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My Digital Farmer Podcast
305 Top 5 Places to Advertise Your Farm’s Lead Magnet
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March 26, 2025 A few weeks ago, my farmer friend Glen Young (shoutout to Glen!) sent me a message: "Hey, Corinna—did you know your website pop-up isn’t popping anymore?" Uh-oh. Turns out, something had changed inside (my email service provider),...
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Corinna Bench
Have you set up a lead magnet for your farm, but you're not sure if you're actually promoting it in the right places? Or maybe you haven't even created one yet and you need a push to make it happen. Today, I'm breaking down five key places you should be advertising your lead magnet this season so that you can grow your email list faster and turn more leads into customers. Let's get started. Hey there. This is Corinne. Hello, Krina 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 305 of the My Digital Farmer Podcast. I'm 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 strategy so that you can grow a profitable business. How's everyone doing today? Welcome back to the show. If you're new to the podcast, I'm really glad you're here today. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast and go check out some of my back episodes. I have over 300 of them now, which is crazy. I always recommend people start with the first 10 because I designed them to be an onboarding ramp into the marketing lingo long ago when I first made them. So that's a really great place to start. But you can also just scroll through the titles and see what jumps out at you. And you should 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 I'm going to drip out to you the most important marketing principles you need to know. I'm going to link you off to really good podcasts you should listen to and start with influencers you should be following tools you should have. I'm going to give you some freebies. This is a really smart thing to subscribe to and you can always unsub when you feel like you're done. So go to mydigitalfarmer.com subscribe to start getting that resource. It's free. Today's Episode is sponsored by my friends at Local Line. If you're like me, winter is your downtime to plan and prep for the upcoming growing season. Set yourself up for success with localline, the best sales platform built for farms. Localline is the most comprehensive software for farmers and food hubs that's out there selling direct to restaurants, schools, wholesale buyers running a CSA and more. With features like E commerce, automated inventory management, they have subscriptions, a box builder, point of sale, and more. Local Line helps you grow sales. It saves you time and streamlines your operations. In fact, on average, this is cool. Farms that use Local Line grow sales by 23% and they increase their average order size by 9.5% annually. So, ready to switch to sales software that does it all. Local Line has no setup fees, no sales percentages, and your onboarding manager will migrate your storefront for free so you'll be up and running in no time. As a podcast listener, localline is also offering a free premium feature for one year with your subscription when you use my coupon code MDF2025. So to claim it, go to mydigitalfarmer.com localline and then enter that coupon code MDF2025. Don't wait. Start your season strong with Local Line today. And now back to the show. Okay, today, before we get started with the actual content of the show, I wanted to come back and announce the winners of my testimonial challenge. If you recall, back in episode 300, to celebrate my 300th episode, I asked my listeners to send me an email and share how the podcast has helped them out in their farm marketing. And I told you that I would choose three people who would get a prize. And I have chosen those three farmers. I'm going to announce them right now, and each of you are going to get three of my favorite business or marketing books sent to your home address. And I will be reaching out to you to find out where that is via email, but look for that in your inbox. And thank you so much to all of you who wrote in. It was really affirming to see the stories of how some of you have taken the principles from this show and used them in your own businesses and seen similar results. So thank you. That was really affirming. I should do that more often. Maybe I will. So the winners are Krista from Thirsty Fruit Farm, Patty from Lonely Lane Farms, and Beth. I don't know your last name, Beth, but just Beth from Michigan. So the three of you will be getting the prize and thanks again so much for for taking the time to write those really long emails to me. They were so sweet and I'm going to save them so I can read them again in the future. All right, let's move on to today's topic, which is all about the top five places to advertise your farm's lead magnet. Now, I realize that some of you may be just joining the podcast and maybe you're not even sure what a lead magnet is and why they are so important. So I'm going to do a very brief overview here at the beginning before I jump into my quick list. So for those of you who are new to lead magnets and to list generation, let's catch you up. A lead magnet in the marketing framework that I teach is a free piece of content that helps a potential customer solve a problem in exchange for their email address. So why does this matter? Because people, most people, won't buy from you the very first time they meet you at the market or visit your website. They need to be warmed up a little