My Digital Farmer Podcast

May 22, 2024 Are you using SMS in your marketing? SMS is "code" for text messaging. It stands for short message service. And in today's podcast, my guest, Ari Memar, is going to give us a basic tutorial in how we can be using texting in our farm marketing strategy. Turns out there is a LOT of money to be made when we leverage this tool, because the open rates are ridiculously high. But it can also be used for customer support and onboarding. Ari is the founder of FarmHand, a virtual assistant for small farms. And one of the tools it offers its customers is weekly texting. Ari shares how Farmhand uses this feature to guide new clients to buy and help his farmer clients make money. This conversation made me want to go out and buy a texting app!! (He recommends Twillio and Text Magic by the way). Podcast Guest: Who is Ari Memar? As a hobby farmer in Sebastopol, CA, Ari Memar knows farming is more than just a job–it's a way of life. As stewards of our nature and local community, small farms are critical to our local community and food system but often overmatched by the resources available — technology, equipment, sales & marketing teams, back office staff — to larger farms. So, in partnership with local family farmers,, Ari founded Farmhand to equip farmers with the technology and services they need to win back local share of the food dollar, and support a thriving local food system. To learn more about Farmhand, click here. This podcast was sponsored by Local Line, my preferred e-commerce platform for farmers. Are you looking for a new solution for your farm? I can't recommend it enough. Easy to use inventory management, great customer service, continuous improvement, and a culture dedicated to equipping farmers with marketing expertise, Local Line should definitely be one of the e-commerce solutions you consider as you switch. Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code: MDF2024. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline This podcast was sponsored by Farm Marketing School - my monthly online marketing school membership just for farmers. Farm Marketing School is an on-demand library of marketing workshops and project plans that will help you build some of the most important marketing elements in your farm business like: building a promotion calendar, setting up your Google Business Profile, auditing your sales funnel, updating your home page of your website, building your first email nurture sequence, and practicing different types of offers. You get to chose what you want to study and build each month. These projects are designed to be completed in under 30 days, so that you slowly build your marketing system piece by piece. Use the step by step project planner and resource folder to help you jumpstart your work. Take advantage of my new marketing crash course inside, watch my new Email Marketing Course, or take the onboarding assessment tool to help you identify where your funnel is broken and what project to do first. To see what courses are currently inside of FMS, or to try out Farm Marketing School for a month at mydigitalfarmer.com/fms Start and cancel your membership anytime. Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: Join my free email list! I have a great "Crash Course in farm marketing" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. Subscribe at https://www.mydigitalfarmer.com/subscribe Join my CSA Academy and learn how to support your CSA members Use my resources!! Try it out for the first month for $1 using coupon code TRIAL. (After that, the price increases to $19/month). Go to www.mydigitalfarmer.com/academy to see what's included with the monthly membership. You'll get access to the ENTIRE resource library I use to help support my CSA members and get them to CSA mastery fast! Use the templates inside to help you build your own customer onboarding and/or training curriculum this summer. This is a MAJOR shortcut to figuring out your onboarding process!! So valuable! Cancel your membership anytime. https://www.mydigitalfarmer.com/academy Beginner's Guide to CSA Guide -- Use my Canva template and share it with your CSA members in your fulfillment process. This quick read guide shares the quick tips from my CSA master members, for how to be successful as a new CSA member. https://www.mydigitalfarmer.com/csasuccess Follow me on Instagram for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer

Raise your hand if you want to find more farm clients... I often hear farmers lamenting that they can't find enough customers. Maybe the people you are attracting don't live in your local area, or they DO live in your area, but they aren't buying. You have an attraction problem. If you're a new or younger farm business, this is one of the earliest challenges you will face -- growing your audience. But even as a seasoned farm, there should be a system to make sure you're pulling in new eyeballs to your brand. In marketing, one of the first "stages" of the customer journey is the attraction phase. We need to capture the eye of our ideal clients and get them to take a second look. So how do we do that? What do we SAY to attract more farm customers? In today's podcast episode, I share a place you can go to find the answer -- your Google Reviews. I'll walk you through what specifically to look for in your client testimonials, and what to do with them. This practice will give you TONS of ideas for what to talk about -- in many cases, it will give you the exact words to use. This podcast was sponsored by Local Line, my preferred e-commerce platform for farmers. Are you looking for a new solution for your farm? I can't recommend it enough. Easy to use inventory management, great customer service, continuous improvement, and a culture dedicated to equipping farmers with marketing expertise, Local Line should definitely be one of the e-commerce solutions you consider as you switch. Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code: MDF2024. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline This podcast was sponsored by Farm Marketing School - my monthly online marketing school membership just for farmers. Farm Marketing School is an on-demand library of marketing workshops and project plans that will help you build some of the most important marketing elements in your farm business like: building a promotion calendar, setting up your Google Business Profile, auditing your sales funnel, updating your home page of your website, building your first email nurture sequence, and practicing different types of offers. You get to chose what you want to study and build each month. These projects are designed to be completed in under 30 days, so that you slowly build your marketing system piece by piece. Use the step by step project planner and resource folder to help you jumpstart your work. Take advantage of my new marketing crash course inside, watch my new Email Marketing Course, or take the onboarding assessment tool to help you identify where your funnel is broken and what project to do first. To see what courses are currently inside of FMS, or to try out Farm Marketing School for a month at mydigitalfarmer.com/fms Start and cancel your membership anytime. Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: Join my free email list! I have a great "Crash Course in farm marketing" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. Subscribe at https://www.mydigitalfarmer.com/subscribe Join my CSA Academy and learn how to support your CSA members Use my resources!! Try it out for the first month for $1 using coupon code TRIAL. (After that, the price increases to $19/month). Go to www.mydigitalfarmer.com/academy to see what's included with the monthly membership. You'll get access to the ENTIRE resource library I use to help support my CSA members and get them to CSA mastery fast! Use the templates inside to help you build your own customer onboarding and/or training curriculum this summer. This is a MAJOR shortcut to figuring out your onboarding process!! So valuable! Cancel your membership anytime. https://www.mydigitalfarmer.com/academy Beginner's Guide to CSA Canva Template -- Use my Canva template and share it with your CSA members in your fulfillment process. This quick read guide shares the quick tips from my CSA master members, for how to be successful as a new CSA member. https://www.mydigitalfarmer.com/csasuccess Get my A to Z Vegetable Storage Guide and use it as a lead magnet -- This is my MOST successful lead magnet ever. I've used it for 5 years. I'm sharing the Canva template with you, and you have full rights to use it as-is, or change it for your farm. https://www.mydigitalfarmer.com/atozguide Follow me on Instagram for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer

May 8, 2024 This week, I have two farm projects that feel like a heavy lift. And because these decisions feel hard, I'm not taking action.... (Does this sound familiar?) I feel like I need more information. I'm worried I'll make the WRONG decision that will upset clients. And finding a solution would require several hours of time that I don't have right now. I want it to be the BEST solution possible, and the current options just don't feel right. So I do nothing. Today on the show, I'm exploring something I call the "One Best Right Way" myth. This thought tells us that there is one, best, right way to do something, and that we better wait until we know exactly what it is. It's the thought that tells us we better not take the WRONG turn because it will set us back. It's the thought that is afraid to make a mistake, hurt some feelings, or waste time. It's the thought that there is one "ideal way" to navigate life, and we better not screw it up. What if there isn't "one, best, right way" to do something? What if "the way" presents itself only when we do ___________. I share 3 metaphors in today's episode that I think will help you push past your fear, and get you taking action -- even if it's imperfect. This podcast was sponsored by Local Line, my preferred e-commerce platform for farmers. Are you looking for a new solution for your farm? I can't recommend it enough. Easy to use inventory management, great customer service, continuous improvement, and a culture dedicated to equipping farmers with marketing expertise, Local Line should definitely be one of the e-commerce solutions you consider as you switch. Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code: MDF2024. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline This podcast was sponsored by Farm Marketing School - my monthly online marketing school membership just for farmers. Farm Marketing School is an on-demand library of marketing workshops and project plans that will help you build some of the most important marketing elements in your farm business like: building a promotion calendar, setting up your Google Business Profile, auditing your sales funnel, updating your home page of your website, building your first email nurture sequence, and practicing different types of offers. You get to chose what you want to study and build each month. These projects are designed to be completed in under 30 days, so that you slowly build your marketing system piece by piece. Use the step by step project planner and resource folder to help you jumpstart your work. Take advantage of my new marketing crash course inside, watch my new Email Marketing Course, or take the onboarding assessment tool to help you identify where your funnel is broken and what project to do first. To see what courses are currently inside of FMS, or to try out Farm Marketing School for a month at mydigitalfarmer.com/fms Start and cancel your membership anytime. Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: Join my free email list! I have a great "Crash Course in farm marketing" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. Subscribe at https://www.mydigitalfarmer.com/subscribe Join my CSA Academy and learn how to support your CSA members Use my resources!! Try it out for the first month for $1 using coupon code TRIAL. (After that, the price increases to $19/month). Go to www.mydigitalfarmer.com/academy to see what's included with the monthly membership. You'll get access to the ENTIRE resource library I use to help support my CSA members and get them to CSA mastery fast! Use the templates inside to help you build your own customer onboarding and/or training curriculum this summer. This is a MAJOR shortcut to figuring out your onboarding process!! So valuable! Cancel your membership anytime. https://www.mydigitalfarmer.com/academy Beginner's Guide to CSA Guide -- Use my Canva template and share it with your CSA members in your fulfillment process. This quick read guide shares the quick tips from my CSA master members, for how to be successful as a new CSA member. https://www.mydigitalfarmer.com/csasuccess Get my A to Z Vegetable Storage Guide and use it as a lead magnet -- This is my MOST successful lead magnet ever. I've used it for 5 years. I'm sharing the Canva template with you, and you have full rights to use it as-is, or change it for your farm. https://www.mydigitalfarmer.com/atozguide Find my marketing Facebook group for CSA farmers! Follow me on Instagram for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer

When I first started learning about farm marketing years ago, there was SO MUCH. I felt overwhelmed. I really wanted a framework to help me stitch it all together and give it a rhyme and a reason. Then, one of my mentors shared an acronym that I found really helpful. That acronym was: TLC. Here's what it stands for: T = Traffic L = Leads C = Conversion I later added the letter "F" for Fulfillment, because I found that this element was one of the key drivers behind customer retention. Today, I'm going to teach you this TLCF method. The goal is to build a mechanism or system in your farm business for EACH of these areas. When you do, your ideal customers will stream right through and turn into super buyers. In this episode, I define each of these elements and give you suggested steps for what you should be doing this spring in each area, so that you have them all covered. You can optionally decide to use Farm Marketing School to help you build some of these systems this summer too in my 30 Day project builds. This podcast was sponsored by Local Line, my preferred e-commerce platform for farmers. Are you looking for a new solution for your farm? I can't recommend it enough. Easy to use inventory management, great customer service, continuous improvement, and a culture dedicated to equipping farmers with marketing expertise, Local Line should definitely be one of the e-commerce solutions you consider as you switch. Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code: MDF2024. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline This podcast was sponsored by Farm Marketing School - my monthly online marketing school membership just for farmers. Farm Marketing School is an on-demand library of marketing workshops and project plans that will help you build some of the most important marketing elements in your farm business like: building a promotion calendar, setting up your Google Business Profile, auditing your sales funnel, updating your home page of your website, building your first email nurture sequence, and practicing different types of offers. You get to chose what you want to study and build each month. These projects are designed to be completed in under 30 days, so that you slowly build your marketing system piece by piece. Use the step by step project planner and resource folder to help you jumpstart your work. Take advantage of my new marketing crash course inside, watch my new Email Marketing Course, or take the onboarding assessment tool to help you identify where your funnel is broken and what project to do first. To see what courses are currently inside of FMS, or to try out Farm Marketing School for a month at mydigitalfarmer.com/fms Start and cancel your membership anytime. Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: Join my free email list! I have a great "Crash Course in farm marketing" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. Subscribe at https://www.mydigitalfarmer.com/subscribe Webinar: Maximizing E-Commerce Success: Crafting Offers to Boost Farm Sales -- Join Corinna Bench from My Digital Farmer and Nina Galle from Local Line on March 25 at 12:00 PM EST/9:00 AM PST as they explore the elements of defining a great offer. Topics include: - Why offers are crucial for your sales strategy, acting as a powerful lure to lead potential customers to the point of sale - Corinna's comprehensive framework on building offers - How to seamlessly integrate offers into your e-commerce platform - And, five impactful examples you can experiment with this season! Join my CSA Academy and learn how to support your CSA members Use my resources!! Try it out for the first month for $1 using coupon code TRIAL. (After that, the price increases to $19/month). Go to www.mydigitalfarmer.com/academy to see what's included with the monthly membership. You'll get access to the ENTIRE resource library I use to help support my CSA members and get them to CSA mastery fast! Use the templates inside to help you build your own customer onboarding and/or training curriculum this summer. This is a MAJOR shortcut to figuring out your onboarding process!! So valuable! Cancel your membership anytime. https://www.mydigitalfarmer.com/academy Beginner's Guide to CSA Guide -- Use my Canva template and share it with your CSA members in your fulfillment process. This quick read guide shares the quick tips from my CSA master members, for how to be successful as a new CSA member. https://www.mydigitalfarmer.com/csasuccess Get my A to Z Vegetable Storage Guide and use it as a lead magnet -- This is my MOST successful lead magnet ever. I've used it for 5 years. I'm sharing the Canva template with you, and you have full rights to use it

