FREE Event:
The Farm Marketing Fix – October 5th
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Next Week I’m Fixing Farm Websites Live, and Yours Could Be One of Them
Episode Summary
Next week I’m going live for five days, October 5th through 9th, fixing real farmers’ websites and marketing emails on camera. It’s free, every session is recorded, and you can save your seat at charlottemsmith.com/masterclass. In this episode I show you why your website isn’t selling: your customer is not wondering how many generations your farm is. She’s standing in her kitchen at five o’clock with two kids to feed in twenty minutes and chicken in the fridge she doesn’t trust. The farms with the most impressive practices lose to the farms that understand her. One client sent a single rewritten email and sold two whole hogs from a list that had never bought from her. This is the first skill taught inside The Profitable Farmer, and there’s a homework assignment in here you can finish tonight.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode
- Why “I’ll do it when things calm down” never arrives
- What your customer is actually worried about when she shops
- The difference between describing your farm and marketing it
- How one farmer sold two whole hogs off a single email
Key Takeaways:
- Farming practices, certifications and generations do not compel a purchase
- Your customer buys from the farm that understands her problem
- Homework: find every sentence describing you, and ask what worry it solves for her
- Rewrite that sentence as her struggle, then offer your product as the answer
Memorable Quotes
“There is no future place where life is calm if you don’t learn how to calm it down today.”
“And farming practices never compel someone to buy from you.”
FAQ
Q: Why isn’t my farm website making sales?
Most farm websites describe the farm instead of the customer’s problem, so a visitor never sees herself in the copy.
Q: Most farm websites describe the farm instead of the customer’s problem, so a visitor never sees herself in the copy.
Lead with the worry your customer is trying to solve, then offer your product as the solution to that specific worry.
Q: Do I need a website or an email list before I start?
No, and starting without them is an advantage because you build them right the first time.
Q: How do I get my own website reviewed?
Register for The Farm Marketing Fix and reply to the confirmation email with your website or marketing material.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Farm Marketing Fix (October 5th – 9th) – A full week of marketing help at no cost, and a real taste of what a year of coaching looks like. Save your seat at charlottemsmith.com/masterclass
- The Profitable Farmer — We build your marketing for you + weekly coaching. Registration opens during Farm Marketing Fix week charlottemsmith.com/mastery
- The Profitable Mindset Podcast — subscribe for weekly farm marketing strategy
About the Host
Charlotte Smith is a fifth-generation farmer, marketing and mindset coach, and host of the Profitable Mindset podcast. When she started her farm in 2009, she knew if she was going to work that hard it had to be profitable. She sold out her farm’s first season before she had anything to sell – and has since taught thousands of farmers in 15 countries to build farms that actually pay them. Food Tank named her one of the Top 25 Most Influential Women in Food and Agriculture.
Connect with Charlotte
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Chat with us to see if The Profitable Farmer Marketing Coaching Program can break you out of marketing misery.
Next week, you are invited to the farm marketing fix. And that is where every day,
October 5th through 9th, I go live for one to two hours on camera and fix farmers’ websites and
email marketing or newsletters so that you can start making sales. You will get a chance to submit
your website for a review if you’d like. And if I don’t review your website, you will learn a ton
from what you hear me offer as feedback. to other farmers. So I hope you will show up.
You can save your seed at charlottemsmith.com forward slash masterclass. And then you will get an
immediate email that invites you to reply to send over your website or marketing material for
review or to get chosen for review. So now you might’ve just had a thought like,
oh my gosh, I’m so busy. It’s October, which means for many of you listening,
you may be right in the middle of your last market push, or you just finished up,
or maybe you’re winterizing, or maybe you’re looking at end of season numbers,
trying not to think about them too hard. And so when I mentioned farm marketing fixes next week,
you might’ve thought some version of, well, that sounds great, but not this week.
I’ll do it when life calms down and I have more time. But I want to tell you, Truthfully,
your farm life is actually not going to calm down. There is no future place where life is calm if
you don’t learn how to calm it down today. That’s what we do in Farm Marketing Week.
So I know it seems like there should be a future place where you’re not as busy,
like maybe finally when the equipment is all working, or maybe when the dahlias are all dug, or
maybe when the animals are all healthy. or the kids are sorted out and the weather cooperates.
But I’m telling you that season is not coming, not because your life is unusually chaotic,
but because farming life is inherently full. The irrigation line might fail the week you plan to
redo your website, or the cow gets out the afternoon you set aside for marketing.
Here’s what I’ve watched play out for over a decade now working with farmers. What happens,
because I teach my, this course, this specific farm marketing week a few times a year. So in
January, a farmer says, oh, I need to wait till spring when things calm down. Spring comes,
you know, think it’s planting season. I need to wait till summer. And then summer comes and it’s
like, I need to wait until after the holidays. But then it starts back over in January.
Like I need to wait for things to calm down until they go out of business.
Once had a farmer tell me, things calmed down exactly when I expected them to. Which means…
busyness was never actually the problem. There’s no month on your calendar where your brain won’t
find a completely legitimate reason to wait, but you do not want to put off learning to make money.
You will struggle on your farm if you don’t learn the skill of marketing and selling in a way that
gets people to buy and makes them want to buy from you. So here’s what I hope. Don’t worry now
about clearing the whole week out. Just come Monday. That’s it. Just if you can only make it one
session, Monday, October 5th is the foundation the whole week is built on. Everything else is a
bonus. So be sure to come. Whether you come next week or not, I want you to have this one thing
though, because here’s something you can fix even if you don’t show up. What I want you to do is go
look at your website homepage right now. Or if you don’t have a website, maybe social media or a
sales email. And I want you to count how many sentences are about you and your products and how
many are about your customers’ problems.