bit. And so a lead magnet gets them into your system so that you can nurture them over time and then eventually pitch them an offer that they are more comfortable saying yes to because they've built that know like and trust factor with you. Now, I know you have seen lead magnets working on you. If you're on social media, I'm sure you've seen them. Here's an example of a farm lead magnet that you might see. Maybe it's a harvest calendar or a vegetable storage cheat sheet. I know that's one of my really big lead magnets. I have the A to Z Vegetable Storage Guide, which teaches people how to store their produce so it lasts longer in their fridge. Incidentally, if that is something that you want to have for your farm, you can go to mydigitalfarmer.com A2Z guide. That's all one word. A, T, O Z G U I D E. I created that guide on Canva and it's one of my paid products for digital farmer. Actually, I have a lot of farmers that just go get that and then they can use that. They don't have to build it themselves. But that is a really popular lead magnet for us. You could also do some kind of a video tour of your farm and they can only watch the video or get the link, the private link on YouTube to be able to watch the video if they subscribe to your email list. Another lead magnet idea could be is CSA right for you? The six questions you should ask before you join a csa and this gives them a document that helps qualify them as a lead and they can decide whether or not this would probably be successful for them. I've also seen recipes used, a collection of recipes or a recipe compilation, and then sometimes just a simple hey, subscribe to get notified of our produce availability from week to week. Like a simple lead magnet like that also works. So those are just some quick examples of lead magnets to remind you of what they are. Now, the purpose of today's podcast is not to do a deep dive into lead magnets. I've already done past episodes all about that. In fact, I encourage you to go back and listen to episode nine. It's called the Anatomy of a Farm Lead magnet. And I think the link for that is mydigitalfarmer.com 009 if that doesn't work, then try 09. For some reason I put zeros in front of them in my first 10 episodes. I don't know why. So you can go listen to that. I'll link it up in the show notes as well. I also have a freebie that might be really helpful for you. It's called 20 Plus Lead Magnet Ideas for Farms. This is just a really good brainstorm list. So if you're thinking, I don't even know what a good lead magnet idea would be, you want to get that guide. It's going to kind of blow your mind and open up some possibilities for you. So go to mydigitalfarmer.com lead magnet all one word and that's going to download for you and open up some possibilities. Okay, so this episode is really just meant to focus on where do you promote these lead magnets once you've created them and you've hooked them up to the Internet? The subscribe form is live. Now. How do you get people to find out that it exists so that it can actually go to work for you and grow your email list? Because you can't just build this thing and expect people to discover it. You have to create a system for promoting it regularly, like every week in lots of places. That's the only way that it works. Okay, so let's talk about five places, key places that I think you should have this asset working for you so that the lead magnet is generating consistent new warm leads into your sales funnel. Okay, actually, I'm going to throw in a bonus, so I'm going to give you six, because I just thought of one that I didn't include in my notes here, but let's start with number one, which is your lead magnet should be on your website. This is the one source of truth for your brand, your website homepage. So make sure that it's on your website. Actually there's several places on your website so we'll kind of break this down but at a very least let's have it as a pop up box on your website. And you can set this up in your email service provider to be a pop up. You can decide that it's a time delay. So it only pops after a certain amount of seconds that someone's been on your site. You could decide you wanted to pop. It's called exit intent. When someone is showing an intention of exiting your website, that's when you could trigger it to pop. Or you could trigger it to pop. When a person scrolls down a certain percentage of your homepage and it won't pop until then. So sometimes it's 50%, 30%. You get to decide that those are all things you set up when you're putting together the, the text side of setting, setting up that pop up box and the form. But that is one way to put it on your website. I also have it as a sticky website head header banner. So right along the top of the website there's this green bar and it says, you know, get onto our email list or I think it says subscribe to our produce availability list here. And when they click on that bar it takes them to the subscribe form. So whatever your lead magnet is, maybe it's get my free farm to table recipe guide here. That's where you would stick it. Again, you have to set that up inside of your email service provider or maybe inside your website is where you do the tech for that. But that is a really great place and it just stays sticky. It stays there at the top. No matter what page they click to, it stays up there. So they're constantly seeing it as bait. I also recommend putting it as a feature element on your homepage of your website. So when you, when you think about designing your website, I like to think about it as a series of pancake stacks. You have kind