April 24, 2024 As life would have it, I've been in a season of long-term illness this winter. These health issues have been so distracting, that I've had to pare down my farm marketing to the absolute bare bones. What's interesting is that I haven't noticed a huge difference! I'm often asked by farmers, "If I only have 2 hours of time a week for marketing, what should I be doing with it?" I feel like I can answer that now because I'M DOING IT. My circumstances forced me to decide what the most critical revenue-driving activities were for my business. I share them with you in this podcast. Keep in mind, I'm in my 16th season of farm business, and I have a lot of the other marketing assets in my machine built. That may not be your situation. But once the machine is built, these 2 activities are the ones I chose to spend my precious time on when I was ill. This podcast was sponsored by Local Line, my preferred e-commerce platform for farmers. Are you looking for a new solution for your farm? I can't recommend it enough. Easy to use inventory management, great customer service, continuous improvement, and a culture dedicated to equipping farmers with marketing expertise, Local Line should definitely be one of the e-commerce solutions you consider as you switch. Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code: MDF2024. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline This podcast was sponsored by Farm Marketing School - my monthly online marketing school membership just for farmers. Farm Marketing School is an on-demand library of marketing workshops and project plans that will help you build some of the most important marketing elements in your farm business like: building a promotion calendar, setting up your Google Business Profile, auditing your sales funnel, updating your home page of your website, building your first email nurture sequence, and practicing different types of offers. You get to chose what you want to study and build each month. These projects are designed to be completed in under 30 days, so that you slowly build your marketing system piece by piece. Use the step by step project planner and resource folder to help you jumpstart your work. Take advantage of my new marketing crash course inside, watch my new Email Marketing Course, or take the onboarding assessment tool to help you identify where your funnel is broken and what project to do first. To see what courses are currently inside of FMS, or to try out Farm Marketing School for a month at mydigitalfarmer.com/fms Start and cancel your membership anytime. Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: Join my free email list! I have a great "Crash Course in farm marketing" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. Subscribe at https://www.mydigitalfarmer.com/subscribe Join my CSA Academy and learn how to fast-track your CSA members to CSA success. Try it out for the first month for $1 using coupon code TRIAL. (After that, the price increases to $19/month). Go to www.mydigitalfarmer.com/academy to see what's included with the monthly membership. You'll get access to the ENTIRE resource library I use to help support my CSA members and get them to CSA mastery fast! Use the templates inside to help you build your own customer onboarding and/or training curriculum this summer. This is a MAJOR shortcut to figuring out your onboarding process!! So valuable! Cancel your membership anytime. https://www.mydigitalfarmer.com/academy Follow me on Instagram for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer

Is your online store confusing? Last month, I was doing a one to one coaching call with one of my farmer Accelerator members. They came to me with a problem: "Help us figure out why hardly anyone is buying from the online store." They had recently received a boost in traffic to their website thanks to some free media/press. They had hoped it would translate to many new buyers and sales. Unfortunately, the conversion rate was abysmally low, and they wanted to know what was wrong. As we sat down together and reviewed their website AND store setup, I noticed a few pretty key elements that were missing and/or confusing. And i suspect this is the reason they aren't seeing sales from new buyers. Remember: Old buyers who have figured out the ropes will navigate their way through these issues. They know how it works. But NEW buyers will NOT enter into a state of confusion. In today's episode, I'm talking through what we uncovered in this online store audit, and I'm challenging YOU to take a look at your own website/online store, to see if you can take this list of improvements to optimize your store conversion. This podcast was sponsored by Local Line, my preferred e-commerce platform for farmers. Are you looking for a new solution for your farm? I can't recommend it enough. Easy to use inventory management, great customer service, continuous improvement, and a culture dedicated to equipping farmers with marketing expertise, Local Line should definitely be one of the e-commerce solutions you consider as you switch. Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code: MDF2024. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline This podcast was sponsored by Farm Marketing School - my monthly online marketing school membership just for farmers. Farm Marketing School is an on-demand library of marketing workshops and project plans that will help you build some of the most important marketing elements in your farm business like: building a promotion calendar, setting up your Google Business Profile, auditing your sales funnel, updating your home page of your website, building your first email nurture sequence, and practicing different types of offers. You get to chose what you want to study and build each month. These projects are designed to be completed in under 30 days, so that you slowly build your marketing system piece by piece. Use the step by step project planner and resource folder to help you jumpstart your work. Take advantage of my new marketing crash course inside, watch my new Email Marketing Course, or take the onboarding assessment tool to help you identify where your funnel is broken and what project to do first. To see what courses are currently inside of FMS, or to try out Farm Marketing School for a month at mydigitalfarmer.com/fms Start and cancel your membership anytime. Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: Join my free email list! I have a great "Crash Course in farm marketing" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. Subscribe at https://www.mydigitalfarmer.com/subscribe Join my CSA Academy and learn how to fast-track your CSA members to CSA success. Try it out for the first month for $1 using coupon code TRIAL. (After that, the price increases to $19/month). Go to www.mydigitalfarmer.com/academy to see what's included with the monthly membership. You'll get access to the ENTIRE resource library I use to help support my CSA members and get them to CSA mastery fast! Use the templates inside to help you build your own customer onboarding and/or training curriculum this summer. This is a MAJOR shortcut to figuring out your onboarding process!! So valuable! Cancel your membership anytime. https://www.mydigitalfarmer.com/academy Follow me on Instagram for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer

Every one of your farm products has a conversion rate. The question is: do you know what it is? I used to scream and rail and raise my fists to the heavens in frustration, when I couldn't get more people to buy my CSA box. What was wrong with me? Maybe nothing... It just has a lower conversion rate. Today, I want to introduce you to the concept of the conversion rate, and I want you to start TRACKING what they are for your most popular (and signature) products. How can we get our conversion rates to go higher? This podcast was sponsored by Local Line, my preferred e-commerce platform for farmers. Are you looking for a new solution for your farm? I can't recommend it enough. Easy to use inventory management, great customer service, continuous improvement, and a culture dedicated to equipping farmers with marketing expertise, Local Line should definitely be one of the e-commerce solutions you consider as you switch. Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code: MDF2024. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline This podcast was sponsored by Farm Marketing School - my monthly online marketing school membership just for farmers. Farm Marketing School is an on-demand library of marketing workshops and project plans that will help you build some of the most important marketing elements in your farm business like: building a promotion calendar, setting up your Google Business Profile, auditing your sales funnel, updating your home page of your website, building your first email nurture sequence, and practicing different types of offers. You get to chose what you want to study and build each month. These projects are designed to be completed in under 30 days, so that you slowly build your marketing system piece by piece. Use the step by step project planner and resource folder to help you jumpstart your work. Take advantage of my new marketing crash course inside, watch my new Email Marketing Course, or take the onboarding assessment tool to help you identify where your funnel is broken and what project to do first. To see what courses are currently inside of FMS, or to try out Farm Marketing School for a month at mydigitalfarmer.com/fms Start and cancel your membership anytime. Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: Join my free email list! I have a great "Crash Course in farm marketing" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. Subscribe at https://www.mydigitalfarmer.com/subscribe Join my CSA Academy and learn how to fast-track your CSA members to CSA success. Try it out for the first month for $1 using coupon code TRIAL. (After that, the price increases to $19/month). Go to www.mydigitalfarmer.com/academy to see what's included with the monthly membership. You'll get access to the ENTIRE resource library I use to help support my CSA members and get them to CSA mastery fast! Use the templates inside to help you build your own customer onboarding and/or training curriculum this summer. This is a MAJOR shortcut to figuring out your onboarding process!! So valuable! Cancel your membership anytime. Find my marketing Facebook group for CSA farmers! Follow me on Instagram for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer

April 3, 2024 Do you have a customer retention problem? If so, I bet I know one of the major factors behind it. In this podcast, we take a deep look at the critical customer management system that should be firiing RIGHT AFTER a person buys. It's called "customer onboarding." I know. Not very sexy. But if you're missing this piece, a lot of confusion is happening for your customer as they get your product. How do I get it? What do I need to do to prepare? What do I watch out for? What do I do first? You need to be ready with answers to questions like these, to help them get results. You need to point them to the "Yellow Brick Road" that gets them to Oz. If you don't, they'll wander around aimlessly, burn out, get lost, experience failure, feel disappointed in themselves, and never buy your product again. Yes, my friend. I know you don't want to hear this... But you can't just grow the product. You have to guide them to success, too. In this episode, we'll talk about what topics to cover in your customer onboarding, as well as where/how you can put this system to work. Lucky for you, it's not that hard to build this element in your sales machine. But you do need to have one. Let's start today, shall we?... Podcast Sponsors: This podcast was sponsored by Local Line, my preferred e-commerce platform for farmers. Are you looking for a new solution for your farm? I can't recommend it enough. Easy to use inventory management, great customer service, continuous improvement, and a culture dedicated to equipping farmers with marketing expertise, Local Line should definitely be one of the e-commerce solutions you consider as you switch. Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code: MDF2024. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline This podcast was sponsored by Farm Marketing School - my monthly online marketing school membership just for farmers. Farm Marketing School is an on-demand library of marketing workshops and project plans that will help you build some of the most important marketing elements in your farm business like: building a promotion calendar, setting up your Google Business Profile, auditing your sales funnel, updating your home page of your website, building your first email nurture sequence, and practicing different types of offers. You get to chose what you want to study and build each month. These projects are designed to be completed in under 30 days, so that you slowly build your marketing system piece by piece. Use the step by step project planner and resource folder to help you jumpstart your work. Take advantage of my new marketing crash course inside, watch my new Email Marketing Course, or take the onboarding assessment tool to help you identify where your funnel is broken and what project to do first. To see what courses are currently inside of FMS, or to try out Farm Marketing School for a month at mydigitalfarmer.com/fms Start and cancel your membership anytime. Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: Join my free email list! I have a great "Crash Course in farm marketing" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. Subscribe at https://www.mydigitalfarmer.com/subscribe Canva Template: Tips and Tricks for CSA Success -- The Beginner's Guide to CSA Success. This is a beautiful, well written guide you can give to your CSA member rookies to teach them the "secrets" to becoming a great home chef faster using the CSA way of eating. Purchase this template and use as-is, or switch out pictures or pages to suit your farm. Ideal for vegetable CSA onboarding. Get my CSA Handbook template -- This is my 2023 CSA handbook. Handbooks are a great form of customer onboarding. If you don't have one yet for your CSA, use mine to help you figure out your sections and then change out the wording to suit your far! To get the handbook template, subscribe at: https://shared-legacy-farms.ck.page/c8cc81f21a Join my CSA Academy and learn how to fast-track your CSA members to CSA success. Try it out for the first month for $1 using coupon code TRIAL. (After that, the price increases to $19/month). Go to www.mydigitalfarmer.com/academy to see what's included with the monthly membership. You'll get access to the ENTIRE resource library I use to help support my CSA members and get them to CSA mastery fast! Use the templates inside to help you build your own customer onboarding and/or training curriculum this summer. This is a MAJOR shortcut to figuring out your onboarding process!! So valuable! Cancel your membership anytime. Episode 252 How to Monetize Your Farm's YouTube Channel for Passive Income- I share ideas for playlist topics in here Find my marketing Facebook group for CSA farmers!

Today it's time to review the marketing basics. When I was a volleyball coach years ago, I used to say, "We spend 80% of our time focusing on the basics." If you can't serve a ball over the net, you'll never score points. If you can't bump the serve into the air to pass to the setter, you'll never score a point. The basics matter. The same is true in farm marketing. There is a FRAMEWORK on which ALL of marketing is based, and you need to know what it is! If you don't have the basics in place, you will lose points! In today's episode, I'm going back to the basics to share with you the 8 stages of the marketing system framework. When you know the stages you need to build in your farm marketing, you'll find that leads move seamlessly through your brand and turn into customers and raving fans. I want you to listen to this episode through the lens of your own farm business. Pay attention! Do you have a marketing element for each stage to move people through the pipeline? Or are you missing some? Perhaps you have a lot of marketing in ONE stage, but hardly any in the later parts of the customer journey. Use this episode to audit your own marketing strategy and identify what areas you need to shore up this season! This podcast was sponsored by Local Line, my preferred e-commerce platform for farmers. Are you looking for a new solution for your farm? I can't recommend it enough. Easy to use inventory management, great customer service, continuous improvement, and a culture dedicated to equipping farmers with marketing expertise, Local Line should definitely be one of the e-commerce solutions you consider as you switch. Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code: MDF2024. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline This podcast was sponsored by Farm Marketing School - my monthly online marketing school membership just for farmers. Farm Marketing School is an on-demand library of marketing workshops and project plans that will help you build some of the most important marketing elements in your farm business like: building a promotion calendar, setting up your Google Business Profile, auditing your sales funnel, updating your home page of your website, building your first email nurture sequence, and practicing different types of offers. You get to chose what you want to study and build each month. These projects are designed to be completed in under 30 days, so that you slowly build your marketing system piece by piece. Use the step by step project planner and resource folder to help you jumpstart your work. Take advantage of my new marketing crash course inside, watch my new Email Marketing Course, or take the onboarding assessment tool to help you identify where your funnel is broken and what project to do first. To see what courses are currently inside of FMS, or to try out Farm Marketing School for a month at mydigitalfarmer.com/fms Start and cancel your membership anytime.= Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: Join my free email list! I have a great "Crash Course in farm marketing" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. Subscribe at https://www.mydigitalfarmer.com/subscribe Follow me on Instagram for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer

How do you market a flower subscription CSA? That's the topic of today's podcast, which is actually a recording from ANOTHER show I was on last week. I was interviewed for the Dirt on Flowers podcast, and the episode turned out SO good that I asked if I could share the recording of the episode with MY podcast audience. Tune in as co-hosts Shannon Allen from Bloomfield Farm and Lyndsay Biehl of Wildroot Flower Co. grill me on how to find the perfect customer avatar for a flower farm, what kind of marketing content to make to attract leads into your farm business, and how to pitch your offer so that people want to stick around from year to year. We get REALLY practical, and I drop all kinds of ideas to try. This podcast was sponsored by Local Line, my preferred e-commerce platform for farmers. Are you looking for a new solution for your farm? I can't recommend it enough. Easy to use inventory management, great customer service, continuous improvement, and a culture dedicated to equipping farmers with marketing expertise, Local Line should definitely be one of the e-commerce solutions you consider as you switch. Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code: MDF2024. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline This podcast was sponsored by Farm Marketing School - my monthly online marketing school membership just for farmers. Farm Marketing School is an on-demand library of marketing workshops and project plans that will help you build some of the most important marketing elements in your farm business like: building a promotion calendar, setting up your Google Business Profile, auditing your sales funnel, updating your home page of your website, building your first email nurture sequence, and practicing different types of offers. These projects are designed to be completed in under 30 days, so that you slowly build your marketing system piece by piece. To see what courses are currently inside of FMS, or to try out Farm Marketing School for a month at mydigitalfarmer.com/fms Start and cancel your membership anytime. Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: The Dirt on Flowers Podcast -- Today's interviewers are the co-hosts of this awesome podcast. If you are a flower farmer, make sure you subscribe to their podcast. Every week, cohosts Shannon Allen and Lyndsay Biehl talk farm business, marketing, and growing techniques to help you create the farm of your dreams. https://www.thedirtonflowers.com/ Join my free email list! I have a great "Crash Course in farm marketing" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. Subscribe at https://www.mydigitalfarmer.com/subscribe My Digital Farmer Podcast Episode 209 Selling Inspiration - My Interview with Lyndsay Biehl of Wildroot Flower Co. - my interviewer from today's podcast was on MY show a few months ago. Listen to her awesome advice on how to build a brand following. Webinar: Maximizing E-Commerce Success: Crafting Offers to Boost Farm Sales on March 25, at 12 PM EST -- join me and my cohost Nina Galle from LocalLine, as we teach how to create offers that will drive traffic to your online store and get them to buy. Learn what makes a compelling offer, and share some examples of what's worked well in your business with our guests.We'll also show some ways you can configure your store settings to make it more likely someone takes your offer. Register for free at www.mydigitalfarmer.com/offerwebinar- Recording will be available to anyone who registers. Find my marketing Facebook group for CSA farmers! Follow me on Instagram for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer Share a Review in Apple Podcast Now if you're feeling extra loving, I would be really grateful if you left me a review over on Apple Podcast, too. Those reviews help other people find my podcast and they're also fun for me to go in and read. Just click here to review, select "Ratings and Reviews" and "Write a Review" and let me know what your favorite part of the podcast is. Thank you!

