My Digital Farmer Podcast (Corinna Bench)

Have you thought of doing a "Market Card" style CSA, but weren't sure how it worked? Well today's guest is Jen Browning of Juniper Layne Farm in Portland, and she answers all the details for how to set up this kind of CSA. A gold mine of step by step information!

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? <== that should be your guiding question.

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

Do you get stumped when it comes to writing your weekly CSA newsletter? Today I invite Lauren Rudersdorf from Raleigh's Hillside Farm onto the show to share her ninja newsletter writing strategies so you can maximize this important marketing asset.

Wondering if e-commerce or an online store might be right for you? Looking for advice on how to get started? In this episode, I invite Cole Jones from Local Line, an ecommerce platform for farmers, to share his wisdom on how to successfully leverage this platform and keep the sales coming.

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

What is the secret behind my CSA's incredibly loyal fan base? How are we scoring a 93% retention rate every year?

What if it's not about the vegetables?

In today's episode, I interview my MVP, Cadie Jardin. Cadie is a member of my farm team. We call her our "CSA Coach," and her job is to make sure my CSA members feel supported in their quest to become successful foodies and local eaters. She also manages our CSA's private Facebook group, and creates weekly video training content for my tribe, as well as recipes.

In this interview, we peel back the layers of customer support in our CSA. We talk through the challenges that new CSA rookies face and how we guide them through the 3-year journey to mastery. We talk about the power of the membership community in helping them along. And we give specifics on what kind of content will move the needle forward for your customers.

This conversation will give you a new perspective on what your customer is thinking, what they NEED, and what they actually WANT from you. 

Want some help building your CSA Early Renewal Sign-Up Promotion so that your members renew their share when you want them to?... Sign up for my online course: "CSA Early Bird Campaigns that Convert" I'll teach you how to build an irresistible offer for your members that gets them running to the online store to renew their membership when you want them to....

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

AI has now hit the marketing space. And if you haven't jumped on the bandwagon yet, I'm about to make a case that you should. In today's episode, I introduce you to "ChatGPT" -- a machine learning tool that is a cross between Google Search, Siri, and your own personal copywriter. I'm sharing how it works and walking through 10+ use cases where this tool can make the process of writing your marketing assets SO MUCH EASIER and faster.

I also had a moment of inspiration while I was recording the show. I've created a 5-Day ChatGPT Challenge, delivered over email. This challenge will be a fun way to learn how to play in the sandbox of ChatGPT.

Here's how it will work:

1. Subscribe to the Challenge here. www.mydigitalfarmer.com/AI  That will trigger a daily email for 5 days in a row. (The first email will also include a DEMO VIDEO of me using the tool.)
2. Subscribe to ChatGPT here. (It's free!)
3. Each day, I'll give you a specific question to put into the ChatGPT query box. You'll see what it generates. That's it. That's all you have to do. After 5 days, you'll have a pretty good idea of different prompts you can use.

I PROMISE you... you'll immediately see the implications for how this can help you in your marketing. My daily email will also include a short paragraph highlighting the implications of how to use the response you see from ChatGPT in your marketing assets moving 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:

Chat GPT Challenge - subscribe to my 5 day challenge, delivered over email, which will teach you the many ways you can use ChatGPT to help you in your marketing. Each day, you'll  get a different query to put into the tool. That's all you have to do! Read the response, and keep interacting if you want. My hope is that it will help you overcome your fear of trying something new, and show you the HUGE possibilities for improving your marketing.

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. We open enrollment again in the fall.

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

Most farmers don't prioritize marketing from the start. Marketing is an afterthought -- something they think of doing at the last minute. This is often because for many of us, we're not sure what we're even supposed to be doing. All we know is that we don't have enough time to do it. Enter today's guest. Tim Young of Small Farm Nation has just released a new book for farmers called "The One Page Marketing Plan." In it, he shares his simple strategy for how to build a marketing system that works.

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

In this episode, I share some examples of product badge labels, best practices, and some categories to help inspire you how to use them.

If your e-commerce platform doesn't make this easy to do, I also share some ideas for work-arounds in the episode. 

I want you to head over to your online store, and audit your product descriptions this week! Decide which ones could use a special "badge" and see if it makes a difference in the sales.

I used to think that I just had to put a few bullet points together to explain what I was selling. But an "offer" is so much more. This episode will break down the 7 elements of an offer that converts and help you get more people to say YES.

What if you customer is feeling confused about where to begin? or how to use your product? In this episode, I walk you through my CSA farm's new customer "Punch List." I'm helping my customers see the target to hit this season! And I think it's going to be awesome! 

Listen to the episode and be inspired how a punch list might work for your business. 

Check out my CSA Member Academy -- a library of resources to help shortcut my CSA customers to mastery fast at www.mydigitalfarmer.com/academy

Have you filed your CTA report yet? (Do you even know what that means?) This is a fairly "new" (and unknown) legal requirement and I'm discovering that a lot of farm business owners have no idea about it.  As a business, you may have to file a report, and you have until December 31, 2024, to do so (or face some big fines).

In this episode, I break down the Corporate Transparency Act and its implications for business owners, especially small farms. With insights from my lawyer Richard Chamberlain, we dive into the federal reporting requirements designed to identify your beneficial owners and prevent money laundering and fraud. Learn what your business needs to do to comply and avoid hefty penalties.

• What critical information must you report to the government by the fast-approaching deadline?
• Who exactly qualifies as a "beneficial owner," and why does it matter?
• The surprising exemptions to the Corporate Transparency Act—could your business be off the hook?
• How you could face daily fines or even jail time for missing a simple filing.
• Can you file on your own, or is a lawyer necessary to navigate this new law?

Tune in to find out how this law impacts your business and the steps you need to take before December 31, 2024! Your homework is to TAKE CARE OF THIS by the end of the year! It only takes 10 minutes. Do it this week!

Meet my Lawyer: Richard Chamberlain.

