While I was at the Southeast Strawberry Expo in Durham, NC I came across farmers marketing their products via Craigslist. This is an interesting way to market farm products because I normally think of Craigslist as a place to sell a used bike or advertise an apartment rental.

If you are not familiar with Craigslist, it is a simple, free classifieds board focused on a single city or area. It is also one of the largest and most heavily used sites on the web. There are Craigslist pages for most metropolitan areas across the United States and many classified categories from automobiles to lost-and-found notices.

I found this posting on the Raleigh, NC Craigslist site listing "U-pick" turnips and greens:

Though posting your farm products on Craigslist will only work if you serve a metropolitan area, I think it could be a successful strategy especially for time sensitive postings like "U-Pick" strawberries, coupons, or anything that customers can take action on quickly. If you end up using Craigslist to advertise your products, please let us know how it goes.

The best marketing is, of course, word-of-mouth. It is free and respected by consumers more than anything you write on your website. Have a great product, get people talking about it, maybe have a website for more information, and you are on your way to a great marketing plan.


There is a way that you can cross your website copy with word-of-mouth advertising: the testimonial.

Kehrer writes: "Testimonials are the missing link for prospects considering a commitment to your product or service. Reading what others have to say gives them instant comfort. It helps them connect the dots, put a real face on your business and see the satisfaction others have garnered from working with you."

Create a page on your site where you can collect the nice things customers say about your farm and build it slowly over time as positive comments are made. Small Farm Central farmers say lots of nice things, that's why we created the What Our Farmers Say page.

Once you have created a repository on your site of testimonials, you can sprinkle the comments throughout your site in places where the specific comment augments the point you are making. Strawberries are going strong across the country right now, so let's say you have created a page about your strawberries with information about "U-Pick", varietals, growing practices, and more. A comment from a customer about how different the strawberries are than store-bought is perfect for the strawberry page!

When someone sends you an email with a quotable line, send them a message back and ask them if you can use their words on your testimonial page. You don't want that customer to visit your site a few weeks later to find their email pasted all over your site without permission -- that is a good way to turn a happy customer into an disgruntled customer!

Be Specific!

Specific testimonials are better than the general. What sounds better?

"I like to eat your produce because it is so fresh!"
or
"We're so excited for the strawberries. The kids and us ate them as our bedtime snack, and like last week, my husband and I had to "fight" to get more than one! The kids love them, and we all love all the greens, too. Tonight before bed, my four year old said, "I'm thankful for the farmers who grow us healthy food." Thanks for feeding our family!"

Village Acres Farm Weekly Survey

Village Acres Farm has compiled a very impressive list of customer quotes this year which you can see on their website in the "recent comments" area in the right-hand column. In fact, the specific testimonial above was taken from their site.

I asked Patrick at Village Acres Farm what they were doing to generate such an impressive amount of positive comments.

Patrick writes:

Photo by: saguayo

Hearing some of the great questions during the Web Session that I helped give at the Organicology conference gave me the idea of setting up a weekly web meeting/conference on web marketing issues for farmers.

There is a lot of interest in how the web can be used for farm marketing and communication between farms, but there are so many tools and the web is a confusing place.

There is low-cost software that we can use to stream video and voice to many participants right through your friendly web browser. We can talk about anything you like at the intersection of the web and farms:

• Outlets to sell goods online
• Mailing list software
• Interesting farming resource blogs
• Creating a farm website
• Web marketing strategies that work
• Small Farm Central tutorial
• Take a look at web analytics tools
• Discuss farm blogging ideas
• Etc, etc, etc

Talk among yourselves, ask me questions, or we'll look at your website and give you suggestions. This should not necessarily focus on Small Farm Central (there a lot of tools out there) nor does it have to be directed by me. I would just like to provide a forum for discussion where web marketing concerns agriculture.

So I am thinking about scheduling an hour a week to talk on a regular basis - stop by once to chat about a specific issue or put it on your weekly calendar. No cost, just communication.

Is this something you would be interested in? Please leave your thoughts in comments. Hopefully there is enough interest to make it worth starting up something like this!

Most farmers I talk to are already convinced that the web is an important part of their marketing. This is part self-selection (staunch Luddite farmers will just ignore me) and part osmosis from hearing about the importantance of the web at farming conferences and from other farmers.

I can think of three reasons why the web is important to farmers as a marketing tool. Perhaps you can think of others? Leave them in comments.

1. The web is a democratic medium - larger companies cannot buy attention from web surfers with money. The most interesting websites, content, and ideas will get the visitors. Luckily, interest in real food is on the rise and consumers are out there looking for your farm.
   
2. A web site bridges the geographic between rural producers and urban eaters. Your customers may be 50 or 100 miles away in the city, but they are working on computers all day and will take a break to search for authentic food in their area. It is not necessary to have a 24 hour customer relations representative waiting for calls -- your website can tell the story and collect email address of prospective customers while you work or rest.
   
3. The incremental costs of communication on the web is effectively zero; that means that once you have your website set up or your email campaign running, adding another visitor or reader costs nothing.You can reach more interested customers at a lower cost than ever before. If you paid 41 cents for each email to your mailing list each week, you would quickly silence your mailing list. Of course this is not only true for farms, but any small business.

Though the web is a perfect medium for marketing a farm, it is not in any way automatic. A good website takes time and energy and the results will not be paid back in a few weeks or months -- it will likely take years of consistent effort to build a good readership on a farm website. In this way, it is no different than building soil, refining herd genetics, or reducing weed load. It may take only a few seconds to send an email, but don't let that fool you: web marketing is as slow as anything else you do for your farm or your business.

Good luck with your farm website this Spring. We are seeing lots of new sign-ups and farmers with existing sites are excited about energizing their web presence.

Can you think of any other reasons to add to three above? Leave them in comments.