Green Machine Farm

So we’ve been making plans for the on-farm store in Minnesota.  There is a small garage-type building right next to the house that looks ideal for the purpose, but it needs a bit of work, specifically, a new roof.

We’ve been thinking of an on-farm store for a while now, and that’s part of the reason we chose this farm in Zumbrota.  It’s close to town, and right off the highway, making it convenient for our customers to get to our store.

Just think of all the times we won’t have to load everything in the truck, drive to the farmers market, setup, sell, take-down, drive home and finally, unload.

But there are a few less-obvious benefits of an on-farm store as well.

The first and foremost of these is the lower regulatory burden and it’s attendant benefits.

Selling your eggs to a Restaurant or Grocery Store? You’ll need to Candle, Grade, Pack and Label your eggs.  And you’ll get paid a (lower) wholesale price for them.

Selling at the Farmers Market? You’ll still need to Candle and Pack them, but you’ll at least get a retail price for them.

Selling at your on-farm store?  There aren’t any of those restrictions. Lower regulatory burden means we can offer lower prices too.  We’re planning on offering eggs from the farm-store at $3/dozen.  The same eggs sold at the farmers market will be $3.25 or $3.50 to account for the added costs.

Keep in mind that this example is just for eggs, but holds true for many different product categories such as poultry, dairy and canned or processed foods.

With on-farm poultry and dairy, there are opportunities that simply don’t exist for farmers selling off the farm.  There is simply no legal way for a consumer to buy raw milk or a chicken that was processed on-farm from a farmer who is selling at a farmers market or through a grocery store.  Consumers get more choice and better prices, and the farmer gets more time to actually farm.

There is a bit of a sticking point with an on-farm store, and that is the big question: Manned or Unmanned?

We’ve been leaning toward Unmanned, and it seems that we’re in good company.  While theft is always a bit of a concern, a large company has just helped us out by doing a bit of an experiment with the honor system.

This summer, Honest Tea conducted experiments in 30 cities to test people’s honesty.
We set up unmanned pop-up stores and asked people to pay $1 per bottle on the honor system.
Data was collected and we compiled our findings into the National Honesty Index.

Note that the worst performance was a pay-rate of 61%  (Detroit) with only two cities coming in under 80%.  The average pay-rate seems to hover just below 95%.

I can live with that.

More importantly, I can make a living with that.

So it would appear that there is a burgeoning new genre of music; Farm Rap.

The first entry into this category is the Yeo Boyz from the UK, with their viral hit “Yeo Valley”

Next up, from this side of the pond we have the Peterson Farm Brothers with “I’m Farming and I Grow It.”

In the interest of retaining my dignity, I will not be attempting to cash in on this latest musical trend.  While these videos are at least mildly embarrassing to the featured parties, they are garnering quite a bit of attention.  In case you were wondering how this “viral marketing” stuff works, this is it.

Make something funny or awesome (or both) that people want to tell their friends about.  The next few million views just sorta take care of themselves.

Well I finally caved.

We’re on facebook.

Which brings up a whole different set of issues.  Apparently businesses on facebook don’t have facebook pages, they have “tabs” and facebook provides no means to create this tab.

So you’ve got to log-in as a “developer” and create your tabs in an API.  In short, it’s a hot mess, and you have to jump through a whole new set of hoops to make it look like you want it to.

It’s at this point when the shock, horror and utter dismay set in.

I don’t want to have to fight with another interface just to make another mini-website.  I already put up a real website, and it was a pain in the neck. So this leaves the door open for all sorts of third-party vendors.  Some are free, most want you to pay, and the vast majority are selling all sorts of social-media snake-oil.

But just when you’re about to throw in the towel and hire one of these social-marketeers, remember the immortal words of Ken at Popehat:

“Outsource your marketing, outsource your ethics and your reputation.”

Don’t do it.

Technology.  It’s a word that you usually either love or hate. I love the internet. I hate smartphones with a passion, especially the way they turn normal people into dead-eyed, thumb-tapping, phone-obsessed zombies. But technology is rapidly changing our world, and on whole, I believe that some of these technologies are changing our world for the better.  Social media, Web 2.0 and mini-computers (like smartphones) are opening up possibilities to small farmers that haven’t been around since….well…ever.