Podcast Sponsor:

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

Some of the resources mentioned in this episode:

Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN): www.Fincen.gov/boi

FAQs on Beneficial Owners - https://fincen.gov/boi-faqs

The Small Entity Compliance Guide: https://fincen.gov/boi/small-entity-compliance-guide

Create a FinCEN ID - https://fincenid.fincen.gov/landing

Where to file your BOI report - https://boiefiling.fincen.gov/

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

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 parts of your marketing system: 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, acquiring and deploying testimonials, writing great weekly email promotions, nurture emails, onboarding emails, 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 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.

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

July 3, 2024

Recently, I've been looking for ways to increase our weekly online store revenue in our Local Line store.

I noticed that we had a LOT of 1 or 2 item purchases last year. Those are quite frankly a real drag to pack. The amount of time it takes me to print the pack slip, pack the order, pay for the bag it goes into, and hand deliver it -- begs the question, "Am I making any money on this?" I penciled out the numbers and realized I'm barely breaking even with those orders. I needed to make a certain "average order value" to make it worth it to run online sales.

So I decided to raise the minimum order last week, and BOY did see a difference! My AOV went up quite a bit, and my bottom line showed it.

In today's episode, we talk about "Average Order Value" or "AOV" for short. Knowing your average order value is absolutely key in business. One of the easiest ways to increase revenue in your business is to simply increase the AOV. So how do you do that?...

I share three of my "best" and easies strategies to get it higher. This is going to be a classic episode!

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

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

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, acquiring and deploying testimonials, 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 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 https://www.mydigitalfarmer.com/fms  Start and cancel your membership anytime.

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

Follow me on Instagram for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer

Get my new weekly marketing roadmap when you subscribe to my email newsletter.

I LOVE interviewing other farmers who are GREAT at marketing. Sometimes, the best way to grow our own  marketing strategy is to see what other farms are doing. Today's guest is Melissa Ballard of Bluegrass Beef in Kentucky. She has managed to build a growing, profitable farm business by attracting the right kind of client, telling her farm story, building a compelling offer, and turning them into repeat buyers.

She also had a moment in her journey where she changed her mindset and claimed some ownership in her business' success -- one of the strongest parts of this interview.

Whether you're a beef producer or a vegetable farm, there's lots of advice hiding in this episode about how to market and sell your product like a boss.

Who is your target customer? Or are you trying to sell your product to everyone? In marketing, we speak our message to one person: our ideal customer avatar. In this episode, we talk about how to find this customer and what you need to know about them.

Writing email copy isn't the same as writing for your English teacher. There are different "rules" of engagement. In this episode, I share best practices for writing emails so that people will actually read them.

Take my free 7 Day Instagram Stories Challenge at mydigitalfarmer.com/IGStories. Are you making the most of Instagram Stories to grow your connection with your followers? Today's guest Kendall Ballantine from @MarketingforFarmers shares her expertise in all things Instagram to help you learn 5 tips to turn your IG Stories into sales. 

Have you claimed your GMB Google My Business Listing yet? If you want to show up in the top 3 Google searches, it's important that you optimize the "business description" of your listing. In this episode, I break down what topics you should include as well as some best practices to make sure you're getting seen by Google for the right things.

That's right: your customers go on a predictable journey through your brand.If I told you there were 8 steps they need to take to become a brand ambassador, wouldn't you want to know what they are?...That's what this episode is all about.

Tired of trying to share long, ugly URL links with leads and customers in your marketing channels?

There's another way. They're called "redirects," and when I first discovered them, I was ecstatic. I use them ALL the time.

This is like bitly link shorteners, but where you get to decide what the actual link itself will say. The formula is always: yourwebsiteurl.com/shortcutword

Using redirects gives you the ability to share things like:

• popular product pages
• your favorite lead magnets
• YouTube videos and hotsted PDF resources
• website pages you always reference
• your online store link

In this episode, I give you some case studies of where I use redirects the most, how they work, and how to set them up.

You can even go watch a demo of me making a "pretty link" here on YouTube.

Ditch the bitly links and start using these easy-to-set up shortcut links through redirects! You're gonna love this quick tip!

If you're a local business, one of the top ways customers will find you is through Google. In this episode, we talk about claiming your free "Google My Business" listing, what information to include so you can be found more easily.

September 4, 2024

Today's podcast guest Sue Miller shares her inspiring story of how she built a thriving farm business in rural Tennessee from growing simple hydroponic butterhead lettuce on her windowsill to serving hundreds of families in her community through CSA, farmers market, wholesale, and online store. And it all happened in just 5 years.

We cover marketing principles like:

• finding your unique niche
• identifying and leading with your gateway product
• cultivating vendor relationships to offer more products
• listening to your customer to build out your business
• sharing your passion
• creating community with your customers
• practicing patience as you coach your customers to new buying habits
• inspiring your customers to turn into VIPs and super buyers

Sue's strategy isn't full of bells and whistles. It's actually pretty simple and elegant. Learn how she does it, and what some of her "marketing lessons" were along the way.

Remember, if you need help building this piece into your marketing system, you can take over 10 marketing projects inside of Farm Marketing School. I coach you through the step by step process for how to create each piece of your marketing sales machine, from lead magnet creation to weekly emails, promotion planning, website home page design, testimonial pages, offer builds, and more.

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

Meet our Podcast Guest: Sue Miller

Sue Miller is the co-owner of Blackberry Pond Farm located in west TN that specializes in growing fresh and delicious vegetables hydroponically. They are in production year round and offer a CSA box quarterly. They are Organic Certified by OnMark Organic Certification with the USDA. The farm started in 2015 in the kitchen windowsill. This was a small hydroponic system to grow herbs and salad greens for Sue’s use in the kitchen. They expanded to the porch with 3 gallon buckets to grow cucumbers and lettuce. Eventually they built a greenhouse, followed by MORE greenhouses, and the rest is history.

Currently, they run a quarterly 100 member CSA from January-November, sell at the Martin Farmers market, wholesale to chefs and run a roadside stand from our 7 greenhouses and 2 fields of crops on 36 acres in Martin, TN.  We are involved in community education about the impact of food on health. The farm is truly a family affair! Drs. James and Sue Miller who own and started the farm are physicians. James is a full time hospitalist at the local hospital and designs and trouble shoots the hydroponic designs. Sue is a full time traveling ER physician who does all marketing, social media and customer service for the farm.  Much of the planting, transplanting, daily care harvesting and delivery is done by sons Chris and Junior and daughter in law Chelsea.

