The Importance of Owning your Customer Base for Long-Term Success
Growing a Farm business means investing in building customer relationships. To create long-term success for your business, it’s essential that Farmers “own their customers.” What does this mean? Your Farm needs to possess all the customer details and contact information of all your buyers (versus relinquishing that relationship to a third-party distributor). When your Farm is in charge of how customers engage with your brand, understand the value of your products while controlling pricing and packaging (helping to ensure better margins for your Farm).
By owning your customers, you’ll build more loyalty through every interaction with you and fuel more consistent sales in the future. Here’s how to own and build your customer base:
Build Your Brand
As buyers increasingly spend more time online and expect a click-to-purchase experience, good branding has become more critical for your Farm. You must determine your brand and messaging before building a customer base. Knowing how you want to present yourself will attract your ideal customers to your business and increase retention. People want to create a relationship with you. That connection has the power to drive up to 43%+ in Farm sales when customers feel bonded to your brand.
Investing in your brand will make it easier to create a consistent experience for customers no matter where they interact with your Farm — on your website, social media, or in email newsletters. With consistent messaging, your Farm will become recognizable to your buyers no matter where they see it!
Grow Your Email List
To own your customers, you must stay top of mind. Like any relationship, consistency is key, which means hearing from you and about you all year long. An email list is essential to growing your customer base and creating long-term relationships.
The most successful Farmers use their time at the farmer’s market to gather customer emails, signing them up for the monthly newsletter. Not only has this tactic led to increasing a customer list by 171% in less than 12 months, but it also guarantees that your Farm can engage customers directly in a place they visit every day – their inbox!
We find that Farmers who send weekly emails to their contact lists enjoy a +28% higher average order volume. Keeping buyers up-to-date on the happenings of your Farm has the power to create a strong network of loyal customers – that you own!
Offer Subscriptions
To build long-term growth, it’s critical that your Farm fits into customers’ busy lives. This means offering convenient ordering, product bundles, and a variety of fulfillment options to provide flexibility and an easy purchasing experience.
As Americans have on average 9 paid subscriptions to products they use and love, it’s essential your Farm evolves to offer the convenience of regular and consistent access to your products. As 90% of buyers would rather buy local than purchase a commodity product, it’s essential to offer the same level of convenience consumers are receiving in other areas of their lives. Subscriptions also guarantee regular cash flow for your business and secure long-term purchase commitments – creating a loyal network of buyers.
Customers are eager to build lasting relationships with local Farms. When selling through different channels (e.g., the farmer’s market or third-party subscription box services), local Farms do not own the customer relationship. The farmer’s market and third-party vendors often act as “the middle man,” taking a percentage of your sales and charging a variety of fees.
Third-party vendors may be getting your products into customers' hands, but they do it under their brand name and through their contact lists, where the end consumers may have no idea that your Farm even exists.
That’s why it’s essential for your Farm to invest in building customer relationships at the markets, create an easy purchasing experience online, and cater to various buyer needs to create lasting growth and success.
Barn2Door provides an all-in-one solution for Farmers to grow and manage their business. If you’re curious to learn why successful Farms run on Barn2Door, watch this 5-minute video.