Have you ever thought about offering a Spring Plant Sale to your customers? You grow veggie startup plants for them for their garden. They pre-order them in early March, you get the revenue in the bag, and then deliver them when they're ready? This has been one of our most popular promotions and offers every year. I've gotten several requests from farmers to "show them how we do it." So this episode is a deep dive into our step by step process. How we set up the offer. What we charge. How to get a higher Average Order Value. What veggies to sell. How we promote it to get lots of buying on the first day. One of the resources I offer in this episode is my Canva file for my Plant Sale Price List. https://shared-legacy-farms.ck.page/f49a438962 This podcast was sponsored by Local Line, my preferred e-commerce platform for farmers. Are you looking for a new solution for your farm? I can't recommend it enough. Easy to use inventory management, great customer service, continuous improvement, and a culture dedicated to equipping farmers with marketing expertise, Local Line should definitely be one of the e-commerce solutions you consider as you switch. Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code: MDF2024. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline This podcast was sponsored by Farm Marketing School - my monthly online marketing school membership just for farmers. Farm Marketing School is an on-demand library of marketing workshops and project plans that will help you build some of the most important marketing elements in your farm business like: building a promotion calendar, setting up your Google Business Profile, auditing your sales funnel, updating your home page of your website, building your first email nurture sequence, and practicing different types of offers. You get to chose what you want to study and build each month. These projects are designed to be completed in under 30 days, so that you slowly build your marketing system piece by piece. Use the step by step project planner and resource folder to help you jumpstart your work.Take advantage of my new marketing crash course inside, watch my new Email Marketing Course, or take the onboarding assessment tool to help you identify where your funnel is broken and what project to do first. To see what courses are currently inside of FMS, or to try out Farm Marketing School for a month at mydigitalfarmer.com/fms Start and cancel your membership anytime. Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: Join my free email list! I have a great "Crash Course in farm marketing" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. Subscribe at https://www.mydigitalfarmer.com/subscribe Subscribe to the I Spy an Offer Challenge. Learn how to get better at making offers in your business by playing along with me! Dates: March 18-22, 2024. To be successful in sales, you need to get good at making offers. This is a skill that takes practice and learning the "formulas" of offers that will appeal to your customer. To help you learn, I'm hosting a 5 day "I Spy an Offer" Challenge. It's easy to play. Just subscribe below and every day starting March 18-22, I want you to put your eyes on and LOOK for a type of offer in the big wide world. It can be anything in any industry or media. For example: "Kids eat free on Tuesdays..." Each day, I'll send you an email with an offer I spied, and what I learned from it. Once you train your eye to see offers, you'll get better and incorporating some of them into your own marketing. If you see this after the challenge is over, you can still play! Subscribe and I'll send you the offers I spied each day for 5 days after the fact. You can still play along in your own time. Subscribe at: https://shared-legacy-farms.ck.page/b8eb611e7d One of the resources I offer in this episode is my Canva file for my Plant Sale Price List. https://shared-legacy-farms.ck.page/f49a438962 My Digital Farmer Podcast Episode 236 How to Raise Your Prices (and Make More $) Using Price Anchoring -- This is SO SO good! Make sure you learn about this powerful pricing strategy used EVERYWHERE, because it will help you make more sales! Find my marketing Facebook group for CSA farmers! Follow me on Instagram for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer Subscribe and Review in Apple Podcast I'd love for you to subscribe to my podcast! I don't want you to miss an episode. Click here to subscribe in Apple Podcasts!

March 6, 2024 Have you ever thought about monetizing your farm's YouTube Channel? If you already have subscribers and videos on your channel -- this may as easy as 15 minutes to set up. I recently flipped the switch to make monetize my channel, and it's SO COOL to see passive revenue coming into my business every month. In this podcast, I share my journey on YouTube, including how I used the platform to help me build brand awareness, grow my email list, educate my potential clients, and support my CSA members with a CSA Success path. We'll cover YouTube basics, what is required to monetize, and my recommended first steps for getting started on the platform. See my YouTube channels for both Shared Legacy Farms and My Digital Farmer. You can scroll those channels to see what content I've created, and see what's been getting more views than anything else. (Get some inspiration for content you could create, too!) https://www.youtube,com/sharedlegacyfarms https://www.youtube.com/mydigitalfarmer This podcast was sponsored by Local Line, my preferred e-commerce platform for farmers. Are you looking for a new solution for your farm? I can't recommend it enough. Easy to use inventory management, great customer service, continuous improvement, and a culture dedicated to equipping farmers with marketing expertise, Local Line should definitely be one of the e-commerce solutions you consider as you switch. Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code: MDF2024. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline This podcast was sponsored by Farm Marketing School - my monthly online marketing school membership just for farmers. Farm Marketing School is an on-demand library of marketing workshops and project plans that will help you build some of the most important marketing elements in your farm business like: building a promotion calendar, setting up your Google Business Profile, auditing your sales funnel, updating your home page of your website, building your first email nurture sequence, and practicing different types of offers. You get to chose what you want to study and build each month. These projects are designed to be completed in under 30 days, so that you slowly build your marketing system piece by piece. Use the step by step project planner and resource folder to help you jumpstart your work.Take advantage of my new marketing crash course inside, watch my new Email Marketing Course, or take the onboarding assessment tool to help you identify where your funnel is broken and what project to do first. To see what courses are currently inside of FMS, or to try out Farm Marketing School for a month at mydigitalfarmer.com/fms Start and cancel your membership anytime. Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: Join my free email list! I have a great "Crash Course in farm marketing" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. Subscribe at https://www.mydigitalfarmer.com/subscribe Join my CSA Academy and fast-track your farm customers to CSA success. Try it out for the first month for $1 using coupon code TRIAL. Go to www.mydigitalfarmer.com/academy to enroll. You'll get access to the entire resource library I give to my CSA members to support them as they learn how to become a home chef! Watch cooking tutorial videos for every vegetable. See the catalog of "cooking exit strategies" we teach to our members. Download my veggie e-guides, worksheets, and use them with your own customers. Or just scroll the table of contents for inspiration on how you can build your own Sucess Path for your farm clients. It's a goldmine of information and a shortcut to content creation each week. Cancel your membership anytime. Follow me on Instagram for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer

February 28, 2024 In today's episode, I share a case study of one pasture-based livestock farmer, who has spent the last 9 years slowly scaling her business in a way that hasn't required her to take on debt, while also having time to homeschool her two kids. I ask her: "How'd you get here?" Dana shares the transition process and lessons she's learned along the way. She discusses how she markets her product each week to attract new customers and get her current ones to buy more. We talk about the strategies that are doing most of the heavy lifting. We talk about the mindset work she's had to do to help her take risks and not give up. And we talk about the deep commitment we both have to running a fun business that doesn't kill our body, mind or spirit. If you're starting out your business, there are some really great gems inside of here. This podcast was sponsored by Local Line, the leading e-commerce platform for the local food system. Try Local Line for your farm today! Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code: MDF2024. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline Meet My Guest: Dana Workman Stacy Today's podcast guest is Dana Workman Stacy. Dana and her husband Jesse along with daughters Eliza and Brynn operate Grass Powered Poultry & Meats, a pasture-based livestock farm in Highland County, Ohio. Over the past 9 years their farm has grown from a few chickens in the front yard to fill their own freezer to raising lots more pasture-raised chicken, pastured pork and grass-finished beef. In 2019, Dana left her career in agricultural lending to focus on the farm and her family and hasn't looked back. As a first-generation farmer, building a profitable and sustainable farm business hasn't been easy, but the journey has been incredible. In addition to raising amazing food, Dana is passionate about building community and supporting the growth and success of rural businesses. Visit her website: GrassPoweredPoultry.com Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: Join my free email list! I have a great "Crash Course in farm marketing" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. Join Farm Marketing School - my monthly online marketing school membership just for farmers. Farm Marketing School is an on-demand library of marketing workshops and project plans that will help you build some of the most important marketing elements in your farm business like: building a promotion calendar, auditing your sales funnel, updating your home page of your website, building your first email nurture sequence, and practicing different types of offers. You get to chose what you want to study and build each month. These projects are designed to be completed in under 30 days, so that you slowly build your marketing system piece by piece. Use the step by step project planner and resource folder to help you jumpstart your work.Take advantage of my new marketing crash course inside, watch my new Email Marketing Course, or take the onboarding assessment tool to help you identify where your funnel is broken and what project to do first. To see what courses are currently inside of FMS, or to try out Farm Marketing School for a month at mydigitalfarmer.com/fms Cancel your membership anytime. Find my Facebook group for farmers! Follow me on Instagram for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer

February 21, 2024 Are you a farm business that uses social media to sell your product? Then today's podcast is a must-listen. One of the delicate balances of posting on social media is making sure you also honor the rules of the platform. I'm constantly reminding myself that people aren't coming to Facebook or Instagram to shop for my stuff. They're there to engage with friends and family. So how do we post our content without it feeling like an "intrusion" into their world? The answer is the indirect post. In this episode, I share the difference between "indirect" and "direct" posts on social media, how they're both necessary, and how to craft them so they BOTH get you traction. I'll give you some examples of what they look like in practice. This podcast was sponsored by Local Line, the leading e-commerce platform for the local food system. Try Local Line for your farm today! Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code: MDF2024. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline This podcast was sponsored by Farm Marketing School - my monthly online marketing school membership just for farmers. Farm Marketing School is an on-demand library of marketing workshops and project plans that will help you build some of the most important marketing elements in your farm business like: building a promotion calendar, auditing your sales funnel, updating your home page of your website, building your first email nurture sequence, and practicing different types of offers. You get to chose what you want to study and build each month. These projects are designed to be completed in under 30 days, so that you slowly build your marketing system piece by piece. Use the step by step project planner and resource folder to help you jumpstart your work. Take advantage of my new marketing crash course inside, watch my new Email Marketing Course, or take the onboarding assessment tool to help you identify where your funnel is broken and what project to do first. To see what courses are currently inside of FMS, or to try out Farm Marketing School for a month at mydigitalfarmer.com/fms Cancel your membership anytime. Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: Join my free email list! I have a great "Crash Course in farm marketing" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. Get my Social Media post templates - Looking for ideas on the "categories" of posts you could create on your social channel? This guide will give you 20 different examples of post styles, from the "question" post, to the FAQ post, to the Lead Magnet post. Use this to break the logjam when you're racking your brain over what to talk about on social! Find my Facebook group for farmers! Follow me on Instagram for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer

Today, we talk about the importance of creating habits around your product. This month, I saw a sign at my local meat/butcher in town. It showed the Daily Lunch Deal for each day for the next 3 weeks. It was new, so it captured my attention. Tanks Meats hopes that by showing me the "schedule" of daily lunch meals, they will draw me back multiple times in a week -- increasing my frequency of purchase. If I'm already the type of person who buys lunch out 1x per week, I can look ahead and "plan" to come back to Tanks on Wednesday, too, since I love Reubens. Now I've just increased my customer value by a factor of two. Tanks can also follow the sales data from this after a few months, and figure out which meals are making the most money. Then optimize their menu. In today's episode, I want to show you the importance of creating buying habits around your product. Sometimes that means you need to create a "rhythm" and pattern that your customers will come to know and expect. I cover all kinds of examples of what this can look like. It's full of practical examples. One small tweak might mean a big shift in revenue for you. Are you showing up at the "trigger moment" for your customer to make them think about your product? This podcast was sponsored by Local Line, the leading e-commerce platform for the local food system. Try Local Line for your farm today! Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code: MDF2024. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: Join my free email list! I have a great "Crash Course in farm marketing" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. This podcast was sponsored by Farm Marketing School - my monthly online marketing school membership just for farmers. Farm Marketing School is an on-demand library of marketing workshops and project plans that will help you build some of the most important marketing elements in your farm business like: building a promotion calendar, auditing your sales funnel, updating your home page of your website, building your first email nurture sequence, and practicing different types of offers. You get to chose what you want to study and build each month. These projects are designed to be completed in under 30 days, so that you slowly build your marketing system piece by piece. Use the step by step project planner and resource folder to help you jumpstart your work. To see what courses are currently inside of FMS, or to try out Farm Marketing School for a month at mydigitalfarmer.com/fms Cancel your membership anytime. Subscribe and Review in Apple Podcast I'd love for you to subscribe to my podcast! I don't want you to miss an episode. Click here to subscribe in Apple Podcasts! Now if you're feeling extra loving, I would be really grateful if you left me a review over on Apple Podcast, too. Those reviews help other people find my podcast and they're also fun for me to go in and read. Just click here to review, select "Ratings and Reviews" and "Write a Review" and let me know what your favorite part of the podcast is. Thank you! My hope is to feature guests periodically on the show. If you know someone who is innovating in the area of marketing as a farmer, please send me an email at [email protected].