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

Farm Marketing School - Want to work with me? Join 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, acquiring and deploying testimonials, 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 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. New projects added regularly so we keep you up to date.

Find my marketing Facebook group for CSA farmers!

Follow me on Instagram for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer

But writing these can feel overwhelming. In this episode, I share a hack for how to build this "evergreen" (everlasting) nurture sequence fast. You probably have the emails to populate it already! You'll LOVE this idea that makes building your email sequene so much easier!

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

Are you looking to make your CSA more accessible for all levels of income? One of the ways to do so is to make SNAP payments possible. Today's podcast guests share a pilot program called "CSA is a SNAP" that uses a revolving fund to make SNAP payments work for farmers. A great discussion about how to make CSA more accessible to all income levels.

When it comes to selling raw milk to the public, farmers face legal and health challenges that make it really hard to provide this product. Luckily there is a work-around. It's called the "herdshare." The problem is, it's awfully hard to explain. In today's episode, I'm interviewing a second generation dairy farmer, who is moving her product line to raw milk. She has faced these communication and sales hurdles head-on, and she shares her unique sales strategy that is slowly but surely getting new customers in the door. We discuss:

• the public perception of raw milk
• the obstacles she has to overcome when it comes to messaging this product
• what types of customers want raw milk
• the unique questions she must answer in order to make someone ready to buy
• legal restrictions -- what you are and aren't allowed to do when it comes to selling raw milk
• how a herd share works
• her scrappy, brilliant sales method that closes the deal almost 100% of the time
• what she focuses on in her messaging to drive sales
• mistakes she's made along the way

Even if you  aren't ever going to sell raw milk (raising my hand here), you'll hear some great beginner-farmer marketing tactics. Katie may not realize it, but she has built a few pieces of a marketing machine that will eventually be able to scale. Come take a listen and see where you can find your story in hers.

Who is Katie Miller?

Katie Miller is the owner of Positively Grown Farm in the small town of Hopkins, Michigan. She’s a 4th generation Dairy farmer following in her dad’s footsteps who has been farming for 35 years. She is the first to pursue the Raw Dairy industry and have one successful year under her belt with no slowing down in sight. When she’s not milking cows she enjoys riding her Harley with friends, going to Festivals and being a mom to 4 Emus, a duck, 3 cats and her Lab/Pit Ruby

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

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

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, acquiring and deploying testimonials, 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 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.

Join my CSA Academy Library -- this is my digital cooking resource library that I provide for my CSA members to help them learn how to become a better home chef and cook the CSA way. It includes a Beginner's Guide to CSA mini-course, Vegetable University (A to Z video tutorials for every veggie); Canning Club (canning videos); Exit Strategy videos; Instant Pot tutorial, and my Recipes and Resources pages (with weekly CSA box recipes and unboxing videos). Farmers can subscribe for a monthly fee to have access to these resources to help them support their own CSA members.

Find my marketing Facebook group for CSA farmers!

Follow me on Instagram for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer

In this episode, we talk about the acronym "KLT," what it stands for, and why it's imperative that you build a strategy around it if you want to develop a strong customer base. I also share examples of how to build KLT into your marketing funnels.

As an entrepreneur and small business owner, I am constantly chasing "the next big thing." I set ambitious goals. I build execution plans to get there. And I base my sense of success and value on whether or not I hit them.

The problem is, I almost NEVER hit them exactly the way I planned. Or I compare myself to  other businesses, Instagram accounts, and parents -- some made-up ideal that I think I "should be" -- and I come up short.

I end up feeling like I'm "not good enough."

Not successful enough.

All I see is the gap.

In today's episode, I want to walk around the dark side of goal-setting. I want to offer another way of looking at your progress, so that you stop seeing the gap, appreciate your gains, and redefine "what is success."

I share lots of examples from my own life to help you see how easy it is to fall into this trap.

What if crossing your horizon line isn't the way to define success? What if there's INCREDIBLE value in the journey itself.

What if you're right where you are supposed to be? And how can we learn to be present in the moment and appreciate all the value of what has come before?

Are your customers getting tired of your brand? Have you done anything NEW lately? In this episode, we discuss the principle that your customers are always growing, and share some ideas for how to keep customer momentum alive in your business.

You are NOT selling just vegetables. As a CSA farmer, you're actually selling something a WHOLE lot more valuable. In this episode, I talk you through what that is, and why it's imperative that you change your messaging to focus on it.

People don't buy based on your product's features. They buy based on your product's results. In this episode, we talk about the importance of knowing your product's "promised result," and learning how to lead with THAT as you go for the sale.

Email marketing is a key way to warm up your prospect and get them ready to buy. But what do you SAY in those sales emails? I answer that in part 1 of this 2 part series all about email promotional sequences (and how to write them).

Sales don't "just happen." In great businesses, there are repeatable systems that ensure that certain actions happen over and over again. In this podcast, I share 8 of the most important systems you need to optimize to build happy customers and more profits.

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

Check out my course: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/earlybird

I did it. My farm sold out next year's CSA memberships in 5 days. What makes this amazing is that we didn't even get to offer it to our wait list or the public. It was all through early renewals.

In this episode, I walk you through the play-by-play of our promotional launch -- the offer, the results, and some of the key take-aways that drove our success. If you're a CSA farmer who uses "early signups" you will find at least one small nugget you can apply to this year's campaign.

Website redesign... did you just groan? Building a website message can feel overwhelming. But it's absolutely critical to finding new customers. In the episode we talk about 6 common website mistakes so you can fix them!

The five stages are:

1. Unaware
2. Problem Aware
3. Solution Aware
4. Product Aware
5. Most Aware

In this episode, I break down details of each of the 5 stages, and I give examples for what type of marketing content works best in each of these stages in your ag business. 

Every marketer should be exposed to this concept, which is why I dedicated an entire episode to it in my podcast archives!

In this interview, Dan talks about the three businesses (CSA, seed company, and Farmer Spreadsheet Academy) he's founded over his lifetime, and the entrepreneurial lessons he's learned along the way. 

