Agriculture stands as one of the cornerstone industries in countries across the globe, playing a vital role in both domestic sustenance and international exports. However, despite the persisting demand for agricultural products, the industry has witnessed setbacks due to evolving consumer behaviour and growing competition.
Producers must embrace digital marketing strategies and tools to establish a strong online presence and showcase their products to potential customers and distributors worldwide. Moreover, online marketing methods can help farmers or agriculturists tap into the e-commerce market, increase sales, and achieve sustainable growth.
Whether you manage a small family-owned farm or a larger agricultural enterprise, this blog provides actionable strategies and insights to help you effectively market your agriculture business in the digital era.
What is Digital Marketing in Agriculture?
Digital marketing for agriculture refers to the efforts that drive both organic and paid traffic to meet the marketing goals of your agriculture business. One can market and promote their agriculture business seamlessly via digital platforms like – Google, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc. Unfortunately, agribusiness owners have not taken full advantage of the opportunities provided by digital marketing.
To succeed in the agriculture business in today’s digital era, you need to leverage digital marketing methodologies. The easiest way to begin is to reach out to customers interested in your products and services. With the right digital marketing strategies for agriculture, you can increase the website traffic, generate quality leads and drive sales in the long run.
Why do Agricultural Businesses need Digital Marketing?
Listed down below are the few benefits digital marketing can bring to your agribusiness –
Digital marketing uses a targeted approach by creating personalised marketing campaigns to reach specific groups based on interest, age, demographics, and location. As a result, you can market and promote your services to those interested in what you are offering.
Conversely, traditional marketing uses a blanket approach to reach customers with different interests and backgrounds. In most cases, traditional marketing reaches customers who are least interested in what you offer, resulting in budget overruns or unqualified leads.
- Enhance Brand Awareness
As of July 2023, there were 5.19 billion internet users worldwide, which amounted to 64.6 percent of the global population (Source: Statista)
Digital marketing enables agricultural companies to reach a broader audience on the Internet effectively than traditional techniques. Agribusinesses can easily reach out to potential customers and boost brand awareness by utilising different marketing channels.
For instance, they can invest in targeted SEO to improve their rankings in SERPs and drive qualified website traffic. Furthermore, agriculture organisations can use the power of email marketing to stay in touch with prospects as well as existing customers and promote their products.
- Build Brand Credibility
One of the objectives of digital marketing for agriculture is to build brand credibility. An authoritative and recognizable brand often builds strong relationships with its target audience. According to a study, 59% of customers prefer to buy products/services from familiar brands.
A customer-centric content marketing strategy is the best way to gain customers’ trust and satisfaction. The only way to survive in today’s online landscape is by creating a solid brand around your agribusiness.
Loyal customers are precious to companies, as they often become your brand advocates – share your strengths and bring in new customers. You can learn more about your customers through digital marketing for agriculture and build a brand identity that resonates with your customer’s needs.
Customers are often inclined toward brands that cultivate a sense of authenticity. When your customers understand that your brand is helping them with any problem or issue, they will naturally trust your brand.
Agribusinesses need digital marketing to boost their conversion rate more conveniently than before. With traditional marketing approaches, it is often challenging to track conversion rates.
Digital marketing for agriculture allows users to track every interaction and take corrective measures to optimize it. For example, you can instantly view how many people are viewing your ads and how they are interacting with your ads. This level of reporting will help you refine the marketing strategy and boost conversion.
- Yield Highest ROI
Digital marketing for agriculture is affordable and can yield a high ROI. According to external sources, companies typically generate $2 earnings for every $1 they spend on Google Ads.
By creating a goal-driven digital marketing strategy, one can aim for a high return on investment. From SEO to social media, email marketing, and paid ads – agriculture companies can leverage various channels to maintain optimum ROI.
- Facilitates Result Tracking
With a plethora of marketing analytics tools and software options out there, it becomes easy to analyse and track the results of your digital marketing campaigns. In contrast, traditional marketing efforts are difficult to measure, making it challenging to gauge the success of your campaigns.
With digital marketing, agribusinesses can easily monitor the results and optimise their strategies accordingly. This helps focus the resources on the most effective tactics and drive the desired results for agricultural businesses.
With so many benefits of digital marketing, it is no longer an option but a must-have for agribusinesses to promote their brands. According to a recent study, farmers and agriculture business owners are slowly adopting digital marketing strategies to gain a competitive advantage.
If you want to start on the right foot for your agricultural business, here are the ten digital marketing tactics proven to work.
