Farm Market & Agritourism: Target marketing to reach your audience

Most of us have heard the term “target marketing,” which refers to the specific customer group a business decides to focus its marketing efforts on. This process involves creating a marketing plan in which you first identify who your customers are — a concept related to the four Ps of marketing discussed in previous articles.

I recently came across a compelling example of a business effectively implementing target marketing. The company developed a marketing plan that first identified its customer base and then directed its marketing efforts toward that specific channel with remarkable success.

Finding your audience

I received an email from a local distillery announcing that it would be setting up at eight different farmers markets in the area. Initially, I thought, “This doesn’t make sense!” The distillery would need a staff member at each market to represent its product well, which seemed both expensive and time consuming. Why not invest in other marketing channels?

Later in the season, I visited one of the farmers markets where the distillery was a vendor. I had the opportunity to ask the owner about his decision to participate in so many markets, and he explained his reasoning: “I was doing all kinds of advertising without knowing how effective it was. I realized that our customers are the type of people who frequent farmers markets. Our distillery is unique because we grow the crops used to make our products, which customers can see right from our tasting room. So I redirected our entire marketing budget to farmers markets. Being at these markets allows us to share our story directly with customers. Additionally, selling our products at the markets more than covers the cost of staffing the booth.”

After the farmers market season ended, he refined his goals based on the results he observed. He identified which markets were most effective and chose to drop those that didn’t meet his expectations.

Refining your strategy based on what works

Another strong example involves the owner of a retail farm market that specializes in gourmet baked goods, deli items and prepared foods. He approached a local BMW dealer with a simple offer: if salespeople brought clients who were test-driving a car to his market, he would provide them with a free cup of coffee and a cookie. He found this strategy far more effective — and less expensive — than his previous marketing efforts.

Any marketing channel can be effective, as long as it reaches the audience that’s most interested in what you offer. It is a noisy, competitive marketplace — focusing on a clearly defined target group is often more effective than broad messaging that risks getting lost.

LAST MONTH – Farm Market & Agritourism: Strategies for finding and keeping your CSA members

Brian Moyer is an educational program associate with Penn State Extension. As founder of PA Farm Markets LLC and founder and manager of the Skippack Farmers Market, Moyer specializes in assisting farmers markets, retail farm markets, direct-to-consumer sales, and new and beginning farmers with marketing, business and regulatory issues.