What is your customer REALLY buying from you? What if it's more than the product itself? People don't buy the "what" -- they buy the WHY behind your business. In fact, it's the "why" that bonds them to your brand for life. In this episode, we discuss the power of the "why" in your messaging, how to find it, and what it looks like to lead with it in your marketing.

Do you have a ladder of products that move customers from the top of the funnel to the bottom? In this episode, I share what a value ladder is and how to build one for your farm.

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

In mid-October, my family and I took a weekend vacation in Hocking Hills, where we participated in a zipline canopy tour. This entire customer experience was so impressive, that I wanted to document my experience from start to finish. I share 6 different elements of their sales funnel that made an impression on me. My hope is that you can pull out some marketing insights from this story to see what a great sales funnel can look like for your farm business.

Last month, I booked a massage with a new LMT that I found via Google. Thirty minutes before my appointment, I realized that she wasn't located in Oak Harbor, Ohio. She was located in Oak Harbor, WASHINGTON.

Yeah.

How did this happen? I'm still trying to figure out what I did wrong. Did I type something wrong into Google? Why would Google give me a search result for somewhere on the west coast? The experience DID give me a lot to think about when it comes to marketing, though. There were several moments along this journey where I "should have" noticed this LMT's location -- and that information was not easy to find.

In today's episode, I share the funny story of my massage-appointment-gone-horribly-wrong. And I share a few tips for how YOU as a business can make sure you do everything in YOUR power to communicate your farm's location BEFORE they try to buy.

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

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 mydigitalfarmers@gmail.com.

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 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

Fixed Price discounts. You've seen them. "Save $5 when you spend $25!!"

Percentage off discounts. You've seen those too: "Get 20% off when you spend $25 or more!"

But which one is more effective? If you were going to build a coupon code in your online store, or offer a promotion at your farm store -- which one will lead to more sales?

Well... it depends.

As it turns out, there are best practices surrounding the use of the fixed price v. the percentage off discount. And it all revolves around sales psychology. 

Our brains just "feel better" when we use one over the other -- in certain circumstances.

In this episode, I share with you what conventional marketing wisdom says about when to use a fixed price discount over a percentage off discount. Test these out in your farm marketing and see what works best.

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

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

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, acquiring and deploying testimonials, 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 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.

Join my CSA Academy Library -- this is my digital cooking resource library that I provide for my CSA members to help them learn how to become a better home chef and cook the CSA way. It includes a Beginner's Guide to CSA mini-course, Vegetable University (A to Z video tutorials for every veggie); Canning Club (canning videos); Exit Strategy videos; Instant Pot tutorial, and my Recipes and Resources pages (with weekly CSA box recipes and unboxing videos). Farmers can subscribe for a monthly fee to have access to these resources to help them support their own CSA members.

Early Bird Campaigns that Convert -- In this episode, I mentioned how I would be building my CSA Early Bird Renewal Promo campaign this month. IF you want to learn my system for how I do this every year, I offer my step by step online course to help you get it done. This course will teach you how to build a compelling offer that gets your current members to decide to renew during your promo campaign. I show you the emails to write, the posts to create, and the ENERGY you need to generate in the week before you launch.

Find my marketing Facebook group for CSA farmers!

Follow me on Instagram for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer

Ever wonder how to incorporate text messaging into your farm business? This question comes up a LOT from farmers who are trying to find a way to attract new clients AND get them to buy from their store on a regular basis. With open rates of text messages being so high, an SMS app can be a great investment for your marketing budget.

In today's episode, I interview Aubrey Seiler from BetterTogetherFarm.com. She shares exactly how she attracts new customers to her business using an SMS texting app called Community. You'll hear examples of the kinds of messages she sends to connect with her clients and get them to buy within an hour each week. She also breaks down her website messaging, as well as her e-commerce platform features that matter most.

Who is Aubrey Seiler?

Aubrey helps run the family farm business started by her younger brother 10 years ago. BetterTogetherFarm.com is located in south-central Oklahoma. They grow around 30 vegetable varieties on 3 acres using intensive growing practices, and are certified organic. Their farm provides produce for families in their local communities and wholesale accounts in Oklahoma City. 

Community Texting App -- Aubrey uses this SMS texting app to manage her customers.

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: DIGITALFARMER2022. Head to this special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline

Sign up for my free Book Study of "Start with Why" by Simon Sinek this February at www.mydigitalfarmer.com/bookstudy

Have you been trying to get people to buy your products, and you're getting no where? Are you posting your offer on social media and wondering why it's not getting traction?

What am I doing wrong, Corinna? 

In today's episode, I tell a fun story about my dog Harley that might just clear things up for you....

Have you ever thought about partnering with a community supported fisherman in your CSA? Neither had I -- until I got a call from Aaron Sechler of Citizen Salmon Alaska. In this podcast episode, you get to be a fly on the wall, and listen in on our initial Zoom call where Aaron and I talk out the possibilities and rethink the word "local." My hope is that you might consider adding this product line and partnership to your own CSA, as we find ways to collaborate with other local-minded businesses!

March 26, 2025

A few weeks ago, my farmer friend Glen Young (shoutout to Glen!) sent me a message: "Hey, Corinna—did you know your website pop-up isn’t popping anymore?"

Uh-oh. Turns out, something had changed inside Kit.com (my email service provider), and I needed to go behind the scenes to tweak a few settings. That pop-up is one of the biggest drivers of email signups for my farm, so I was SO grateful he caught the issue before it went unnoticed for too long.

This got me thinking—how many farmers have a lead magnet set up but aren’t actually promoting it in the right places? Or worse, have no idea if it’s even working?

So today, I’m breaking down 5 key places you should be advertising your lead magnet so you can grow your email list faster and turn more leads into customers. Plus, I’ve got a free resource to help you brainstorm 20+ farm lead magnet ideas so you can get started today!

Your homework from this episode is to pick ONE of the ideas I share in the episode and start promoting your lead magnet there on a consistent basis every week!

🎧 Hit play now and make sure your lead magnet is working for you!