February 7, 2024 Do you have a signature product you're trying to get your customers to buy? I often ask farmers: "Where are you taking people?" Your Answer: All roads in your business lead to ___________? If you answered something like "CSA membership," subscription, side of beef, or some other big ticket item, then I want to introduce you to a powerful marketing asset called the "email sales sequence." This is a series of emails you write in advance and load up into your email provider as an automation. It "drips" out to a subscriber once a certain trigger fires (like downloading a specific lead magnet or after completing a nurture email sequence), and it PITCHES YOUR PRODUCT. I built one of these to pitch my CSA membership many years ago, and every year, I tweak it and make it better. Between this asset, my regular social media, one formal promo launch to my wait list (and a few referrals and word of mouth), I sell 400 CSA memberships a year. It's a work horse for me. What's great about these is that you spend the time to build them ONCE, and then they keep working for you on auto-pilot behind the scenes, pulling in new customers. And even if they don't pull in customers the first time, you can re-use the same sequence once or twice a year "live" as you broadcast your email list. I'm often asked, "But what do you talk about in them?!!" That's what this podcast episode is all about. I share the 6 email "topic map" you can use as a general guide when you build your own sales sequence. Use it as a framework to get started. And if you need more step by step help with building this, join my Farm Marketing School membership for a month and take the "Promotional Email Sequence" Project Build. (When you take that project, I also share my own CSA promo sequence with you so you can see the framework in action). Be forewarned: your first attempt at writing this sequence will still feel weird. That's normal. Do it anyway. It's your fear of being sales-y coming out. Put it out into the world, see what happens, then commit to tweaking it. It will take several iterations before you feel good about it, but you have to take the first step and get something out there. I promise: the world will not end. In fact, you may find that you create a pipeline for ongoing sales in your business that takes some major time (and stress) off your plate. This podcast was sponsored by Local Line, the leading e-commerce platform for the local food system. Try Local Line for your farm today! Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code: MDF2024. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline This podcast was sponsored by CSAWeek and the CSAInnovationNetwork -- Mark your calendars: CSA Week is February 19-25, 2024! Imagine a week dedicated to empowering farmers with the latest strategies, tools, and ideas to enhance their CSA and kickstart the CSA season. From February 19-25, 2024, join the CSA Innovation Network in this week-long celebration dedicated to promoting CSA, supporting local agriculture, and fostering a stronger connection between farmers and their communities. Get your free CSAWeek Promotion Pack from CSAInnovationNetwork by subscribing at csainnovationnetwork.org/csa-week It includes Canva templates for social media posts, sample emails, press release, customizable CSA infographics, and even a social content calendar guide. Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: Join my free email list! I have a great "Crash Course in farm marketing" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. This podcast was sponsored by Farm Marketing School - my monthly online marketing school membership just for farmers. Farm Marketing School is an on-demand library of marketing workshops and project plans that will help you build some of the most important marketing elements in your farm business like: building a promotion calendar, auditing your sales funnel, updating your home page of your website, building your first email nurture sequence, and practicing different types of offers. You get to chose what you want to study and build each month. These projects are designed to be completed in under 30 days, so that you slowly build your marketing system piece by piece. Use the step by step project planner and resource folder to help you jumpstart your work.Take advantage of my new marketing crash course inside, watch my new Email Marketing Course, or take the onboarding assessment tool to help you identify where your funnel is broken and what project to do first. To see what courses are currently inside of FMS, or to try out Farm Marketing School for a month at mydigitalfarmer.com/fms Cancel your membership anytime. Get my Social Media

January 31, 2024 In today's episode, you're going to hear from a flower farmer who used the "early bird launch sales method" to help her presell 60% of next summer's subscriptions in just 7 days. Megan reached out to me a few weeks after her promotion campaign ended to say, "It worked!!!" (Multiple exclamation points). I use this exact same process to presell about 400 CSA vegetable shares every fall, and I usually get about 75-80% of my folks to sign on the dotted line. I asked Megan onto the show to share her story, because I know how important it is to show you that this stuff works for other farmers! She'll share how she modified my strategy to build an irresistible offer to her clients, how she created hype and buzz, and what advice she found most helpful when she was in the thick of the launch. There's also a really good tip in here about how to capture testimonials from flower subscription clients.... This podcast was sponsored by Farm Marketing School - my monthly online marketing school membership just for farmers. Farm Marketing School is an on-demand library of marketing workshops and project plans that will help you build some of the most important marketing elements in your farm business like: building a promotion calendar, auditing your sales funnel, updating your home page of your website, building your first email nurture sequence, and practicing different types of offers. You get to chose what you want to study and build each month. These projects are designed to be completed in under 30 days, so that you slowly build your marketing system piece by piece. Use the step by step project planner and resource folder to help you jumpstart your work.Take advantage of my new marketing crash course inside, watch my new Email Marketing Course, or take the onboarding assessment tool to help you identify where your funnel is broken and what project to do first. To see what courses are currently inside of FMS, or to try out Farm Marketing School for a month at mydigitalfarmer.com/fms Cancel your membership anytime. Interview Guest: Meet Megan Rudroff Megan Rudroff started Rudy Lane Flower Farm in 2019 with the intention of solely growing peonies as an added enterprise on their traditional cattle and row crop farm in the heart of Missouri. However, since peonies take a few years before they can be harvested, she planted a few hundred dahlias to cash-flow for more peony plants. Then, throw in a world-wide pandemic and an unforeseen addiction to dahlias and now Megan grows 600 peonies, 800 dahlias, thousands of tulips and too many annuals to count that she sells primarily retail via her subscription program and farmstand. Though Megan is the primary flower farmer, her husband Layne, and their three daughters all play a part in the flower business. Layne does all the equipment operation and flower deliveries, and their girls, ages 8, 6 and 3, help with planting, harvesting and, their favorite, deadheading spent blooms. Megan believes that growing flowers is the easy part, it's selling those flowers that is truly the hard part. Megan's full-time career is in natural resource conservation… not marketing! Because of that, she credits podcasts like My Digital Farmer for helping her flower business being successful from the start. Learn more about Rudy Lane Flower Farm Instagram: @OnRudyLane Facebook: www.facebook.com/RudyLaneFlowerFarm Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: Join my free email list! I have a great "Crash Course in farm marketing" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. Episode 235 of the My Digital Farmer Podcast: CSA Renewal Promotion Process: Step by Step - Megan used this episode to help her build her own strategy. Episode 120 of the My Digital Farmer Podcast: How My "CSA Giveaway Challenge" Experiment Built Some Major Brand Identity - Megan referenced this episode as inspiration for her giveaway element in her offer. Sign up for Farm Marketing School - my monthly online marketing school membership just for farmers. Farm Marketing School is an on-demand library of marketing workshops and project plans that will help you build some of the most important marketing elements in your farm business like: building a promotion calendar, auditing your sales funnel, updating your home page of your website, building your first email nurture sequence, and practicing different types of offers. And new content is being added every month. You get to chose what you want to study each month. I've taken the recordings of just the teaching sessions of each project inside of my high-end coaching program (Accelerator) and made them available to everyone. These projects are designed to be completed in under 30 days, so that you slowly build your marketing system piece by piece. Use the step by step project planner and resource folder to help you jumpstart your work.Take a

Farm website updates. Ugh. If you're like most farmers, you cringe at the thought of working on your website. It feels overwhelming, time consuming and ultra confusing. What do you say? How do you set it up technically? How do you even get started?! In today's episode, I interview an actual website designer who works specifically with farmers to design or rebuild farm websites. She has seen it all. We talk through the 3 most important elements that need to be on your farm's website home page, and what's at stake if you get them wrong!! You'll hear great conversation around the importance of visuals, CTA buttons, navigation, testimonials, knowing your customer, and creating clarity for the potential buyer. We also talk through the process for finding and hiring a website designer, so that you get someone who will deliver a great end product and set you up to maintain it easily after they're done. If you're thinking about building or refreshing your farm website, this is a MUST-LISTEN to guide your plan of action. Today's Podcast Guest: Jean-Marie Merkle Meet Jean-Marie Merkle: an extroverted maximalist with a passion for branding, project management, and regenerative agriculture. After working at design and advertising agencies in New York and Philadelphia for over a decade, burnout hit, and she moved to Tennessee to throw herself into farming. A car crash, the pandemic, and some cosmic alignment led to her forming her own agency, Dig Digital. Now she lives in Lancaster County, PA collaborating with farmers and food businesses to improve their digital presence through design and marketing. Learn more about Jean-Marie's services on her website: www.dig-digital.com Follow her on Instagram @dig__digital Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: Join my free email list! I have a great "Crash Course in farm marketing" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. Top 10 Website Mistakes Farmers Make -- Want to know why your website isn't working? I've audited a lot of farm websites over the years, and I see the SAME issues over and over. I put together the most common website mistakes in this multi-page guide Want to know what they are? Download my PDF and use it as a checklist to audit your own farm website and make some quick adjustments that could be stopping your website from converting. Sign up for Farm Marketing School - my monthly online marketing school membership just for farmers. Farm Marketing School is an on-demand library of marketing workshops and project plans that will help you build some of the most important marketing elements in your farm business like: building a promotion calendar, auditing your sales funnel, updating your home page of your website, building your first email nurture sequence, and practicing different types of offers. To see what courses are currently inside of FMS, or to try out Farm Marketing School for a month at mydigitalfarmer.com/fms Cancel your membership anytime. We reference the Chrome Extension Go Full Page. This tool will allow you to take full screenshots of individual URL pages, so you can reference them as templates later. Find my Facebook group for farmers! Follow me on Instagram for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer

I'm willing to bet that if you're in business, you have some big dreams and goals you want to hit. How do you make sure you reach them? Over the last 3 years especially, I've made some pretty incredible things happen. One day this past year, I was reflecting on the art of "manifesting big things." I decided to catalog a list of things that I would consider "big goals" I had manifested. And then I asked the question in my journal: What do all of these things have in common? Did I see any patterns in how I experienced them, or in how they came to be? I wrote down 5 observations. And then, I did something I've never done... I photocopied this page in my journal, and I put it in my podcast folder. (That means I was impressed with what I came up with). I stumbled upon this photocopy last week as I was looking for a podcast topic. I re-read my reflection and thought, "I've got to talk about this." The more I work with my own coach, the more I realize how powerful our thoughts and beliefs shape our feelings, actions, and (ultimately) our destiny. I have a feeling that some of your hangups when it comes to creating your dream might be all in your head. If you have an audacious sales goal or life quest, and you're interested in exploring "how to manifest," then this podcast is for you. As you listen to this episode, I'm going to ask you you to think about a achievement you manifested in your past. Then I want you to think about your big, audacious goal/desire that you are chasing right now. Take the principles I share from today and see if they ring true foryou. Did you need to hear one of these "lessons" today? Lean into them as you move towards manifesting your dream. Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: Join my free email list! https://www.mydigitalfarmer.com/subscribe Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. Sign up for Farm Marketing School - my monthly online marketing school membership just for farmers. Farm Marketing School is an on-demand library of marketing workshops and project plans that will help you build some of the most important marketing elements in your farm business like: a promotion calendar, a sales funnel audit, home page of your website, an email nurture sequence, and your latest best-selling offers. These projects are designed to be completed in under 30 days, so that you slowly build your marketing machine piece by piece. To see what courses are currently inside of FMS, or to try out Farm Marketing School for a month at https://www.mydigitalfarmer.com/fms Cancel your membership anytime. Follow me on Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/mydigitalfarmer for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer

January 10, 2024 Today we do one of my favorite things: we interview a farmer and audit their sales funnel. In today's episode, you'll hear from Adam Henson of Shady Brook Farm. Adam joined my Accelerator program this fall to build out his email nurture sequence and sales sequence for his meat sales. As you listen, I want you to hear how simple his sales funnel is. Sometimes we think that we have to have a lot of irons in the fire, but in reality, in the early years of setting up your business sales flow, you're just layering in the main players: the website, the weekly email, the nurture sequence, the product ladder, the attraction strategy and message. Although Adam will tell you he isn't at his finish line yet, I wanted to show you a farm that is well on its way. Listen for some of the strategies that are working well for him. Notice the importance of the buyer's journey at the point of sale, and knowing your customer's pain points. I'm sure you'll find some marketing gems in this episode! This podcast was sponsored by: The Thriving Farmer Podcast. In this top-rated farm podcast, you'll learn the latest tricks and strategies of successful farmers, strategize with in-depth interviews with leaders in the industry, and connect with stories of farmers just like you. In our interviews, we focus on building farms that last, on setting up systems, knowing your customers, building your team, and creating a work/family/life balance. With over 15 years of farming background, your host Michael Kilpatrick has the experience and authority to bring you practical advice, ask the hard questions, tease out the gold nuggets, and help share what it's really like to build a profitable, sustainable farm. Subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts or visit: https://www.thrivingfarmerpodcast.com/ Today's Podcast Guest: Today's podcast guest is Adam Henson of Shady Brook Farm in Canton, NC. Adam is a fourth generation cattle farmer running a cow/calf operation in a grass based production model along side his wife Jada. his dad and grandmother are stake holders in the operation as land owners and in having a small interest in the cow herd. In 2012 Adam made the switch from the commodity system to a direct to consumer model offering grass fed and finished beef under their own label. Since then they have added pasture raised eggs in 2013 and pasture raised chickens in 2015. In 2022 they switched their laying hens and meat chickens to an organic/soy free feed. They sell at a local farmer's market on Saturdays, maintain an online store connected to their website, publish a weekly email to push customers to the online store and farmer's market, as well as offer some small scale subscription services. Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: Join my free email list! https://www.mydigitalfarmer.com/subscribe I have a great "Crash Course in farm marketing" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. Sign up for Farm Marketing School at https://www.mydigitalfarmer.com/fms - my monthly online marketing school membership just for farmers. Farm Marketing School is an on-demand library of marketing workshops and project plans that will help you build some of the most important marketing elements in your farm business like: building a promotion calendar, auditing your sales funnel, updating your home page of your website, building your first email nurture sequence, and practicing different types of offers. These projects are designed to be completed in under 30 days, so that you slowly build your marketing system piece by piece. To see what courses are currently inside of FMS, or to try out Farm Marketing School for a month at mydigitalfarmer.com/fms Cancel your membership anytime.

