Profiles & Thinking In Reverse

Don’t promote yourself, promote a network

Once you have a full profile of the type of consumer you DO want in your business, you should also have established where they are likely to spend their time when they are not at your farm shop.

You can now use these additional avenues to communicate with potential customers.

As many of you will know, Linda and I, produce 15 tonnes of sweet chestnuts a year; a product that is not known to many in my part of the world.

That said, we have a clear picture of who we want to attract.

Our research revealed that Foodies were our target market, these foodies eat at “white table cloth” restaurants and so we consciously decided to target the head chefs at these restaurants. We ask them to promote the farm in their restaurants, on the menu, and when serving sweet chestnuts.

By way of reciprocation, we promote their restaurants in our social media marketing.

This has given us the credibility we are looking for. To work with a "middle of the road restaurant", we decided that they would not give us the exposure and credibility we are looking for.

“Ora Salmon”, from New Zealand, concentrates on “Farm to Five Star Table’ in their promotions. They do not spend a lot of time focusing on the quality of the product; all salmon eaters know the quality to already be the best. They do, however, explore the supply chain and how that maintains their exceptionally high, quality standard.

Learn to turn negatives into positives

Here's another valuable case-study that reinforces the point.

One of the challenges hotels on the west coast of Vancouver Island in Canada had was that whilst they were fully booked in summer, they had problems paying the bills in winter. The storms blew in and the hotel rooms were empty.

By thinking in reverse, that is not the case today... Now, when a storm is due, the hotels are full of guests who enjoy the experience of watching those very same storms blow in.

When are your quiet times and what can you do to build guest traffic at that time of year?

When it is quiet in your business, you can provide quality time with customers and they are prepared to pay for this premium time with you and your team.

A local farmer in Western Australia, near to our farm, developed a “Mud Fest” in the middle of winter. He invited people down from the city in winter to race through muddy fields with obstacles in them.

Is he crazy? Yes and no at the same time!

The local accommodation is now fully booked for the event at a time when they were normally empty.

He has been so successful that he has now partnered with another farmer in another region of the State to grow the event even further. Potential visitors can now go on a “Mud Fest” trail

It was always a challenge to get visitors down on the farm in winter, The “Mud Fest” is now his major event of the year and each year it gets more successful, mainly through participants promoting it to their friends

We all have quiet times in our year when we would like to have more customers.

Also remember, in a well-run business, when the customer count is down the average sale should be higher.

If it is not something is probably at fault with your customer service strategy. We need times when we have fewer customers so that we can add more value to the offer.

Therefore getting customers into your business when you are quiet should be a major driver for the business and a means of business growth.

Think of strategies of how you can grow the business in quiet periods.

In our own business, we have developed “The Chestnut Experience”. We take people on a chestnut journey through the farm and the production area.

In the harvest period, we are too busy to develop such an experience for the consumer. This has proved to be a profitable time in the business as we achieve a high average sale per customer group.

Using Reverse Marketing Technique in your business.

This technique of marketing is based on three parts

1. Recognition by your customers of you and your product range. This means you have to monitor the food trends in the marketplace and the changes in consumer behaviour. You have to be customer-focused

2. They come to you rather than you go to them. You have to give them the reasons to come to you and the channels to contact you.

3. As a business, provide value and information. Every time you contact customers, add more value and more information so that you can build the engagement between your business and them. In our own business, we have found providing unusual recipes using our product to be a very effective marketing tool

These techniques can be used in traditional marketing campaigns as well as in social media campaigns, or both.

So give it a go... Put your reverse-marketing hat on and see what new perspectives you get on how to market your business!