront at no cost, so you'll be up and running in no time. You can even pause your subscription in the off season now. Bonus. As a podcast listener, localline is also offering a free premium feature for one year with your subscription when you use my coupon code. So to grab that, go to mydigitalfarmer.com localline that's one word and then enter the coupon code MDF2025. We love localline. We've been using it for years. I highly recommend them make the switch today. And now back to the show. Well, happy New Year everyone. Welcome back to the show. I hope you had a little bit of time off in the last week or two to celebrate the new year. You may have noticed that we didn't have an episode last week and that was intentional, but I don't think I warned you. So some of you were reaching out to me, making sure everything was okay. I appreciate that. Yes, all is well. I continue to heal and I'm enjoying a more relaxed off season than I have in years past. I always do some goal setting work in the month of December and this year's. This past year's was really fruitful and the outcomes from that debriefing and goal setting process were very different than in years past. I feel like the things that I've learned this past year due to my health journey have been very profound and this will probably be one of those turning point moments in my life. And as a result, some of the goals that I set for this coming year were a lot less tangible. They're much more introspective and willing to live in the moment and explore some of, I don't know, the inner workings of Corinna. So I'm just excited about what this next year is going to bring. I'm being very open to whatever God brings me and have a little bit of specificity about some things I want to accomplish. But I really am just giving myself space to continue to explore the new Karina and heal and just let whatever's supposed to happen happen. So I wish that for you as well and continuing to look forward to being on this podcast every week. That is still in my plan. So let's get started with today's episode, which is actually coming out of an experience that I had this past December with my youngest son, Josiah. Periodically, I like to share stories on the podcast of real life things that happen to me, especially when I see A marketing principle in action. And so that's what happened in today's story. I'm going to share the experience with you and as I share it, I'm also going to be pointing out some of the lessons, the marketing and sales lessons that I think are present in this story. So here's what happened. My son Josiah recently decided that he wants to go to a different school next year. So when he's currently in eighth grade, when he goes to high school, he's decided he doesn't want to stay in our current district, but that he wants to open enroll in a public school, a Toledo public school called Toledo Technology Academy. And this is a school that tries to recruit students who are gifted and interested in engineering. So math and science are strong suits. And this is definitely my son. He's always been interested in the mechanics of things. The types of machines that he's built with Legos would blow you away. He's made working engines. The vacuum cleaner is running in his room quite often, but not because he's cleaning the carpets, but rather because he's experimenting on his vacuum engines that he's building. So he's pretty remarkable. And we've encouraged him to explore that gift for some time now. I think it became apparent to us that our current school in our district just it was we have a good school system. I used to sit on the school board, but it's just not going to be able to challenge him and serve him. So we were beginning to look at other options. So he looked at this school. Last semester we went on a tour, he decided he wanted to do it. And once we told the school we were informed that there was a signing day that we were invited to attend. In fact, we got a very fancy looking invitation in the mail from the principal. And so we RSVP'd. I invited Josiah's grandparents to come with us and Josiah missed about half a day of school so he could attend his new school's signing day event. Now this event was so remarkable in its production value that it created some pretty powerful emotions inside of me and I think also in my son. And because of that, I found myself feeling differently towards this brand, towards this school, and frankly towards the whole upcoming four year experience with it. It changed the way I am looking at the school and I think what I'm expecting of it and what I'm expecting of myself as a parent and what I expect of my son. As I was reflecting on this signing day experience, I realized that it was so well engineered by the marketing team or the sales team of this school. I'm sure that it was a PR position like that. It was positioned as a PR move. And I think that it has an effect on how the students and parents are going to end up experiencing the school in the long run. So I wanted to describe to you what this experience was, how it made me feel. And then I'm going to pull out a few principles at the end that I think apply to how we run our businesses. So what is a signing day? I feel like it's a little bit like when you see athletes who join a team and the television stations make a big deal about it and they show the athlete holding up their jersey and there's the coach next to them and there's lights flashing and there's a big rah, rah PR moment made of this moment, this person signing on to the team. It's a little bit like that. So all of the students who have accepted that, yes, I want to come to