How to Use the Holiday Season to Drive Farm Sales in the New Year
With the New Year around the corner, it’s essential to take the winter months to prepare your business for the busy season. With increased awareness and demand for local foods, keeping buyers engaged with your Farm now will help your business secure customer commitments in the future.
Here are three tasks to prepare your Farm for the New Year and drive momentum leading up to the busy season:
Review What Worked & What Didn’t
Now is the time to look back through your inventory from the last 12 months and identify which products sold the best and which products you had trouble moving. This gives you insight into how Buyers reacted to your pricing, packaging, and product offerings - allowing you to make informed decisions on your product mix in the upcoming year.
Don’t know what to do with less popular items? Unconventional Acres noticed that they were regularly left with round roasts in their inventory. After working with their butcher, they pivoted to selling round steaks instead, which has become one of their most popular products. If you can’t repurpose a cut, try different ways to promote products, like including it in a bundle box or featuring it in a recipe for Customers to try.
Read: New Year Checklist: Improve Your Margins in 2022
Provide Convenient Access to All Products
Buyers expect convenience. Providing different ways for customers to access your products is essential to driving more orders and satisfying a range of buyers’ needs, making them more likely to become repeat customers. Here are three different formats to sell products:
Pre-Orders:
Pre-Orders are a great way to help bankroll cash flow before the next season. You can offer Pre-Orders for upcoming events, Subscription items, or high-demand items. As a result, you’ll have guaranteed cash flow in the off-season, and you’ll move more products during the busy season.
Listen: Direct Farm Tactics #2: Pre-orders: Increased Stability, Increased Sales
Subscriptions:
For the average Buyer, retail or wholesale, their weekly order looks 90% the same every week. By selling Subscriptions, Buyers can subscribe to your Farm Products on a recurring basis. Subscriptions guarantee your Farm monthly revenue and meet Buyers’ expectations of convenience, as they don’t have to remember to order specific items from your Farm each week or month.
Watch: How to Build Brand Loyalty with Subscriptions
Bundle Boxes
If you want to simplify your product offerings and drive sales of a wider range of items, Bundle Boxes are your best avenue to success. Offer specialty products in bundle formats and pair them with other products to move more inventory and drive larger order sizes. Also, arrange the size of your products to cater to different household needs --- small, medium, and large, as 1/3 of Americans live alone, 1/3 of Americans live in a household of 2-3 people, and 1/3 of Americans live in homes of 4+ people.
Read: Earn More with Bundle Box Subscriptions
Engage Buyers on all Channels
Keeping Buyers engaged throughout the year is essential to staying top-of-mind. Regular email newsletters and frequent social media posts keep your Farm brand top-of-mind with your customers. By updating Buyers about your Farm, you will improve customer loyalty and attract new Buyers when products are available (even during the off-season). Here are three channels your Farm should be present on:
Now is the time to organize email subscribers into groups (new, loyal, and absent), engage Customers that haven’t purchased recently, and “scrub” or remove inactive subscribers from your list. With the Barn2Door + Mailchimp integration, you can easily organize Buyers into different groups and send targeted emails based on their purchase activity. To new subscribers, remind them who you are and how they can purchase. To loyal customers, thank them for their support with a small discount (5-10%), and to absent customers, remind them of your products, what makes your Farm unique, and how they can support you. Sending targeted emails has the power to increase your open rates by 14.2%.
Social Media
Social media allows your Farm to be “seen” by Buyers in a place they visit every day. Almost 50% of consumers check their social media accounts multiple times daily. With regular posts, your Farm will stay top of mind, prompting Buyers to order (or pre-order!) from your Farm.
As you plan your social media posts, remember to keep the three E’s in mind: Educate, Entertain, and E-commerce. Having a balanced mix of content will keep followers engaged where they won’t feel like you’re always selling them.
Website
Keeping your website up-to-date is important when establishing yourself as a professional business. Websites are a great place to showcase your Farm’s information in one place - including the products you raise, your unique practices, Farm values, and story. It’s essential to have a simple user experience on your website, using buttons and call-to-actions to prompt people to visit your Farm Webstore.
Read: What’s a Call-to-Action & How to Use It
Watch: Building a Presence Online & Offline to Grow Your Farm Brand
Listen: Save Time and Boost Sales with Practical Email Marketing Tactics
Keeping your Farm top-of-mind and offering convenience for your Buyers will help you drive momentum into the New Year to fuel consistent sales and reach more customers.
Barn2Door provides an all-in-one solution to grow and manage your Farm. If you’re curious to learn why successful Farms run on Barn2Door, watch this 5-minute video.