It’s a common misconception that marketing is about tricking people into buying your product or service.
We see advertisements that tell us we are need a product to look better or be happier or fit into the cool crowd. We hear of legal battles where companies are accused of claiming their product does something it doesn’t or not disclosing harmful ingredients.
So it’s understandable that many people think marketing is deceitful and deceptive.
What is marketing?
Marketing is about finding people who have the want/need that your product/services fulfills.
Perhaps we should work backwards…
Your rural business fulfills a want or a need.
You grow organic vegetables, fruits, and herbs for people who want local, fresh produce grown without any -cides. You raise pastured chickens, pigs, lamb, or cows for people who want nutritious protein from sustainable sources. You care for bees and trees to make raw honey and real maple syrup to fill someone’s sweet tooth with a healthy sugar-alternative. Your sheep provide wool for high-quality clothes and blankets free of micro-plastics. Your breads, jams, pickles, and pies are the best around and mouths water just at the sight of these goods.
But people won’t know about your products without marketing!
What activities are ‘marketing’?
Marketing is wide and diverse, including:
- Direct Mail
- Billboards
- Print Media
- Search Engine Optimization
- Search Engine Marketing
- Social Media
- Email Marketing
- Content Marketing
- Affiliate Marketing
- Public Relations
- Branding
- Advertising
- Sponsorships
- Word of Mouth
(Many of these activities are grouped into bigger categories, such as print, digital, traditional, non-traditional, guerrilla, outbound, inbound, etc.)
If you never participated in these marketing activities, no one would ever know your products and services exist and you wouldn’t sell a single product.
Benefits go both ways. You want to sell products and services so you can make a living and customers want to fulfill their wants and needs so they should be able to easily find your products!
The Marketing Efforts that Made a Sale
A personal example: Recently, I wanted to make jalapeño poppers with the jalapeños from my garden. To spice it up a bit, I wanted to wrap some in bacon, specifically local, pasture-raised bacon. The issue was I wanted to make them during the week so I couldn’t wait for the Saturday morning farmers market. So I took to the Internet to find a local farm store or farm stand that carries pasture-raised pork, specifically bacon.
If the local farms didn’t have websites and Google My Business profiles, I would never have found them. I then went to their websites to ensure that their pork was pasture-raised and bacon was in stock. Then I looked to ensure I could go to the farm and purchase some there.
As the customer, I wanted: pasture-raised bacon that was available for purchase during the week.
As the farmers, they want to sell their products.
To connect with me, the farm needed a Google My Business profile, a website, descriptions of their farming practices, a product list, a physical location for sales, and a phone number.
All of these things are marketing!
Marketing isn’t the bad guy.
If it weren’t for marketing, the farm wouldn’t have sold some bacon (and a whole chicken, since I was there) and I wouldn’t have been able to make yummy bacon-wrapped jalapeño poppers on a Wednesday!
How can you market your products and services?
Are you looking to develop a marketing plan or ramp up your marketing efforts?
Do you want to branch into new marketing methods like advertising or content creation?
Schedule a call with me to explore what we could work on together to make your products and services known to your target audience!
Whenever I think of marketing I think of those sleazy used car salesmen! But, yes, marketing isn’t the bad guy. There are gadzillions of websites out there and it seems the chances of anyone seeing my tiny little website about my fresh flower business are slim to none. I never realized there is so much behind getting a website to be seen. Google My Business? Never heard of it before. So much to learn but too little time when flowers are blooming and need to be picked and sold. I need your help!
It definitely is a busy time of year! Just send a message to me here and we can schedule some time to chat.