your school, are invited to this event. It's held in the auditorium, which is this beautiful space. This is a gorgeous building. It almost feels like a. Like a college building, college campus. The entire student body is invited to attend. So all of the students that are currently going to this school from 7th grade through 12th grade are in the auditorium watching the entire thing happen. Up on this stage is the principal and one other senior administrator. I think it was some kind of a teacher, but it was hard to tell she was buying to podium. And she opened with some remarks, inviting, welcoming the parents and students, reminding them what an honor it is to be selected into this school and what they were going to do for them and how excited they are that we are going to be a part of this institution and this legacy. And then one by one, they call out the names of the students who are in the audience that are going to be signing. And they come up to the stage, they shake hands with both of the administrators, and then they walk to this giant whiteboard that has class of 2028, class of 2029, class of 2030, whatever on it. And they sign their name underneath their class. And as they do so, the entire auditorium erupts with applause and cheering one by one as the students are called across. And then they go and sit down in their seats. Parents and grandparents and loved ones have been invited to witness this event. And there are even some alumni in the audience as well. Afterwards, the TV cameras, because yes, the local TV media had been invited to this, interviewed some parents and students about why it is that they chose to go to Toledo Technology Academy and why they're excited about it. And then afterwards, there was a reception in the dining hall with cookies and coffee and tea. And when you left, you were given a gift bag with a bunch of Toledo swag inside for free. And a sign, a yard sign to put out in your yard that proudly say, states that you have been accepted into the Toledo Technology Academy Class of 20, 29 or what? So I just want you to imagine all of that happening in about 30 minutes of time. There were five students in my son's class that were signing that day. There were a whole lot more signing up for the next seventh grade class since that's the. The big class where they all, most of them enter. And because my son was entering in kind of midway, most people begin in seventh grade, he's coming in in the ninth grade year. There aren't as many spots open for his particular grade. Since some of the students drop out at the end of every year, they either they don't make it, they don't cut it, they don't make good grades, or they decide they don't like it. There's always a few spots that open. And this was sort of the last chance that Josiah had to enroll. And there were, as it were, there were enough spots for him to get in. So it. It felt, I bring this up because it felt even more special to get in at this stage in the game because there just. There's more competition for those final spots. Okay. So at the end of this presentation, I felt so proud of my son. Now I already feel proud of him, and I see immense gifts in him, but this event made me feel something else, like just more elevated. I sensed that it was an honor to go to this school, to get into this school, that we were lucky to have been chosen. I got this feeling that they saw something special in my son, which is why they let him in. I felt proud that we were going to be going to a school that clearly had such a bar of excellence. And I felt confident that they were going to be able to deliver an incredible experience to him and that we would be in good hands for the next four years. And I was grateful that they were making a big deal about this and that they were welcoming us, this huge body of students behind us, cheering in my son and. And making him feel like, this is where you should come. You fit in here. This is where we engineering folks hang out. You belong. That's a really powerful feeling. And I ultimately walked out of that auditorium on fire. For Toledo public schools, wanting to be the most loyal super fan parent that I could be. And I guess loyalty is what comes to mind the most. I felt more loyal because of this event. And what's interesting is that they didn't have to have this event. They could have just said, you got in. Congratulations. I would have been very happy with that. Sent me a nice letter signed by the principal. We could have celebrated that. And then, you know, sent me some emails to onboard us and let us know, here's what you need to do to actually open enroll and here's what you do on the first day of class. That would have been, you know, bare minimum what I would have expected. To create this special event and make a really big deal about. It was a little over the top, and yet by doing so, it created an extra element of wow and loyalty. So I, I wanted to spend the rest of the episode reflecting with you on why was this event so effective? Why was it so powerful? What were the principles at play here that were creating a loyal new student, new parent, and how did this event orchestrate that feeling in me? And what can we learn from it as marketers of a farm business? Because after all, a student is kind of like a customer, and the parent is, you know, buying into this school, into what the school promises, and the school needs to deliver on what they promise. And they guide the student through a customer experience, a learning experience over the next four years. And if they do a good job and the family has a good experience, we will be loyal alumni that will talk