Your own marketing sweet spot happens at the intersection of your capabilities and the needs, wants, and desires of your customers – and where that intersection doesn’t intersect is with what your competition provides.
Your capabilities are those things that you are able to do, and include products and services with different definitions of quality at different value points. For example, your capabilities might include producing inexpensive tomatoes and delivering them fresh to your customer’s doorstep; or, it might be producing the most beautiful, high-priced tomatoes in sufficient quantity to effectively distribute them through a wholesale distributor or food hub.
The needs, wants, and desires of your customers include everything from “I’m hungry” to a desire to feel like they are part of a community. In many marketplaces, customers exist on multiple levels: you might be selling to a grocery store, where you need to meet the needs of the produce buyer; but you also need to meet the needs of her customer, the one actually picking your produce up off the shelf.
Customers at the grocery store, for example, wanted our skinless, seedless cucumbers – the ones that you grow in the greenhouse and can charge a million dollars for. But the produce buyer at the store needed cucumbers that could last on the shelf for a long time. Since those skinless cucumbers wilt if you look at them funny, that meant that we needed to wrap them in shrink wrap to be able to sell them in the wholesale marketplace.
My mom, for example, wants salad mix in containers (she justifiably feels that bulk salad greens are subject to sneezes and other undesirable occurrences). The produce buyer at her store needs consistent deliveries of salad greens in well-labeled boxes with clear invoicing. Be certain that you are providing what the end consumer wants, as well as what the middleman needs.
Your competition includes those people and companies providing similar products and services in your marketplace. Your job is to provide goods and services that differ from theirs, in quality, price, and other expressions of value. If somebody’s already providing radicchio to stores in your area, why go there – unless your radicchio has some distinguishing qualities. Can you deliver more often? Is yours certified organic while theirs isn’t? Does yours have a significantly longer shelf-life? Can you grow and sell it at rock-bottom prices? (Please don’t do that last one.)
Competition happens at all different levels. The radicchio you sell to stores in your area is in competition with the radicchio from other local growers, as well as the radicchio being sold from national distributors.
Of course, your customer has to value your differentiation from the competition for it to do you any good. When I started Rock Spring Farm, we made bunched parsley available to the local food co-op. But the local food co-op was perfectly happy to buy parsley in bulk from another local grower and put the twist ties on themselves. While it seemed crazy to me, my capabilities (providing bunched parsley) didn’t match up with the needs, wants, and desires of my customer – the fact that I was doing something that my competition wouldn’t simply didn’t matter in this case.
The needs, wants, and desires of your customers include everything from “I’m hungry” to a desire to feel like they are part of a community. In many marketplaces, customers exist on multiple levels: you might be selling to a grocery store, where you need to meet the needs of the produce buyer; but you also need to meet the needs of her customer, the one actually picking your produce up off the shelf.
Customers at the grocery store, for example, wanted our skinless, seedless cucumbers – the ones that you grow in the greenhouse and can charge a million dollars for. But the produce buyer at the store needed cucumbers that could last on the shelf for a long time. Since those skinless cucumbers wilt if you look at them funny, that meant that we needed to wrap them in shrink wrap to be able to sell them in the wholesale marketplace.
My mom, for example, wants salad mix in containers (she justifiably feels that bulk salad greens are subject to sneezes and other undesirable occurrences). The produce buyer at her store needs consistent deliveries of salad greens in well-labeled boxes with clear invoicing. Be certain that you are providing what the end consumer wants, as well as what the middleman needs.
Your competition includes those people and companies providing similar products and services in your marketplace. Your job is to provide goods and services that differ from theirs, in quality, price, and other expressions of value. If somebody’s already providing radicchio to stores in your area, why go there – unless your radicchio has some distinguishing qualities. Can you deliver more often? Is yours certified organic while theirs isn’t? Does yours have a significantly longer shelf-life? Can you grow and sell it at rock-bottom prices? (Please don’t do that last one.)
Competition happens at all different levels. The radicchio you sell to stores in your area is in competition with the radicchio from other local growers, as well as the radicchio being sold from national distributors.
Of course, your customer has to value your differentiation from the competition for it to do you any good. When I started Rock Spring Farm, we made bunched parsley available to the local food co-op. But the local food co-op was perfectly happy to buy parsley in bulk from another local grower and put the twist ties on themselves. While it seemed crazy to me, my capabilities (providing bunched parsley) didn’t match up with the needs, wants, and desires of my customer – the fact that I was doing something that my competition wouldn’t simply didn’t matter in this case.
Word of Thanks
Yes, this newsletter is coming out on Thanksgiving (at least here in the states!), but it’s also kind of a cool day from a measurements standpoint.
Sometime this morning, the Farmer to Farmer Podcast will go past 100,000 downloads. And last week, this newsletter shot past 800 subscribers - most of whom actually open and read it every week!
It’s pretty easy, talking into my microphone and typing away at my keyboard, to feel sort of isolated. It’s hard to know if anybody’s listening - and that means it’s hard to know if this is making a difference.
Thank you. Thank you for being there. Thank you for sharing the newsletter and the podcast, and thank you for letting me know that it matters. Most of all, thank you for doing what you do every day: getting up and moving your farm, or your boss’s farm, or your farming dream, forward. A little bit better every day.
Keep up the good work. Be safe. And keep the tractor running.
Sometime this morning, the Farmer to Farmer Podcast will go past 100,000 downloads. And last week, this newsletter shot past 800 subscribers - most of whom actually open and read it every week!
It’s pretty easy, talking into my microphone and typing away at my keyboard, to feel sort of isolated. It’s hard to know if anybody’s listening - and that means it’s hard to know if this is making a difference.
Thank you. Thank you for being there. Thank you for sharing the newsletter and the podcast, and thank you for letting me know that it matters. Most of all, thank you for doing what you do every day: getting up and moving your farm, or your boss’s farm, or your farming dream, forward. A little bit better every day.
Keep up the good work. Be safe. And keep the tractor running.