Growth Strategy: Selling and Marketing Online

The following article has been adapted from a workshop series by Penn State Extension Business Management Team called Strategies for Successful Selling and is the 2nd of a 3-part article reflecting the series.

If you were an adult or a person interested in the growing discussion of IT in Spring of 1999, you may have caught the CNN Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer in which Al Gore, potentially rallying for a Democratic presidential nomination, stated that he created the internet. Our Former VP took a lot of ridicule for stating that, and the humor has lived on over decades. However, he did significantly contribute to the development of Congressional Bills that led to what he may have coined as "the information superhighway", to the development of ARPANET (the predecessor of the internet), and supported many policies that paved the way for the internet we know today. The internet that now houses $19.89 Billion globally in e-commerce food and beverage sales and is estimated to grow by 18.9% in 2020, becoming one of the fastest growing channels for food and beverage sales. So the important question now. Where are you on  Internet?

Considering online sales (e-commerce) of your farm products

When we ask this at our Extension workshops on Strategies for Successful Selling, we want farmers to consider their place in e-commerce and understand the value food and beverage transactions are having on the total success of the internet, and the sales potential farmer's have with e-commerce. This is to ensure that farmer's can assess their own business values with e-commerce and have the updated and essential data needed to make an informed decision about their business. This information can also get them ready to jump into e-commerce or strengthen their existing place on the internet and make the living they are looking to make. So if you are considering selling your products online, there are now a lot, and we mean a LOT, of options to choose from and any smart person running a business could feel overwhelmed or even downright fearful of making a wrong decision on where their business should live on the world wide web.

The 3 headed beast: website, social media and e-mail marketing

There are 3.03 billion active social media users, while approximately 91 percent of retail brands use 2 or more social media channels. With one million mentions annually on social media sites about the restaurant, food and beverage industry, the most prevailing are grocery store shoppers comparing prices between food brands (54%) and making their food buying decisions online. So where does a family or small to mid-scale farm fit into this large marketplace?

There is definitely a growing opportunity for a farm to expand and add an online sales channel to their operation. In fact, we find ourselves, as agricultural educators, discussing more and more with farmers, the importance of having an online presence and improving their awareness of, and skills in e-commerce (selling online). A farm can choose simply to interact and sell regularly through a forum like Facebook, or build up an e-commerce site that sells many or all of their products, delivers or ships and engages customers widely across social media. But there are many factors in deciding where and how to sell and market online and I would not recommend a farm go in haphazardly. Like any new venture, a farm should treat it as a sales channel and know the expense and the potential income it will make them. If a farm uses any type of planning method for their business (Whole Farm Planning, Holistic Management, Lean Farm Management) it should use their method to consider any new addition to their business activity.

In addition, a farm has to consider that previously stated, large social media audience, and how much it can and will draw customers to their online sales. It is a symbiotic relationship between a website and social media - a loop of audience referrals, monetary transactions and customer feedback. Let's examine some options farms can review in their quest to join the world wide web.

Wrestling the e-commerce beast

Let's tackle the tough one first. There are a LOT of places your farm's website could land on the internet. And if you are not an IT-trained professional or have no one close to you who understands the details of what makes a website work, how do you know where to put your business? Honestly, there are hundreds of pages of texts already written on websites, web-design, web-marketing and we just can't touch all of it in one small article. So like we do in our Strategies class, we will ask you to consider a few things about your farm business.

First thing to consider. If you sold any product at all that you already produce, how do you want to get it to the customer? Do you have the time and the means to deliver it? How far an area will you deliver to? Will you package and ship it? How far will you ship? Answering these questions will pin down the first beast of e-commerce - the distribution method of your product and how far of a reach your sales channel will go. There are 3 types of delivery to consider in online sales:

In Click and Collect, the customer chooses products online, puts in cart, pays and heads to your place (or designated pick up place) for pick up to collect their items. Then there is Delivery where the Customer chooses products online, puts in cart, pays and farm provides delivery time options directly to customers door. And finally there is Shipping, where Customer chooses FDA regulated & shelf-stable products online, puts in cart, pays and farm provides allowable shipping [frozen/refrig meats/cheese, dried/jarred goods, shelf-stable]. Deciding how you want to deliver will be essential in deciding what you will list online and how far you allow your online reach to go.

So now that you have decided how you want to deliver your products, you can better choose the platform on which you want to sell. There are a lot of subscription-as-a-service platforms out there for websites. You can name your website, have it hosted, build it with a template, manage it, list your products, price your products, add your shipping or delivery method into, manage your inventory (slightly), market through social media, and even email your customers through a lot of these platforms. They are now one-stop-shops for online selling and if you have one person in your farm business who can dedicate some regular weekly hours to the online platform - it may be the direction you want to go.

Playing nice with the social media beast

Hey you there? You built that website, didn't you? You just launched it and are ready to let the world know! Now how are you going to tell the world where you are and what you have for them to eat? Your teenager, niece, or a close millennial has been telling you all about Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat and all those you can't even remember. So what are you supposed to market your website with. Let us assist you with some data.

According to global business data platform Statista, Facebook is still the top user social media platform in the world. With $169 Million users, it's got the largest audience which to market your products.  Now let's add in the next stat. The largest age group of perishable (and non-perishable) online grocery buyers lies between 18-54 yrs of age. Are you starting to see where this is heading? Finally 86% of 18-29 yr olds and 81% of 30-59 year olds use Facebook, followed by YouTube.  So your top two social media marketing platforms for marketing your fresh, local and possibly perishable farm items? Well maybe they should be Facebook and YouTube. Did we just place nice with social media? I think we did.

Making friends with the email marketing beast

Our last step is to make friends with that well-known beast, email marketing. Email marketing has an average ROI of 3,800%. For every dollar invested, the average return is $38. That's basically all the data you need on email marketing. Using either the internal email platform connected to your lovely new or longtime trusted website platform, or try on one of these services. Then write a letter with pictures, direct to your website, sell products, repeat.

We are not fooling you, when we say there is a lot of information out there on selling and marketing online and what we learned here is just getting you warmed up. But if you are now very interested in all Al Gore's internet has to offer, do not forget your trusty Extension service and other agricultural service providers. We are here to help you tame this beast.

The Penn State Extension Business Management Team offers articles, in-person workshops and online courses in all aspects of farm and food business management.