up this school. Right? And so how do we do this kind of work with our customers? What does this story teach us? So the first thing that I want to point out to you is that they created a moment of recognition in the customer journey. My son was celebrated in a highly public way with the entire student body, principal, TV crews cheering him on, alumni. And this public acknowledgment made our whole family feel valued, noticed, worthy, special. And I think when you think about the implications for your business, customers crave recognition for their decisions, for their skill sets within your product. They crave recognition for their loyalty. Have you noticed this? I'm sure you can think of some examples where you have praised someone in your group. I do it quite often inside my private Facebook group for my CSA members, where I will just lift up one of the people in there and point them out as a superstar. Publicly acknowledging and celebrating them can elevate their sense of belonging. And now they feel more committed than ever to your brand. So I think that's what was going on here. It was the first act in our relationship with them is to create a moment of recognition. So I was thinking about, you know, if you're a CSA farm, what could this look like? And it could be as simple as spotlighting your CSA member on social media, or writing up something in your weekly newsletter about one of your clients, or having a section where you highlight three or four superstars in your CSA and why, why you're mentioning them this week, or giving one of the CSA members in your group a title like Grill Master. I know Bobcini, and Bobcini is sort of known as the. The ultimate baker in our group. And Brian Hammer is this Grill Master. Giving them these titles makes them feel like they're noticed. So that's just one simple way that you can acknowledge this. But you could also do something like hosting a welcome event for new subscribers periodically in your schedule or for new CSA members when they're introduced to your farm family and make a big deal about it. Those are just two that came to the top of my head. But I want you to just ruminate on this principle here of creating a moment of recognition in the customer journey, either at the beginning, when they first start, or even periodically throughout the journey as they progress through you. Maybe when they hit certain milestones that you know are a big deal in the growth and development of a typical customer, you celebrate that in some way and you recognize them. So what does that look like for you? Okay. The other principle I saw here at play was elevating the value of participation. So this event was, this event framed the act of being accepted into the school as a big deal. It had a formal ceremony. There was a television crew, there was a reception. It wasn't just, oh, sign up for our school. It was an achievement to actually get in. It was an achievement to sign up and do the signing day. Right. So I think the implication here for, for your marketing is elevating the value of your product. You can elevate the value of your product or your service when you frame it as something exclusive, as something important, hard to get into, or an accomplishment to be a part of. And so this ends up making the customer feel like they're a part of something really rare and, and special. So what does this look like in a farm context? I was trying to think of a few examples here. And again, I immediately think of CSA just because that's what my farm predominantly is. But position your CSA or farm products as premium or exclusive. You can do that with your Pricing, but also with your language. You can do it through the number of people that you let in. You can use messaging like join an elite group of local food lovers who care about their health, who care about their farmers, who care about local. You could create a members only event. You could create some kind of VIP status within your brand, a level that has perks. You could have a wait list. Even the very act of having a wait list and that your item is scarce makes a person feel special when they can get in. Right? Some kind of qualifier that they have to meet before they're allowed in. These are just some things to play around with. Some of that I know might feel a little bit weird, but I want to just challenge you to think about what can I do to elevate the value of being a participant in my brand? What does that look like? How can I position my product that way? And this school did it simply by having a formal ceremony and TV crews showing up and deciding, we're going to make a big deal about a signing day moment. Okay, all right. The third principle that I saw at play here, this is a big one, Is how they welcomed their new students into a community. And this is powerful if you want to build loyalty, welcome people into a community identity. The cheering of the crowds, you know. You know what it reminded me of? It reminded me of the Harry Potter book, which when, if you're a Harry Potter fan like we are, when Harry Potter first goes to Hogwarts his first year and he has to get assigned to one of the different groups, and the way that they do that is they wear the sorting hat. The sorting hat gets put onto your head and the sorting hat decides which house you're going to be put into. And then when you're selected for a certain house, the whole house cheers for you and celebrates you like, yes, this is where you belong. And then you go over to those tables in the dining room and you sit with your house. Okay. It reminded me of that, this whole experience when he was called up by name, signed