of your, you have your header image right with the key call to action button. And then you might have a section that introduces yourself with a picture of you and a little bit about your farm. And then maybe you have a section that features your best products, right? These are each elements that sit on top of each other like pancake stacks. And one of those pancake stacks in my opinion should be pitching your lead magnet it shouldn't be at the top. It should be kind of closer to the bottom, almost like a plan B. So if someone doesn't take your offer, maybe they'll subscribe to your lead magnet instead. And now they're on your email list and you can follow up with some kind of a nurture email sequence for a few weeks. And then maybe after that they get on your weekly email list and then they start to see your offer and they might decide to buy you. See how that works? Okay, so that's kind of the first one. It should be on your website. If you can't do anything else, do that. Today's podcast is sponsored by Farm Marketing School. All right, farmer, let me ask you something. Is marketing your farm something you actually enjoy or does it feel like a constant struggle? If you are like most farmers that I talk to, you are wearing all the hats and marketing always seems to slip through the cracks. Can I get an amen? That's exactly why I created Farm Marketing School. It's an online membership designed to help farmers like you build a simple, repeatable marketing system that actually works. Inside, you'll get bite sized, step by step projects that make marketing easier. Each month you pick what to work on, like writing better sales emails or improving your website copy, or setting up your online store. And I walk you through exactly how you should be doing it. And you're not doing this alone. Every month we have a live Zoom meetup where you can ask me questions, meet other members of Farm Marketing School, get coaching, and hear what's working for other farmers. It's like having a farm marketing mentor in your back pocket. This isn't some long, overwhelming course. The projects are designed to be completed in under 30 days. So you're making steady progress without it taking over your life. So if you're ready to stop winging it and finally build a marketing system that brings in steady sales, come join Farm Marketing School today. Sign up for your first month and see what a difference it makes. Go to mydigitalfarmer.com fms to get started. And now back to the show. Okay. Number two is on social media, specifically Instagram and Facebook is where I'm going to recommend this. And this is organic and paid ads potentially. Now, I don't currently run paid ads to my lead magnet, but I have in the past. So kind of depends on where you are in the development of your business. If you need to grow your email list fast, then you'll want to put some paid advertising dollars behind a lead magnet post. So in general, there's lots of places on social media that this could be advertised. Let's go through a quick short list here. Your Instagram bio links always have your lead magnet link in here. If you use something like link tree, or if somebody clicks on the Instagram bio link, it takes them to a page on your website that basically looks like a link tree. One of those links should be your lead magnet. Static posts that are just in your weekly social rotation. So I don't know if you're like me. I actually schedule many of my social media posts on a weekly basis, sometimes every other week. And I'm also posting things organically. Live in the moment. But I have a few things that I plan and schedule because I want to make sure that I am promoting my lead magnet. And I don't always think to do that if I'm just living in the moment. And so I have those scheduled in the rotation that should be at least weekly, if not more frequently in the main season. You might want to be doing it twice a week. Instagram and Facebook stories with a link sticker. If you're doing stories, you should have an invitation to get onto your email list in every single day's story somewhere. One of those stories should be, hey, if you're not on my email list yet, you can get on it here, I've got da da, da da. And then talk about your lead magnet. Or if it's just a simple, hey, if you aren't on my produce availability list, I'm going to put a link right here. Just click on it and subscribe. Okay. Something as simple as that. I usually don't put that into my Instagram story until the end, but it's almost in every single day's story. A pinned post on Facebook is another place, especially if you have a group, then you can place that as a pinned post. So it's always sitting at the top for anybody who comes in. New Instagram highlights. You know what those are? Those are those little bubbles on your profile page. And you can build a unique story in Instagram, have it run live that day, and then you can go back and actually say, I'd like you to pin this story as one of my highlight reels and then name it so that people can see that it says freebie on it. And they're then tempted to go and watch some of those highlight reels or highlight stories. And then they'll say, oh, I want to get on this list. Okay, so make sure you've got that lead magnet as one of Those highlighted highlights in Instagram. You could also create a short reel for Instagram. And the whole purpose is to talk about your lead magnet. And then you make sure that it's in the comments, in the, in the, sorry, in the post caption that goes along with that. And then finally, Facebook and Instagram ads, I feel like $5 a day is probably enough to get that list