Announcing our Marketing Toolkit for Farmers
By Katherine Hoke, Humane Farming Program and Communications Assistant
We are excited to share with you a new farmer resource available to you on our website, the Marketing Toolkit for Farmers! As any direct-to-consumer livestock and poultry farmer knows, educating your consumers and correctly marketing your product is crucial to the success of your operation. Even though you know marketing is important, it can be hard to prioritize writing an engaging newsletter or creating social media posts when you have all the practical duties of running a farm staring back at you, literally,
We have put together this Marketing Toolkit to help you educate your consumers about the specific benefits humane farming offers animal welfare, human health, and the environment. Sharing your story, your practices, and highlighting the health advantages of pasture-raised products are just some of the ways strategic marketing can cultivate a loyal and informed customer base.
With the ever-rising cost of groceries, it is important to show your customers why your product is special. What differentiates it from the discount meat at the grocery store?
Download our Nutritional Fact sheets to inform your customers of some of the unique benefits of consuming humane and pasture raised meat, dairy and eggs. Feel free to use these as social media posts or print them out and laminate them to display at your farmers market stall.
Sometimes you just need a jumping-off point for a social media post or newsletter. Download our sample posts document to help you get started.
One of the best pieces of advice we can give you for marketing directly to consumers is to be real and relatable. Customers who value high-welfare, pasture raised animal products enjoy feeling connected to their farmers. They want to hear about your day-to-day operations. They want to hear about your successes as well as the way you move through hardships.
We’ve created this useful handout to explain some of the ways humane farming is different from industrial farming. Like the nutritional factsheets, this is a great resource to share as a social media post or display at your farm store or farmers market stall. Your product is special, make sure your customers know that!
Good Meat Project Resource Library:
The folks over at The Good Meat Project have put together an excellent resource library to educate customers on buying and preparing high-welfare meat. This is especially helpful when you are trying to market a cut of meat your customers may be less familiar with.
SARE (Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education) put out an in-depth social media toolkit in 2020. This resource helps answer some of the questions you may have when starting out with social media marketing. What platforms should you use, how do you link them together, etc.
We hope these resources help you with your marketing strategy. A well-informed consumer is a committed consumer!