Guides of Good Practice
Direct Marketing
SUMMARY
This is one of a series of Guides of Good Practice which have been produced to help commoners in dealing with key issues.
- There is a growing trend for direct marketing of lamb to consumers.
This can be exploited by farmers with common land, both in selling meat and breeding animals. Although there are some disadvantages with carcass quality from hill breeds, these can be offset by stressing a brand message based on taste, grazing quality, health and welfare and environmental benefits, on which some customers place a high value.
- Maximising marketing opportunities depends on having a strong desire, being prepared to compromise, and making sure the whole exercise is planned and managed with the customer in mind.
- A marketing plan should be an evolving process, with a product or service being refined as more information is obtained about the marketplace.
- Setting objectives can be very difficult and its importance is often overlooked.
All parties must agree and it is a good idea to write out the objectives. Involving an outside party is sensible. They can ask difficult questions that others may not be able to. Make sure everything that is relevant is discussed in the open.
- Define the product to be offered.
Include the obvious (quantity, supply through the year, quality etc). Define the product attributes that help to distinguish your product from others, and make sure these elements are of value to the target customers e.g. heather reared.
- Gather information about the market place.
This aspect is usually perceived to be the most difficult.But it can be very enjoyable, given a few guiding principles – a bit like being a private investigator! The principles are: start broad and then look more gradually at specifics.
First, look for existing reports that give a picture of overall trends, possibly UK wide, then for the North West and possibly then Cumbria. Places to look are listed in the full Guide, but the best ones are trade associations, MLC, breed societies, libraries, and Cumbria Farm Link, who can put you in touch with others.
Second, there is usually a need to do some specific research as it relates to your own proposal. The principle is to do this in a logical, thorough way, being most careful not to put any bias into the results. Be clear and take time to write out what information is essential to know and concentrate on getting that. Do not complicate matters with getting too many answers to things that would be nice to know. Take time to pre-plan any questions.
Where interviews are made, write down the responses straight away. Some people will tape interviews to make sure nothing is missed, but this is not always practical. The main Guide gives guidelines on the different methods of gathering market information.
- Decide the target market and marketing mix, based on the market research.
This must not be decided in advance. It must follow the research phase and be based on it. There are far too many cases of failures resulting from people making their mind up what they are going to do without finding out about the market place and acting on the information received, even if this means the original ideas have to be scrapped or modified. Outside advice at this stage can be worthwhile.
Decide exactly who the target customers for the product will be, what product you intend to sell, at what price, how it will be promoted and how distributed/where located
- Consider your promotion strategy, including special attention tobranding. Good branding will increase sales considerably.
Brands can be very powerful sales tools. Good examples are Coca Cola, Nike, Evian, Wensleydale Creamery etc. Done successfully they create loyalty by the customer, even when prices may be higher than the competition. Creating a brand is about identifying the tangible and intangible attributes that your product has as advantages over the competition and then promoting these to the target customers (who must value them). Examples of tangible attributes may be the taste is strong and distinctive, or the breed has exceptionally good mothering abilities. Examples of intangible attributes may be: that buying direct from the farmer makes people feel good about their “green” credentials; or that choosing a traditional breed from a well established farmer engenders feelings of food safety. Professional help is often worthwhile.
- Implementation and evaluation have many problems, but these are much easier to deal with if planning has been good.
One of the most difficult elements can be managing production to meet market demand, especially for meat. Options to overcome this include: lambing over a longer period; investing in extra housing; working with groups of farmers in different locations, with different soils and climates;and freezing carcasses. Quality must be carefully controlled and consistent.
Staff management and keeping track of slow payers are two important elements that can easily be overlooked. Constant monitoring is important because markets constantly change. This must include customer satisfaction, just as much as production processes.
- Working in groups has advantages in getting a larger and more varied supply. But it requires substantial additional time and resources to organise. Few marketing schemes yet exist where farmers work together, but farms that share grazing on common land do have a good opportunity to cooperate in marketing.
The main difference from the individual situation is the need to spend more time on making sure communications work well between all group members, that all members have an equal say about group policy decisions, with everything discussed in the open. Establishing an agreed set of rules early on is worthwhile. Formal help in the formation stages is a useful.
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