Most farms read something like this. We’re a fourth generation family farm.
We raise pasture raised chicken on rotational pasture. We’ve been at it since.
2009, our birds have moved daily and never given antibiotics. Or some, you know, think if you’re a
flower farmer, a similar version for flower farms. All of that’s true and all of it’s good,
but it’s all about you and your farming practices and none of it is marketing. None of it’s doing
the work to sell your products because your customer is not standing there wondering how many
generations your farm is or what. your education is or certifications you have.
And farming practices never compel someone to buy from you. Instead,
your customer is standing in her kitchen at five o’clock on a Tuesday with two kids who need to be
fed in 20 minutes. And she needs, thinks she needs to do a quick box of mac and cheese.
Yet again, because she’s worried that the chicken in her fridge that she got two days ago at the
grocery store smells a little off. See, that’s what she’s struggling with. She has problems in her
life. She’s trying to overcome and you’re the solution to that problem. The women who desperately
want to buy from you don’t wake up wanting rotational grazing or to hear about your farm.
She wakes up wanting to feel good about what she puts in front of her family without having to
spend precious time every day figuring it out. That’s her problem. And she buys from the farm that
shows her it understands her problem, not the farm with the most impressive list of practices and
certifications. So go see if this is your website now. I had a client,
Rebecca, who made exactly just this one change during my free farm marketing week. We fixed her
marketing. She stopped describing her farm’s features, started describing her customers’ problems
and how she was the solution. She learned it from me and she started making sales immediately.
So here’s your homework. And it just takes a few minutes. Take your homepage and find every
sentence that describes you. and your farm, and your practices, and your product.
And for each one, ask, what is the worry that this solves for the person reading?
Because the person reading that, she’s got a struggle. And so what does that solve for her?
Then write that sentence instead. Write her struggle, her problem, her worry, her concern. Only
then offer your product as the solution. You’ll see clear examples of this on October 5th.
Here’s a couple. One farmer, flower farmer might say something like, our dahlias are cut fresh at
dawn the morning of your delivery. That’s all about the farmer. But try this instead.
You’ll never have to wonder if they still look good by the weekend. Or if you’re a meat farmer,
not something like, our beef is dry aged 21 days. Instead, try something like,
you’ll never have to wonder if dinner will be tough again. Okay. That’s a whole fix.
You just switched your focus on your website from focusing on you and your products and your
farming practices to focusing on your customers. And if you hear my clients on the podcast,
many, a couple of times a month, all year long, this is the skill they’re learning.
And they 5X their sales. They 10X their sales. They triple their sales and they keep more money
than ever before. This is the whole fix. So if that felt useful,
even just the awareness that that’s how you need to be writing your marketing materials,
then sign up for next week. Monday is… about the power of one. And it’s the one decision that
when you get it right, makes everything else in your marketing work. And I will be giving feedback
on farmers’ websites so that you can then adjust your own website. Tuesday,
again, probably 60 to 90 minutes max. It’s recorded. You’re going to see how me and my team build
your marketing for you. And then you’ll see me review real marketing emails from some of you,
some of you who submit them for review. And you will learn what you can change in what you write in
your social media posts or your emails to start making sales. Wednesday, you’re going to meet some
of my clients. They are going to share their journey on camera, on Zoom. in a meeting format.
So you can see them face to face and talk with them. They’re going to talk about how they went from
struggling farm to success and sustainability and profit.
And you’ll get to ask them anything you want to about their journey in the profitable farmer and
turning their farm around. And Thursday, let’s see, that would be October 8th.
You’re going to get some live coaching with me. Bring your struggle. What’s in the way of you
learning marketing? Get some mindset coaching. See what it’s like. And Friday, I am going to be
answering the hundreds of marketing questions that have been coming in these past couple of weeks,
all kinds of things, including what’s working today, how best to sell your product right now.
And just, we’ve gotten so many text questions coming in. And I’ll walk you through what a full year
of marketing. that we create for you looks like. So you can actually see a real farmer’s marketing
plan. Okay. And if you don’t have a website, don’t worry. If you don’t have an email list, don’t
worry. Show up anyway. It’s okay. It’s even better if you start this work before you’ve got those
things. If you’ve already got them, you’re going to make them better. If you don’t have a website
or an email list or a social media account, you’re going to start off with them, start off ahead.
So for sure to show up. All right. I want to leave you with one of my… clients,
Janet. She had emailed her customers over and over trying to sell her hogs and didn’t sell a thing.
I reviewed one email for her in the farm marketing fix. I fixed it. She took it and sent it the
following week and sold two whole hogs off one email when she never had anyone purchase from email
before and she couldn’t figure out why not. We fixed it. Nothing about her farm changed. Nothing
about her customers changed. Instead, she learned the skill of how to write words that make people
trust you and buy from you. That’s what next week is. So be sure to save your seat. Again,
it’s free. charlottemsmith.com forward slash masterclass. The Profitable Farmer Marketing Coaching
Training Program opens up for registration that week as well. And this is a free preview of
everything in there. And every session is recorded if you can’t make it live. So can’t wait to see
you Monday. All right. Take care.
