More and more farmers are looking for alternative income streams and ways to bolster their farms’ bottom line. One way is through direct-to-consumer sales, whether through farmers markets, roadside stands or online. Rick Harrison is CEO of Farm Trader and suggests farmers, as entrepreneurs, should pay special attention to how they market themselves. He begins by offering three keys, the first being that farmers need to set themselves apart and grab the buyer’s attention in an emotional way.

“It was funny. It made you mad. It made you happy. All of those things make your marketing and other companies marketing stick with their customers in a much longer way. And so how can you create a scenario where what it is that you’re creating stands out from the pack? Be that you know, you’re posting pictures of your farm in a unique way, you’re telling a story behind what it is that you’re doing anything that you can do to grab people’s attention.”

Harrison says the next marketing step is to develop trust.

“The more that you see something, the more familiar you are with it, and the more you expect it to be there, right? So if you go on a long road trip, you expect there to be a McDonald’s at some point down the road that you’re going to see a logo from, right? And so the idea is, is to show up in as many different places and ways as you possibly can, so that people become familiar with you, people come familiar with your brand, and be begin to trust it as a reputable source of whatever goods that they are looking for.”

The third step is to provide your customers with easy action points.

“What ways can you differentiate yourself to make the buying process as seamless as possible? The whole purpose of this is to reduce the number of steps that it takes for the person to be able to make that purchase the fewer steps that there are in that process, the more likely they are to go through with it.”

You can learn more at thefarmtrader.com.