A BONUS episode?! That's right. I don't do these very often. But recently, Local Line released some big news for their platform, which have some exciting possibilities for farmers using their platform. This news was so big, that I wanted to make sure farmers heard about it NOW before the season gets intense -- in case they want to jump on board. So I invited Local Line's founder, Cole Jones, to come onto the show to release the news in this bonus episode. So much of marketing is about removing f...
Apr 17, 2023•53 min
April 12, 2023 by Corinna What makes a person decide to buy themselves a bouquet of flowers? Knowing the answer to this question may be the key to selling more of them. In today's podcast, I interview flower farmer Kendra Kennedy of Dogwood Flower Farm in Wisconsin. Her goal is to build her entire farm business around the love of flowers. We talk at length about the kind of person she is attracting to her business. What makes a person decide to buy this product? Are you really selling just the f...
Apr 12, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Season 1Ep. 206
AI has now hit the marketing space. And if you haven't jumped on the bandwagon yet, I'm about to make a case that you should. In today's episode, I introduce you to "ChatGPT" -- a machine learning tool that is a cross between Google Search, Siri, and your own personal copywriter. I'm sharing how it works and walking through 10+ use cases where this tool can make the process of writing your marketing assets SO MUCH EASIER and faster. I also had a moment of inspiration while I was recording the sh...
Apr 05, 2023•45 min•Season 1Ep. 205
What if someone could give you a roadmap of "what to do" in your first 2 years to build your CSA business? In today's episode, I interview Farmer Glen Young -- a 2-year farmer who is hell-bent on building his new farm business to be profitable by year 5. Glen has made all of the mistakes possible in his first two seasons of organic market gardening as he has built up to a 40 member CSA and a once-per-week Farmer's Market operation. He has "bet the farm" on making Cold Springs Organics environmen...
Mar 29, 2023•1 hr 23 min•Season 1Ep. 204
Glamping on the farm? Is it for you? Today on the show, I'm inviting Kasey Marshall of 350 Farms in Alberta, Canada. In 2022, they branched out and began a glamping in canvas tents along a private trails system on their farm. It's now turned into the leading enterprise of their business! If you've ever wanted to get the 411 on how glamping works as a farm enterprise, THIS IS THE PODCAST TO LISTEN TO! Kasey offers a deep-drive training -- from infrastructure needs, booking software, the ideal cus...
Mar 22, 2023•1 hr 24 min•Season 1Ep. 203
March 15, 2023 by Corinna How are you collecting new email subscribers? It's SO important as a business to grow your email list -- all year long. In today's episode, we're talking about one powerful strategy for doing this, called a "lead magnet." A lead magnet is some kind of value in advance that you offer for free in exchange for an email address. It could be "How to Fill Out a Cut List in 5 Easy Steps" or "6 Questions to Ask Before Joining a CSA." People trade their email (on a subscribe for...
Mar 15, 2023•50 min•Season 1Ep. 202
What if you were just starting out your pastured meat business in a small town where there's no current market for it? How do you convince a new community to accept you, believe in you, and support you? Today, I interview my guest Kayla Gibbons from Sugar Butte Farms, who decided in 2019 to start their farm in the small town of Lowell, Ohio. Kayla harnessed the power of social media and some popular farm swag to get the word out about her farm. As you'll hear, she had to do a LOT of pre-educatio...
Mar 08, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Season 1Ep. 201
This winter, I decided I wanted to learn how to speak Spanish. I subscribed to the language app called Duolingo, and every day, I get a new lesson that builds on the last. They started with the basics like "how to say hello." Then I learned how to introduce myself to someone and tell them where I was from. Now I'm learning how to order coffee, ask for directions, or buy clothes from the store. The only way to master a language is to focus on the fundamentals first, then build on that. Today, in ...
