Marketing Farm Fresh Eggs

Marketing  Farm Fresh  Eggs

Reading Time: 6 minutes

So you want to sell your farm fresh eggs? You’ve come to the right place. 

We farmers and homesteaders typically operate on a tight budget. Feeding animals, growing and caring for crops, and maintaining a clean and healthy farm is not a cheap endeavor. This is why it’s important to make sure our time and advertising dollars are spent as efficiently as possible! 

In this article, we will go over the basics of creating a brand and marketing plan for your fresh eggs.

Establishing Your Core Values

No farm or business can be successful in their marketing efforts without first establishing their own core values. Your core values are what you want to communicate to your customer — in this case, that you are marketing fresh eggs.

If you are struggling to create a list of your farm’s core values, think of who you are as a person and what beliefs you bring to your farm and business.

What do I value as a farm (i.e. local, organic, fair-trade, low-waste, etc.)?

Determining Your Ideal Customer (Or Target Audience) 

By recognizing and establishing what your own values are as a farm, you can then begin to understand where to find like-minded folks who would want to buy your product. These are the venues in which you would want to advertise and determine how frequently to achieve your desired results. This whole concept is called a marketing plan; having one can save your farm from marketing its goods to customers who just aren’t interested, to begin with. After you have identified your ideal customer, you can then work to create visuals, messages, experiences, and product packaging that communicates and delivers this message well. 

Understanding your ideal customer can be as simple as writing down the answers to these questions on a sheet of paper:

  1. My customer shares my values, so they would want to buy my product. What am I offering (product, services, etc.)?
  2. What is the budget like of someone who would buy what my farm is selling?
  3. Where would my ideal customer shop (i.e. grocery stores, etc.)?
  4. What interests might my ideal customer have (i.e. conservation groups, rock climbing, crafting, gardening, etc.)?

Based on these answers, you can determine where to find your ideal customer, where to place ads, and how to better convert marketing outreach into sales. If you answered that your ideal customer would likely shop at a natural food store, and have a high-level income, then a more artisanal farmers market or grocer might be the right fit for your advertising and to sell your eggs.

Branding and Marketing Your Farm Fresh Eggs

What is the difference between branding and marketing

Branding is who you are … Marketing is how you tell people who you are. 

Think of branding as your farm’s personality, and your farm’s marketing as when and how your farm is interacting with potential customers.

Branding Your Farm

Branding is a word to describe the feeling you are trying to get your customers to experience through interacting with your business. Your farm’s brand should point back to your farm’s core values whether that be via ads, purchasing something from you, chatting with your farm on the phone, or receiving something in the mail. By creating a cohesive brand that speaks to your target customer, you increase your chances of creating a sale—and a memorable one that will keep customers coming back and referring what you have to sell to others.

Your Logo for Your Farm Fresh Eggs

The visual component of your brand will orbit around your logo. The logo establishes the color scheme your farm or business will use in all of your materials. Color psychology and subliminal details come into play when creating a memorable and successful logo. For example, an organic and all-natural farm who believes in environmentally friendly practices might want a color palette that is more natural. 

Not a graphic designer? That’s okay! Canva is a great (free) tool that can help you create a professional-looking logo in minutes! You can create a free account here.

Marketing Your Farm

After you have created your brand, it is time to let the world know about it!

Let’s refer again to the characteristics of our ideal customer. Are they Internet savvy and use social media? Physical venues such as signage are great for advertising but the digital world should be taken into account. 

Creating a Website

It is important that your farm has a website where people can go to easily gather information about your farm and how to purchase your eggs. You should think of your website as the main hub for anyone who wants information about your farm! Wix, WordPress, and Squarespace are great website builders that are easy to use and relatively quick to set up.

Pages that you should be sure to include on your website:

  • About Us / Our Story / About the Farm
  • Our Products
  • Contact Us

Other pages that are great to include:

  • Farm Photos
  • Blog
  • Recipes

Be sure to include your social media links on your website. This is a great way to help people connect with you and stay up to date about what is happening around the farm and with your flock! 

If your target customer likely uses social media, it’s probably time for your farm to start also. Different platforms carry different audiences and your farm business should identify which outlet is right for you.

Utilizing Social Media for Your Fresh Eggs

fresh-eggs

Facebook: As of the year 2020, approximately seven in ten adults use Facebook with the average Facebook user being roughly 40.5 years old. Facebook users are 43% female and 57% male.* This information tells us that Facebook would appear to offer a platform suited to marketing to a middle-aged demographic, relatively split even between males and females. Facebook pages are quick to create for your business and can offer a multitude of tracking tools. Some businesses prefer to use a Facebook page as a replacement for a website as it’s fairly intuitive.

Instagram: To date, Instagram currently has 500 million+ daily active users, 56.3% of whom are female. In the US, 37% of US adults have an Instagram account while 72% of teens use this platform. According to 73% of US teens, Instagram is the best way for brands to reach them about new products and promotions. And funnily enough, the most-liked photo ever on Instagram is of an egg with a total of 54.2 million likes.** Instagram is preferred by a younger crowd. Because Instagram is a photo-sharing app with the ability to add captions and link to others, messages are often short and sweet.

Social Media Pro Tips

  1. No matter which social media platform your farm may use, consistency is key. Accounts that share content regularly are favored and gain more visibility. 
  2. Make sure that you build out your social media profiles completely! This means making sure that you have every information section completed on your profiles and that they are business profiles – NOT personal profiles! Having a business account will give you more analytics that will help you determine what content your followers enjoy and should also influence future marketing decisions. 
  3. Video and high-quality images often result in more engagement from prospects and customers. Great news! Professional videography and photography are not required; tools such as Canva and snapping photos with your smartphone (hello iPhone portrait mode!) are great ways to level up your content without having a creative background or breaking the bank. Canva has thousands of templates to make you look like a content creation pro!  
  4. Research and use hashtags that your customers follow! This will help you reach a larger audience that may not have known about your farm before. 

Deciding on Packaging

Picking the right packing for your eggs can be a great tool to reinforce your brand and market your eggs. For example, an organic and all-natural farm who believes in environmentally friendly practices wouldn’t want to package eggs in styrofoam. Instead, they would want to use eco-friendly packaging like paper-pulp egg cartons that are made from recycled materials. After you have decided on the best packaging for your eggs, you will want to create an egg carton label or stamp design that incorporates your logo and will help your eggs to stand out on the store shelf, at the farmers market or at your farm stand. It is important to include your logo and brand colors on your egg packaging so that your customers can recognize your product!  A great place to find quality egg packaging, stamps, and labels is The Egg Carton Store.

fresh-eggs

Utilizing Your Resources

Marketing on a budget means you will want to take full advantage of any free marketing and advertising resources you can find! Local Hens is a great example of a free resource that can be used by farmers to connect with local consumers. www.localhens.com is a free online directory of farms across North America that want to connect with local consumers. Someone looking for fresh, local food from a farm like yours, simply types in their zip code to generate a list of farms within 200 miles. Shoppers can choose the exact food items they are searching for, their preferred distance in miles, and shopping venues they desire like a grocery store, farm stand, etc. This online source is a great choice for farmers looking to connect directly to local customers.

Well there you have it! The basics and best practices of how to get started marketing your farm’s fresh, local eggs. Best of luck to you and your flock!

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