his name, and everyone cheered and I was like, oh, it's like he's being told, you belong here. You belong here at this school. And let me tell you, for a student who's really geeked out about mechanics and engineering and likes to talk about engines and all that stuff, there aren't too many people like that in his school right now. And I know that he's really looking forward to finding a group of peers that enjoy doing the same things he enjoys doing. And that is a powerful that is an attractive quality about this school. Right. So the cheering, the reception, they weren't just for my son, though. They were for us as an entire family. And it made me feel like I belonged at this school as well. And I'm sitting with a whole bunch of other parents in the first three rows of the auditorium, looking around at them, saying, some of these people I'm going to end up becoming friends with because we have a common denominator of a child who loves machines. And we're going to be on this journey together. So what are the marketing implications here? People value a sense of belonging. It's actually one of the core needs that every human being has. We, on a very deep level, need to feel like we belong. It creates a feeling of safety in us. So when you can make your customers feel that they are a part of a larger community, they are more likely to stick around with you for years to come. And they're more likely to advocate for your brand and find other people like them to join your brand. They end up becoming some of your best brand ambassadors and they attract more of your ideal customer. So however we can get our customers to feel like they belong, doing activities that show you belong in this group, this is where brainstorming can really help you. What are the mechanisms that cause a person to sense, oh, I belong to this community? So hosting a farm tour, having a potluck, or inviting people to a field to table dinner, those workshops where they can come and meet you or meet, not just meet you, but meet other people like them and do the workshop together, Those are some really common examples of how this community building piece is often done on farm businesses. But social media groups can foster member interaction. I know my private Facebook group is one of the main ways that we build community with our CSA members. Now, not as many people are in the Facebook group as, say, four years ago. Just because I think more and more people are trying to control, you know, how much they're on Facebook, but it's still really powerful. And we'll do contests and challenges, virtual challenges in this group, and people will share their ideas, their. Their entries for the contest. They're also posting pictures of what they made with the food. They're asking questions. Right. All of that activity and engagement in the social media community is also creating this feeling of, you belong here. And as new members join, I'm watching this happen right now. As we've had a slew of new members come in for next season. I'm watching my community welcome them. It used to be That I was the one who did that and now my community is doing it, too. That's powerful stuff. That's powerful stuff. So I want you to think about, what does this look like for my business? Where am I currently doing this right now? Well, where am I welcoming people? How am I onboarding them? Making them feel like you belong here? This is exactly where you need to be. These are your people. Wear my swag. What's that phrase on your shirt that identifies them as one of your people? Right. And have they claimed that identity yet? This is a really big solidifier of loyalty. Today's podcast is sponsored by Farm Marketing School. This is my monthly online membership program for beginning to intermediate farmers that's designed to teach you the ropes of farm marketing, but also, more importantly, to help you actually build the most essential marketing assets that you need to have in your farm business if you want to thrive. Now, I know you know how important systems are. You have systems in your business for all kinds of things in the production realm, but you also need systems in your marketing and sales, especially if you want to scale up and get to that point where you can have a team, hire a great group of people and be less and less involved in the minutiae of your business. So inside of Farm Marketing School, there are over 15 different classes that you can take. You join for a monthly fee and you can have access to all of them. You can binge them all if you want, or you can be selective about which ones you want to deploy. They're each designed to take about 30 days and you watch the training video and then you actually build that particular marketing asset. Whether it's updating the homepage of your website, or it's writing an email nurture sequence, or it's practicing writing a weekly email really well, or building out different kinds of promotion offers so many different projects inside of there. I also give you a resource folder with examples and templates to shortcut the process. Sometimes I have bonus videos that give you a step by step of how to do the tech work. It's really good. It gets really high marks. So I encourage you in your off season to take some time and invest in building out the sales and marketing systems in your business. To join Farm Marketing School and try it out for a month, head to mydigitalfarmer.com fms and now back to the show. Okay, let's move on to number four. This event signaled prestige and excellence. I feel like I've said that already, but I wanted to give it its own section Here. Toledo Tech Academy orchestrated