Grow it - and they might not come

It's always interesting to confront people with their worst nightmare early on a Saturday morning.  

I ran a marketing workshop on Saturday on behalf of the Soil Association, for a group of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) projects.  I'm a big fan of the CSA approach - the main idea being that local people share some of the risk with the grower by paying up front, in return for a regular share of the harvest over that year.  I was a member of a CSA at Swillington Farm - and they've also recently set up a CSA arrangement (to rear a pig) with Salvo's -  a local Italian restaurant which you may recently have seen on Gordon Ramsey's F Word.  There are plenty more businesses which have adopted the model - including a Community Supported Bakery which I wrote about here.

The marketing workshop was themed around the title - Grow it - and they might not come.  This in turn was inspired by the Kevin Costner film Field of Dreams - in which rookie farmer Ray Kinsella hears a voice which tells him to build a baseball pitch in his field.  The voice tells him "If you build it, he will come" - and sure enough the ghost of Shoeless Joe Jackson and seven other Chicago White Sox players turn up to play on his field.

As you can imagine people thought Ray was nuts.  People who want to set up CSAs sometimes meet with a similar response.  Getting people to pay up front to buy veg from you - when all that currently exists is a sketch of your planting plan and a seed catalogue - can be a challenge.  That's where an effective marketing plan can help.

A do-able marketing plan for your CSA

View more presentations from robg.

I talk about marketing as building relationships with customers.  This concept sits well with CSAs.  You need to build relationships if people are to trust that you will grow food for them.  I take people through my step-by-step plan - which requires you to think carefully about your business - and in particular your customers - but doesn't require you to have any formal marketing background.  

During the workshop we split into groups and each group creates a plan - using an innovation which, even if I say so myself, I'm very proud of - upcycled wallpaper - used in place of flipchart paper.  £2 spent in Oxfam has to be better than £10 spent in Staples, surely?

 

Aside from the eco-benefits (which won me early greenie points with my organic audience), I'm a big believer in thinking sideways along a page, rather than down a page.  There is something about a portrait flipchart which makes you anxious - you get to the bottom of a page and you start losing the will to live - because the stuff at the bottom feels weighed down by what's gone before (and you're now kneeling on the floor, writing like a four year old).  You're also wondering whether to squeeze a few more words on - or start a new page.   Whereas, with a roll of Upcycled Wallpaper  Flipchart ^TM you can keep on writing - and keep referring back, drawing lines where there are connections, etc etc.

The risk I take with this workshop is that I spend very little time talking about the things that some people expect me to talk about.  Some people want clear guidance - a top ten of the best ways to market your business - that kind of thing.  I don't believe in that stuff.  As my Iced Tea slide suggests, what works in one place doesn't necessarily work in another.  That's why I talk people through what they need to think about - so that they can then make their best judgement about what it's best to do.  That way, you also start thinking about ways to market your business which don't cost a great deal of money.

My four year old son was a bit confused on Saturday morning, given that I was going to work.  He asked me what I was doing.  I told him I was running a workshop.  

"Is it like Santa's workshop?"  he asked.   

"Son", I said, "Today I will give people a gift greater than any that Santa could give.  A do-able marketing plan."  He looked at me a bit confused, and carried on eating his breakfast.    

Comments

[twitter.com/gentlemandad]

Interesting - I don't have time to look at the presentation just now, but would think that the problem is that it actually is not a normal marketing issue. Most greenies who are into CSA are not going to be very impressed with the normal arguments for using a product.

Seems to me that there is a lot more in common between a social group or church and a CSA - rather than a producer-consumer paradigm. Mmm lots to think about there.

[Rob Greenland]

It's a good point Joe. One of the opening exercises I do is to ask people for their feelings about marketing. With most audiences - and in particular with a green/alternative... audience, you get a lot of understandable hostility towards marketing. I share that too, which is why I'm interested in a different way to build relationships with people.

