My Digital Farmer Podcast

Have you ever wanted to build your own butcher shop in your local area -- to vertically integrate your business and stop the meat processing bottlenecks? Liz Brownlee of Nightfall Farm did. But she wasn't sure if it was financially viable. So what did she do? She wrote a SARE grant for a feasibility study, got the funding, and then paid herself to research the idea. In the process, she found the i...

Take my 5-Day CSA Startup Challenge - Are you looking for help setting up your first season of CSA? Then join my CSA Starter Challenge. Over the course of 5 days, I walk you through the first 5 key decisions you need to make as you set up the groundwork of your CSA. Each day you receive an email with a teaching video and a small bite-size homework assignment that gets you started on your CSA creat...

Need help starting a vegetable CSA? Register for my free CSA webinar "The Three Mistakes Rookie CSA Farmers Make (And How to Avoid Them)" at www.mydigitalfarmer.com/masterclass When you're a brand-new farm business, it's hard to break into the market. You can't just throw your product onto a website and hope people will buy it. First, you have to make people aware you exist, get them to take a sec...

A website header is the first thing that visitors see when they visit a site, and it appears on every page of the site. How does yours look? I liken the header to the front page of a newspaper. Customers will make split-second decisions about whether to keep researching your business, based on the information in your header. Clients are often looking for key information in your header. We want to...

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 me...

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 imp...

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...

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 BetterTogetherF...

In this week's episode, I wanted to share a very cool Thanksgiving project we did last year called "Feed the Need" bags. It served as a way for us to donate our produce to people in need, but USE OUR CUSTOMERS as the vehicle to do so. We found that this initiative created so much momentum and positive goodwill in our community. We were going to give the food away anyway.... but to invite our custo...

So many farms fail to be profitable simply because they don't have a good handle on their finances. To be a profitable business, you need to know how to build a budget, keep track of your numbers, and be able to pivot your business to meet your revenue goals. But what numbers matter? Oftentimes, a new farmer has no idea how to make sense of a financial report. What benchmarks should we be aiming f...

How do you get someone to buy your product? Well, it all starts with a "good offer." What does that mean? "Crafting the offer" gets its own module in marketing school, because it's THAT important. There are strategies for what goes into an offer that makes people convert. And in today's episode, we dissect those elements in details. My guest is Michael Kilpatrick, host of the Thriving Farmer podca...

Every year, I run an "early renewal" promotion to my CSA members, to try and get as many of them as possible to sign up for next summer's CSA season. Getting them locked in early gives me a sense of security and peace of mind -- not to mention enough cash flow for the spring. But how do I do it?  In this week's podcast, I perform an audit of this year's CSA Early Renewal Campaign that I launched t...

A few months ago, I made a HUGE leap and decided to invest in a leadership coach. I had gotten to a point in my business where I felt like what was holding me back most was my mindset . I kept hearing my mentors say things like, "Mindset is everything." But how do you find a life coach who will actually get results, when I'm not even sure what results I want? Enter Rebekah Zimmerman. Rebekah is th...

Here's a powerful marketing principle: The more you say something, the more likely your customer will remember it (and believe it). For example: What is GEICO known for?... If you've ever seen one of their commercials, you know the answer: it's car insurance. But interestingly, GEICO also sells all kinds of other insurance too. But it only promotes the car insurance messaging. It keeps things simp...

Does your website need a makeover? Or maybe you don't have one at all?! Then this episode is for you! If you own a farm business, you need a website. But many farmers feel overwhelmed when it comes to building one from scratch. What do you need to think about before you start the process of writing, rewriting or restructuring the messaging and look? Where do you start? My guest today is Tricia Phe...

I love interviewing other CSA farmers and learning their sales secrets. Today I introduce you to Karin Velez from Wolf Creek Family Farm. Karin has been farming for 15 years as a CSA farm, and she somehow manages to keep her members coming back over and over -- so much so that she doesn't even offer open enrollment anymore. You can only get in if you're on a wait list. What are her secrets to find...

In this episode, I announce the release of my new Small Group Coaching program for farmers called Acclerator. Think of it like "marketing school meets group coaching." I'm taking 5-15 growth-mindset farmers who are ready to build their marketing assets one by one, one month at a time. This experience will last for 3 months this winter (Nov, Jan, Feb). It's made up of virtual teaching workshops, gr...

I get this question a lot from farmers... "What should I focus on first in my marketing strategy?" After 15 years of running a farm business (and learning this stuff the hard way), I feel like I can offer a pretty solid "list" of the marketing "assets" that pack the biggest punch.  In this episode, I share what they are. It's not a short list. The goal of this episode is not to intimidate you or o...

What if there were a Farm Marketing "Bible" that spelled out all the best practices to help market to your customers online? Farmers are expected to know everything about how to run a business - including sales and marketing. But knowing where to start can be overwhelming -- especially if you're not trained in this skill set. Enter Nina Galle from Local Line. In her role as the Content Creator at...

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...

Somebody buys your product. Then what happens?...  Many business owners think that the work of sales and marketing is now over. The customer bought the product, and now we're done. Wrong. In today's episode, I talk about the VERY important phase of the sales process called "product fulfillment." I share lots of examples of what this can look like, and why spending just a few hours optimizing your...

Before your potential new client decides to buy your stuff, they're looking for ONE thing... Proof. You need to show that you're the real deal -- your product delivers results! Customers often don't even realize they're looking for this, but they are. That's why it's important for you to build these "credibility moments" into your buying process somewhere. In today's episode, we talk about 10 diff...

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...

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 give...

Every now and then, I run into a fantastic sales funnel example in the real world in another industry. When it happens, I take notes, so I can share it with you. This week, I'm breaking down the sales funnel of my son's orthodontist.  You see, in a matter of 7 days, Kurt and I decided to write a big fat check for $6000 to this Downey Orthodontics in Bowling Green. How did he pull that off so fast?...