this event to feel prestigious with formal ceremonies. It had a high production value. And what this did was this communicated to me that the school was a place of excellence and that enrolling was something to be proud of. The fact that he got in was something I should be proud of. We were walking the halls to go to the reception afterwards, and I was just in awe of the building. I mean, the environment was helping here. The fact that they staged it in the gorgeous auditorium with high ceilings, I just felt like we are in, you know, some acclaimed hall of learning. And the whole thing just felt that elevated, like I was in some kind of college campus. So how you present your brand matters. I guess that is sort of the implication from this. A polished professional experience is going to elevate your perceived value and it's going to make your customers feel like they're making a wise investment. A lot of you guys are luxury products. The way that you've positioned the price of your brand essentially has marked you as somewhat of a luxury item. And that right there automatically sets you apart as a place of prestige, a place of excellence. And I think that's a good thing to show that you value your product and they should too, and they should be willing to pay for it. So as I was thinking about examples of how this plays out in a farm business, the obvious first one that came to mind was just investing in high quality branding and high quality packaging for your products that can communicate excellence. Beautiful curated events like those farm to table, those long table events, we always have at least one a year. And part of that is its position at the end of the season. And I pay attention to the aesthetics of that and the price point of that because I want people to feel. Feel elevated. I want them to feel like this is a special community that I'm a part of, that I get to be a part of. There's a little bit of prestige, a little bit of status involved in being a part of this community, and it reflects the care, the excellence, the quality behind my farm. So making our CSA or our online store feel premium. We can do that by really watching how we build that, that polished customer experience. Right. All right, number five, I have a couple more I wanted to bring up here. This event anchored an emotional experience. It took me a long time to figure out that phrase anchors the emotional experience. So this event wasn't just a functional event. It wasn't just like a transactional thing. We've got to do this, come sign your name, blah, blah, blah, blah. He didn't have to sign his name. He could have just said, I want to do this. But they created this moment. Let's have him sign his name on a whiteboard. And that's going to create some extra buy in and some emotion. And it did. It was deeply emotional. Seeing my son celebrated like this sparked pride. It sparked joy, which I now associate with the school. Are you catching that? That emotion has been imprinted on my entire impression of the school and they engineered that. So here's the marketing implication. This is a big one. Emotional moments create lasting memories and they create loyalty. When your customers feel something deeply, they are more likely to stay connected to your brand and they are more likely to remember you. Emotions really help us remember things. I used to, I caught on to this principle when I was in ministry many, many years ago as a youth minister. This is one of the reasons why taking our students away for a weekend to a weekend retreat or a conference with other students or a youth convention is so powerful. Because those events, they happen in auditoriums with, with really good bands and music and great speakers and the lights go, go out and there's, there's just emotion. You're staying up late until like 2 in the morning, having heart to hearts, having a, you know, a campfire where you share your heart. Like there's emotion all over the place. And because of that, powerful things get unlocked and you remember those moments and you create these loyalty commitments and decisions. And so that was something that I learned firsthand, how emotion can really be a driver for building loyalty and commitments and decisions in people. So when, when you're thinking about how do I create a loyal customer? I want you to start brainstorming. How can I create emotional reactions in them? How can I create events that will spark emotions? Because that's stuff that will burn into their brain and they'll remember that forever and they'll associate you with it. So we want positive emotions. This also works against you. If your customer has a negative emotion that's going to be hard for them to let go of, you'll have to work, you know, five times as hard, give them five times as many good experiences and good feelings to overcome that one negative one. So think about that. So create experiences that stir emotions. Like seeing their child pick their first strawberry at your U pick field, right? Or, you know, this just happened this past year. One of my CSA members, she's been with me for a really long time and her husband came down with cancer and he went into hospice. In the last like three weeks of our CSA Season. He had been coming every week with her in the car to pick up their box and their share. And they had told me that he was stage four and that it was just a matter of time. And so I started giving him a bouquet of flowers. And when he finally could no longer come to the pickup site, he just couldn't drive. He was staying at home. I kept giving the flowers to his wife and I said, would you just pass this to