I studied spanish at university and i like the spanish word for business - negocio. You can see the roots there - and it's that type of business - people in a relationship, negotiating a deal which both sides are happy with - that we've lost. In my own little way I try get us back to that way of doing business.

[David Floyd]

I'd wondered where 'build it and they will come' came from. It's the unspoken motto of a worrying proportion of well-meaning people I've met in the world of social enterprise and the voluntary sector.

"Building relationship with customers" is for cynical capitalists. If you do something good people will come and buy it/make use of it by magic because it's right - or so they generally tell me in a half-angry, half-pitying tone.

I'm sympathetic when the people involved are wasting their own time, money and energy - less sympathetic when they're wasting other people's.

[Rob Greenland]

Great point David. The analogy works well in the food growing field (sorry) because the problem of so many businesses - including social businesses - is that they're so focused on production (understandable if you're a farmer for example) that they forget about the marketing. And yes, there is a breed of social enterprise/third sector org which believes it's so bloody good that people SHOULD buy from them, no matter how random their product is or their ability to get it to people in one piece.

This is why I do what I do. What often happens is that people get a grant to get a marketing company to come in and wow them with a funky website, which then sits there gathering spacedust because no-one updates it and none of their customers are bothered about websites. Better to spend the money with me and I'll help you work things out for yourself!

[MIke Chitty]

They will come if there is a real need for what is built. Often this is not the case.

It is about providing what enough people want and can use. If there are enough people who will pay enough for organic, free range, rare breed pork served up in pricey Italian eateries then the marketeers have a chance. Sometimes we may need to sub-optimise our product or service a little to allow us to engage and then grow with our customers. Social enterprise has to develop the market.

It is a bit like Schumacher's point about Intermediate Technology. It is not about always offering the best technology, but about offering what can be used and maintained.

[twitter.com/gentlemandad]

I'm increasingly thinking that 'good'-ness is not much of a selling point. I know it goes against conventional wisdom, but I think you're unlikely to wow many potential customers just on the basis of how ethically pure you are (mostly because these ethical claims are so easy to unpick if you really feel bloody minded).

So, in my investigations into farmshops (and farmers markets), I find that people are more interested in the 'idea' of rural-food-products-in-a-rural-setting than actually investigating some long speel about why this particular product is so marvellous. So those who are highly-ethical-but-crap-marketing achieve less than those who are normal-but-good-marketing.

In terms of a CSA, I'd think you need to focus on something beyond the 'we're-so-ethical-because-of-our-co-operative-anti-capitalist-stance'. Or a social enterprise needs to advertise why their product is great rather than 'feel-sorry-for-us-because-we're-a-social-enterprise'.

[Rob Greenland]

Thanks for comments. The need point is an important one. We talked about this on Saturday. In setting up social enterprises many people are driven by an understandable sense of "This is what our community/the environment/the world/ needs - they just don't realise it yet." There is no real thinking about whether there is any actual demand. "They'll get there in the end..... They'll have no choice eventually..... If we build it, they will come....." It's all to be found in the same visionary social activist/entrepreneur handbook.

I think we need this activism - but we also need people to combine the drive to change society with an in-depth, pragmatic appreciation of how the world is right now. "If we believe in local food economies, how can we get from where we are now (not many people really care) to where we'd like to be?"

The answer isn't "marketing" on its own, but good marketing is part of the answer.

In terms of the messages, yes, that's an important point - and for most audiences (beyond the Transition/Green/Organic niche) they'll care about other stuff - taste, cost, convenience, service, aspirational consumption, a chance for their four year old to bottle feed a lamb and to talk about it at a dinner party. Benefits, benefits, benefits.....

[David Floyd]

Certainly agree on the funky websites vs. useful marketing support.
Funky websites can be and are very useful but they're a tool rather than a likely solution to a series of otherwise unsolvable problems.

You may or may not need one after you've worked out what you're doing and how you're going to do it.