← My Digital Farmer Podcast
My Digital Farmer Podcast
332 Quick Tip - How to Get Your First Farm Testimonials
00:25:03
One of the biggest struggles for new farm businesses? No testimonials. When you're just starting out, you know your product is amazing—but your customers don’t. And without social proof, it's hard for new buyers to feel confident putting your food...
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:01]
A
What if the one thing standing between your product and a new customer wasn't the quality, the price, or even the convenience, but whether they could see proof that anyone else had tried it and loved it? In today's quick tip, I'm going to show you a simple way to get your very first testimonials, even if you're just starting out and don't have any yet. Let's dive in. 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 332 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. A big shout out to all of my super fans and my regular listeners. If you're new to the podcast, I'm really glad you're here today. Make sure you subscribe to the show and if you're new to the marketing lingo, go check out my first 10 episodes because I designed them to be an on ramp into the marketing space and really teach you the ropes. You can also get onto my email list that's going to help you a ton. It's free, just go to mydigitalfarmer.com subscribe subscribe and when you do, I'm going to send you an email like every four or five days for about three months and it's kind of my best of my best stuff. I'm going to teach you the key principles you need to know first and everything builds on the email before it until by the time you get to the end you kind of have a good solid understanding of the stuff you need to know. So mydigitalfarmer.com subscribe to get on that. It's free. Today's podcast is sponsored by my friends at Local Line. If managing orders, customers and inventory feels chaotic this season, it might be time for a better System. Localline is the all in one sales platform built for farms and food hubs. Whether you're selling direct to consumer or managing wholesale buyers or running a CSA with tools like E commerce, automated inventory management, subscriptions, barcode scanning, box builder and pos, localline helps you simplify operations and grow your sales. In fact, farmers using localline increase their annual sales by 23% and boost their average order size by 9.5%. Switching is easy. No setup fees, no sales commissions, and your onboarding manager will migrate your storefront for free. No joke, so that you can get started without missing a beat. As a podcast listener, you'll also get one premium feature for free for a full year when you use my code MDF2025 at checkout. So head to mydigitalfarmer.com localline use that coupon code and you'll be on your way. Start selling smarter this season with localline. And now back to the show. All right, today we are talking about how to get your first testimonials. And I've been running into this a lot in farm marketing school lately, either in my zoom calls or my one to one coaching calls. New farmers coming in frustrated because it's just a slow process at the beginning, trying to build the machine and find your first customers and get them to actually buy and figure out what, what offer is the one that's going to work. And when I review their funnel with them, we go through kind of what's on their website, what are they doing at the top of the funnel, are they using social media, their product descriptions? There's usually zero social proof and that's the missing piece in many cases because customers need to see that other people have tried your stuff, loved it and recommend it because without that one piece they hesitate. You know, I, I often tell farmers that social proof is the deciding factor in whether or not a new customer is going to take a chance on you. I want you to think about that for a minute. Imagine that you're buying a new product for the first time, especially if it's a higher ticket priced item. Are you just gonna throw down that chunk of change without first going and checking to see that it actually works. Don't you go and read the reviews when you're buying things, whether it's, you know, from a website or I, I'm always checking things on Amazon. I decide whether to read a book based on the reviews. It's just kind of what we do. And I think we forget that selling food is also emotional and risky. People are putting something into their bodies. They want reassurance. And so if they don't see evidence that other people love your food, they'll hesitate, they'll scroll away, or they'll go buy from the farm next door that can give them that reassurance. So having testimonials early on in the formation of your business, I think it's one of the first things, one of the first marketing assets that you should try to acquire because it reduces risk and it builds trust and it helps your prospects feel confident that they are making the smart choice. So your website or your social feed without testimonials is kind of like. It's like having a billboard with no lights on it, right? People may see it, but they're not going to be compelled to pull over, check it out, and put it in their cart. So a very common mistake that I see with beginning farms. And I, you know, honestly, we did this too in the beginning