Are You Feeding Your Berry Business Junk Food Marketing?
Find Out by Answering These Five Questions.

1. Does your marketing
a. follow a written plan,
b. or do you fly by the seat of your pants?

2. Is that plan
a. tailored to fit your business,
b. or are you using marketing that you heard worked for some other person’s business?

3. Do you have
a. goals for your marketing,
b. or is the outcome of your marketing a mystery, especially to you?

4. Is your marketing
a. directed to a target,
b. or do you scatter your efforts, hoping to hit something?

5. How often do you review your marketing plan?
a. monthly
b. quarterly
c. review, what’s that?

On questions 1-4, give yourself five points for every a answer and one point for every b answer. On question 5, give yourself five points for a, three points for b, and zero points for c. If you scored 25 points, congratulations, you have healthy marketing. If you scored 10 to 20 points, you’ve given your marketing some feeding, but it could have more energy with better nutrition. If you scored 10 points or below, your marketing needs an immediate I. V.!

Marketing Secrets for a Profitable Berry Business
The first of a series of four articles about marketing.
By Elizabeth K. Fisher (*)

How do you market your berry business? Take the quiz on this page. Do it before you read further.

Well, how did you do? Is your marketing healthy? Or does it need an I. V.? Do you have a well-thought out, written marketing plan for your business?

Left to Chance
No other part of a berry business is so left to chance as marketing. If you are growing berries, you plan how much production you want, how many plants you must grow to achieve that production, and what nutrients and care are required. You set up a timetable of what you will do by what time to assure that you reach the production you want. You know when the harvest will be ready and how you are going to get the harvest to market. You plan your planting, your growing, and your production. Yet marketing plans are seldom created and rarely written down.

Why? Because, though many berry growers sense the need for one, they don’t understand the process or its benefits. So, they run a couple of ads in the newspaper and call that marketing. Or, they take advantage of a special promotion by a radio station and call that marketing. Or, they put up a billboard announcing that “It’s Berry Picking Time” and call that marketing. Some say that they don’t need marketing; their marketing is word-of-mouth. Others do nothing; they’re not doing marketing because it’s a waste of money. While all of these, with the exception of the last one, may be useful in marketing your berry business, you’ll never know for sure unless you have a written marketing plan that you review regularly.

“OK,” you say, “I don’t have a marketing plan, and I don’t understand marketing. Where do I start?”

Understand Marketing
It’s important to start with the basics, the fundamentals. I boil marketing down to one word: com-munication. Marketing is any communication between you and your customer or potential cus-tomer about your business. This communication can come in many forms: how your berry plants look to customers, how you and your employees dress, how your telephone is answered, how you handle a customer complaint, and even how your company truck is painted. Most business people equate marketing with advertising. While advertising is a part of marketing, the two are not the same.

When you create a marketing plan, you need to address four areas:

1. Your target market,
2. Your objectives,
3. Your competition
4. Your budget

Creating a marketing plan requires thought.
It demands your unique input. Although you may seek advice from marketing experts on how to best market your berry business, information about who your customer is and what you want to achieve can only come from you. These are key elements of your marketing plan.

Let’s begin by defining your market.
Who is your customer? Whom do you want as your customer? Some berry growers might re-spond, “everyone.” But is everyone really a potential customer? No business can be all things to all people. It doesn’t work. While you may want the world to eat your berries, in truth only a hand-ful of people will. That’s OK. You don’t have the time or energy to grow berries for the entire world anyway.

So who is your customer?
What characteristics do your current customers share? Are they from a certain geographical area? From a particular city or county? To what age group do they belong? Are they male, female, or a mixture of both? Do they make similar incomes? Have you noticed that they have similar inter-ests? Are they city folks who love the quiet and fresh air of the countryside? Are they health or fitness oriented? Is the issue of locally or sustainably grown food part of their buying motivation. Think about your current customers. Talk about them with your partner and your employees. Write down a concise description of your customers and the kind of customers that you want. Your answers will form a “profile” of the kind of customers that are likely to be drawn to your place and products. This is your first step in developing a marketing plan.”

Reprinted with permission of the Northland Berry News. Originally published in the February 2004 issue of Northland Berry News. www.BerryNews.com.

(*) Elizabeth K. Fischer, author of Mistakes I Made My First Five Years in Business (and How You Can Avoid Them), offers an E-session, “No Junk Food Marketing,” in which she personally helps you create your marketing plan, all the while helping you learn marketing. Find out more by clicking here or call 888-895-7166.