him? And she told me in weeks after that, she's like, he loves getting these flowers. It is such a bright spot. Spot. She's like, I know, that's so silly. He's a guy, but he loves getting the flowers. And so I kept passing him a bouquet of flowers all the way until the end of the season. And I found out a few just a few weeks ago, actually, at our November pickup, our pop up market, I was there, I was ready to pass a bouquet to her again. And she told me that he had passed away. And I got really emotional. But I was thinking about this as I was writing out this principle of anchoring the emotional experience, you know, talking about how flowers can be so much more than a bouquet of flowers, that she is going to forever associate the flowers from my farm with her husband and providing him peace and joy in his farm final weeks. Right. And I'm tearing up just thinking about it. Like, I know that's just locked in her loyalty because I took the time to give her an emotional experience. Now, I didn't manipulate that or do that on purpose, but as I reflect on it, I'm like, wow, I just created an emotional moment for her and that built loyalty. So create experiences that stir emotion. Can you share your personal story? Can you share your mission? Has something happened to you that's powerful, that's going to help customers feel connected to your values? Yeah, think about that. That's a really big one. Another thing that was happening in this moment was the power of social proof. The school created an event where my son wasn't just signing a loan, wasn't like they just said, come into our office, we need you to sign this document and pass it back to the secretary and then you can head back home. No, they created this event where the signing moment happened in front of an audience. A huge audience auditorium. And not just the students that were already going there, but fellow students who would be joining him. For the first time, we were all being celebrated together. The cheering crowd of the student body, the alumni, the staff, staff, the families, all reinforce this idea that this school is Special. And other people believe that too, right? Seeing so many others aligned with our decision creates a sense of confidence, a sense of this is the right thing to do. We, we must be doing this right, because everyone else is in here has done this and they look happy. They look like happy clients, right? So social proof, I've talked a lot about this. I know you know this, but I'm just bringing it up. Social proof is one of the most powerful persuasion tools you have in your toolkit. When people see other people participating in your product or endorsing your product, it validates their decision and it encourages them to stay committed to you and to keep buying. So keep putting those testimonials out there because they continue to validate the customers you already have. Even the ones who've already made a testimonial like it keeps validating that they are part of a smart group of people who are a part of your brand. Because look at how your family continues to grow in size. More and more people, more and more super fans. They must be pretty smart that they found you and that they're a part of this movement, right? So highlight that as much as possible. Showcase how many people love your product, how many people are a part of this unique family. So highlighting the size of your customer base, right? Mention we've got 400 plus local families who trust in us for fresh organic vegetables every week. Talk about that number. Maybe it's 1,000. Even if it's 50, say, say the number. Share testimonials, share photos, share videos of happy customers that are enjoying your products. If they tag you like, show that in your social media. Show people who are farther along on the customer journey so that the members that are the customers that are currently already in your customer race can have, have something to aim for, right? They see what's possible when you're highlighting your super fans, your veterans who have been with you a long time, who are doing the type of cooking that is beyond, you know, the scope of a beginner. But one day you can be like this, like be highlighting those stories too. Show them what's possible. One day this will be you. This is what you can grow to when you become part of our brand. That's all social proof. Host public events where people can visibly engage with your brand. Maybe it's a community harvest day or a members only popluck or those field to table dinners or workshops and promote those images of other people gathering together. Large crowds. Promote those widely. Put them on your website, put them in your social media. All right. And the final principle that I pulled out of this was that this event encouraged accountability through a public commitment. So the act of my son Josiah signing in front of a crowd didn't just celebrate him. It locked us in. It locked us in. This is a principle known as consistency to commitments. And it's an entire chapter in a really good marketing book called Influence the Power of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini. That's Cialdini. You should all go read that this winter. It's a little dense, but it's really good. And it's gonna. It's going to provoke you, but it's good. So the, the principle of consistency to commitments states that when people make a public declaration or a commitment, they're more likely to follow through because they want to remain consistent with their stated actions. I don't know if you've caught yourself doing this, but I catch it all the time. I have a hard time backpedaling. If I have put