These new technologies are helping to make little-ol’ us competitive with the big-hulking mega-food-conglomerates.  If you don’t belive me, just ask yourself when was the last time that thousands of regular folk pooled $35,000 to fund a butcher shop for Smithfield foods?  Smithfield can’t make social media work for them, but Walter Jefferies knows how to make it work for his farm.

It is said that people do business with entities that they know, like and trust.  Here is where social media gives us the huge advantage.  We are far easier to know, our practices are more likeable, and we are more easily trusted than any of the big food companies.  All we have to do is put ourselves out there and interact with people.

Essentially, the more information that people gather about the big food companies, the less likely they are to know, like or trust them.  If we’re doing our jobs right, then the opposite should be true.  The more our customers find out about us, the more they will know, like and trust us.

I’m no fan of social media for myself personally, but as a business, it’s too good to pass up.  Social media is like someone giving you the keys to the marketing kingdom, or the enchanted sword Andúril of business, or whatever other goofy metaphor you’d like to use.

To quote Scott Stratten: “to be successful, you have to:

- Answer questions about our product or service

- Educate consumers

- Offer post purchase follow up

- Market research

- Discuss industry best practices

Read those five things out to a social media naysayer and ask if they agree about them being smart for businesses. Because that’s a checklist for what social media is used for.“

Another big trend that I see (that farmers aren’t using) is the QR code.  QR codes are those little square pixelated-looking barcode thingies that are showing up on real estate signs, business cards, direct mail postcards, coupons and a bevy of other creative places.  But what, you may ask, exactly is a QR code?

A QR code is really pretty simple.  It’s a hyperlink for stuff that’s not on the internet.  In real life, someone would scan a QR code with a smartphone and instantly be taken to a website.  For small farmers competing in the cold, distant asiles of supermarkets, this could be leveraged into a HUGE advantage, but I’ve yet to see any small farmers do anything with it.

We shouldn’t be putting too much information on our packaging or signage, but throw in a QR code, and you’ve just linked a massive amount of information to your product without overloading the package and your customer.  There’s a lot more that QR codes have to offer, and a lot of caveats for their use, but that’s a subject for another time.

The final area that I would like to see farmers doing better is simply getting their farms online. I know a great many farmers, and a minority of them actually have their own website.  Of those that are online, a mere handful actually update their website or put content online on a semi-annual basis.

I can understand the reluctance to get a website going. If you’re web-challenged (like me) then it can be a hassle, but it’s getting easier all the time.  That’s a good thing too, because with every day that goes by, there is a greater need to have a web presence.

I am from the first generation to have really grown up with the internet. I had telnet and Alta-vista and an excite email account in middle school, and I have only grown more accustomed to the internet as I’ve grown older.  For people my age and younger, the internet isn’t a tool, it’s their default method of investigating and interacting with the world.  If you’re not on the internet, you’re missing out on their current and future business.

And remember, in the grand sweep of history, we are still in the beginning of the internet age. With all the advances in the past 5 years, who can tell what the next 50 years will look like?  We are just beginning to see the ways that farming can be improved with technology.  Take the Holstein Cow for instance.

So anyway, long story short, internet good. Just use it responsibly, and as with everything else, in moderation.

So we’ve already covered the basics of farm marketing. We’ve come up with our farm’s identity, and we’ve put that identity (brand) to use.  Now comes the part where we actually come up with our “pitch” so to speak.  Now our pitch is pretty straightforward when we’re at a farmers market.  We engage the customer in conversation, extoll the virtues of our product, and answer any questions that they might have.  Again, this is our strong suit as small farmers.  We know our product better than anyone, and we are passionate about it, which usually makes for a pretty good pitch.

Where we get into the weeds so-to-speak is when we extend our marketing beyond our conversations with customers.  I know, because I too am guilty of this.  I noticed that I was framing my own farming with a lot of negative statements.  I was so caught up in explaining what Green Machine Farm isn’t that I had neglected to explain what it is about.

I have a theory about why so many farmers fall into this trap, and it’s all about that one customer…

We’ve all had the customer who comes to our booth and leads off with a simple question. “Is it (organic/local/hormone-free, etc.)?” And while the single question, and subsequent curt dismissal of anything not meeting the standard is memorable, it shouldn’t inform the rest of our marketing efforts.

We wouldn’t want to base our marketing on these folks would we?