How do you make more money in your farm business? Answer: make more offers. In our early years as a CSA farm, we struggled to increase revenue because we only had the one thing to sell: our 18-week CSA membership. That's it! Once you paid for that, you weren't asked to buy anything again until the next year, when we asked to renew the membership. Looking back, that was a mistake. In order to maximize profits, your farm will want to sell multiple things to the same customer all year long. That means you will need to have enough products in your product suite to sell. You need a "product ladder." In today's episode, you'll learn how the product ladder works, how to build one, and how to USE it to make more money. This may involve making new products!! Your homework is to identify your product ladder and map out the different key categories, products, or promotions that fall into it. This is your key step to increasing your revenue as a farmer. This podcast was sponsored by Local Line, the leading e-commerce platform for the local food system. Try Local Line for your farm today! Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code: MDF2023. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline This podcast was sponsored by: The Thriving Farmer Podcast. In this top-rated farm podcast, you'll learn the latest tricks and strategies of successful farmers, strategize with in-depth interviews with leaders in the industry, and connect with stories of farmers just like you. In our interviews, we focus on building farms that last, on setting up systems, knowing your customers, building your team, and creating a work/family/life balance. With over 15 years of farming background, your host Michael Kilpatrick has the experience and authority to bring you practical advice, ask the hard questions, tease out the gold nuggets, and help share what it's really like to build a profitable, sustainable farm. Subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts or visit: https://www.thrivingfarmerpodcast.com/ Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: Join my free email list! I have a great "Crash Course in farm marketing" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. Sign up for Farm Marketing School - my monthly online marketing school membership just for farmers. Farm Marketing School is an on-demand library of marketing workshops and project plans that will help you build some of the most important marketing elements in your farm business like: building a promotion calendar, auditing your sales funnel, updating your home page of your website, building your first email nurture sequence, and practicing different types of offers. And new content is being added every month. You get to chose what you want to study each month. I've taken the recordings of just the teaching sessions of each project inside of my high-end coaching program (Accelerator) and made them available to everyone. These projects are designed to be completed in under 30 days, so that you slowly build your marketing system piece by piece. Use the step by step project planner and resource folder to help you jumpstart your work.Take advantage of my new marketing crash course inside, watch my new Email Marketing Course, or take the onboarding assessment tool to help you identify where your funnel is broken and what project to do first. To see what courses are currently inside of FMS, or to try out Farm Marketing School for a month at mydigitalfarmer.com/fms Cancel your membership anytime. ConvertKit - I mention my email service provider of choice. If you decide to try this ESP out, use my affiliate code here and I get a small commission. Flitetest.com -- this is the RC airplane brand that got my kids hooked on aviation! Find my Facebook group for farmers! Follow me on Instagram for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer

Have you ever wondered what are the primary agents that cause people to buy your product? Turns out there are "laws" in marketing that drive the sales to our products. Do you know what they are? I'm betting that many of these principles are familiar to you. You're probably using some of them without realizing it. But there might be a couple that are new to you. What's REALLY cool is when you can use multiple principles at the same time for a multiplier effect. In today's episode, I want to introduce them to you all as a group -- let them "walk across the stage" and strut their stuff. Pay attention to your favorites, but also notice some new characters. Then pick one principle that you can work on this month as you optimize the different elements of your sales system. Here they are in a list: Principle of Authority Principle of Social Proof Principle of Direction Principle of Tunnel Vision Principle of Objections Principle of Why Now? Principle of Cause and Effect Principle of Reciprocity This podcast was sponsored by Local Line, the leading e-commerce platform for the local food system. Try Local Line for your farm today! Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code: MDF2023. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline This podcast was sponsored by: The Thriving Farmer Podcast. In this top-rated farm podcast, you'll learn the latest tricks and strategies of successful farmers, strategize with in-depth interviews with leaders in the industry, and connect with stories of farmers just like you. In our interviews, we focus on building farms that last, on setting up systems, knowing your customers, building your team, and creating a work/family/life balance. With over 15 years of farming background, your host Michael Kilpatrick has the experience and authority to bring you practical advice, ask the hard questions, tease out the gold nuggets, and help share what it's really like to build a profitable, sustainable farm. Subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts or visit: https://www.thrivingfarmerpodcast.com/ Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: Join my free email list! I have a great "Crash Course in farm marketing" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. Take My 5-Day FREE CSA Startup Challenge - Looking to start your first veggie CSA, but not sure how to get started? Subscribe to my 5 day challenge. Each day, I'll walk you through one of the 5 key steps to getting your CSA framework in place. You'll do the homework assignment each day, and by the end, you'll have your basic roadmap! Sign up for Farm Marketing School - my monthly online membership. Farm Marketing School is an on-demand library of marketing workshops and project plans that will help you build some of the most important marketing elements in you business like: auditing your sales funnel, updating your home page of your website, building your first email nurture sequence, creating a promo calendar, practicing different types of offers. These projects are designed to be completed in under 30 days, so that you slowly build your marketing system piece by piece. Use the step by step project planner and resource folder to help you jumpstart your work. Take advantage of my new marketing crash course inside, watch my new Email Marketing Course, or take the onboarding assessment tool to help you identify where your funnel is broken and what project to do first. To see what courses are currently inside of FMS, or to try out Farm Marketing School for a month at mydigitalfarmer.com/fms Cancel your membership anytime. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini -- this is a great read that will show you the triggers and psychology that cause someone to be ready to buy. The Rule of Reciprocity is one of them! Find my Facebook group for farmers! Follow me on Instagram for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer

It's the end of the year, and that means it's time for the end of year evaluation and goal setting retreat! This is a rebroadcast of Episode 191 -- because it's THAT good, and I want you to repeat the process again! I used to avoid this process — partly because I didn't have a good process that worked for me. That all changed when I found these evaluation questions. And in today's podcast, I'm going to share them with you. I spend two separate days working through them for about two hours each time. That's a total of 4 hours. In this episode, I walk you through 9 questions and flesh out examples of what kinds of answers you're looking for. By the time you've really worked through these, I PROMISE YOU that the answers to question #7 "What are your goals for next year" will be pretty clear to you. I love how these questions bring up so many discoveries, limiting beliefs, desires, direction, and clarity for me. I hope it works for you too. I encourage you to listen to my episode in its entirety. Then book some time this week to work through the questions — make the process your own. See what comes up for you. Then tell me what you came up with! I'd love to hear one idea… email me or shoot me a DM @mydigitalfarmer on Instagram. Here are the questions I journal through: PART 1 – do these on day 1 List everything that has happened to you in the last 12 months related to your business? What are the lessons from those experiences that you can take into next year? What do you want to do more of? What do you want to do less of? What are you still holding onto from last year that is taking up space? And what will there be room for when you let that go? (Think physically, relationally, feelings, possessions, time sucks, mindsets and limiting beliefs) What are your 5% revenue generating activities? PART 2 — do these on day 2 What do you want? (Think outside your business. What else do you want for your life?) What are your goals for next year? What results do you want to produce? (This could include elements of your personal life too). What specific measure will you use to know that your objective has been realized? What new habits will you have to adopt to win your game? (Daily? Weekly? Monthly? Quarterly?) Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: This podcast was sponsored by Local Line, the leading e-commerce platform for the local food system. Try Local Line for your farm today! Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code:MDF2023. Head to this special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline Join my free email list! I have a great "email onboarding sequence" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. Sign up for Farm Marketing School - my monthly online membership. Farm Marketing School is an on-demand library of marketing workshops and project plans that will help you build some of the most important marketing elements in you business like: auditing your sales funnel, updating your home page of your website, building your first email nurture sequence, creating a promo calendar, practicing different types of offers. And new content is being added every month. As the DIY version of my Accelerator Group Coaching program, you get to chose what you want to study each month. I've taken the recordings of just the teaching sessions of each project inside of my high-end coaching program (Accelerator) and made them available to everyone. These projects are designed to be completed in under 30 days, so that you slowly build your marketing system piece by piece. Use the step by step project planner and resource folder to help you jumpstart your work.Take advantage of my new marketing crash course inside, watch my new Email Marketing Course, or take the onboarding assessment tool to help you identify where your funnel is broken and what project to do first. To see what courses are currently inside of FMS, or to try out Farm Marketing School for a month at mydigitalfarmer.com/fms Cancel your membership anytime. Take My 5-Day FREE CSA Startup Challenge - Looking to start your first veggie CSA, but not sure how to get started? Subscribe to my 5 day challenge. Each day, I'll walk you through one of the 5 key steps to getting your CSA framework in place. You'll do the homework assignment each day, and by the end, you'll have your basic roadmap! Register for my webinar called "The 3 Mistakes CSA Rookie Farmers Make (And How to Avoid Them)." You can register at www.mydigitalfarmer.com/rookie — and select from the time options available each week. This is a free webinar, designed to help "new" CSA farmers learn the framework for a profitable and resilient CSA.

How do you sell a rare breed pig in a community who's never heard of it? This was a problem faced by today's podcast guest. Joanna Shepherd from Cobblestone Farm had moved from the UK on a mission to save the Berkshire pig breed! The problem: not many people in Saskatchewan, Canada knew what they were, or why they deserved her luxury-level price point. How do you market a product no one has heard of and create desire for it? Joanna has spent the last 5 years trying to figure it out. In today's episode, we'll hear some of the issues she has had to work through to help her find her way. Now she's guiding other Berkshire pork farmers and helping them learn how to market this rare breed of pig. You'll hear her rather simple strategy which is a mix of email marketing funnels, social media, and SEO that is slowly building an audience of super-fans who become repeat buyers. She's building a marketing machine "slow and steady" that will serve as a strong foundation as she scales her production. This podcast was sponsored by Local Line, the leading e-commerce platform for the local food system. Try Local Line for your farm today! Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code: MDF2023. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline This podcast was sponsored by: The Thriving Farmer Podcast. In this top-rated farm podcast, you'll learn the latest tricks and strategies of successful farmers, strategize with in-depth interviews with leaders in the industry, and connect with stories of farmers just like you. In our interviews, we focus on building farms that last, on setting up systems, knowing your customers, building your team, and creating a work/family/life balance. With over 15 years of farming background, your host Michael Kilpatrick has the experience and authority to bring you practical advice, ask the hard questions, tease out the gold nuggets, and help share what it's really like to build a profitable, sustainable farm. Subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts or visit: https://www.thrivingfarmerpodcast.com/ Meet Our Guest ~ Who is Joanna Shepherd: Joanna Shepherd is the co-owner of Cobblestone Farm in Saskaketchewan, Canada, that specializes in raising Berkshire pigs. She and her husband Carl are a couple of Brits from the North Of England, and you'll definitely hear her fun accent! Joanna was raised in UK on mixed livestock farm, meaning beef, sheep, and pigs. She met her husband at an abattoir they both worked at and decided to move to Canada to see where the adventure would take them. They started out working in abattoirs and ended up buying acreage and raising registered Berkshire pigs. Joanna's mission is the save the rare Berkshire breed, selling her "genetics" to breeders, as well as weanlings and processed pork to local buyers. Her small herd of Berkshire pigs free ranges on 27 acres of pasture year round. She's committed to allowing her pigs live a stress-free life -- one that allows them to breathe fresh air, wallow, root, sunbathe and play. Blunt, bold, a risk taker, she says what she thinks and goes after what she wants. Learn more about CobbleStone Farm at www.berkshirepigs.net Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: Join my free email list! I have a great "Crash Course in farm marketing" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. Take My 5-Day FREE CSA Startup Challenge - Looking to start your first veggie CSA, but not sure how to get started? Subscribe to my 5 day challenge. Each day, I'll walk you through one of the 5 key steps to getting your CSA framework in place. You'll do the homework assignment each day, and by the end, you'll have your basic roadmap! Sign up for Farm Marketing School - my monthly online membership. Farm Marketing School is an on-demand library of marketing workshops and project plans that will help you build some of the most important marketing elements in you business like: auditing your sales funnel, updating your home page of your website, building your first email nurture sequence, creating a promo calendar, practicing different types of offers. And new content is being added every month. As the DIY version of my Accelerator Group Coaching program, you get to chose what you want to study each month. I've taken the recordings of just the teaching sessions of each project inside of my high-end coaching program (Accelerator) and made them available to everyone. These projects are designed to be completed in under 30 days, so that you slowly build your marketing system piece by piece. Use the step by step project planner and resource folder to help you jumpstart your work.Take advantage of my new marketing crash course inside, watch my new Email

What do you want your farm customers to DO? This is the all-important question as a farm marketer. You are always taking your customer (or prospect) somewhere. We should be ready at all times with a "call to action" in whatever communication channel we use. So what is your go-to CTA? Most farmers (and business owners) default to "buy my stuff." But in the world of marketing, there are a lot of other options for CTAs (calls to action). And frankly, you shouldn't be pitching your stuff all the time. That's when you start to feel icky and sale-sy. In today's podcast, I answer a question that came up with my Accelerator coaching members last month as we were practicing the art of writing weekly emails. The question is: "What are some other things I could ask customers to do in my weekly email?". In this episode, I share a list of 10+ CTAs you could use when sending an email. These actions are all examples of "micro-conversions" that bring a person ever closer to the final goal of getting them to buy. I recommend you write these down and put them somewhere near your computer. The next time you need to write an email, you'll have PLENTY of ideas for a CTA. It will make writing so much easier. I love this hack! This podcast was sponsored by Local Line, the leading e-commerce platform for the local food system. Try Local Line for your farm today! Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code: MDF2023. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: Join my free email list! I have a great "Crash Course in farm marketing" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. Take My 5-Day FREE CSA Startup Challenge - Looking to start your first veggie CSA, but not sure how to get started? Subscribe to my 5 day challenge. Each day, I'll walk you through one of the 5 key steps to getting your CSA framework in place. You'll do the homework assignment each day, and by the end, you'll have your basic roadmap! Sign up for Farm Marketing School - my monthly online membership. Farm Marketing School is an on-demand library of marketing workshops and project plans that will help you build some of the most important marketing elements in you business like: auditing your sales funnel, updating your home page of your website, building your first email nurture sequence, creating a promo calendar, practicing different types of offers. And new content is being added every month. As the DIY version of my Accelerator Group Coaching program, you get to chose what you want to study each month. I've taken the recordings of just the teaching sessions of each project inside of my high-end coaching program (Accelerator) and made them available to everyone. These projects are designed to be completed in under 30 days, so that you slowly build your marketing system piece by piece. Use the step by step project planner and resource folder to help you jumpstart your work.Take advantage of my new marketing crash course inside, watch my new Email Marketing Course, or take the onboarding assessment tool to help you identify where your funnel is broken and what project to do first. To see what courses are currently inside of FMS, or to try out Farm Marketing School for a month at mydigitalfarmer.com/fms Cancel your membership anytime. Find my Facebook group for farmers! Follow me on Instagram for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer

