marketing question

[dunroven]

Okay folks, can you help me here please? I need to have some ideas of how to market things, besides the farmer's markets. How do I draw people to our farm? We are in a rural area on a 6 acre farm with a very small town, 1200 people about 1 mile from us and the bigger towns which are 15,000 and less within 25 miles of us. You have to go about 2 hours either direction, more or less to get to any sizeable cities, Des Moines, Sioux City, Sioux Falls, etc.

I don't have lots of time to spend as far as going places to meetings, etc., as I am going to have to work on my full time job LOTS more hours. We are going to pare down a lot of things that we have here, but I want to get some sales from the farm going. The below is what we have to offer. If you were offering these things, how would you go about marketing them, and making it so that people would want to come and buy?

Rabbits: New Zealands, Californians, and Flemish Giants (nearly 200 rabbits)
Chickens: Black Australorps, White Leghorns, Smutts, Buff Orpingtons (total of about 150)
Turkeys: BBBs and Royal Palms (total of about 20)
Goats: 10 total, right now 4 little bucklings almost to be weaned (2 saanens, 2 boer/nubian, 1 of which we will be keeping)
German Shepherd dogs: (Puppies: 3 females, 1 male).
Muscovy and Rouen ducks: About 30 (some are mules).
Geese: Toulouse, Embden, Chinese, African, and Buff (all in together, but no babies in there from any of them, all adults).

That's about all the saleable stuff and we will have about 15 litters of rabbits coming the week of August 7.

Thanks for any help you can give me.

[homebirtha]

Are you selling breeding stock or are you selling them as the final product to food customers?

We mostly sell final products. We get a lot of business from our website. We are also listed on several referral sites like localharvest and eatwild. Our county has a virtual farmers market that lists websites to area farms too and that has given us a lot of business.

We find most of our business comes from word of mouth. I think it was a big help to us that we were already eating locally and buying natural foods and most of our friends were as well. So many of our early customers were friends, families we knew from homeschooling, etc. They have passed our name on to others and it has grown from there. We also always have business cards with us, in case food comes up in conversation.

If you're selling mostly breeding stock, I don't have as much experience there. The small amount we've sold has come again, from our website. I would also look into the registries and clubs for those animals that you raise and any yahoogroups for owners of those kind of animals. Ex. I'm on Lamanchatalk on yahoo and people are always advertising animals for sale there.

[Charleen]

Before you go much farther, you might wish to check with your homeowner's insurance regarding liability. We have a special farm policy that includes coverage should someone get hurt at our place when they stop to buy eggs, etc. It's worth the peace of mind.

[bill not in oh]

V - have you read through the thread I started? There's some good info in it already and I expect more.

To render an opinion about your situation... If there's any way to avoid 'paring back' do so. I'd do just the opposite - add products as you are able that will represent value to folks. Run a small ad in the 5 newspapers closest to you that have a listing of "Good Things to Eat" or similar heading. It doesn't matter if it's a daily or weekly (I'd avoid the biweekly or monthly at first). List the things that you have for sale "meat rabbits, meat goats, dairy goats, etc' with a phone #. If you list a location, it may discourage people because of the distance, but once you have them on the phone and they realize what a great person you are they will be less adverse to making the trip and it gives you the opportunity to give some description of your [higher value] products that would be expensive to include in the ads. Be prepared to run the ads weekly on Friday, Sat, Sunday (for daily papers) for as many consecutive weeks as you can possibly manage. When you have folks come out and visit, do not let them leave with fewer than 5 of your business cards. (If you don't have one - get some. Get some professional help designing it and if the professional help doesn't suggest the phone # to be the most prominent thing on the card or they suggest slogans pictures logos or other crap - get different professional help. You have too many products to try to list them without a 2 sided card. Give each customer 6 cards when they leave and ask them to give the extra 5 to friends and/or family. Do this also with your canoe rental customers, any family or friends you have in the area, your church members, hair stylists/barbers - you get the idea? Get other folks to help you advertise! They'll be happy to help and feel good that you think they are important enough for you to ask. I know you're trying to spend as little money as possible so this is the advice I'd give you at this point. Later, when you can free up some money for flyers and/or newspaper inserts, I'll be happy to talk with you about those. You can do this - you'll make it work!

Read the other thread if you haven't - after all you inspired it!

[Maura]

Who are these people who are willing to drive all the way out to the country to buy produce and rabbits? If there is a coop near you, advertise there. You might even be able to sell your produce directly to the coop. Weight watchers or other diet help groups promote eating fresh fruits and vegetables, so that could be another place to advertise or even offer to lecture on produce related subjects such as: buying locally to help the local economy, buying locally for the freshest produce, buying produce that has not been sprayed with herbicides or insecticides, rabbit as a good source of protein, etc.

[Pigeon Lady]

Hey Dunroven, hope this doesn't come across as spam, but you could wear an ad!

I have a "Stock For Sale" design in the Farmer's Market section of Dirt Road Duds. I'd be happy to personalize it with your farm name and phone number. Just drop me a pm if it's something you're interested in.

Gosh I don't know how you manage to keep up with all those animals and work full time too!!! I hope you your sales do well and you can cut down you're hours instead of add to them!

Pauline

[dunroven]

Not a shameless spam at all. I love the idea. I need to keep it in mind for a few weeks, if that's not a problem. Right now I'm cash poor and can't do much of anything. However, if my ads and my cards work, I'll be buying several of those items from you. I love those barbecue aprons and the sweatshirts, and the T shirts, and the bags! LOL

Thanks, please don't give up on me. If I do have sales, I WILL get some walking advertising for myself AND my husband!

I went out to do my lunchtime watering a few minutes ago and it is apparent that it will be raining later today. So, I just went back and got my little package of green beans and went back and planted about a 4 foot row of green beans. Now that's not much, but its at least something. I also looked at the corn plants in the midst of all the weeds, and we WILL be eating some fresh sweet corn anytime now. I'm so glad I looked. I have 2 zucchini plants coming up and a few okra and maybe 2 swiss chard plants, so something is happening out there, even with the weeds!

[georgec]

I think that marketing is one of the hardest jobs when running a business. There are lot of things you can do that cost little or no money. Build yourself a simple website, there are many free places to host it; although it is much more professional if it is not on a "free" site (everyone hates popups). You can post the animals you have for sale on free search sites like www.search4paws.com (shameless plug, I own this site). Put fliers up in the local laundry mats, coffee shops, anywhere with a buletin board.

[dunroven]

Well, I have my own web site, but I have not a clue of how to put stuff on it. I'm completely web site illiterate. I just managed to pay the bill to catch up on it, but as soon as I know it is up and running again, I will tell you all.

It is

www.dunrovenfarms.com

They took it down until I could pay for it and today we reinstated that web site and my husband's canoeing website which is

www.siouxlandcanoes.com

I did some work on his web site, and now all that work is gone. Like I say, I don't know how to put stuff on it but I guess I'm going to have to learn. We'll see.