Podcast Sponsors:

Local Line:

Local Line is 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 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: MDF2025. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline

Farm Marketing School:

Marketing doesn’t have to feel overwhelming! Farm Marketing School is my step-by-step system for building a profitable farm marketing plan. Inside, you'll get access to bite-sized marketing projects like:

• 📆 Creating a promotion calendar that drives consistent sales
• 🛠️ Setting up & optimizing your Google Business Profile
• 📧 Writing high-converting emails (nurture, promotions, onboarding)
• 🗣️ Collecting & using customer testimonials effectively
• 🔍 Auditing & improving your sales funnel
• 💬 Monthly live coaching calls for answers to your burning questions

Each project includes a workshop and step-by-step plan so you can take action and see results without the overwhelm. Join here:
👉 www.mydigitalfarmer.com/fms (Cancel anytime!)

Links Mentioned in This Episode:

• The Anatomy of a Lead Magnet: Episode 9 of the My Digital Farmer Podcast.
• A to Z Vegetable Storage Guide Canva Template -- Don't have time to make a lead magnet? Get mine! Do you want to download my ready-to-use, customizable veggie storage guide for YOUR farm? I made this paid product to save you time! Get it here: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/atozguide
• 📩 Grab my freebie: 20+ Lead Magnet Ideas for Farmers! This will show you over 20 examples of lead magnet titles you could use for your farm business. 
• What email provider do I use? I recommend Kit.com (formerly ConvertKit.com) -- it is easy to use, powerful, and getting better every year. It also integrates with most e-commerce providers and tools. Use my affiliate link!
• 📲 Follow me on Instagram: @mydigitalfarmer
• 📬 Join My Email List: Get weekly farm marketing tips delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up at www.mydigitalfarmer.com/subscribe.
• 🌱 Want more farm marketing strategies? Visit my full resource library at www.mydigitalfarmer.com.

💛 Support the Podcast:

Love the My Digital Farmer Podcast? You can help keep the show going!

• Subscribe on your favorite podcast app so you never miss an episode.
• ⭐️  Leave a Review on Apple Podcasts—it helps other farmers find the show.
• Share this episode with a fellow farmer or small business owner.

With all the ideas you hear from this podcast and other marketing gurus, you may be feeling overwhelmed as you try to find time to build your own marketing system. You might be thinking: "There's no way I can do that!"

If you're not careful, you can easily start to feel like a failure when your strategy seems insufficient or imperfect compared to what you hear "other people" doing. But what if imperfect and incomplete is "good enough?" I share with you the concept of "minimal viable marketing." Is there such a thing? How can you stop the comparison trap and find your "good enough"?

A few weeks ago, I launched a challenge inside my CSA's private Facebook group that was meant to create some fun and excitement. I had no idea it would end up propelling my brand identity forward so profoundly. In this episode, I audit this Challenge Experiment and show you how to indoctrinate your CSA members into your brand's "why."

What if you were just starting out your pastured meat business in a small town where there's no current market for it? How do you convince a new community to accept you, believe in you, and support you?

Today, I interview my guest Kayla Gibbons from Sugar Butte Farms, who decided in 2019 to start their farm in the small town of Lowell, Ohio. Kayla harnessed the power of social media and some popular farm swag to get the word out about her farm. As you'll hear, she had to do a LOT of pre-education in the early years. Kayla shares what the strategy looks like to move through this early start-up phase of your farm business. You'll hear how she uses monthly "themes" to guide her promotions in her email copy, her social, and her Facebook community.  Kayla is also a member of my Accelerator small group coaching community!

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:

Visit Kayla's farm website: www.sugarbuttefarms.com 

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 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.

Remember that commercial with the Owl and Tootsie Roll Pops? He would ask, "How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop?"... Then he would start to count until he lost patience and just swallowed it whole. What if I asked YOU, "How many customer touch points does it take to get a person to turn into a customer?..." Do you know the answer to this question? And more importantly: do you have a strategy to keep those touch points happening? In this episode, we talk about the concept of customer touch points and how to get your customers to the center of your Tootsie Roll Pop!

If you're a CSA farmer, you know that not everyone is a perfect fit for your product. It takes a "special kind" of customer. So how do you find more of them? Meet the "Lead Magnet" -- a digital form of "bait" to hook new customers.

So you've got all these new CSA members this year. What do you need to do to help them achieve success with your CSA product? In this episode, I share my specific curriculum we teach to our CSA rookies to help get them to mastery faster. 

Did you know you should be creating regular posts in your GMB (Google My Business) listing? In this podcast, we talk about what the 5 types of posts are, and how they can help Google better understand WHO you are and how to share the right information with those who are searching for you.

A few weeks ago, I drove my two boys up to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, for their annual weeklong Air Show.

The EAA Venture Air Show in Oshkosh is the largest air show in the world, and for seven days, it also becomes the busiest airport in the world. Hundreds of thousands of people visit this air show every year.

We first discovered the event a few years ago when my son Jed first started getting into aviation. Everyone told us, "You need to go to Oshkosh."

Well, they were right. If you're an aviation enthusiast, you eventually end up at Oshkosh. In fact, I would argue that it's almost the equivalent of making a holy pilgrimage to Jerusalem. 

Our first trip to this aviation experience was other-worldly. It was so over-the-top, and it turned us into rabid superfans of aviation. In fact, it was SO powerful, I remember thinking, "I need to do a podcast about this. The brand culture here is so potent."

The thing about Oshkosh is that there are some very specific principles at play that are creating community and turning us plane nerds into superfans. In this podcast, I wanted to point them out to you. I show you how you can take these same principles and put them to work in your farm business, so that you create a community among your customers.

Because people come for your vegetables. They come for your meat and your flowers. But they stay for the community.

As a farm, you must learn how to build a community to achieve longevity. Oshkosh (and this podcast) will show you how. This turned into a great episode!

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

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

Episode 203: How to Build a Glamping Enterprise on Your Farm -- Everything You Need to Know with Kasey Marshall - I mention our vacation to Canada to see the Cold Lake Air Show, and our hosts Kasey and Renaud Marshall at 350Farms! Kasey was on my podcast last year to talk about their glamping operation. If you want to learn how to set up a glamping operation, THIS IS THE PODCAST to listen to.

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, acquiring and deploying testimonials, 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 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.

Find my marketing Facebook group for CSA farmers!

Follow me on Instagram 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.

