Marketing Campaign for Farmers Market with Soacial Media

Two weeks ago, I started reading "Facebook Marketing: Design Your Next Marketing Campaign," a new book by Justin R. Levy (2010). Justin Levy is the Director of Business Development, Marketing, and Client Relations of New Marketing Labs, a new media marketing agency. He wrote this book to help businesses navigate the unknown sea of new media marketing including how to use social media tools, blogs, community platforms and audio tools to achieve added value.

Facebook has become popular with not only individuals, but an increasing number of companies as well. The reason is simple. This unique took provides a suite of features that allow companies to develop communities, humanize their brands, engage with their prospects and customers, and many other benefits.

More than simply teaching the techniques to use the tool, the book digs into concepts of establishing a corporate presence, extending communication into the interwebs, Facebook advertising, privacy concerns and common good of the community. The book has brought social media from a personal level to a wider scope. It embraces the trend of businesses' approach to use social network.

Social media is the collective term for online engagement tools such as social networks, blogging and microblogging. These tools enable people to easily share information and network with like-minded others on the Internet.

To me, I think it is interesting to see the potential of local farmers markets to apply social media to reach their core audience segments and communicates meaningful messages to them. In March 2010, the Missouri Value Added Center at the University of Missouri conducted an online survey of Missouri farmers market organizers to discover how they perceive and use social media. The response from 40 survey participants indicated that when selecting marketing tools, farmers market organizers should consider the potential of social media for reaching current and potential customers and building relationships with new and existing vendors. The new strategy requires market organizers to make necessary changes in their marketing activities and can better craft marketing plans and messages to achieve their marketing goals.

This was an significant move in the media market because farmers are a group who have less active access to the Internet on average. I ever talked with several vendors in the Columbia Farmers Market. Usually they would get online only once every three days because they spent most time in the field. The social media marketing approach would offer a good start for these people to be more involved in the information society.

According to the survey,about half of the Missouri farmers market organizers surveyed said website development would be a promotional tool they would like to learn more about for use in expanding their markets. The social media tools they most want to learn more about are Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and blogs. They were least interested in learning more about MySpace, Ning, Meetup, Flickr and Wikipedia. Only 22% of respondents were not interested in learning about using any social media as promotional tools. Among all the purposed to be achieved, generating awareness was a goal of 87% of the respondents and distributing market news and building relationships with customers were goals for about 3/4 of the respondents.

One advantange of social media is that in general it can help learn about consumer needs and preferences, provides specifics on product information and details for using certain stuff via a more personal channel than traditional ways. It enhances the establishment of a friendly relationship between the suppliers and the shoppers, as well as enable local people to enjoy a strong sense of community.