10 Practical Ways to use Digital Marketing for Agriculture in 2022
Digital marketing for agriculture encompasses all the marketing efforts conducted via the internet, such as search engines, social media email, and other websites. Here are some of the ways –
1. Invest in SEO to drive website traffic
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) helps improve the quality of traffic coming to your website by targeting high-value industry-based keywords and infusing the site content with those keywords. When searching for locally produced farm products, most people use search engines. Therefore, your website must follow the best SEO practices to improve your agricultural company’s ranking on Google. Keywords play a crucial role in website SEO.
To enhance the visibility of your website, you should use relevant keywords in prominent sections like – meta title, meta description, headings, alt image tags, and on-page content. For example, your agricultural company is located in Australia. To optimise your website for search engines, you should infuse relevant keywords such as – best agricultural company in Australia, top agricultural products in Australia, best farming techniques in Australia, largest agricultural company in Australia, etc.
2. Use PPC to reach the audience instantly
With PPC campaigns, advertisers can place ads on search engines, social platforms, and other websites – and pay when someone clicks on them. It is an amazing way to reach targeted audiences quickly through Google Bing, Facebook, Instagram, and more. With the right paid media strategy, you can instantly enable more users to find your agribusiness on search engines and increase conversions.
With PPC campaigns, advertisers can place ads on search engines, social platforms, and other websites – and pay when someone clicks on them. It is an amazing way to reach targeted audiences quickly through Google Bing, Facebook, Instagram, and more. With the right paid media strategy, you can instantly enable more users to find your agribusiness on search engines and increase conversions.
3. Build a unique identity on social media
The main challenge agri-businesses face is creating brand recognition. When it comes to building brand identity, social media is your best bet. Create a social media page for your agribusiness and start posting informative and engaging content that gives your company ‘Expert’ status. With more than 3.96 million users on social media, you could be missing many quality leads if you don’t use social media for your agribusiness.
Your farm or orchard must have a Facebook page, especially if you want to connect with people interested in purchasing your produce. Make your brand stand out by posting a diverse combination of images, videos, informative posts, testimonials, reviews, products/services, etc. Whether it is notifying the customers about the crops you grow or spreading the word about adding something new, talk about your farming practices. You need to make sure your target audience follows your page and comes back to check the updates.
4. Leverage SMM to boost conversions
Social media marketing offers growth opportunities for agribusiness growth. Paid advertisements on social media typically include a call-to-action button with an ad creative. Using paid social media ads helps agricultural businesses to gain visibility into new geographical markets and generate more revenue.
Rewarding existing and new social media followers through giveaways, promotional offers, special deals, etc., is a great way to create a fun buzz around your brand. You only need a small investment for these reward programs, but it can lead to massive returns. Share your farm story, capture the beauty of your farmland, or get behind the scenes with daily activities to engage your target audience.
5. Start email marketing to engage customers
Email marketing is another essential digital marketing strategy that helps generate a high return on investment. As per reports, email marketing is 40 times more effective in acquiring new customers than social media channels. Newsletters, promotional emails, acquisition emails, retention emails, etc., are some of the popular email campaigns to engage your subscribers.
You can start with an email newsletter to deliver farming updates, livestock production, forestry, and cultivation. Then, connect with your potential customers via email to exchange information on crops, cultivating procedures, and the latest trends. Marketing for agricultural companies and agro-based products has never been easy. You can craft illustrative email templates featuring your agri-products and dispatch emails across a wide orbit of audiences.
6. Include content marketing to build brand loyalty
Create custom content that answers your target audience’s questions and provides them with solutions to their pain points. It involves the creation of content assets such as blogs, articles, press releases, infographics, case studies, eBooks, viral content, etc., that provoke the brand’s interest in the customers’ minds.
With the right content marketing for agtech, you will reap numerous benefits, including ranking higher on search engines, boosting online visibility, driving more traffic to your website, and increasing conversions. To implement an effective content marketing strategy for your agribusiness, generate a list of keywords that point to various agriculture topics such as organic farming, shifting cultivation, nomadic herding, Arabic agriculture, and more.
Share your knowledge by posting informative and engaging content on these topics and build your authority.
7. Engage in video marketing for agricultural companies for visibility
Video marketing helps to capture users’ attention in a short span. You can use platforms such as YouTube, Dailymotion, Video, etc., to educate your customers on various agribusiness offerings. With more than 5 billion videos consumed daily, YouTube is growing exponentially.