In this episode I share the P.A.S.T.O.R. method for crafting your sales message. I use this to frame my website and my promotional email campaigns. If you're stuck not knowing how to start your sales argument, start here.

Subscribe to my free 5-Day Instagram Reels Challenge here. You'll get a daily video tutorial on Reels and a quick homework assignment to practice the skill you learned. Each day builds on the next, as you experiment and play in the sandbox. By the end of the challenge, you'll know your way around the Reels platform and know how to take it deeper if you want!

Do you need to be doing Instagram Reels? And if you ARE ready to take the dive, where do you get started?

Well, in today's episode, I walk you through some of my "beginner's tips" for getting started with Reels.

At first, I was overwhelmed and intimidated by all the professional-looking, high production value Reel videos in my feed.  So I avoided it for the longest time. But then I began researching IG Reels back in early 2022 -- experimenting, following other accounts, trying to figure out the mechanics of how to do it.

Finally, I decided to take the plunge and play in the platform -- "just as an experiment." Along the way, I became more confident, and every month I feel myself getting better.

In this podcast, I share some of my take-aways for "Reels-Rookies" or "Reels-Wanna-be's" for what to expect when you get started, what to keep in mind as you develop your skills, and shortcut hacks that helped me overcome my imposter syndrome.

I also talk about how you can take my free Instagram Reels Challenge with me this August! In this challenge, I teach you the mechanics of how to make your first reels confidently, so you can take this platform and run with it! NO MORE FEAR.

Subscribe to my free 5-Day Instagram Reels Challenge here. You'll get a daily video tutorial on Reels and a quick homework assignment to practice the skill you learned. Each day builds on the next, as you experiment and play in the sandbox. By the end of the challenge, you'll know your way around the Reels platform and know how to take it deeper if you want!

I wish someone had shared the ropes of reels with me like this when I was trying to learn the platform.

I've used email a LOT in my farm business. Now I share which of them are the MOST beneficial to your farm in acquiring a customer and turning them into a lifelong buyer. Learn what they are and what goes inside them. 

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

What happens immediately after someone buys your signature product? If all they get is a confirmation email, then this episode is for you. We talk through why an email welcome sequence can be a super powerful way to onboard your customer, and I share my exact template for how to build your own.  

Getting the right people into your business matters. In this episode, we interview special guest Cole Jones of Local Line who shares his best practices on how to build systems that "qualify" your leads so you don't end up with a revolving door in your business.

Writing the weekly CSA Newsletter.... do you love it? Or hate it?

This used to feel like a CHORE! In my early years, I would start from scratch every week, and it felt like I was back in Yearbook class -- not only trying to write engaging "newspaper-style" articles, but worrying about layout and images so it all fit!! It would take me around 6-7 hours every weekend.

Ugh.

After 14 years, I've learned a few things about how to make this important resource a whole lot faster (and better!) In this episode, I share 5 time-saving hacks I use now that help me knock this out in about 3 hours a week. So when the well runs dry... you have some back-up systems that keep you moving forward.

You can check out my latest CSA newsletter here: www.sharedlegacyfarms.com/blog.

What if your social media posts were more than just cool pictures of your farm's produce or calls to shop the market? In this episode, I teach how to create "Content Pillars" that help you not only connect with your audience but promote your unique brand.

Have you thought about starting a CSA, but you're not sure if you're up to it? What does it take to become a great CSA farm? Before you take the leap, what if you could get some advice from seasoned CSA farmers, to tell you what you need to commit to if you want to be successful?... In this podcast, we interview Lauren Rudersdorf and Cat Becker, collaborators of the recent North Central SARES video series called: CSA Starts Here. We talk about how this video can help future CSA farmers decide if they should venture into the CSA world. We share the 10 questions and skill sets they must master before moving forward. 

How are you leveraging word of mouth? It is still by far the #1 way that people hear about your product. So are you building any mechanisms to encourage this to happen more? And what if I told you that around 60% of word of mouth marketing for your brand is happening in offline conversations? When specifically is your product or brand coming to mind for your customer, so that they think to talk about it with someone.

In today's podcast, I'm sharing a recording of a Book Study I led with y Accelerator members on the book "Contagious" by Jonah Berger. This is a fascinating idea-sharing discussion of farmers trying to brainstorm specific actions they can take to get people to talk more about their brand. I hope you get some ideas from this mastermind!

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.

Contagious by Jonah Berger - this is the book we discuss in today's recording

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.

Subscribe to my farm's CSA Resource Library for $1 using the coupon code TRIAL at www.mydigitalfarmer.com/academy 

Have you ever thought about creating a passive form of revenue through a digital workshop?

Today's podcast guest, Heather Carter of Nature Hills Farm, did just that! Her cheese-making online class is purchased by people all over the country. In this episode, she shares how she built the course, what obstacles she had to overcome, and how she plans to grow this revenue stream for her farm.

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. <== Grab it here! This is the "plant catalog" I created in Canva to show my customers the plants we offer, as well as how it all works. I link this up in my promo email to my buyers. You can grab a copy of this Canva design for FREE, and use it when you build your own Price List. It will serve as a great starter template. Subscribe here to get the Canva template link for free: 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. <== Grab it here! This is the "plant catalog" I created in Canva to show them the plants we offer, as well as how it all works. You can grab a copy of this Canva design for FREE, and use it when you build your own Price List. It will serve as a great starter template. Subscribe here to get the Canva template link for free: 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!

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

Sometimes life throws you a curve-ball you weren't expecting. How you respond can make all the difference. What if "everything is happening FOR you?" In this episode, I open up with Kate Weschler on the Root to Bloom podcast as I share my healing journey over the past 12 months, including the transformative insights and breakthroughs. We talk about the role of gratitude, choosing specific thoughts that would serve me, finding my true north again, and learning to "live in the land of fun." I hope this episode will help you re-imagine how to view your own obstacles  that life sends your way, and instead see them as a catalyst for potentially huge breakthroughs.

Podcast Sponsor:

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: MDF2025. 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. Subscribe at https://www.mydigitalfarmer.com/subscribe

Check out the Root to Bloom Podcast with Kate Weschler -- today's episode was originally recorded for the Root to Bloom podcast, and Kate graciously agreed to share the audio with me so i could showcase it on the My Digital Farmer podcast, too. I invite you to check out her podcast!