How do you make your farm products highly desirable? To answer this question, this week I share another saga in my continuing quest to find a massage therapist. I share how my prospective LMT played "hard to get" when I tried to book her; and what that did inside my brain to make me want it even more. We'll explore the value of things like "sold out" signs, wait lists, and low inventory. How can you use the principle of scarcity to ratchet up the perceived value of your goods and services? This is an episode that will make you rethink how subjective the word "value" really is.... This podcast was sponsored by Local Line, the leading e-commerce platform for the local food system. Try Local Line for your farm today! Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code: MDF2023. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline This podcast was also sponsored by: The Thriving Farmer Podcast. In this top-rated farm podcast, you'll learn the latest tricks and strategies of successful farmers, strategize with in-depth interviews with leaders in the industry, and connect with stories of farmers just like you. In our interviews, we focus on building farms that last, on setting up systems, knowing your customers, building your team, and creating a work/family/life balance. With over 15 years of farming background, your host Michael Kilpatrick has the experience and authority to bring you practical advice, ask the hard questions, tease out the gold nuggets, and help share what it's really like to build a profitable, sustainable farm. Subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts or visit: https://www.thrivingfarmerpodcast.com/ Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: Join my free email list! I have a great "Crash Course in farm marketing" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. Take My 5-Day FREE CSA Startup Challenge - Looking to start your first veggie CSA, but not sure how to get started? Subscribe to my 5 day challenge. Each day, I'll walk you through one of the 5 key steps to getting your CSA framework in place. You'll do the homework assignment each day, and by the end, you'll have your basic roadmap! Sign up for my CSA Academy -- and get access to my CSA's member resource library to use for your own CSA (as long as you're a paying member). Videos, veggie guides, recipes, onboarding tips, and more. Use coupon code TRIAL to get your first month for $1. Find my Facebook group for farmers! Follow me on Instagram for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer

What if you could go ONE place to learn all the farm marketing basics, and DIY your way through them? What if you could spend this off-season, working through ONE marketing project at a time - build it in 30 days, and move on to the next one? What if you could finally get some of those "big" marketing tasks OFF your plate and into your sales machine, because someone has explained it in a way that actually makes sense to you. In this episode, I walk you through the in's and out's of my new monthly membership called Farm Marketing School. This is an on-demand digital library of DIY marketing workshops/playbooks, built just for farmers. And it's basically the DIY version of my Accelerator Group Coaching program. Inside the FMS Hub, you'll find a collection of 10+ marketing workshops, organized as "30 day projects." Each one includes a video training, as well as a resource folder to help jumpstart your process and GET IT DONE. Whatever you need help with... designing your website home page, creating better weekly emails, building better offers, researching your ideal customer... Farm Marketing School can help. And every month, a new class joins the curriculum to keep you growing. Take a listen to the episode and learn how FMS works, what courses are inside, how it can help you build your marketing machine, and how I get you over the finish line. To learn more or to sign up for Farm Marketing School, go here. To see a tour of Farm Marketing School, click here. This podcast was sponsored by Local Line, the leading e-commerce platform for the local food system. Try Local Line for your farm today! Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code: MDF2023. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: Join my free email list! I have a great "Crash Course in farm marketing" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. Follow me on Instagram for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer

How do you raise your prices and get your customers to buy at that price point? (And feel good about it?) In today's episode, I'm diving into a crucial aspect of farm marketing: the art of price anchoring. Have you ever gone to Amazon to buy something with a certain idea in your mind of what something will cost?... and then you see what Amazon thinks it should cost?... For example, I recently needed to buy a countdown timer for our Chopped Competition -- a big one that everyone can see from the room. Amazon had one priced at $300 (!!!), then another one at $65, and another one at $125. Guess which one I bought?... Yup, the $125 one. AND... I felt okay with it. Honestly though, going into it, I was hoping for a $75 option. That's where my mind was. But then I saw the $300, and realized I was at the wrong pricing table. So the $125 suddenly didn't feel so bad -- like I had compromised and found a good happy medium in quality and price. This... is price anchoring in action. And if you know how to use it, it can help you raise ALL your farm product prices, get people to buy at that price level, and make you more money. Price anchoring is a psychological technique where consumers use an initial piece of information to base future buying decisions. You set a mental benchmark, or an "anchor" with a high price tag, and then this creates a perception that subsequent (slightly lower) prices are a better deal. (Meanwhile: you've also raised the prices of those subsequent, slightly lower prices, too). You see this ALL OVER THE PLACE in the retail world. And in this episode, we dive into the details of how it works. It's time you learned the psychology and strategy behind what makes this work. Your homework from this episode is to set up a product with a higher price anchor, position your other products around it, and guide your customer this week to buy the thing you want them to (at the price you want). This podcast was sponsored by Local Line, the leading e-commerce platform for the local food system. Try Local Line for your farm today! Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code: MDF2023. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline This podcast was also sponsored by: The Thriving Farmer Podcast. In this top-rated farm podcast, you'll learn the latest tricks and strategies of successful farmers, strategize with in-depth interviews with leaders in the industry, and connect with stories of farmers just like you. In our interviews, we focus on building farms that last, on setting up systems, knowing your customers, building your team, and creating a work/family/life balance. With over 15 years of farming background, your host Michael Kilpatrick has the experience and authority to bring you practical advice, ask the hard questions, tease out the gold nuggets, and help share what it's really like to build a profitable, sustainable farm. Subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts or visit: https://www.thrivingfarmerpodcast.com/ Hit play and let's get started! Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: Join my free email list! I have a great "Crash Course in farm marketing" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. Join my CSA Renewals Course: CSA Early Bird Campaigns that Convert. In this program, I teach you my exact process for how I build my renewal promotion campaign every fall, that gets 80-90% of my members to sign up again by November 1st. Sign up for my CSA Academy -- and get access to my CSA member resource library to use for your own CSA (as long as you're a paying member). Use coupon code TRIAL to get your first month for $1. Find my Facebook group for farmers! Follow me on Instagram for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer

Do you wish more of your current CSA members would renew their share early? I just wrapped up my end-of-season "early renewal" promotion campaign to my current CSA members, and it's October 23. I asked 400 members to give me their commitments for next summer. My results?... 310 of 385 spots were pre-sold in 7 days before November 1st! That's 7 months before we start our season. And most of them came on day one of the promotion period. In today's podcast, I'm doing a full-scale audit of the whole process, and sharing my 4 step framework that can guide your own planning process behind big promotion launches. This framework can help you build any sales promotion for your farm. If you're a CSA farmer, this will give you some great ideas for how to build hype and turn your renewal promo into an event. This podcast was sponsored by Local Line, the leading e-commerce platform for the local food system. Try Local Line for your farm today! Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code: MDF2023. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: Need free Farm Marketing training? Join my email list! I have a free "Crash Course in farm marketing" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. CSA Early Renewal Campaigns -- Online Course! Today's podcast does an overview of my 2023 CSA renewal campaign, but I have a deep-dive digital course that will help you personalize the material and build out your own "launch" promotion strategy. The course is called CSA Early Bird Campaigns that Convert. In this program, I teach you my exact process for how I build my renewal promotion campaign every fall, that gets 80-90% of my members to sign up again by November 1st. You'll learn how to build a compelling offer, write the sales emails and social posts, how to create a pre-launch runway, what to talk about in your messaging, and more. I also include swipe files for email copy and social media posts to show you what kinds of messaging you can create over a 7-10 day period to drive the sales. Sign up for my CSA Academy -- and get access to my CSA member resource library to use for your own CSA (as long as you're a paying member). Use coupon code TRIAL to get your first month for $1. Find my Facebook group for farmers! Follow me on Instagram for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer

When you talk about your farm products, are you making a nice, bullet-point list of features that come with your product? Things like: certified organic by USDA grass-fed, regeneratively-raised locally-sourced raw and unfiltered That's great, but that may not be enough. The problem with just focusing on features in our marketing is that we (as the salesperson) have assumed that the customer has a level of understanding he/she simply doesn't have. From the inside looking out, we think, "Everyone knows why it matters that my honey is unfiltered!" My friends, they don't. Which is why, you need to learn 3 very powerful words that will immediately transform this list of features into a list of BENEFITS. When you start using these 3 words in your marketing, you'll begin to show your customers what's in it for them. You need to answer the question: "So what that your honey is raw and unfiltered?..." You want to know what these 3 words are?... Listen to this episode to find out, and hear lots of examples for how to use them in farm marketing. See if it helps you increase your sales. This podcast was sponsored by Local Line, the leading e-commerce platform for the local food system. Try Local Line for your farm today! Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code: MDF2023. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline This podcast was sponsored by: The Thriving Farmer Podcast. In this top-rated farm podcast, you'll learn the latest tricks and strategies of successful farmers, strategize with in-depth interviews with leaders in the industry, and connect with stories of farmers just like you. In our interviews, we focus on building farms that last, on setting up systems, knowing your customers, building your team, and creating a work/family/life balance. With over 15 years of farming background, your host Michael Kilpatrick has the experience and authority to bring you practical advice, ask the hard questions, tease out the gold nuggets, and help share what it's really like to build a profitable, sustainable farm. Subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts or visit: https://www.thrivingfarmerpodcast.com/ Hit play and let's get started! Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: Join my free email list! I have a great "Crash Course in farm marketing" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. Join my CSA Renewals Course: CSA Early Bird Campaigns that Convert. In this program, I teach you my exact process for how I build my renewal promotion campaign every fall, that gets 80-90% of my members to sign up again by November 1st. Sign up for my CSA Academy -- and get access to my CSA member resource library to use for your own CSA (as long as you're a paying member). Use coupon code TRIAL to get your first month for $1. Find my Facebook group for farmers! Follow me on Instagram for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer

Imagine waking up on Christmas morning and running to tree to pass out gifts, only to discover that none of the packages have labels on them. You have no idea which package is for whom. Some packages go to the wrong person. People get upset. NO BUENO. Ahhh.... the power of LABELS. When it comes to communicating with your customers and leads, it is VITAL that you have some kind of identifier, label, or marker on their account to help you know what messages to send their way. So where can you add these "tags" to make sure you're sending your message to the right people? In your email service provider. I'm often asked, "But Corinna, what kind of tags could I use?" In today's episode, I'm sharing over 10 different "tags" you can use to label your customers with inside your email service provider. I want you to listen to the ideas, identify the ones that makes sense for YOUR business, and then GO SET THEM UP! Now be careful! Don't waste your time adding too many tags. Just focus on the ones you'll actually find helpful and use. How do you want to "sort" your list? This podcast was sponsored by Local Line, the leading e-commerce platform for the local food system. Try Local Line for your farm today! Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code: MDF2023. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline This podcast was sponsored by: The Thriving Farmer Podcast. In this top-rated farm podcast, you'll learn the latest tricks and strategies of successful farmers, strategize with in-depth interviews with leaders in the industry, and connect with stories of farmers just like you. In our interviews, we focus on building farms that last, on setting up systems, knowing your customers, building your team, and creating a work/family/life balance. With over 15 years of farming background, your host Michael Kilpatrick has the experience and authority to bring you practical advice, ask the hard questions, tease out the gold nuggets, and help share what it's really like to build a profitable, sustainable farm. Subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts or visit: https://www.thrivingfarmerpodcast.com/ Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: Join my free email list! I have a great "email onboarding sequence" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. Which email service provider do I use? I use ConvertKit, and I LOVE it. I am an affiliate for them, so if you decide to try them out, use this affiliate link, and I'll get a small commission to help support my work at DigitalFarmer. I also encourage you to look at Drip or Active Campaign. Sign up for my CSA Academy -- and get access to my CSA member resource library to use for your own CSA (as long as you're a paying member). Use coupon code TRIAL to get your first month for $1. Find my Facebook group for farmers! Follow me on Instagram for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer

How often do you hold up a mirror? If you're good at marketing, you're doing it ALL THE TIME. We mirror in two ways: In our behavior and face to face interactions with customers/prospects. In our messaging. In today's episode, I'm revealing "sales secrets" that the great sales reps often leverage to quickly connect with their prospects and close more deals. It's something known as: "sales mirroring." Basically, you are holding up a mirror and reflecting back what you are seeing from your customer. It's crazy effective. I bet you're doing some of this stuff intuitively! I share with you 4 ways you can use mirroring with one-to-one conversations, and I share how to hold up a "mirror" in your messaging. You'll walk away with LOTS of very practical strategies from this one. Your homework is to practice one of the techniques on one of your customers at the farmer's market next week, and see if you close the sale. This podcast was sponsored by Local Line, the leading e-commerce platform for the local food system. Try Local Line for your farm today! Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code: MDF2023. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: Join my free email list! I have a great "email onboarding sequence" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. Join my CSA Renewals Course: CSA Early Bird Campaigns that Convert. In this program, I teach you my exact process for how I build my renewal promotion campaign every fall, that gets 80-90% of my members to sign up again by November 1st. Sign up for my CSA Academy -- and get access to my CSA member resource library to use for your own CSA (as long as you're a paying member). Use coupon code TRIAL to get your first month for $1. Find my Facebook group for farmers! Follow me on Instagram for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer

Do people "Google" something that leads to your business? If so, what are they typing into that search bar? And is Google recommending your business to them? If not, you may have an "SEO Problem." In today's episode, I invite a special guest and SEO expert, Julia Bocchese, onto the show to share some best practices for how we can improve our SEO performance and drive more organic traffic to our business. This interview was so good that I hired Julia afterwards to "SEO-proof" my farm business! Whether you decide to hire Julia, too, or DIY it yourself, you'll get some great tips here for how to become more discoverable! This podcast was sponsored by Local Line, the leading e-commerce platform for the local food system. Try Local Line for your farm today! Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code: MDF2023. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline Who is Julia Bocchese? Julia is an SEO Consultant for agriculture and horticulture businesses at Homegrown Reach and is the first SEO professor at Drexel University. Her goal is to make SEO strategies approachable and easy to implement for all small businesses so they can reach their customers organically and help their business bloom. She lives in Philadelphia with her Siberian Husky sidekick, her husband, and her baby, and on the side, she's working on revitalizing their previously neglected garden, runs a travel photography site, and experiments with spicy recipes in the kitchen. Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: Join my free email list! I have a great "email onboarding sequence" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. Join my CSA Renewals Course: CSA Early Bird Campaigns that Convert. In this program, I teach you my exact process for how I build my renewal promotion campaign every fall, that gets 80-90% of my members to sign up again by November 1st. Accelerator Group Coaching - My group coaching program is now closed until next September. But you can sign up to get on the Wait list for next year here. Sign up for my CSA Academy -- and get access to my CSA member resource library to use for your own CSA (as long as you're a paying member). Use coupon code TRIAL to get your first month for $1. Find my Facebook group for farmers! Follow me on Instagram for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer

How many times does your call to action show up on your website home page? (or anywhere on your website?!...) Today I'm going to challenge you to go count. And if you've only got 1-2 on your home page, I want you to DOUBLE it (at least). In today's episode, I talk through why repetition of this CTA button is so important for conversions. I also share some best practices for how to design (and write copy for) that button. It's a simple, quick tip that you can execute on in under 10 minutes! Try it and see if it changes anything. This podcast was sponsored by Local Line, the leading e-commerce platform for the local food system. Try Local Line for your farm today! Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code: MDF2023. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: Join my free email list! I have a great "email onboarding sequence" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. Join my CSA Renewals Course: CSA Early Bird Campaigns that Convert. In this program, I teach you my exact process for how I build my renewal promotion campaign every fall, that gets 80-90% of my members to sign up again by November 1st. Sign up for my CSA Academy -- and get access to my CSA member resource library to use for your own CSA (as long as you're a paying member). Use coupon code TRIAL to get your first month for $1. Find my Facebook group for farmers! Follow me on Instagram for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer

Who are your "best" clients in your farm business? Do you know? And how do you define "best" when it comes to your customers? Maybe it means "biggest-spending" or "biggest referral source." Or maybe your best clients are customers who add energy to your brand in some other way. We all have a small subset of super valuable clients. In business, it's vital that you A.) know who these clients are, and B.) that you take GOOD care of them so they keep replicating the desired behavior. So what are some ways you can appreciate your best clients? That's what this podcast is all about. I share 5 different "categories" of appreciation strategies to make sure your best farm clients are getting the strokes they deserve. This podcast was sponsored by Local Line, the leading e-commerce platform for the local food system. Try Local Line for your farm today! Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code: MDF2023. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: Join my free email list! I have a great "email onboarding sequence" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. Join my CSA Renewals Course: CSA Early Bird Campaigns that Convert. In this program, I teach you my exact process for how I build my renewal promotion campaign every fall, that gets 80-90% of my members to sign up again by November 1st. Accelerator Group Coaching with Corinna -- learn more about how to get into my 20-member group Mastermind and Farm Marketing School experience. I'm opening the doors for a 3-month cohort for a limited time. The next cohort starts October 1. Apply now for a limited time! Limit: 20 farmers. Sign up for my CSA Academy -- and get access to my CSA member resource library to use for your own CSA (as long as you're a paying member). Use coupon code TRIAL to get your first month for $1. Find my Facebook group for farmers! Follow me on Instagram for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer

Traffic is a count of the number of visitors to a website, web page, or your point of sale. Increase the number of people who get exposed to your message, and you will inevitably increase your traffic (and your sales). If I know that 20% of people who see my message end up clicking to my website or online store, then the way to get more eyes on my offer is to increase the number of people I'm funneling through that message in -- aka turn up the traffic hose. If you're a newer farm business, one of your early priorities is to get more eyes on your business. We want as many people as possible to be coming to our website, our farm stand, our online store, or point of sale system. But what can you use to get more eyes on your message? Turns out there are a LOT of places you could be going to turn up the traffic hose. In this episode, I give you an overview of what these traffic sources are, and I share some examples of what it would look like to invest in one of them. Your homework is to decide "what traffic source" will be your primary focus. Then I want you to invest some intention in building a mechanism that actually gets that traffic system to fire. This podcast was sponsored by Local Line, the leading e-commerce platform for the local food system. Try Local Line for your farm today! Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code: MDF2023. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline Listen to this episode on Stitcher. Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts Listen to this episode on Google Play Listen to this episode on Spotify. Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: Join my free email list! I have a great "email onboarding sequence" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. Join my CSA Renewals Course: CSA Early Bird Campaigns that Convert. In this program, I teach you my exact process for how I build my renewal promotion campaign every fall, that gets 80-90% of my members to sign up again by November 1st. Accelerator Group Coaching with Corinna -- learn more about how to get into my 20-member group Mastermind and Farm Marketing School experience. I'm opening the doors for a 3-month cohort for a limited time. Sign up for my CSA Academy -- and get access to my CSA member resource library to use for your own CSA (as long as you're a paying member). Use coupon code TRIAL to get your first month for $1. Find my Facebook group for farmers! Follow me on Instagram for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer

What farm marketing metrics are you tracking in your business? When I first took the reins of sales/marketing in my business, I didn't know I SHOULD be tracking metrics, much less which ones! Peter Drucker (wise, business man) once said: "You can't improve what you don't measure." SO TRUE. Please trust me: if you haven't starting measuring data, you're leaving money on the table. The data is there, waiting to show you something. Don't be afraid of it. Let it guide you. In today's podcast, I'm pulling back the curtain and sharing a list of data points you can track in your farm business that affect your sales and marketing. What levers do you have to pull in your business? What do the numbers actually tell you? What are the most important metrics that push the needle in your business? You won't know until you start tracking them. When you see the numbers, it alerts you to what's working and what's not working. You'll be able to adjust your sales strategy. You'll know where you need to allocate resources to make you more money. You might even realize you can stop doing something altogether. So get a pen and paper out. Take some notes. Then use this information and go set up a tracking system on a Google Sheet where you can store these numbers. This podcast was sponsored by Local Line, the leading e-commerce platform for the local food system. Try Local Line for your farm today! Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code: MDF2023. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline Hit play and let's get started! Listen to this episode on Stitcher. Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts Listen to this episode on Google Play Listen to this episode on Spotify. Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: Join my free email list! I have a great "email onboarding sequence" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. Episode 21: The 100 True Fans - I reference this in today's podcast. Accelerator Group Coaching with Corinna -- learn more about how to get into my 20-member group Mastermind and Farm Marketing School experience. I'm opening the doors for a 3-month cohort for a limited time. Sign up for my CSA Academy -- and get access to my CSA member resource library to use for your own CSA (as long as you're a paying member). Use coupon code TRIAL to get your first month for $1. Find my Facebook group for farmers! Follow me on Instagram for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer

How much does it matter that a customer "like" you -- before they buy your product? Turns out, it helps a ton. In today's episode, I let you peek into one of my private Book Studies I'm doing with my Accelerator Group Coaching cohort this summer on the best-selling book "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" by Robert Cialdini, PhD. In this study, we discuss two key psychological "trigger points" that will set off automatic behaviors in our clients. What are they?... "liking" and "social proof." You'll hear specific ideas for how we can leverage social proof to show our clients that "lots of people like our product." And we discuss ways to do marketing to increase the odds that customers will like you (like showing your face more often). It's a fascinating book, and the discussion brought up a lot of practical examples. I hope you walk away with a couple of specific things you can try in your marketing that will get these psychology triggers to work for you. This podcast was sponsored by Local Line, the leading e-commerce platform for the local food system. Try Local Line for your farm today! Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code: MDF2023. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini - This is the book we're discussing in today's episode. Grab the Amazon link. Join my free email list! I have a great "email onboarding sequence" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. Accelerator Group Coaching with Corinna -- learn more about how to get into my 20-member group Mastermind and Farm Marketing School experience. I'm opening the doors for a 3-month cohort for a limited time. Sign up for my CSA Academy -- and get access to my CSA member resource library to use for your own CSA (as long as you're a paying member). Use coupon code TRIAL to get your first month for $1. Find my Facebook group for farmers! Follow me on Instagram for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer

A few weeks ago, I broke a personal weekly record with my online pre-sales for this time of year. My store sales revenue jumped by 35% in my Local Line store. I accidentally did something different that week, and I think that's the reason it happened... In today's episode, I share the story and why I think it worked. If you have an online store that you're driving customers to each week -- this tip will totally work for you. And it took about 15 minutes to implement. I'm all about KEEPING IT SIMPLE. This podcast was sponsored by Local Line, the leading e-commerce platform for the local food system. Try Local Line for your farm today! (We use Local Line at our farm, and WE LOVE IT!!) Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code: MDF2023. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: Join my free email list! I have a great "Crash Course" in farm marketing that I drip out to you over email each week, that covers the fundamentals of sales. Get loads of suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. Accelerator Group Coaching with Corinna -- The doors open for the next 3-month cohort of 20 farmers in September. Learn more about the program AND get on the wait list for group Mastermind and Farm Marketing School experience. Sign up for my CSA Academy -- and get access to my CSA member resource library to use for your own CSA (as long as you're a paying member). Use coupon code TRIAL to get your first month for $1. Find my Facebook group for CSA farmers! Follow me on Instagram for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer

Sometimes you just need to have a few key elements in place in your marketing system to get the sales going. In today's episode, I interview a guest who spends most of her time on two things -- social media and an email marketing process (called a "nurture email automated sequence"). These two elements are enough to drive new clients into her world and get them to feel ready to buy her bulk beef. If you're looking for ideas for content marketing for a bulk buy business, this episode will resonate with you! This podcast was sponsored by Local Line, the leading e-commerce platform for the local food system. Try Local Line for your farm today! Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code: MDF2023. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline Who is Sarah Lovenuk? My guest today is Sarah Lovenuk from Black Barn Farms in Oxdrift, Ontario. Black Barn Farms was started in 2017 when Sarah and her husband Phil bought their property together. After converting a pole barn into a house the first year, they started their farm adventure in 2018 with 6 pigs, selling mostly to family and friends. Sarah wanted nothing to do with Phil's farming dreams at first, but was slowly convinced of the beauty of being able to farm regeneratively in order to improve the environment they live in and work with the ecosystems already occurring in nature! The goal at Black Barn Farms is to provide healthy pork and beef locally, with a dedicated focus on ethical livestock treatment, regenerative agriculture practices, and a sustainable source of quality food! Both enterprises are marketed as bulk sales every year as well as retail sales straight from the farm! They are the only farm in their area that has implemented the use of hydroponically grown fodder in order to reduce hay and grain consumption year round! Sarah recently retired from a 10 year career as a dental hygienist to take over farm sales, marketing, and farm education. Through early promotion of their farm ideals through social media, their farm has gained a reputation and a decent following in their small town. They have recently joined a local food co-op to enhance their sales reach outside of their community and created an online store in order to make selling their meats more convenient for local folks! It has been a huge success! Website: www.blackbarnfarms.ca Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: Join my free email list! I have a great "email onboarding sequence" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. Accelerator Group Coaching with Corinna -- get on the wait list for this 15-member group Mastermind and Farm Marketing School experience. Episode 27 Case Study: Objections of a Beef CSA Buyer - Sarah referenced this episode as being helpful as she developed her bulk-buying nurture email sequence. Sign up for my CSA Academy -- and get access to my CSA member resource library to use for your own CSA (as long as you're a paying member). Use coupon code TRIAL to get your first month for $1. Find my Facebook group for farmers! Follow me on Instagram for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer

If you want to be in business for a long time, then you MUST become a master at making "offers." An offer is not your product. An offer is how you position and pitch your product in such a way that makes a person want to buy it. There are LOTS of different ways you can pitch your product, and in this episode, I'm sharing 10 of the most popular ones you see around many industries (that also work for farming). (Plus I share how you can get my Ultimate list of marketing offer Ideas in the show.) This podcast was sponsored by Local Line, the leading e-commerce platform for the local food system. Try Local Line for your farm today! Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code: MDF2023. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline Hit play and let's get started! Listen to this episode on Stitcher. Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts Listen to this episode on Google Play Listen to this episode on Spotify. Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: Join my free email list! I have a great "email onboarding sequence" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. Accelerator Group Coaching with Corinna -- get on the wait list for this 15-member group Mastermind and Farm Marketing School experience. The Ultimate List of Offer Ideas -- want a list of offer strategies to pull out of your toolkit? I list 30 different ideas for offers in this PDF, and I add to it as I come up with more! Grab it here. Episode 67 Use the 34Limiteds. How to Get Someone to Buy Now. Episode 143 The 5 Elements of an Amazing Offer (Shutterfly Case Study) Episode 50 - Three Ways to increase Your Revenue Sign up for my CSA Academy -- and get access to my CSA member resource library to use for your own CSA (as long as you're a paying member). Use coupon code TRIAL to get your first month for $1. Find my Facebook group for farmers! Follow me on Instagram for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer

August 2, 2023 by Corinna For many farms, COVID-19 forced many of us to re-imagine how we could sell our products to our customers, and inadvertently created an opportunity to sell more product with less work. Today's guest is Sarah Bakker from Field Sparrow Farms, and she shares how moving to an online pre-sale process made everything easier. We'll learn how she drives the marketing engine in her business -- you'll be surprised to find out how simple it is. Sometimes, you don't need a lot of bells and whistles. This podcast was sponsored by Local Line, the leading e-commerce platform for the local food system. Try Local Line for your farm today! Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code: MDF2023. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: Join my free email list! I have a great "email onboarding sequence" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. Accelerator Group Coaching with Corinna -- get on the wait list for this 15-member group Mastermind and Farm Marketing School experience. Sign up for my CSA Academy -- and get access to my CSA member resource library to use for your own CSA (as long as you're a paying member). Use coupon code TRIAL to get your first month for $1. Find my Facebook group for farmers! Follow me on Instagram for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer

What if you only needed 100 "true fans" to hit $100K in revenue? I remember in my early years of farming, I was just grasping for new clients -- whatever I could get! I wasn't looking at numbers, or data, or patterns. I didn't think about a "strategy" for how to hit revenue goals. Today, I share the "Principle of the 100 True Fans," (well, actually it's called the Principle of the 1000 True Fans, but 100 is way more accessible for farmers). The idea is that if each of our 100 "true fans" bought $1000 worth of product every year from us, we'd make $100K. Using this concept, you can quickly identify a few milestones to reach for to help you create a repeatable annual revenue. So just how possible is that formula?... Today we look at some scenarios and consider a realistic, hopeful path forward. This podcast was sponsored by Local Line, the leading e-commerce platform for the local food system. Try Local Line for your farm today! Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code: MDF2023. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: Join my free email list! I have a great "email onboarding sequence" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. Accelerator Group Coaching with Corinna -- get on the wait list for this 15-member group Mastermind and Farm Marketing School experience. Sign up for my CSA Academy -- and get access to my CSA member resource library to use for your own CSA (as long as you're a paying member). Use coupon code TRIAL to get your first month for $1. Find my Facebook group for farmers! Follow me on Instagram for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer

How important are consistency and persistence in sales? Turns out, pretty important for Red Handle Farm. In today's episode, I interview Bridget McMillion, who shares her story of how she cultivated new florist clients for her cut flower product line by showing up EVERY week all summer long at the florists' shop with her product. After months of no sales, she finally got them to convert. And now they are regular clients. Bridget has a ton of wisdom to share -- even though she's only been doing this for a year. She brings her background in sales to the table and we talk shop. This podcast was sponsored by Local Line, the leading e-commerce platform for the local food system. Try Local Line for your farm today! Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code: MDF2023. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline Hit play and let's get started! Listen to this episode on Stitcher. Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts Listen to this episode on Google Play Listen to this episode on Spotify. Who is Bridget McMillion? Bridget McMillion is the owner of Red Handle Farm. She was raised by her grandparents on a farm in Amelia County Virginia and lives in sight of the home where her grandfather was born in 1928. She is a board certified health coach who understands the importance of eating fresh food, getting daily exercise and the mental health benefits of being in nature. Bridget stepped back from her coaching position in 2022 to focus her energies on revitalizing the family farm with the help of her 2 adult children & grandson, who also live, work & play on the land with her. She & her family strive to continue the legacy of this multi-generational farm by producing flowers, field grown fruits & veggies, and forest products. Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: Ready Farmer One - This marketing book was written for farmers, and it's AWESOME. It is referenced in today's episode. Join my free email list! I have a great "email onboarding sequence" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. CSA Tips & Strategies Canva Template -- this ready-to-go resource is perfect to give to your CSA members -- it helps them identify the key lessons they must learn early on to "master" their CSA membership quickly. It includes all the "beginner's guide to CSA" tips and hacks in a beautiful, easy-to-skim guide. Your clients will LOVE it. Use it for onboarding, as a sign-on bonus, or as a paid product. The Canva template allows you to customize it yourself. Accelerator Group Coaching with Corinna -- get on the wait list for this 15-member group Mastermind and Farm Marketing School experience. Sign up for my CSA Academy -- and get access to my CSA member resource library to use for your own CSA (as long as you're a paying member). Use coupon code TRIAL to get your first month for $1. Find my Facebook group for farmers! Follow me on Instagram for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer

Do certain enterprises in your business feel a little stale? It's easy for that to happen, when you put things on auto-pilot and just do stuff the same way over and over again. The downside is that your clients can get bored, and YOU can get bored. That lack of energy translates to your customers. In 2017, I stumbled accidentally onto a path where I began creating "new" projects and content with my clients. I saw an immediate increase in excitement and attention to my brand. I now make it a practice to bring in "new" things to our CSA every year to jazz it up and keep my customers guessing. In today's podcast, I share my specific "inner-marketing" plan for my CSA season -- what mechanisms I'm using to create hype, momentum, and a spirit of fun. Perhaps you can use some of the ideas I'm sharing in your own farm business somewhere -- even if you don't have a CSA. So get out a legal pad and pen, and take some notes! This podcast was sponsored by Local Line, the leading e-commerce platform for the local food system. Try Local Line for your farm today! Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code: MDF2023. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: Episode 66 Using Contests to Build Excitement in your CSA - follow up this podcast with episode 66 for more details on how to use contests well. Episode 119 How My "CSA Giveaway Challenge" Experiment Built Some Major Brand Identity Episode 150 Creating a Punch List for your Customer -- Learn how the Bingo Board idea started! Join my free email list! I have a great "email onboarding sequence" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. CSA Tips & Strategies Canva Template -- this ready-to-go resource is perfect to give to your CSA members -- it helps them identify the key lessons they must learn early on to "master" their CSA membership quickly. It includes all the "beginner's guide to CSA" tips and hacks in a beautiful, easy-to-skim guide. Your clients will LOVE it. Use it for onboarding, as a sign-on bonus, or as a paid product. The Canva template allows you to customize it yourself. Accelerator Group Coaching with Corinna -- get on the wait list for this 15-member group Mastermind and Farm Marketing School experience. Sign up for my CSA Academy -- and get access to my CSA member resource library to use for your own CSA (as long as you're a paying member). Use coupon code TRIAL to get your first month for $1. Find my Facebook group for farmers! Follow me on Instagram for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer

Over the years, I've had a lot of people come up to me and ask me, "What's this box of veggies all about?..." I used to take 5-10 minutes with EVERY person and dive deep into how a CSA worked, how to sign up, etc. I could tell some of them were interested, and some weren't, but it would take me a little longer to figure out if they'd be successful. Years later, I now know how to shorten that process immensely. I've learned how to ask the right questions first, read body language, and determine who is really a serious lead, and who isn't. This screening process is something called "qualifying your leads" in the marketing space. Qualifying leads is important because it allows you to focus your precious time and resources on prospects who are more likely to convert into paying customers. If you can find a way to identify and then target the qualified leads, you'll not only see higher conversions, but it will happen a whole lot faster. So what are the questions and elements we need to be looking for to help us "screen" our leads? In today's episode, I share an acronym used by IBM sales executives called B.A.N.T. B - Budget A - Authority N - Need T - Timeline This acronym becomes the starting point for a lively discussion on what information we're trying to glean from our prospect, to help guide the sales conversation. At the end of the day, I want my client to LOVE my product and experience satisfaction. I feel responsible for making sure I don't sell it to someone who isn't a good fit. Use this podcast to help you develop your own qualifying questions for sales conversations, and consider how you might set these up into a "system" in your customer interactions. This podcast was sponsored by Local Line, the leading e-commerce platform for the local food system. Try Local Line for your farm today! Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code: MDF2023. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: My List of Great Market Research Survey Questions -- I send a survey out to my clients every year at the end of the season. Want some ideas for great questions to use? Grab this list here. Join my free email list! I have a great "email onboarding sequence" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. Accelerator Group Coaching with Corinna -- get on the wait list for this 15-member group Mastermind and Farm Marketing School experience. Sign up for my CSA Academy -- and get access to my CSA member resource library to use for your own CSA (as long as you're a paying member). Use coupon code TRIAL to get your first month for $1. Find my Facebook group for farmers! Follow me on Instagram for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer Subscribe and Review in Apple Podcast I'd love for you to subscribe to my podcast! I don't want you to miss an episode. Click here to subscribe in Apple Podcasts!

June 28, 2023 by Corinna I'm often asked by farmers who are strapped for time: "Help! If I only have a few hours a week to devote to marketing, what should I be doing?" Last week, I talked about the top repetitive weekly tasks that drive results in my farm business. So be sure to check that one out too here. In today's podcast, I share the monthly and annual marketing tasks that repeat every year, to keep the flywheel spinning. Creating a system for your marketing strategy is the key. When you know the tasks that drive results in your business, and you create a container/system to make sure they happen over and over again -- that's when you see the needle start to move in your business. I hope you find this list helpful. This podcast was sponsored by Local Line, the leading e-commerce platform for the local food system. Try Local Line for your farm today! Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code: MDF2023. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: Episode 216 of the My Digital Farmer Podcast -- I share the repetitive weekly marketing tasks that move the needle in my business. Definitely listen to that one! My List of Great Market Research Survey Questions -- I send a survey out to my clients every year at the end of the season. Want some ideas for great questions to use? Grab this list here. My CSA Renewal Promotion Campaign Course -- learn how to build a promotional campaign to get more of your CSA members to renew their membership when you want. I teach the "launch" style promo, for CSAs. Step by step. Join my free email list! I have a great "email onboarding sequence" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. Accelerator Group Coaching with Corinna -- get on the wait list for this 15-member group Mastermind and Farm Marketing School experience. Sign up for my CSA Academy -- and get access to my CSA member resource library to use for your own CSA (as long as you're a paying member). Use coupon code TRIAL to get your first month for $1. Find my Facebook group for farmers! Follow me on Instagram for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer

I'm often asked by farmers who are strapped for time: "Help! If I only have a few hours a week to devote to marketing, what should I be doing?" Today's podcast answers that question. I share the top 5 tasks that I repeat every week in my main season to keep the flywheel spinning in my farm business, and to keep the revenue coming in. Creating a system for your marketing strategy is the key. When you know the tasks that drive results in your business, and you create a container/system to make sure they happen over and over again -- that's when you see the needle start to move in your business. I hope you find this list helpful. Next week, I'll do a follow-up episode and talk about the top repetitive monthly/annual tasks that drive results in my business. So be sure to check that one out too! This podcast was sponsored by Local Line, the leading e-commerce platform for the local food system. Try Local Line for your farm today! Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code: MDF2023. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: Social Media Templates Guide: Get my guide of the "categories" of social media posts. Feel like you're falling into a rut and not sure what to post about anymore? This will show all kinds of examples. Email Writing Prompts -- one of my most popular downloads! Not sure what to talk about in that all-important weekly email? I share over 20 different starting points to help you find the central focus of your weekly email to connect with your clients and build trust. Want to practice Instagram Stories? Take my Instagram Stories Challenge -- it's a free 7-day challenge that will teach you the mechanics of how to do IG Stories. Come play in the sandbox with me and grow your confidence! Join my free email list! I have a great "email onboarding sequence" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. Accelerator Group Coaching with Corinna -- get on the wait list for this 15-member group Mastermind and Farm Marketing School experience. Sign up for my CSA Academy -- and get access to my CSA member resource library to use for your own CSA (as long as you're a paying member). Use coupon code TRIAL to get your first month for $1. Find my Facebook group for farmers! Follow me on Instagram for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer

In today's episode, meet my special guest Elizabeth Hopkins from Honeymoon Farm - the mushroom capital of the world. Since 2017, she's been marketing her gourmet mushrooms at a farmer's market, trying to educate a consumer who's only familiar with the cremini mushrooms you might buy at the store. How do you create interest, pique curiosity, and overcome the "outlier" factor that might keep a person from trying it? This episode is full of practical wisdom based on trial and error of being in the trenches week after week, peddling her wares. We talk website messaging, customer onboarding, rebranding, recipe cards, gateway products, signage, SEO, lead magnets, juggling farm and mom life, and email marketing. You'll find an idea in here for sure to apply to your farm business! This podcast was sponsored by Local Line, the leading e-commerce platform for the local food system. Try Local Line for your farm today! Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code: MDF2023. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: Join my free email list! I have a great "email onboarding sequence" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. Accelerator Group Coaching with Corinna -- get on the wait list for this 15-member group Mastermind and Farm Marketing School experience. Learn how to use AI for your marketing with my 5 Day ChatGPT Challenge -Want to see how this easy-to-use AI tool can simplify your marketing tasks? Each day via email, I share a phrase to drop into the ChatGPT query box. Then see what happens. That's it. 5 minutes a day. And I promise... you'll see the implications right away. It's going to blow your mind. Subscribe to the 5-Day challenge below and receive your first query to put into the ChatGPT interface, starting tomorrow! Sign up for my CSA Academy -- and get access to my CSA member resource library to use for your own CSA (as long as you're a paying member). Use coupon code TRIAL to get your first month for $1. Follow me on Instagram for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer

What if I told you that the average cart abandonment rate across all industries is 69%? OMG, yes. It's a big deal. This week, I was placing an online order for poly bags for our farm's pack shed. But as I was reading the product description, I couldn't tell if this was the "right bag." I went to look at the actual box in my pack shed to read the label. I copied down the product number, and all the specs like 1.5 mil and 1.8 gallon -- just so I could make sure it was the same bag. But the product description didn't have those details. I actually found myself squinting at the poorly lit, fuzzy product photo -- trying to decide if I wanted to take a chance and just order them. In the end, I had to call the company and ask clarifying questions. I felt friction. I was annoyed. I almost gave up -- especially when I realized I'd have to call someone. How many times does a similar type experience happen for your new clients? Are you inadvertently creating friction in the actual buying process because you have some kinks in your ordering process? In today's episode, I provide you with a checklist of essential elements to evaluate in your checkout process, ensuring a seamless checkout, so that your customers aren't experiencing any confusion or speed bumps when they try to "BUY NOW." After you listen to the show, I want you to do a detailed audit of your new buyer's journey, and uncover some of the places that are confusing your new clients and making them abandon ship. I bet you'll find something you didn't realize was there. Remember: the goal is NO FRICTION. This podcast was sponsored by Local Line, the leading e-commerce platform for the local food system. Try Local Line for your farm today! Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code: MDF2023. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: I share this list of "optimized CTA button text" in today's episode: Proceed" instead of "Continue to Checkout" or "Complete Purchase" "Submit" instead of "Place Order" or "Finalize Purchase" "Next" instead of "Review Order" or "Confirm Details" "Click Here" without specifying the action, such as "Click Here to Proceed with Payment" "Continue" without indicating the next step, like "Continue to Payment" or "Continue to Shipping Options" "Finalize" without clarifying what is being finalized, such as "Finalize Your Order" "Register" instead of "Create an Account" or "Sign Up" "Upgrade" without indicating what is being upgraded, like "Upgrade Shipping" or "Upgrade to Premium" Join my free email list! I have a great "email onboarding sequence" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. Accelerator Group Coaching with Corinna -- get on the wait list for this 15-member group Mastermind and Farm Marketing School experience. Episode 151 Creative Badges for Your Product Descriptions Episode 213 How to Tell Customers What to Do in 3 Easy Steps Sign up for my CSA Academy -- and get access to my CSA member resource library to use for your own CSA (as long as you're a paying member). Use coupon code TRIAL to get your first month for $1. CSA Tips and Tricks E-Book Canva template -- this Canva template is customizable! It's the playbook to share with all your new CSA members, that teaches them the ropes for how to become a CSA master member faster. Use it as a lead magnet for your CSA product line, as an onboarding gift to new members, or as a bonus in your CSA offer! Find my Facebook group for farmers! Follow me on Instagram for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer