6 Farm Store Marketing Strategies To Try Today

Most farms are focused primarily on one thing: growing and raising high-quality food — and for what it’s worth, that should be your top priority.

However, the unfortunate reality is that offering excellent fresh food alone isn’t enough to become financially independent and grow your business. You also need a solid farm store marketing strategy.

When most people think of “marketing,” they think of sales stickers and ads. And while that is part of marketing, it’s so much more than that.

In a nutshell, marketing is:

Creating your brand story: A brand story is what you want customers to know about you, including your values, your products, and what makes you unique.
Understanding your customers: A large part of marketing is understanding your customer preferences so you can constantly improve your offerings.
Ads and promotions: Coming up with deals and promotions to attract new customers and retain existing ones.
Defining your look and feel: Creating a logo, building a user-friendly website, and other aesthetic choices are all a part of your brand.

Creating a solid marketing strategy will help you define your niche in the food e-commerce space, reach more customers, and improve sales.

If you’re not doing anything substantial to market your farm store, the best time to start is now!

Here are six easy strategies you can try today.

1. Build a Social Media Following

It’s projected that in 2025, over 300 million people will be active on social media in the U.S. That number is only growing, and social media continues to be an invaluable tool for small businesses to connect directly with their customers.

This is especially true for farm stores that — perhaps more than other businesses — rely on visuals and storytelling to sell their products. Social media has many benefits for independent farms, including:

Putting a human face to your brand
Highlighting sales and farm-fresh products
Sharing your commitment to quality and regenerative farming practices
Forming direct connections with customers
Discovering customer preferences and new trends

If you’re posting to social media as a business, make sure to use a business profile. Also, choose one or two platforms and post regularly. Consistency will help your brand rise in search results and show up in people’s feeds more often.

Once you establish a regular posting schedule and find which types of posts are more popular, consider promoting yourself locally with paid advertising.

2. Start a Farm Blog

Many people seek out a local farm store as an alternative to the faceless, corporate feel of a big chain supermarket.

Take advantage of this by writing a blog that lets your personality (and your products) shine. Unlike social media, blogs let you share more details about your business, giving you opportunities to show off your expertise, educate, and build trust with customers.

On a practical level, starting a farm blog also helps you climb the ranks in local search — which is essential for attracting new customers.

If you’re new to blog writing, start at a biweekly cadence. Come up with a few different topic categories and rotate through them (e.g., recipes, educational, daily farm life, etc.).

Once you get more comfortable, try to increase your pace to once a week or more. Make sure to include links throughout the blog to the products you’re talking about or even promote other local businesses.

3. Leverage Email Marketing

With social media algorithms, video ads, and everything else out there, email might seem like an outdated way to market your farm store — but don’t write it off.

Email marketing has one of the highest returns on investment (ROI) of all marketing methods, especially for small businesses.

Send out a weekly newsletter that highlights new products or seasonal deals (you can also link to your social media and blog at the same time). Or send emails every time you have a big sale or exclusive promotion.

If your e-commerce platform supports it, we recommend trying to segment your customers to maximize effectiveness. Segmenting customers means grouping customers by preference (e.g., people who buy in bulk, people who buy primarily beef, etc.), and it allows you to create email offers tailored to customers’ unique preferences.

4. Sign-up Discounts and Member-Only Exclusives

Until now, we’ve mostly been talking about spreading brand awareness (what’s called “top of the funnel” in marketing) — but how do you tip someone over the edge to actually make a sale?

One effective tactic (used by many meat subscription boxes) is to offer discounts to first-time customers, especially if they’re signing up for a subscription. For example, offer new customers 15% off for the first two months, or a one-use code that gives 20% off or free shipping on orders over a certain amount.

Once someone has purchased from you, use email and SMS to offer them exclusive discounts they couldn’t find anywhere else.

Subscriptions themselves are both a great deal for customers and a reliable source of recurring revenue for farm stores selling online. Offer bulk orders at a slight discount to encourage upselling. That way, when customers go to check out on a one-time purchase, they’ll see how much they could save by setting up a recurring order.

Before you get started, be aware that not all e-commerce platforms support subscriptions out of the box.

5. Update Your Branding and Website

Even if you’re an established farm store that’s been around for years, people might overlook your experience because you have an outdated website or logo.

It’s not fair, but it’s true. Even if your brand isn’t decades out of date, almost every company benefits from a fresh coat of paint every once in a while.

Here are a few specifics to consider.

Your website: Keep your website up to date, in terms of and functionality. Ensure it’s mobile-friendly and supports multiple payment methods. Ideally, use an e-commerce platform that has no-code website-building tools so you can create a great-looking website without hiring a designer.

Your logo: A strong logo helps your brand stick out in customers' minds. Design a farm logo that is memorable, simple, and versatile for the best results.

Product pictures: Make your products stand out by taking great pictures — but whatever you do, don’t use stock images you find online. If you do, people will be less likely to trust your brand.
Product descriptions: When people browse your products, they aren’t just looking for what you have but why it’s better. Spend time writing detailed product descriptions that convince people to give your products a try.

Remember, your website and logo are an extension of your business, so infuse them with whatever makes your business unique.

6. Host Local Events and Farm Tours

Online stores are helping drive sales of local sustainable food, but that doesn’t mean you should neglect your physical storefront. In fact, by supplementing in-store and local events with online marketing, you can drive turnout and sales!

Host tasting events, cooking classes, and other events at your store to educate customers and give them confidence in using your ingredients. You could also sell meal kits with the ingredients to sell later.

If your farm and farm store are in the same area, consider offering farm tours on the weekends to drive brand awareness and educate customers on the benefits of sustainable farming and eating seasonally.

Farm Store Marketing: Useful Services and Tools for GrazeCart Customers

If you are completely new to farm store marketing, need some helpful tips, or professional help, here are a few services and tools to use.

Services

Good Roots: If you need more overall help building your business, Good Roots offers business and marketing consultancy services for farmers and food entrepreneurs, as well as GrazeCart e-commerce planning.
Marie Ideas: Founded by Marie Reedell, Marie Ideas helps specifically with website design, email marketing and automation, and content marketing support.
Grapevine Local Food Marketing: Grapevine helps create farm websites, graphic design services, and other marketing service for local food producers.

For more recommendations, check out our list of GrazeCart-certified partners.

Tools

Hootsuite: Hootsuite is a tool that helps you schedule social media posts in advance, all from one place. Their free version lets you post up to 50 posts over 3 accounts at a time.

Canva: Canva is a free design tool that lets you create and size posts for different uses. It also has a premium version that includes stock photos and other enhancements.
Moz: Moz offers some free options for monitoring your site's search rankings and SEO.

Enhance Your Farm Store Marketing With GrazeCart

If you’re passionate about raising quality food and connecting directly with customers, work with a partner who shares your passions. GrazeCart was founded by and for farmers, with the specific functions you need to simplify the way you sell food online.

GrazeCart offers customers a one-stop shop to build websites, monitor inventory levels, manage subscriptions, handle shipments, support farm store marketing campaigns, and more.

Try your free 14-day GrazeCart trial to see how we can help bring your farm store business to life.