Marketing for your farm

Can comprise of many different things

Be that breeding and selling stock, wool sales, prepared or fresh farm foods, or even farm related services. The list is endless and so is the resulting list of possible income streams that you can use for your farm which are only limited by your time, skills and if you use a high quality marketing agency to help you power your offerings into the marketplace.

The best farm marketing plan starts with a list of all of the services and products that you offer for sale or will be doing in the future. A plan that is successful can massively add to your revenue stream and business growth, not to mention sustainability.

plan your business strategy

Identify your market

The first thing you need to do is identify the market(s) that your farm serves, and work out who exactly is your customer? Or target market?

If you put pen to paper you can make this easier! Firstly, ask yourself who currently buys products from you? What actual problem are you solving for people with your offerings? Or maybe you are providing the best products, rather than the cheapest?

SME Marketing

Is it men or women or both who mainly buy? Is there an average age group for your customers or maybe an average earning level? If your farm is already serving customers, have a good think about how you would describe them.

If you can then describe their buying journey, write it down. Eg/ how did this person arrive at the decision they need to buy my product?

What was their pain point? Eg what did they need? And how did you solve that need?

How did they find us to buy our product? Did they find us at a farmers market? Word of mouth? Or do you have an actual shop on your farm? Was it a farm exhibition where they came up to your stand?

Do you have customers already?

If you don’t currently have customers, as you are earlier in the cycle, that is not a problem. Look at your potential competition and their customer base. Doing so can help you increase the likelihood or making/increasing sales by targeting your message to their needs and wants.

You must be aware that your target customer could differ depending on the product or service you are selling. So, if you have a cattle farm for instance, the breeding stock buyers could be from all over the UK, but if you are selling dairy products and cheese through a farm shop, then customers would be more locally based, initially at least.

Establish your USP

This is universal regardless of the business involved, but is still very important for farming and agri businesses. You must establish your USP (unique selling point) and therefore what separates you from the other sellers of similar products. This could be quality, freshness, unique ingredients etc. This USP just needs to be a clear statement of what you offer, and why its special.

Spend some time on formulating your USP, and write it down somewhere you can see it daily. It may become your focus and driving force in getting business rocking and rolling for your farm!

The next stage for your farm marketing campaign is create a marketing plan. This is one of the more nitty gritty bits of planning to grow your business, but is also one of the most critical things you can do . It will become your road map and self testing tool all in one. Some of the things you will be creating for your business marketing plan are a company logo, a company tag-line, advertising, nice website, social media presence, possibly some SEO for your new internet presence (a whole complex industry in itself), sponsored events, customer service setup, timings and of course, budget. You WILL need a significant budget to do things properly and effectively, but you can see it as investing in your business. If you do things right, you will more than make your budget back.

Get with the times!

You need to be prepared to pay for internet marketing for your farm business as well as (if you dont have one) a new website build,

Farmers markets – oh yes, if you dont attend them, then you need to read our guide on why you should be!



17th street farmers markets are a bunch of farm market enthusiasts, some who farm and some who market! Together, we decided to offer some advice on actually building your farm business into something larger, and taking advantage of all of the things that are available in modern times, namely the internet.