We all want to find more customers. Those perfect customers have a good average order size, come back week after week, and are always willing to try new things. But unfortunately, more likely than not, they don’t fall out of thin air.
To find those dream farm customers, you first define who they are and where to find them.
Before we go into how to create a farm customer persona, let’s define what a customer persona is.
What is a customer persona?
A customer persona describes a type of customer to who you want to sell. It’s a descriptive profile of their demographics, shopping habits, interests, and hobbies, which allows you to choose marketing strategies that target the right kind of customers.
What’s the benefit of creating customer personas?
1. Get to know who is and who isn’t your customer
When you define who your customers are (and who they aren’t), you can better identify sales channels, marketing strategies, and distribution channels that will attract your target audience.
Before diving into marketing strategy, you want to start at the top level. What am I selling? Who am I selling it to? And, how do I reach them?
The more granular you get about your target audience, the more granular you can get about your marketing strategy.
Once your customer personas are identified, you can also identify who isn’t your customer → the anti-persona. This is important because it helps you increase sales productivity. Don’t spend time and resources chasing down the wrong customer.
2. Segment your audience
You might have multiple customer personas, such as:
- Millennial couples
- Families with young children
- And, elderly couples
The way you reach these different audiences will differ. By building out your customer personas, you can easily segment your audience by persona and alter your marketing strategies to meet their needs, such as creating content for them and using the correct distribution channels. You can even change the copy for each persona group if you send out monthly emails.
Before we build our personas, have you heard about our farm sales and marketing book, Ready Farmer One?
We wrote this book because we noticed a big gap in the market. Anyone starting or diversifying their farm can use Ready Farmer One as their blueprint for sales and marketing success.
How do you create a customer persona?
Building a profile for your customer types is key to creating customer personas. By this, we mean:
- Who are they?
- Where do they live?
- What is their family dynamic?
- What are their hobbies? Etc.
These profiles should provide enough information so that you’re able to distill their shopping patterns, how to reach them, and how to sell to them. Your customer personas are one of the most important marketing tools you can use.
➡️ We’ve created a robust list of questions to answer when building your customer personas: Get your copy!
Your business's customer personas will differ significantly from those of other businesses. Like anything, what you put into it is what you get out of it. For example, the more research, information, and effort you put into creating your personas, the more granular and specific you can get in your marketing.
Here are some great places to start.
Do an audit of your current customer list
- Do you notice any similarities or trends between your customers?
- Where do they live?
- What age are they?
- What’s their buying behavior?
- Which customers are your favorite? Why?
- Which are your least favorite? Why?
Talk to your sales team
Your sales team will have valuable insights about your customers. Be sure to connect with them to see if they notice any trends or have received any feedback.
Interview or survey your customers
If you’re having difficulty answering some questions or are looking for more insights, go right to the source. Choose customers with who you have great relationships and ask them questions.
- How did you hear about us?
- Why do you shop from us?
- Where do you get your information?
- What do you look for when buying food?
- Is there anything we can do better?
This information is extremely valuable feedback.
If there’s one thing you should do this year to level up your farm marketing, BUILD your personas! Trust us, it’s going to make a huge difference when planning and executing your marketing strategy.
Also, remember that your personas aren’t static. As your business grows and evolves, your personas will too. Be sure to revisit those questions and update your personas as the year goes on.
Ready to put your farm customer personas into action?
Now that you've created your farm customer personas, it's time to put them to work in your marketing strategy. Local Line can help you reach your target audience more effectively and efficiently.
With Local Line's all-in-one farm sales and marketing platform, you can:
- Use our farm CRM features to send targeted email campaigns for each of your customer personas
- Build a farm website and farm ecommerce store to customize your product offerings based on your personas' preferences
- View farm sales reporting to better understand your customers' buying behavior and refine your personas over time
- Simplify farm inventory and order fulfillment processes to provide a top-notch customer experience for all your persona groups
Local Line empowers small farms to sell online, communicate with customers, and grow their business. Our platform is designed with farmers in mind, providing the tools you need to succeed in today's competitive market.