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 parts of your marketing system: 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, acquiring and deploying testimonials, writing great weekly email promotions, nurture emails, onboarding emails, 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 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.

Writing a CSA Handbook is often an overwhelming job the first time you tackle it. This document acts as your "Users Manual' for your CSA members - the one source of truth to spell out your membership agreement and policies and procedures. But what should you write in it? Find the answers in this episode!

Fresh cut flowers and meat? It's an interesting product mix for a farm business! In today's episode, I introduce you to Farmer Anna Hankins of Over the Moon Flowers, who shares how she targets these two distinct buyers into her sales funnel, and gets them to buy. We cover what marketing channel gives her the most punch, how she uses Shopify to sell her products, as well as her excellent website messaging. She's got LOADS of marketing ideas you can apply to your own farm business -- whether you're doing flowers, meat, or veggies. 

Ever heard of the NextDoor app? I've been hearing farmers mention it from time to time as a GREAT way to sell their products. So I decided to investigate. In this episode, I interview Rowan Miller of RowanTree Farms, who explains how this social media app works, who it's best for, and how to use it to sell more of your products.

I bought a new air fryer last month. The "unboxing" experience was so top-notch, that I decided to make an entire episode about it. In this tutorial, I'm going to challenge you to think about how you are engineering the moments AFTER a person buys your product. Excite your customer and you'll have them coming back for more.

This episode is PART TWO of a series all about "ways to use coupon codes in your online store."

If you have an online store, these are a great way to entice your customers to come on over and buy. I also love that i can run a report of my coupon codes and see how they performed. This gives me the ability to TAG clients who use certain coupon codes, RETARGET them, and EVALUATE how effective my offers were. 

I recently heard from Local Line (my ecommerce platform) that they would adding coupon codes as a basic feature at the end of May. This compelled me to find 15 different ways I could test coupon codes this summer in my store. I'm sharing the last 8 with you here. (The first 7 were in Episode 264 -- go listen!)

Get ready to write these down. And commit to testing at least one of them in the next few weeks! See if it helps you make more sales.

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

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

Be sure to listen to Episode 264 for Part 1 of this series on Coupon Codes! I share 7 other ways you can use them in your online store.

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, acquiring and deploying testimonials, 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 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.

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

Sign up for my CSA Quickstart course and coaching program through Feb. 4th: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/csaquickstart

What if you were given an opportunity to acquire a loyal customer base from another CSA farmer who was retiring? Would you take it?

In this week's episode, I interview a CSA farmer who did just that! Aeros Lillstrom of Who Cooks for You Farm shares her story of how she grew her CSA to 800 members through this form of acquisition. She also shares some of the unique issues that needed to be addressed as part of that transition. If you've ever thought of this form of scaling, this will be a helpful primer for you! 

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

A few days ago, I had a spontaneous idea... 

I needed to set up my coupon codes in my e-commerce store. (Local Line recently announced that they were adding coupon codes as a free feature to the platform).

But I was dragging my feet to get it done.

"I know!" I said.  "I'll create a challenge for farmers. That will make me do it!"

And thus, the 4-Week Coupon Code Challenge was born. 

The goal of this challenge is to expose you to different coupon code styles that you can use in your farm marketing, and get you to experiment with them this month as you build your offers. This is a live challenge, running during the month of June, 2024. Each week, I'll send you an email with a short video inside that focuses on TWO new coupon code concepts. Your job is to choose ONE of them, build an offer around it, create the code, and market it to your clients that week.

Then... seee what happens!

I'll also share the tech videos for how to build out the featured coupon codes in Local Line -- since that's my platform of choice.

Some of these coupon code styles work really well for weekly offers to drive sales in your store. But some can be set up inside of your email or text automations --  a one-and-done kind of setup that drives revenue forever.

By the end of this month, you'll have a pseudo-coupon-code-strategy running in the background of your business, making you money. 

To join the challenge (which is totally free), subscribe at https://www.mydigitalfarmer.com/couponcode. I'll send you your first marching orders a few minutes later! 

Get excited with me. This is how we get stuff done. Together. Let's go.

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

Are you doing video in your farm marketing? If not... why not?!

Video is my go-to content creation method. Perhaps it's because I'm a natural public speaker, but I find it to be the easiest and fastest way to communicate with my leads and customers. It's also the best way to build connection and trust, to grease the wheels and move people towards buying.

And yet, for many farmers, video remains an elusive skill. It feels scary and the fear of looking unprofessional is real. In this episode, I'm sharing some of my best practices when it comes to video, including my list of "gear" (it's not very long), and my short list of "must have videos" to film for your brand. I also show you where to get started if you're a little nervous.

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

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

Wireless Microphone (Links to Amazon) 

Goosehead Bed Phone Holder (Links to Amazon)

Best Video Editing Software: I don't actually use one, but I do have InShot on my phone!

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, acquiring and deploying testimonials, 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 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.

Find my marketing Facebook group for CSA farmers!

Follow me on Instagram for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer

April 12, 2023 by Corinna

What makes a person decide to buy themselves a bouquet of flowers?

Knowing the answer to this question may be the key to selling more of them. In today's podcast, I interview flower farmer Kendra Kennedy of Dogwood Flower Farm in Wisconsin. Her goal is to build her entire farm business around the love of flowers. We talk at length about the kind of person she is attracting to her business. What makes a person decide to buy this product? Are you really selling just the flowers themselves?... or is it something else? And if it IS something else, how can we lean into THAT message more in our marketing? It's a great discussion, and I hope it gets you thinking about YOUR product -- and the real WHY behind the buy.

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 Kendra Kennedy?

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.

Building a Storybrand by Donald Miller -- Kendra mentioned this book several times, as a key resource that helped her understand the concept of making her customer the hero of her brand story.

Accelerator Group Coaching with Corinna -- get on the wait list for this 15-member group Mastermind and Farm Marketing School experience. We open enrollment again in the fall.

Why They Buy -- Want to the learn the psychological triggers that make a person ready to buy? Take my free class that will teach you the sales secrets many marketers rely on to move their products.

