Happy New Year!
This time last year we were digging our way out from under three trees and unknowingly starting a year that would be defined by growing the homestead and discovering new niche markets that both further enrich those in our community with local produce and give us the opportunity to learn as we grow. Having only lightly used social media to post content or develop a presence, I believe we have been growing fast and organically for what has been little to no engagement on social media. No small amount of our first-year customers were friends and family that supported us because of that relationship, and now I want to see what kind of interest outside of that circle we can drum up in regards to chickens.
Social platforms are most people’s go-to source of information for creating that initial interest in a product, company, or person; however, I don’t enjoy that kind of interaction, and I do not believe that any of the platforms would be effective in connecting people locally to our products. I am not saying that an online presence is not important; it is, but I also believe more so that a marketing campaign skewed towards physical and real-world engagement to capture the initial interest, followed by online interaction when it is needed, will be the most efficient way to reach our community.
It is important to me that I differentiate between marketing and advertising because they are sometimes used in lieu of each other, so I am going to state what I believe the difference is between advertising and marketing before confirming it:
Marketing is when a product or group are introduced to a target audience, and the interest drummed up by the marketing of said product drives the audience to look further into it.
Advertisements are what are force fed down our ear holes at 3x speaking speed about a drug that might help with something, but also will cause internal bleeding and sudden incontinence.
Here is the dictionary definition: Marketing is a business practice that involves identifying, predicting and meeting customer needs. Advertising is a business practice where a company pays to place its messaging or branding in a particular location.
Okay, okay, I’ll play pretend and say advertising isn’t only vast majority corpo’ hogwash that undersells and over promises on products; however, when was the last time you were advertised to for something that was a local product? Truly local and not a car dealer or insurance offices, but truly, physically local only? If you are like me, it is really hard to think of something that I have seen advertised locally that didn’t look like a complete scam or people third party selling makeup and oils, short of a select few local farms and pumpkin patches that pop up around the holidays; otherwise, nothing exists.
With that thought and the less than optimistic yet very realistic outlook on marketing, I present my idea for my “Year Two-Tiered Marketing Blitz”!
Yard Signage
Does everyone know what year we are in? An ELECTION YEAR! My favorite time of the democratic process where our nation viscerally hates one another in order to show support for a small group of “people” who faked a pedophile’s suicide and called it a hanging in his cell…oh, and people also put up yard signs! My plan is to implement yard signs for current customers and friends of ours that will be colorful, funny, and most of all, informative, in order to catch the eyes of passersby. I have never seen a yard sign that made me desire to reach out for anything. I attribute it to the fact that most of them are a garish color with bold letters and a phone number, and honestly a little painful to look at. I think I will only need one sign per yard, with a descriptor of our poultry and a QR code that links directly to the poultry page on my website.
Pricing is always going to be tricky. My concern is that showing the price for a pasture raised poultry is going to be jarring to the potential customer due to what that individual is used to spending. On the other hand, not showing pricing and having to manage the communication about pricing with that potential customer has merits on both sides as well. What I decided is that if I am going to introduce something to a potential customer that has a higher price than what they are used to, then it should be done with a little bit of flair that makes the whole experience feel like it SHOULD cost more, and I have two ideas on how to achieve this:
What if the yard sign was an old-school wooden design and not one of the ones that are a dime a dozen now? I am a firm believer that quality of product is still a huge buying factor (no matter how many TEMU ads they shove at my face!) and the type of people I want as customers are the type of people who would notice and appreciate the effort to attract business.
What if they had to “pluck” a paper tail feather (100% Kayla’s idea) to find the pricing and our QR code, and on the other side is a 10% discount code for their first chicken purchased?
I know, it is cute.
The point of the whole idea is that the experience is not something that they can relate to on any other level, and that may be the reason they are curious enough to try one.
Posters in Local Small Businesses
I am barely old enough to remember newspapers still being delivered and when people hand wrote letters to love ones while listening to local radio, but those days are mostly gone. No one really reads newspapers anymore, mail is tossed with disregard, radio is seemingly ineffective, and while they look super cool, I have never followed the instructions of a banner in the sky being pulled by a plane. They do all share a commonality, though, and that is that they are all more expensive than I would want to ever spend. I do think there are opportunities in coffee shops and similar brekky’ and diner joints that have boards that allow me to present a poster or flyer promoting the land, and that there is a local access to something more.
Educating a potential consumer is one of the hardest things to do unless the consumer is looking for options and is presented with said options frequently to consider. If I can post in a coffee shop et al., I capture a small percentage of the regulars that come in and look at my flyer every day; however, I have spent next to no time educating or working with that customer other than changing a flyer out every 6 weeks in the spring and summer.
I know I speak for both Last Bastion Homestead and our Poultry Pals, The Barefoot Farmstead, when I say we are very excited to be starting off this year looking forward to a good year of raising animals from day one to day none and allowing them to live their best lives.
Thank you to all our members, friends, and family who support us as we continue to thrive in our community.
I ALMOST FORGOT!
We have two new logos! one more detailed, and one more simplistic. We are planting our feet deep into year two!
Wooden signs for sure! And yes to the new logos. You know I'll take all the chicken and turkey feet ;) Made a great broth tonight. Cheers!!
The problem of marketing is one that has been on my mind a lot recently, and I really like the idea of the yard-signs for folks that are fans of your products. Seems like it would really help with word-of-mouth type marketing that works well on the small/local scale. Have you seen success from this method over this last year?