to grow fast in the early stages, at least test that for about a month and see where you're at. You may need to adjust and tweak that ad after the first seven days. You want to give it at least seven days for the algorithm to kind of learn and see how it, how it works. And by that, you should have enough, by that time, you should have enough data to go in and say, well, maybe I need to try tweaking the graphic, but I'll keep the post copy the same and see if you get a better result. And then maybe you can be like, oh, I'm going to choose the winning ad. And now I'm going to change the headline for the ad and run that for seven more days and choose the winning result. Right. That's sort of how you tweak Facebook ad copy. Okay, so that's number two, is just on social media, whether organic or paid ads. Number three, a QR code. And you can post this QR code in a few different ways. So if you are still at the farmer's market, put it at your farmer's market booth either on the sign or maybe on your business card or the flyer that you drop into everyone's bag when they purchase something from you. Maybe you have an insert or a flyer that just advertises your, your CSA or your meat products. You could have the QR code on the flyer so that they take the price list home with them and they're encouraged to subscribe and get onto your email list. And it'll be easy for them to do that because they've got the flyer right there and they just hover their camera over it. Okay. Farmstand signage of any kind. So maybe it's not just the big banner, but it could be other signs that you have there at the farmer's market. Just think through that lens of printed materials, more and more you're seeing QR codes, like, everywhere. Okay, number four, blog posts. For those of you who are blogging every week like I still am, I have a weekly blog in the main season where I put some kind of an article in there. You could be putting your lead magnets there or if you are a CSA farm and you are putting your weekly recipes and what's in your box into the blog, you could have a lead magnet subscribe form there. So here's a few different ways you could do this. You could place that lead magnet in the middle of the blog post as a call to action. So they kind of start reading and then it kind of interrupts the blog post content and there it is. You could have it at the bottom of every blog post to capture readers who scroll to the end. That's actually something that I can set up in WordPress as like a standard default. Like, always put a lead magnet at the bottom of every single blog post page and I can even tell WordPress which one I want to have set up as that default blog post. Or, excuse me, lead magnet. You could have it in a sidebar widget so that it appears on multiple pages. You could also use it as an inline text link. So that's not where it looks like a box, but where it's just linked up. You talk about it in your blog. You kind of just reference in passing that you have this special guide and then you link it up. It looks like a hyperlink. If they click on it, it'll pull up the subscribe form box. Now, here's one final idea. You could create an entire blog post about your lead magnet that's on the same topic as your lead magnet. And if they want to dive even deeper, then they click on something in that article and it takes them to the subscribe form. Okay, I think that's a really good one. Okay, number five, you can also advertise lead magnets in your emails and your weekly newsletters to your list. Now, you may be thinking, why would I do that if they're already on my list? Why do I need to advertise a lead magnet to them? Okay, well, although it's true that that lead magnet link wouldn't cause them to get on your list again, what it would do is potentially tag them in a different way. So when you set up that subscribe form, that lead magnet, you can tell, in my case, Kit.com, which is the one I use, you can tell Kit.com when people click on this link and subscribe to this form, I want you to tag them as with. With the tag called interest csa. Because maybe the thing you're trying to get them to do is to download the six questions to ask before they join a csa. Maybe these people are just on your regular general farm market booth list and you want to see if they might be interested in joining a csa. So you mention it casually in your weekly email. You say, hey, if you want this guide, click here. It's going to give you these questions to think through. And when they click on it, it's going to tag them as, huh, interested, possibly in a csa, because they clicked on that link. Do you see how that works? So, no, it's not going to, like, do the work of adding them to your email list. They're already on your email list. But it does add a tag to them so that you can segment future emails to them in a better way. Okay, so think about putting those links in the PS of your emails. Like, ps, have you grabbed my free guide yet, xyz? You could add it as an outright call to action inside of your weekly newsletter. You could create an entire dedicated email that you send out to everyone on your list to try and get that tag to try and see, oh, are they interested in this kind of a product? You could even put it in a transactional email. If you're able to customize those from your online store in your order confirmations or your pickup reminders, you could put them in there. I've even seen them in the email signatures, Gmail. So that's another fun spot to play around with. Okay, so those were the top five. Now I'm gonna throw in a bonus one because I thought of this as I was literally on the air here