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 a season when CSAs are once again "hot," many farmers may be asking themselves, "Should I start a CSA for my farm?" In this episode, I interview my life partner, Kurt Bench, as we explore the 10 qualities that we think will help you have an edge. Ask yourself if you have some of them before you pursue your CSA dream.

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 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

Imagine launching a brand-new U-Pick strawberry business... with only a few months to get everything in place. No website. No email list. No customer base.

That’s exactly the challenge David Heeks faced this spring—and in this episode, you’ll hear how we mapped out his entire sales funnel during a live Farm Marketing School coaching call.

David had just completed the Farm Marketing School (FMS) project on "Auditing Your Sales Funnel," and came prepared to share his homework. We walked through every stage of the customer value journey, from building awareness and engagement all the way to repeat buying—and we identified the key gaps he needed to fill fast.

🎧 Whether you’re just starting your farm biz or revamping an existing one, this episode is packed with practical ideas and “aha” moments about how to think through your customer’s journey—plus a cool little demo of how I used ChatGPT live to help David implement part of his plan on the call!

Podcast Sponsors:

Local Line:

Local Line is 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 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: MDF2025. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline

Farm Marketing School:

Marketing doesn’t have to feel overwhelming! Farm Marketing School is my step-by-step system for building a profitable farm marketing plan. Inside, you'll get access to bite-sized marketing projects like:

• 📆 Creating a promotion calendar that drives consistent sales
• 🛠️ Setting up & optimizing your Google Business Profile
• 📧 Writing high-converting emails (nurture, promotions, onboarding)
• 🗣️ Collecting & using customer testimonials effectively
• 🔍 Auditing & improving your sales funnel
• 💬 Monthly live coaching calls for answers to your burning questions

Each project includes a workshop and step-by-step plan so you can take action and see results without the overwhelm. Join here:
👉 www.mydigitalfarmer.com/fms (Cancel anytime!)

Need content ideas for your CSA members? Enroll in my CSA Membership Academy and get your first month for $1 when you use my coupon code TRIAL at www.mydigitalfarmer.com/academy

Do you spend more time than you'd like in your farm delivery truck? Do you dream of giving this up and having more time for revenue-generating activities on the farm? What if you could outsource delivery to someone else?

In this episode, I interview Andrew Miller from Farmstead Logistics -- a third party logistics provider who helps deliver farm products from Point A to Point B. Andrew talks through what services like his provide, what a farmer should ask to decide whether this service is "worth it," what potential hiccups you need to watch out for.

My hope is that after listening to this podcast, you'll have a better idea of some of the issues you need to address before you contract with a courier service.

It's our 300th episode!! Wow. Can I make a confession?... I didn't realize this important milestone moment until 10 days ago. And by then, it was too late. I realized I had missed my chance to make this moment a "Big Deal" and build momentum for my brand. There were SO many things I could have done with this episode!... invited a special interview guest, held a giveway, gotten a round-table of farmers who have coached with me to hear their transformative stories, or "looked back" at where I've been.

So I decided to turn this into a learning opportunity for all of us. I'm "going meta" as we use this milestone episode to discuss the marketing power of YOUR farm's milestone moments. I’ll share the lessons I learned from forgetting to celebrate this big achievement—and give you a roadmap for using anniversaries and other key dates to grow your farm’s business.

In this episode, you'll discover:

• Why milestones create powerful marketing opportunities

• The psychology behind milestone marketing (and why it works)

• 3 types of milestones you should celebrate

• Creative ideas for turning milestones into marketing gold

• How to name and promote your milestone celebrations

Your Action Step: Identify one upcoming milestone in your business and brainstorm three ways to celebrate it. Need help? If you're a member of Farm  Marketing School, you cann download my free Milestone Celebration Planning Worksheet to get started!

Podcast Sponsors: 

🌿 Local Line: Local Line is 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: MDF2025. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline

🚜 Farm Marketing School: Feeling overwhelmed by marketing? Join Farm Marketing School—my monthly membership designed to help farmers like you build a simple, repeatable marketing system. Inside, you'll get access to bite-sized marketing projects like:

• Creating a promotion calendar that drives consistent sales

• Setting up & optimizing your Google Business Profile

• Writing high-converting emails (nurture, promotions, onboarding)

• Collecting & using customer testimonials effectively

• Auditing & improving your sales funnel

• Monthly live coaching calls for answers to your burning questions

Each project includes a workshop and step-by-step plan so you can take action and see results without the overwhelm. Join here:

👉 www.mydigitalfarmer.com/fms (Cancel anytime!)

Links Mentioned in This Episode:

• 📄 FREE Milestone Celebration Planning Worksheet and AI Prompt Cheatsheet-- available to all subscribers of Farm Marketing School.

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• 💬 Love this episode? Screenshot and tag me on Instagram @mydigitalfarmer or DM me your biggest takeaway.

• 🌱 Want more farm marketing strategies? Visit my full resource library at www.mydigitalfarmer.com.

🎧 Recommended Next Episode: Not sure what to listen to next? Check out Episode 205: How to Create a Promotion Calendar for Your Farm—it’s the perfect follow-up to today’s discussion.

🔗 www.mydigitalfarmer.com/205

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In this episode, I walk you through my process for developing my annual promotional calendar. I walk through the 8 steps we follow every year. You'll learn the questions you need to ask along the way so that you can create your own promo plan that will guide your sales process.

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In this episode, I interview Farmer Sarah Judd of Meadow Lynn Farms. She shares how she used my early bird sales formula to help her get more of her CSA members to commit to her farm earlier than ever before -- giving her peace of mind over her winter break. 

CSA is not an impulse buy. That means we need to build a long-term strategy to get people to warm up. In this episode, I talk through the concept of "Building a Runway" to get your customer ready to buy. And I give you 10 ideas for how to do it.

Vacation in July for a farmer? Is it possible?

What if it were?...

In today's episode, I share my story of how Kurt and I successfully planned and executed a 5-day vacation to Oshkosh, Wisconsin in the middle of July.

How did our farm survive without us? What did we have to do to make it happen? And was it worth it?

In this episode, I share some observations and take-aways from this experiment that will be helpful if you want to make this dream a reality.

It is possible. It all starts in your mind.