January 31, 2024

In today's episode, you're going to hear from a flower farmer who used the "early bird launch sales method" to help her presell 60% of next summer's subscriptions in just 7 days. Megan reached out to me a few weeks after her promotion campaign ended to say, "It worked!!!" (Multiple exclamation points). I use this exact same process to presell about 400 CSA vegetable shares every fall, and I usually get about 75-80% of my folks to sign on the dotted line.

I asked Megan onto the show to share her story, because I know how important it is to show you that this stuff works for other farmers! She'll share how she modified my strategy to build an irresistible offer to her clients, how she created hype and buzz, and what advice she found most helpful when she was in the thick of the launch. There's also a really good tip in here about how to capture testimonials from flower subscription clients....

This podcast was sponsored by Farm Marketing School - my monthly online marketing school membership just for farmers. Farm Marketing School is an on-demand library of marketing workshops and project plans that will help you build some of the most important marketing elements in your farm business like: building a promotion calendar, auditing your sales funnel, updating your home page of your website, building your first email nurture sequence, and practicing different types of offers. You get to chose what you want to study and build each month. These projects are designed to be completed in under 30 days, so that you slowly build your marketing system piece by piece. Use the step by step project planner and resource folder to help you jumpstart your work.Take advantage of my new marketing crash course inside, watch my new Email Marketing Course, or take the onboarding assessment tool to help you identify where your funnel is broken and what project to do first. To see what courses are currently inside of FMS, or to try out Farm Marketing School for a month at mydigitalfarmer.com/fms Cancel your membership anytime.

Interview Guest: Meet Megan Rudroff

Megan Rudroff started Rudy Lane Flower Farm in 2019 with the intention of solely growing peonies as an added enterprise on their traditional cattle and row crop farm in the heart of Missouri. However, since peonies take a few years before they can be harvested, she planted a few hundred dahlias to cash-flow for more peony plants. Then, throw in a world-wide pandemic and an unforeseen addiction to dahlias and now Megan grows 600 peonies, 800 dahlias, thousands of tulips and too many annuals to count that she sells primarily retail via her subscription program and farmstand.

Though Megan is the primary flower farmer, her husband Layne, and their three daughters all play a part in the flower business. Layne does all the equipment operation and flower deliveries, and their girls, ages 8, 6 and 3, help with planting, harvesting and, their favorite, deadheading spent blooms.

Megan believes that growing flowers is the easy part, it's selling those flowers that is truly the hard part. Megan's full-time career is in natural resource conservation… not marketing! Because of that, she credits podcasts like My Digital Farmer for helping her flower business being successful from the start.

Learn more about Rudy Lane Flower Farm

Instagram: @OnRudyLane

Facebook: www.facebook.com/RudyLaneFlowerFarm

Some of the resources mentioned in this episode:

Join my free email list! I have a great "Crash Course in farm marketing" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better.

Episode 235 of the My Digital Farmer Podcast: CSA Renewal Promotion Process: Step by Step - Megan used this episode to help her build her own strategy.

Episode 120 of the My Digital Farmer Podcast: How My "CSA Giveaway Challenge" Experiment Built Some Major Brand Identity - Megan referenced this episode as inspiration for her giveaway element in her offer.

Sign up for Farm Marketing School - my monthly online marketing school membership just for farmers. Farm Marketing School is an on-demand library of marketing workshops and project plans that will help you build some of the most important marketing elements in your farm business like: building a promotion calendar, auditing your sales funnel, updating your home page of your website, building your first email nurture sequence, and practicing different types of offers. And new content is being added every month. You get to chose what you want to study each month. I've taken the recordings of just the teaching sessions of each project inside of my high-end coaching program (Accelerator) and made them available to everyone. These projects are designed to be completed in under 30 days, so that you slowly build your marketing system piece by piece. Use the step by step project planner and resource folder to help you jumpstart your work.Take advantage of my new marketing crash course inside, watch my new Email Marketing Course, or take the onboarding assessment tool to help you identify where your funnel is broken and what project to do first. To see what courses are currently inside of FMS, or to try out Farm Marketing School for a month at mydigitalfarmer.com/fms Cancel your membership anytime.

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