Create different engaging videos such as explainer videos, promotional videos, animated/whiteboard videos, etc., to showcase your company. You can even reach your potential customers by advertising your content on other videos. The most significant advantage of YouTube marketing is building an email list by embedding the signup form directly into the videos. This way, you can create an email database while providing informative content to your target audience.
For example, you can create explainer videos on farming techniques, crop cultivation, harvesting tips, etc., to increase engagement on digital channels.
8. Collaborate with influencers for effective promotion
For years, brands have turned to celebrity figures for sponsorships and endorsements. The fact is that endorsements continue to thrive in sports and other events worldwide. There’s a case for influencer marketing in agriculture, as many believe that agriculture businesses could benefit from connecting with influencers for promotions.
Why? Because it is a human tendency to look to experts for their opinions, especially those we trust. With the prevalence of social media, many agribusinesses are taking to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to showcase what they do. You don’t need to approach a celebrity to promote your agriculture business. Instead, you can collaborate with ‘farm influencers’ who understand farming, irrigation, controlling weeds, procurement of high-quality seeds, and crop rotation.
9. Try mobile marketing for agricultural companies for instant response
Smartphone access and mobile marketing have played a significant role in helping farmers. Using mobile platforms like Telegram and Whatsapp, agribusiness owners can share valuable information, spread awareness, find buyers, and do more.
Whatsapp is transforming the agriculture sector as agribusinesses, SMEs, and agro-dealers create value for farmers. The agro information-based WhatsApp groups that range from soil/animal health, seed availability, fertilizers, pesticides, and fodder have become a support system for farmers. Besides, many agribusinesses use Whatsapp to connect with their consumers and sell the produce directly. Some agripreneurs have even turned Whatsapp into a marketplace to help farmers trade vegetables, seeds, grains, irrigation equipment, and more.
10. Use affiliate marketing for better ROI
If you wonder if an affiliate program is worthwhile for your agriculture business, the answer is yes. However, like any other product, agricultural products also need to consider the exposure in the market to increase sales.
Affiliate marketing is one of the effective ways to accelerate growth by developing mutually beneficial partnerships. Agribusinesses can invite their existing customers to become affiliates. Affiliate marketing aims to boost conversion rates while expanding business reach. Affiliate marketing benefits for agribusiness include acquiring new customers, growing business reach, unlocking the potential for collaboration, and increasing ROI.
In a nutshell, digital marketing for agriculture helps grow your business and reach new heights cost-effectively. We hope you have understood how digital technologies can be used in agriculture. Consider the above digital marketing strategies for agriculture to help you market your agricultural business successfully in today’s digital era.
Examples/Case Studies of Successful Digital Marketing for Agricultural Companies
- Bellamy’s Organic
Bellamy’s Organic is Australia’s leading producer and distributor of simple, nutritious, and organic food products. They invested in digital marketing, social media, and SEO. and consistently ranked #1 for the keyword “baby formula’ for four years. The content marketing strategy increased their online sales by 1100% and website traffic by 635%. Also, they had 100,000+ Facebook followers and 8,000 user-generated images through Instagram campaigns.
Read the detailed case study of Bellamy’s Organic here.
- Nufarm Limited
Nufarm Limited is a leading Agri company in Australia that offers innovative crop protection solutions and a range of agriculture chemicals that protect crops from damage caused by weeds. They leveraged the increasing popularity of social media marketing to reach the mass market economically.
Read the detailed case study of Nufarm Limited here.
5. How can a Digital Marketing Agency Help?
A digital marketing agency is equipped with the relevant experience and resources required to create result-driven marketing initiative for your agriculture business. They remain aligned with the market demand and the latest trends to cater to your marketing demands are precisely met.
Growth Ganik is a full-stack marketing agency offering industry-specific digital marketing services. Over time, we have successfully designed and executed tailored strategies for various businesses and delivered the desired results. Book a free consultation with our experts to learn more about custom marketing solutions.
FAQs
- How does digital marketing help in agricultural marketing?
Digital marketing helps in agricultural marketing by reaching the target audience at the right time and increasing brand awareness.
- What do agricultural marketing services include?
Agricultural marketing services can include everything from building digital strategy to SEO, social media and paid advertising. The farm marketing services can be customised to cater to specific organisation’s needs.
- What are the challenges in agricultural marketing?
Some common challenges in agricultural marketing are the lack of marketing skills, transportation problems, and a long chain of intermediaries.
- What are the benefits of agricultural marketing?
As mentioned above in the blog, agricultural marketing helps target the right audience, increases brand awareness, boosts conversion rates, builds credibility, and enhances ROI.
