Farming and Marketing
Many people are surprised / confused that I have 2 verrrry different professional skillsets: (NB- I'm eclectic in nature and love to express the polarity of my being!)
1. Farmher/Agricultural consultant
2. Digital Marketing consultant
I live in the Northern Rivers NSW, Australia, it is a rural, and somewhat alternative community, where the predominant culture is around ‘creating a good lifestyle, and focus on personal development, creativity, family and friends’, rather than being career focused and ambitious. This is what attracted me to moving to the region when I had my first child in 2002.
However, working in this environment has seen me need to invest in my business and digital marketing skills, as well as my passion for farming, to survive and thrive here. As a small business owner and farmher, I realised that marketing and sales are the lifeforce for business’s, so I needed to learn.
I completed an international qualification: CDMP (Certified Digital Marketing Professional), for my own business, and to help the business’s that I consult with. (Farmers are not well known for their tech savvy, and so much of their success and sustainability lies in being able to market their business as well as to grow the crops, and sell the products :))
I am an infinitely pragmatic, common sense and logical person when it comes to business, it takes a lot of time, energy and resources to start a new enterprise, or launch a new product, and I see it as my role to ensure that it is grounded in reality, and has the potential for success from the outset, working with how things are, not the way you think the world should be.
I do love to work within heart-centred business’s to ground their visions, and co-create here on Earth, in this reality within a financial context.
Many people interested in creating ‘passion’ and heart centred business’s, and farms do not know the basics of creating them. They try and ‘manifest their dreams', without having skills, experience or resources, and then wonder why they aren’t reaching their business or production goals … they start complaining that someone, or something should support them, YAWN!
This is infinitely flawed - at best wishful thinking, at worst delusional and narcissistic … and I have seen many small businesses and farms who adopted this attitude and belief system fail repeatedly.
Just because it’s your dream, and vision, doesn’t mean that there is a market out there of customers who will regularly buy your products and services, for the prices you need to charge to be profitable, and therefore sustainable into the future.
To be in business is to SERVE, if there’s little demand for what you are offering, or its unaffordable for your target demographic it won’t work. The End.
This is where marketing research and creating a strategy comes in as an incredible tool to assess business and agricultural proposals, make risk assessments, and create good outcomes.
Marketing is a science, and the technology and software available today is really advanced, allowing accurate market research in depth BEFORE you try to invest your life savings (or continue), promote or sell products and services.
As the online sphere becomes more technological and sophisticated, this is actually creating a disadvantage for small business who typically don’t have these skillsets or resources available in their workforces and budgets, things are changing FAST … as farmers, and small business owners, we are generalists, needing to wear ALL the hats, even the ones that aren’t ‘our passion’.
This is why, I find the digital marketing skillset so useful in my agricultural and small business consulting, providing insight and strategy based on analytics, to bring discernment to ideas, and direction.
The marketing Yang, to my flower farming Yin, allows the flow of lifeforce