it out into the world that this is something I believe or this is something I stand for, it takes a lot for me to change my mind. And that's just something that all human beings apparently demonstrate in our behavior. It's one of our default behaviors. So by signing in front of the school and in front of the community and key stakeholders like your parents and your grandparents, the decision to attend felt more serious, more significant. And I think my son felt differently about what he now expected of himself and what was possible for him because of this. So the marketing implications here, I think are significant. When we ask our customers to make a public or visible commitment, it increases their follow through and their loyalty to you because they've tied their identity somehow to the decision and it makes them less likely to back out. They're going to stay with you as a lifelong customer now. So where are we doing this? Where are we encouraging accountability through a mechanism in our business and in our marketing, in our customer journey story that we deliberately create for them? Right. So here are some examples. A public signup like, so when a person joins your CSA inviting them to post on social media with a hashtag like proud CSA member or tag a farm or tag your farm in the post to say, hey, I just signed up for so and so. That's an example of this principle in action. I know we do this when we run our renewals for CSAs. I tell people in a post in the Facebook group, hey, once you've signed up, let us know in the comments below. And that's one of our most popular posts all year long. Because there's like over 175 comments. Because everyone's saying, I'm in, I'm in, I'm in. Community involvement is another obvious way you can do this. So hosting a member event where new customers introduce themselves to the group and they share why they joined. You could have an on farm celebration where you have members plant their flag, quote unquote, by signing a farm pledge board. Or they can take a photo holding a sign that says, I joined Shared Legacy Farms and put it out in their yard. That's part of what was going on there when Toledo public gave us that yard sign. They want us to publicly state we are a part of this community and proudly put it out in our yard. And it also helps advertise. And then, like I said, during your renewal push, you can create an event or a virtual experience where members have to publicly recommit to the next season. Yeah. Think about, what could that look like? Are there some other things that come to mind as you brainstorm that? But this is another powerful suggestion. So the school didn't just have us sign a piece of paper. It orchestrated a meaningful experience that turned us into a loyal, proud advocate of this school, of this brand. And you can do the same thing by intentionally designing moments in the customer journey that recognize and celebrate the customer, that elevate the value of your product and service. Look for ways to build community, that community identity signal excellence and quality and specialness, maybe that you're rare and anchor emotional connections while encouraging accountability and leveraging social proof, all things that were happening in that one event. Think about how you can apply these principles at key touch points in your customer journey. Whether it's at signup, whether it's in your packaging, whether it's during a farm event, in your social media, on your storytelling, in your emails. These small shifts can have a huge impact on your customer loyalty. So I hope that this story inspired you. Was just a lesson from my life. Random thing that happened to me and I noticed it. I noticed how it was acting on me, how it was creating these powerful loyalty feelings. And I just broke it down and analyzed it. And so much stuff was going on in there. And I have to believe this school is savvy enough in their marketing. I have to believe that this was somewhat orchestrated, that they know what this does and they. They have this event for a reason. For a reason. We can build these kinds of moments, too. Great marketers, great salespeople think about this stuff and they build mechanisms in their brand's journey to trigger this. And make it more likely to happen. So what is coming up for you today? What did you learn today? Is there one particular principle that you can put into action to help create a superfan? Well, that's all I have today. I'm going to put everything in the show notes@mydigitalfarmer.com 294 if you liked this episode, please share it with another farmer friend and see if it gets them excited too. You can also leave me a rating or a review on Apple Podcasts that actually really helps more and more farmers find out about this show. I'm always trying to grow grow more savvy farmers in in the marketing space and I know that the stuff in this podcast will help them. So if you can help me get the word out that we exist, I am forever grateful to you. And don't forget, if you want to get onto my email list and learn a thing or two about farm farm marketing, I will show you the ropes. I'll get you started with some free stuff. You can go to mydigitalfarmer.com subscribe. You can also check me out on Instagram ydigitalfarmer. I show up in stories mostly whenever I feel inspired with a fun tidbit, and I'm also looking for podcast guests. So if you have a great guest you'd like to see on the show, or if you have a story to tell, please reach out to me at mydigitalfarmers. Thank you for joining me today. Have a wonderful week, a fabulous new year, and remember, I believe in you. This is your year. Take care. Bye.