of our business because I just didn't know. I didn't know anything about marketing when we started. This is all stuff I learned, like, I don't know, around year five or six. That's why I'm so passionate about teaching this stuff to farmers. It's not your fault that you don't know this marketing stuff. It's not probably why you went into business. You wanted to produce the thing you're making. That's the love of it for you. But we also have to learn how to run a business. We have to learn how to make the money and acquire customers. And, you know, that's part of why I started this podcast, because I just want to put this information out there for eternity for people to be able to learn this stuff for free. But new farm businesses often launch without any testimonials, and they stay that way for many years until they realize that it's something they should be having out there. They kind of assume, oh, once I sell more, the reviews are just going to come in. But that kind of creates a catch 22, because if you don't have any testimonials, you're going to have fewer customers. And if you have fewer customers, well, you're going to have no testimonials. And so you got to break that cycle early on. It's really critical that you do that. So how do we do that? Well, that's what today's episode is really all about. It's sharing a quick tip. You give away your product for free. I know some of you are cringing right now. Let me just walk you through this common practice. This is not just something I'm coming up with that sounds crazy to you right now. This is done in all kinds of industries. At the beginning, when a business is first starting and it's seen as a cost of doing business, it's sort of part of that initial investment that we put down into our work. So here's how it works. You pick a small number, like five to 10 people who fit your target customer profile. Or they could be friends and family, someone that's a little bit easier to ask this to do at first, but you go up to them and you tell them up front what you're trying to do. Hey, you know, I'm in the. I'm starting to grow my business, and I know that one of the things that I need is to prove to people that it's actually good, that it's going to work. And so I'm trying to acquire some custom. Some customer testimonials. So you tell them up front, I'm going to give you my product for free in exchange for a testimonial. Would you be willing to do that? You know, you want to be really clear about your intentions. You know, I'd love to give you this product for free in exchange for a testimonial. I'm going to use it publicly on my website. I might put it on social media. Are you willing to do that? And if they say no, then you're like, all right, no, no big deal. If they say yes, you can give them a little guidance on what you're looking for. You can say, well, I want you to tell me, what did you like about it? Or how did you use it? How did it compare to other options? Sometimes giving them some guiding questions gives you a really, really good testimonial. Because there's a difference between a okay, testimonial that's kind of generic and generalized, and then one that's like, really detailed and speaks to the pain points and the specific problems that were solved or the. The flavor profile or, you know, why was it so fantastic? How does it compare to something else? The objections that a customer might have if it speaks to those, like, those are really powerful testimonials. And you can kind of coach that kind of testimonial out by asking, you know, these questions and saying, hey, you know, as you're writing this testimonial, try to think about some of these questions. Then you can collect their feedback in writing, or you can also do it as a video. I've seen that as Done as well. It's not how we did it, but I usually get it in writing. And then you use it everywhere for the next, like, year or two, you're going to repurpose those five to 10 testimonials over and over and over again. And no one's going to notice that you keep bringing up the same testimonial. So you'll put it on your website, on the homepage, also on your product page. You'll put it in your product descriptions. You can make one entire email in your email nurture sequence, a series of those testimonials. You can put it in a product promotional email, social media posts. Gosh, you could probably even put it on signage at your booth. So many places that you can put that. So here's like, an example script that you could use. If you were walking up to one of these five to 10 people, you could say something like, hey, I'm just starting out in my business and I know I need to build some testimonials in order for me to grow my business. And would you be willing to try this product, xyz for free? Give me a quick paragraph about your experience. What did you like about it? How did you use it? How does it compare to other products? You can give them some other, like, coaching questions there, and then just kind of say, I'm looking for honest feedback and a quote I can share. That's. That's the only cost. And then just see what comes back. Now, my friends, most of the time, you're going to get really awesome testimonials. Every now and then you'll get one that's kind of meh. Or maybe they legitimately didn't like it too much. And you read the testimonial and you're like, don't think I want to put that out there into the public world. So don't feel like you have to put up a testimonial. Obviously, if it's not super awesome, okay. But most of the time, you're going to get some really good stuff, and then the goal becomes to repurpose that in multiple places. 