putting this podcast together. Number six, if you have a YouTube channel, then I recommend putting your lead magnet in the description of that video. And if you have the foresight to actually mention the lead magnet in your video itself, so you're recording the video of whatever you're doing out in the fields, or you're documenting some kind of a process and you actually talk about the lead magnet in your video itself and say, hey, you can grab this guide@mydigitalfarmer.com A to Z guide. Then you have it in the video itself, and then you can put it in the description of the YouTube video. So if they watch that video on YouTube and they decide, I want that guide, what was it again? Or I want to get that resource she's selling, what is it again? They can then click on the link in the description. Okay, so I personally think that if you are doing videos on a regular basis on social media already, you should definitely be thinking about repurposing them and putting them onto YouTube. Plus, it's just another search engine that you can be found on. So download those really good videos you create on Facebook or on Instagram and then republish them onto YouTube. Pay attention to how you build the title and the description of the video so that when people stumble upon it, they might fall into your sales funnel from that channel. YouTube is the second biggest search engine in the world right now. Let's not forget that. So if we can be putting our content there, we may get quite a few leads from that location. Okay, so that was my list. Let me run through them real quick one more time. Five awesome places to be advertising your farm's lead magnet. Actually, let's say six. Number one on your website. Number two, on social media, Instagram, Facebook, whether that's organic or paid ads. Number three, as a QR code at the farmer's market or in your print materials. Number four, blog posts. And I gave you lots of different places to be positioning it on your blogs. Number five, in your emails that you're sending to people who are already on your list so that you can tag them differently. And finally, number six in your YouTube video descriptions. All right, so big takeaway. Your lead magnet is not going to grow your email list if no one sees it, if no one knows it's even around. And so this episode was meant to nudge you a little bit. To set up one new placement for that lead magnet this season, I want you to build a system around one of these. Okay? Don't just have a great lead magnet and then never talk about it. So will you promise me, pinky swear me that you're gonna take one idea from this list and I gave you so many, right? In reality, I gave you more than six because there were like four under each one. So pick one idea and commit that at least once a week. I'm going to make sure I advertise my lead magnet in that place. Okay, now, where can you go deeper on this topic? If you're interested now in lead magnets and you want to geek out and really get into this, first of all, I want to remind you I have a free guide that 20 plus lead magnet ideas for farms. Get it at mydigitalfarmer.com Lead magnet, all one word. It is totally free. And that's just going to give you ideas for what a lead magnet could be, if that's where you're stumped. Okay? Now, if you want help creating a lead magnet from start to finish, literally step by step, where I'm going to hold your hand and show you the whole process, from coming up with the idea to actually writing it, to building the subscribe form. What are the words that should be on that subscribe form and what's in the confirmation email and how does it get delivered to the person and how do you connect it to the Internet, the tech? Then I have an entire step by step project inside of Farm Marketing school that's going to help you do all of that in 30 days. It's a 30 day project build the lead magnet project build. So if you need help setting that up, just come join me for a month inside of Farm Marketing school. You can do that by going to mydigitalfarmer.com FMS okay. And actually this month in Farm Marketing School I am focusing on lead generation on lead magnets. I'm actually hosting a special bonus live Zoom meetup where we are going to be looking at examples of farmers lead magnets and giving feedback for how to make them better, how they're already really good and coming up with ideas for what lead magnets could look like for your farm. So if you want to be in on that action, then definitely jump into Farm Marketing school for the month of March 2025. Okay. All right, that's all I got. Today's show notes can be found@mydigitalfarmer.com 305 if you liked today's episode, please go leave me a rating or a review on Apple Podcasts. Or if someone you know, another farmer needs to hear today's message, then send them the link to the episode. Would you do that? Text it to them and say, hey, you've got to listen to this podcast. It's really good. There's so many good episodes. Here's one I think you'll like. I would love that because the more people find out about the show, the more we can spread the word and the more farmers are going to start making money because they are going to learn how to build the system that gets them comfortable and confident selling. All right. Now don't forget I'm also now on Instagram ydigitalfarmer. I show up there almost every day with a marketing tip or mindset coaching moment to help keep you on track in your business. I'd love to connect with you there so you can find me at my digital farmer all one word. Have a wonderful week everyone and I will catch you next time. Remember, I believe in you. Bye Bye.