274 Scaling Your Marketing: What Farms Do Differently at Each Level - Interview with Andrew from Local Line

Today we're talking scaling.

I've always wondered "What does an established farm do differently than a beginner farm --when it comes to marketing and sales?"

If you could break up the development of a farm business into stages, what would be the key identifiers? How do those business owners practice business differently? Do they think differently? Do they believe certain things that are hard to believe early on? Are they doing certain things that they didn't do in an earlier level? If being an entrepreneur means breaking a glass ceiling every now and then, what does that ceiling look like?

As I've matured as a farm entrepreneur, I can look back at my early years and see how far I've come. I can see the progress, the systems I learned to build, the key decisive moments where things shifted, the actions that really mattered.

THAT's what this podcast episode is all about -- sharing these insights to help you transition and grow into your next phase. How long does it take? What do you need to do? How do you get there?

To get to this data, I called in a favor from my podcast sponsor Local Line. I asked them if I could talk to someone who would be able to look inside the thousands of Local Line accounts, analyze the patterns and trends and simplify a few key principles to help us grow through each stage. 

In this episode, Andrew Meehan is sharing the three "levels" of farms he sees, the identifying markers of each, and what behaviors and mindsets those farms manifest while in that stage. I think this is a helpful conversation, because you'll be able to identify where YOU land, and what you need to do, think, and be to graduate to the next level. 

Remember, if you need help building this piece into your marketing system, you can take my testimonial project inside of Farm Marketing School. I coach you through the process of finding 5 quality testimonials and tell you where to put them in your farm sales messaging sequence.

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: Andrew Meehan:

Andrew has worked in agriculture for the past decade, operating a market garden for seven years and more recently working as a sales rep at Local Line. In his role at Local Line, Andrew collaborates with farms and food hubs to optimize their sales process by integrating scale and industry appropriate software solutions. 

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.

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