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. All right, I want to also encourage you to think outside the box when it comes to this testimonial exchange because it doesn't just have to be a written quote. That's kind of the classic thing we ask for. You know, a few sentences about what they loved and what stood out and why they'd recommend it. Usually I get that by just giving them some prompts like what surprised you the most about the flavor? How did this compare to what you usually buy in the store? What I said before. But you could also negotiate additional testimonial style assets from them. You could say, hey, in exchange for this chicken bundle, I would like you to create a written quote and a photo in action where you ask them to take a photo of themselves with the product in some way. Maybe they're holding the CSA box in their kitchen. Or maybe you say, hey, cook this ground beef on the grill and have someone snap a picture of it. I want that as well. Or setting your flowers on the dining room table asking for that specific shot. So these photos are really gold for social media. They're gold for your website. They become very powerful and they're more than just a quote. So you could negotiate that as well. You could say, I want that too. Or maybe that's what you want instead of the actual quote. I think you should try and get both. Some people ask for a video testimonial. I know Amy Porterfield, who's an influencer that I follow, did this many times where she asks her audience to leave a 30 to 60 second clip or you know, on their phone and send it to her. Tell me what you loved about digital course academy. And then she will use those on her sales page and those can be really great too for Instagram stories or for reels or TikTok or embedding on your website. So that for some of you that might be something that you want to negotiate. A social media shout out is another thing that you often see like with influencers where you ask them to post about their experience on their Instagram and tag your farm. So maybe you give some free product to an influencer and in return they're going to do a social media shout out for you for a certain number of times or on a certain cadence like every week on this day. And that way you borrow their audience too and you get instant reach and credibility. Another thing you could negotiate would be like a star rating or a review on Google specifically. So if you have a Google business profile, you can ask them to leave a five star review there and then those live forever. They build local SEO power. Instead of just saying, hey, send me a testimonial and then I can use it and say go write it on Google reviews and then you have it in that location as a Google review and then you can just copy and paste it and you can send them the link to your Google review page. Another thing I thought of was to just be very specific about how you want the testimonial given to you. So you could say like can you, can you give it to me as a usage story or a recipe share? Instead of just a general like here's what I like about your products. You could say instead of just it was delicious, ask them to share how they used it. Like I made beet hummus with the beets and my kids devoured it. I actually have a picture of that where someone did that for me and those become stories that turn into great content. You can reshare it. I've used that particular example of the beat hummus one and put it the screenshot of it from a Facebook post into my email nurture sequence. And it's teaches my audience like, hey, not only do my customers like my product, but did you know you could make beat hummus with beats? And that becomes kind of a cool thing for content creation. Another example would be to to ask them to do a before and after comparison. This is particularly powerful I think for meat producers or like a CSA farm to coach them and say, hey, we used to Buy beef at the grocery store, but now we can't go back, you know? Or are the flowers I used to buy at kroger wilted in three days? This bouquet lasted 10 days. You can ask them to write the testimonial like, hey, do you have any kind of before and after story? What was it like before you started buying our product and how are you different now? And have them try to identify the transformation that could be your coaching prompt. And then you get a really kind of cool style of social proof. So I just wanted to bring this up. Like, sometimes I think when, when we tell people to make a testimonial, we only just think of the basic one of that classic quote. But there are so many other ways that you could negotiate a testimonial exchange and you could kind of build a special offer. The more valuable your freebie is, I think, the more things you could request of them. So you could certainly ask not just for the classic testimonial, but say, hey, I also want a picture of you grilling with it. I'd love a, a picture of the product with you actually eating it. I, I'd love to have a shout out on social media, you