As many of you can attest, the fine folks at “Portlandia” seem to have hit on something here.  We typically have a very small number of customers who are adamant about getting the “right” food.  This may be a well-informed or ill-informed idea of what constitutes “right” food, but their insistence is challenging, and we end up defining ourselves based on those few customers.

It would seem that as farmers, we could devote great tomes and epic poems to defining what we are NOT. Our meat is hormone-free, antibiotic-free, free-range, pastured and fed no soy.  Our veggies are pesticide-free, GMO-free, heirloom, no-spray and no-till.  We are very good at describing what we are not, by-in-large, our prospective customers don’t know what that means or how that benefits them. We need to improve our ability to define what our products are as opposed to defining what they are not.

I was reading a copy of Inc. magazine today out of complete boredom, when I happened upon an article that was quite apropos.  In particular, Elizabeth Nientimp’s three tips for designing food packaging were particularly enlightening.

Three things. First, make it simple.  Resist the urge to tell consumers everything about your brand on the front of the package.  Second, make it special. Understand what makes your brand unique and own it. Finally, make it personal. Know what motivates them; let them see themselves in your brand.

There’s a lot there in those three little points.  Take them to heart, because they are the best advise you’re likely to hear.

The first two are pretty simple, but it’s that pesky third point that’s often hard for us farmer-types.  It’s often difficult to put ourselves in the shoes of our customers and to understand their motivations for buying our products.  Fortunately, a marketing blogger-fella has a pretty good run-down as far as that goes.

This is where knowing your audience becomes so critical. There are too many psychological movers to name. These “movers” are emotions and desires that move people to buy. Some movers are negative and some are positive. All of them are based on emotion. Here’s a few small examples…

Frustration, Fear, Stress, Anxiety, Insecurity, Complacent, Bored, Desperate, Confused, Self-conscious, Disgust, Laziness, Helpless, Overwhelmed, and Disappointed.

Love, Freedom, Respect, Wealthy, Amused, Security, Accomplished, Essential, Dependable, Stability, Spontaneous, Joy, Fulfillment, Pride, Supportive, Admiration and Confidence.

As I said, there are more movers than I can list here.

Remember that stuff I said in the last installment?  You know, “consistency is key” and all that?  Yup, applies here too.

Your top 3 should become an underlying theme to your marketing and your content. You always want to be leading your prospects to action. Smart marketing isn’t blasting your “please buy my stuff” message to the masses. It’s showing your target audience you have a solution to their problems.

So there we have it.  Easy as 1, 2, 3.  Well, easier said than done anyway.  These little tidbits from the big marketing gurus are pretty handy, but as with branding, it’s not something you can just do once and forget about.  Marketing, like farming is not about magic bullets, it’s a long slow slog, but the result will be worth it.

Stay tuned for the next installment, were we discuss the last piece of the trifecta: Embracing Technology.  Also, you’ll get to see me (an near luddite) try to backpedal on my aversion to social media and smartphones. Hooray!

Now that we’ve got part 1 out of the way, and we’ve already established our farm’s identity or “brand” it’s time to put it into action. This is the part where so many otherwise great farmers fall flat.

So what’s this branding business all about anyway?  It’s about immediately identifying your farm to anyone and everyone all of the time.  Obviously, it’s hard to do this verbally, as you’d go hoarse pretty quickly trying to shout out your farm name to everyone who passes by in a crowded market.  We need a to convey this information visually.

You can’t just slap our farm logo and name on a big sign and call it a day either.  What happens when a customer buys a bag of spinach and gives it to their friend?  The friend may think it’s the best thing they’ve ever eaten, but unless the bag has some sort of identifying information on it, they may never know it came from your farm. One opportunity lost.

The key to successfully using your logo/brand is consistency.  Consistently applying your branding is one of the most common mistakes that I see farmers making.  The font, colors and feel that are used in your logo aren’t just for your logo.  If you print something for your farm, a label, a CSA signup sheet, an invoice, it should use your font, your colors and should have a similar “feel” to your logo.  All of your materials should present a “unified look” to your customers.