Mar 01, 2023•54 min•Season 1Ep. 200
I love interviewing other farms to see how they're finding new customers and cultivating them into super-fans. This week, I interview Katie Farrar from Farrar Family Farms. Katie shares some of her marketing mojo that's moving major product in her business -- including (my favorite) email marketing as well as some creative use of "category names" in her online store that help funnel her clients to the right products. I hope you get some fun tips from Katie that you can apply to your marketing st...
Feb 22, 2023•1 hr 7 min•Season 1Ep. 199
Do you struggle with asking people to buy your product because you're afraid of coming off as too sales-y? If so, you are not alone. I used to have it really bad. I worried about getting the "no." I would make it mean something really negative about ME in my head. "I'm not good enough. No one will buy this. You're an amateur. You don't belong here." Over time (and with some experience and coaching), I've learned that this is all made up in my head. However, I still feel it every now and then -- ...
Feb 15, 2023•45 min•Season 1Ep. 198
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 information she needed to make her decision. I first met Liz at a CSA conference in Indiana, where sh...
Feb 08, 2023•59 min•Season 1Ep. 197
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 creation journey! A few months ago, I booked a room on AirBnB for a vacation home in Washington D.C. I wa...
Feb 01, 2023•42 min•Season 1Ep. 196
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 second look, build a relationship so they trust you, get them on your email list, and finally serve the...
Jan 25, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Season 1Ep. 195
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 make it easy for them to find this stuff so they don't abandon your site (and you lose the sale). In...
Jan 18, 2023•49 min•Season 1Ep. 194
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 messaging. She's got LOADS of marketing ideas you can apply to your own farm business -- whether you'r...
Jan 11, 2023•1 hr•Season 1Ep. 193
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 imperfect and incomplete is "good enough?" I share with you the concept of "minimal viable marketing." ...
Jan 04, 2023•41 min•Season 1Ep. 192
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: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline It's the end of the year, and that means it's time for the end o...
Dec 21, 2022•1 hr 6 min•Season 1Ep. 191
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 BetterTogetherFarm.com. She shares exactly how she attracts new customers to her business using an SMS texting app ...
Dec 14, 2022•1 hr 4 min•Season 1Ep. 190
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 customers to be the ones who personally gave it away, and to see them get energized and generous -- that ...
Dec 07, 2022•20 min•Season 1Ep. 189
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 for when it comes to expenses? What percentages are industry standards? How do I know if I'm way off ...
Nov 30, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 188
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 podcast, and he is a MASTER at creating offers. He's interviewed hundreds of farmers and consulted with d...
Nov 21, 2022•1 hr 17 min•Season 1Ep. 187
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 this fall. It ran for 8 days from October 15-22, 2022, and got 85% of my members to renew (and pay) fo...
Nov 16, 2022•45 min•Season 1Ep. 186
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 the coach at TrailBlazersgrowth.com. I got on a discovery call with her, and 2 days later, I hired her...
Nov 09, 2022•1 hr 15 min•Season 1Ep. 185
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 simple and clear. And it beats that drum so we associate them with car insurance. The next time I'm shop...
Nov 02, 2022•47 min•Season 1Ep. 184
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 Phelps from Taste the Local Difference. She is the CEO of a marketing agency for farmers, and her staff...
Oct 26, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 183
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 finding these kinds of loyal clients and making them superfans? Her story is inspiring, and you'll hear ...
Oct 19, 2022•1 hr 11 min•Season 1Ep. 182
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, group coaching hot seats, resource drops, incredible farmers, and mastermind sessions... I made this p...
Oct 12, 2022•38 min•Season 1Ep. 181
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 overwhelm you. (I didn't make all these in one year either!) But having the checklist will give you cl...
Oct 05, 2022•49 min•Season 1Ep. 180
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 the leading e-commerce platform for farmers, she began to see common themes among the 'successful' f...
Sep 28, 2022•52 min•Season 1Ep. 179
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 manages our CSA's private Facebook group, and creates weekly video training content for my tribe, as...
Sep 21, 2022•1 hr 10 min•Season 1Ep. 178