know, whatever, be creative, put that whole package together. Now, why is this exchange worth it? Yes, it's going to cost you product, but that cost becomes a marketing asset that you will be able to use hundreds of times. And a single good testimonial is going to help you close dozens of future sales, my friend. I don't think you realize just how important it is for social proof to be on your website or, or wherever your point of sale, your, your button that they click on. Like, you need to have a testimonial close to that button because a lot of times once they've read the testimonial, they're ready to buy. And you don't want to make them hunt around to try and find the button to click and buy, right? So I always tell people, wherever your buttons are, try to have a testimonial nearby. You can be repurposing those testimonials on social media in a carousel of quotes, or it could be just, you know, the, the screenshot of it that is in your rotation every couple weeks or every, every month. It could be in the product description on your online store. It could be on your landing page for your CSA signup, your email nurture sequence, right, Your booth signage. It's, it can be in a lot of places. So a testimonial is not just like a Nice little compliment to show you that you're on the right track. It is an asset, and so we want to treat it like gold. It may cost you $50, $40 in product, but maybe you don't have to spend that much. But trust me, you only have to do that a few times, and it is totally worth it. You'll. You'll milk that those testimonials for all they're worth for a few years, and then they're going to start coming in organically, and you don't have to be doing that anymore, but just look at it as a cost of doing business. So here's my challenge to you today. This was a quick tip. If you don't have testimonials yet anywhere on your marketing outlets, make this your action step this week, okay? I want you to identify five ideal customers and pick out the product that you want to give to them for free. It can be whatever you want. It doesn't have to be expensive. It can be a smaller packaged item. I'm not telling you to go, you know, spend a boku bucks, okay? Do something that you feel good about, and then give them your product in exchange for feedback, like we talked about in this episode. Don't overthink it. Just ask. Keep it casual. And once you've got a handful of them, give them a deadline, right, to get that back from them in like, a week or so. And once you've got a handful, sprinkle them everywhere in your sales funnel. And over time, more testimonials will come in naturally. But this is just going to get the snowball rolling. All right? You may find that these people that you reached out to with free product end up becoming customers, regular customers. So don't forget to pitch them product again later and see if this time they'll want to buy. All right? So final takeaway, everyone. Social proof is a really big lever that you have to pull in marketing. So don't wait for testimonials to magically appear. If you're at the beginning of your business, you have to go get them. And the cost of a few free products now is worth the confidence and conversions that they're going to bring later. This is done a lot across industries, so don't feel like this is weird. This is a very common first step when businesses are getting started, so maybe you should do it, too. All right, well, that's all I got today. Remember, if you want to go deeper into using testimonials and social proof in your marketing, I have an entire project about this Inside of Farm Marketing School how to acquire testimonials. I'll show you how to ask for them, where to put them in your sales funnel, how to repurpose them for maximum impact. You can go check it out Ad Farm marketing school@mydigitalfarmer.com forward sl fms it would be a great first project to work on this coming fall. I know many of you are going to be joining us in the winter time and hanging out in there for a few months with us and working on the your marketing over the winter. I'd love to see you in there. And this is a really good project and it's pretty easy one. It goes pretty fast. I'd love to see you inside there. All right, well today's show notes can be found@mydigitalfarmer.com 332 and if you like today's episode episode, please share it with another farmer. You can grab the link and text it to them or go leave me a rating or a review on Apple Podcasts because it really does help a lot more people find out about this amazing resource, this show. If you want to get onto my email list, I have some free stuff to send your way. It's going to make you a better marketer. It's free. Did I say that it's free? You just go to mydigitalfarmer.com subscribe and as they come in and you don't have time to sort through them all, that's fine, stick them in a folder and then go through them this winter. If you ever start to feel like this is too much, then just unsub. But it's really good. I get so many comments about how valuable they are so encourage you to check that out. I'm also on Instagram ydigital Farmer. I show up there every every week, a few times a week and I share a mindset tip or a marketing tip. Thanks for joining me today on the My Digital Farmer Podcast. Have an amazing week and remember I believe in you. Bye bye.