“A unified look makes it easier for anyone (new and old customers) to readily identify you. Creating a thematic “look” for your business isn’t difficult. Many aspects of promotion are already commonplace but underutilized or not coordinated: farm invoices, farm checks, business cards, signage at farmers market and farm stand, produce bags, case labels, farm truck lettering/artwork, T-shirts, hats, and stationary letterheads.”- The Organic Farmers Business Handbook, by Richard Wiswall

The big companies that you’re competing with all know the importance of branding.  They all have multi-page branding guides that they distribute to their underlings.  These guides list out in exacting detail the exact colors that may be used in printed or online materials, the exact fonts to be used, and even the acceptable sizes that a logo can be printed in.

So how do we brand our farms to compete with the big boys?  Well, lets start out by clarifying that branding isn’t going to make our farm or products anything that they aren’t.  If we grow bad lettuce, good branding isn’t going to make it sell any better.  Branding is connecting your awesome product to a mental construct in the mind of your customer.  To make that association stick, we have to repeat it constantly.  We have to apply our branding to everything that leaves our farm, and a lot of the stuff that stays on our farm.

One of my favorite tricks (if you can call it that) for applying a farms branding is using commonly available 2″x4″ labels. You can download a 2×4 label template for free and use it to make labels for most of your farm products: bagged greens, baked goods, jams, jellies, you name it. Make sure that you’ve loaded up your logo fonts on your word-processor and use them! If you don’t have the fonts that are in your logo, you can use whatever font you’d like, but use it consistently. Consistency is key.

Ok, quick!  Think of the last thing you bought from someone’s farm.

What did their logo look like? What color(s) was it?  What did their text look like?

If they’re like most small farmers, you probably can’t remember.  Maybe they didn’t have a logo at all, and maybe it was just pretty “blah” to look at so you forgot all about it.

You want your logo and farm name,which should be part of your logo, on everything.  Your logo is the way to get your farm name out there, to get your customers to associate your product (a tangible thing) with your farm (an intangible entity). This is what they call “branding.” Your brand is the idea that is in your customers head, about what your farm and your products are about.  This idea all starts with your farm name.

Farm names come in roughly 4 different categories (at least according to me).

1. Geographical – describing a place or landmarke.g. Windy Hill Farm
2. Personal – describing a person, usually the proprietore.g. Smith Farm
3. Conceptual – describing an idea e.g. Pastoral Fantasyland Acres
4. Hybrid – a mix of any of the above

So which one of these types of names are best?  There is no best, but there sure might be one that suits you a lot better then the others.  I have a general rule of thumb that says to look at what the majority of people around you are doing, and don’t do what they do.  For farmers, this means usually staying away from geographical names unless you have a darn good reason for doing so. If I had a dime for every geographical farm name, I could afford a pretty nice farm of my own.  If you’re trying to come up with a name only use a geographic name if you have a place or landmark that is truly historic or meaningful.

So how about personal names? Personal names are great, unless you have a funky name that a majority of people are going to have a hard time with.  Even so, feel free to have a little fun with names. Nicknames, ironies and oxymorons are all fair game.

Conceptual names can be the best of all (in my opinion) when done correctly.  Conceptual names need to convey an idea that is central to your philosophy/story.  To do it right, you’ll have to distill your entire philosophy down into a very few words.  Shoehorning a big idea down into a few measly words is tough, but totally worth it.

Hybrid names?  Well, it’s anything that doesn’t fit comfortably into the other three.

So, if you already have a farm name then you’re in good shape.  Stick with the name you’ve got.  There’s no use changing horses mid-stream.

If you’re trying to come up with a name, start by listing a few ideas, themes, or categories that you’d like to have in the name.  For example, I used “Agriculture” “Environmental” “Industrial”

Then as fast as you can, write down every word you can possibly think of within those categories.  Don’t censor yourself during this process, write it down even if it sounds stupid,  try to get down as many words as possible.

It also helps to write down as many different words for “Farm” as you can think of.  (Ranch, Gardens, Acres, Pastures, etc.)

Once you’ve got your lists of words, look through them and start coming up with some combinations that you like.  That should at least give you a starting point for coming up with a name.

Now if you have any artistic leanings whatsoever (stick-figures totally count) start doodling based off the same word list, and see if you can’t find a few images that work together. If you don’t have any artistic skills, go to our good friend google and start looking for pictures that you like related to those words.

Here’s my first sketch of what would become my logo. For someone who’s been around cattle for half his life, I sure can’t draw them very convincingly.

Now we have a name and ideas for a logo, it’s time for the last piece of the puzzle, a typeface.

Typefaces or Fonts are an often overlooked and abused tool for conveying meaning.  A well-chosen font can help reinforce the message that your name and logo are sending.  Start hitting all the free-font internet sites and browse to your hearts content.  Make sure that you’re picking a font that compliments the “feel” that you’re going for (e.g. clean & modern, old-timey, rustic, earthy, etc.)  Jot down the names of any fonts you like, and download them on your computer.

Using your new fonts, type out your farm name in a word-editing program and see which ones you like.  Remember your Shakespeare: Discretion is the better part of valor.  Use the most subtle font that still conveys that feel that you’re going for.  You’re trying to convey your message, not beat people over the head with it.

At top are the two fonts I ended up using: BorisBlackBloxx and Avenir.

Ok, one more choice to go.  Color(s).  For reasons that will be explained later, it is usually cheapest to stick with a 1-color logo.  To make it cheaper still, stick to a common PMS color.   What’s a PMS color?  Well, it’s not that important right now, it’s a printing thing.  But if any of those common colors look good to you, pick it and stick to it.  You’ll thank me later.

Here is my color: PMS 3425 – Kelly Green.

Anyway, it’s at this point that for-real, professional software is needed.  We’re talking about the good stuff, Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign.   If you have these programs and know how to use them, then get to work!

If you don’t have the programs, or the know-how to use them, don’t worry.  There are people around you who do.  Pay them to do the work, it’s worth it.   Look around for a commercial printer, screen-print shop, or a sign & banner place.  They’ll usually have a small staff of designers who can design you something for $60-120.

Take in your sketches or pictures from Google, your farm name, any fonts you have chosen, your color preferences and let them do their work.

Next Time: Branding consistently.

Marketing.

Yeah, it sounds like one of those dirty corporate words to me too. Yuck.

But, lets face facts, farms are businesses.  If we really hope to be sustainable, that means financially sustainable (AKA: profitable) too. And there are few businesses out there that get to profitability without doing a little marketing.

The problem is that most small farmers are terrible marketers.  They are not alone in this.  In fact, most small business owners are terrible marketers, but farmers in general seem to have a few unique obstacles to overcome.

Small sustainable farmers tend to have an almost visceral disgust of marketing.  I can’t blame them because I too share that disgust in some cases.  But we shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.  Marketing is a very basic business tool and can be used for good as well as for evil.

Marketing: Noun

1. Selling of Products or Services: the business activity of presenting products or services in such a way as to make them desirable

So like it or not, we engage in marketing every time we go to a farmers market or talk to a customer.  We are engaged in marketing when we attempt to describe our farm, our process, and our products to anyone.  Heck, if you’re anything like most of the farmers I know you probably love talking to your customers about your farm. We love to tell our story.

The problem is, while most of us farmers are fairly engaging on a personal level, we don’t expand our story into our wider presence very well.  I rarely go to a farmers market and see a stall that really has a well-defined, unified look that tells the customer who they are, or what they’re about.   Remember, there are a lot of people out there who are intimidated or uncomfortable initiating conversation with strangers, so we need to be able to get our message across without necessarily speaking.  Even those customers that you do speak with have started to form opinions about you before they even start to strike up a conversation.

If you are selling products in a retail store, where you the farmer are not there to tell your story, then your marketing is even more important.  You cannot tell the story, so your product, packaging and sinage has to tell it for you.  Worse yet, your message has to compete with the messages of Tyson, Land ‘O Lakes, Dole and all the rest of the big food companies. With that kind of competition we can’t afford to have bad marketing, we need better marketing to accomplish our goals of creating a better local food economy.

As you may know, I am about to embark on a move up North, and probably will not be able to farm full time for the next year.  I still think that I can leverage some of my experience to help other beginning (and established) farmers to get their marketing house in order.  I have worked for 5 years as a Graphic Designer at two printing companies, so I’ve seen every mistake in the book from our local clients.  Save yourself some trial-and-error and learn from their mistakes.

So here are the biggest problems that I typically see with farmers marketing:

• Bad identity design
• Inconsistent identity / brand
• Failure to describe benefit
• Failure to use technology

Now that we know what’s wrong, stay tuned as we fix these 4 problems.

First up, Identity design.