Direct market channels allow farmers to make more profit by giving them full control over their product’s delivery, quality, and pricing. The consumer also benefits by paying reasonable prices for products that are locally grown, fresher, tastier, and more nutritious than items they may find at the supermarket. These benefits help to make direct marketing a satisfying win-win relationship for both the farmer and the consumer!

Is Direct Marketing Right for You?
To help decide whether or not direct marketing might be a good strategy for you and your operation, begin by asking yourself the following questions (adapted from “Market What You Grow” by Ralph J. Hills Jr.):

If you answer “yes” to four or more of these questions, then direct marketing may be a very good strategy for you, especially if you are a small farmer making less than $250,000 a year from your operation.

For a “people person” who grows a diverse mix of vegetables for fresh consumption, the appeal of direct marketing is quite clear. However, if you don’t enjoy working directly with the public, or even if you grow a crop that people don’t consume directly (such as wheat or grain corn), you may still be able to partake in the benefits of direct marketing by forming marketing cooperatives with other growers in your area.

To further assess your interest, be sure to make a thorough and honest evaluation of your operation, your interests, and your goals. The following steps, adapted from ATTRA’s “Direct Marketing: Business Management Series”, can help you develop a thorough assessment:

1. Determine what kind of business and lifestyle you want. Visualize the ways you want your farming business to grow, and commit your vision to paper. Include a clear description of your ideal lifestyle, and develop realistic one-year, five-year, and ten-year goals to help you achieve your vision. Ask yourself the following questions to guide your planning:

2. Take inventory of your current physical resources. Document all your operation’s resources, with some assessment of their qualities and shortcomings. Include everything you can think of, from machinery and buildings, livestock and water resources, to total acreage of land, soil quality, and location. This information will help you determine the best ways to utilize your current resources, and also help you assess what other resources you may need to achieve your goals.

3. Assess your human resources. Think of the people who will work with you in your operation. Ask yourself the following questions:

4. Evaluate your current financial resources and liabilities, and outline potential future resources. If you haven’t done so already, outline your current financial assets and liabilities on paper. Determine what assets you can use to develop your business, such as savings, investments, or credit. Also brainstorm to develop a list of untapped financial resources to which you may have access, such as grants, low interest loans for rural or small business development, or investment by friends, family, or customers.

When you have clarified your vision, interests, and resources, you can more easily identify the strategies that will most effectively develop your direct marketing plan.

Keys to Direct Marketing Success
Successful direct marketing is based entirely on the quality of the relationship you develop with your customer. Because direct marketing removes all middlemen, such as processors, packagers, and other marketers, from a farm product’s “chain of custody”, good direct marketers are able to focus their energies on meeting the needs of their customers.

Positive, interactive customer relationships are fostered through the following steps:

1. Identify your target customers. Decide what customers you would most like to serve. For example, would you prefer to develop relationships with residents of your community, or with restauranteurs and market owners in the surrounding area? Think creatively and “look outside the box” for possible customers that others may not have found. (For in-depth guidance on market research, check the “Resources” section at the end of this fact sheet.)

2. Assess your customers’ needs. Be curious! Ask questions and learn everything you can about your customers’ lifestyles, ages, incomes, interests, shopping habits, and food preferences. Also visit other direct marketing venues, such as those listed previously, and ask what their customers want. By finding out what your competition offers, you can look for ways to improve their product and services, or identify an unfilled niche.

3. Let your customers’ needs determine what you produce. With the above information, you can choose the types of produce and farm products that best fulfill your customers’ needs and desires. (This approach differs from standard farm marketing “strategies” in which the farmer chooses what he wants to grow and then tries to find a customer for his product.) Toward this end, some successful direct marketers emphasize the following points:

4. Focus on quality. Let one simple rule guide your work: if you wouldn’t buy it, then don’t sell it. When you offer only the best produce and products, your customers will appreciate your efforts and keep coming back. They’ll also be more willing to pay the price you ask without question. Toward this end, be sure to invest time in post-harvest handling because proper washing, cooling, packaging, and storage are essential to present the best product possible.

5. Be a price-setter, not a price-taker. Make a clear, informed decision on how you will set your prices, and then stick to it! Be sure to set a price that’s fair to you and the quality of your product. (For example, take the top supermarket price for an item and add 5% or more. This price is often easy to get if your product is more fresh, beautiful, and delicious than the supermarket’s offerings.)

6. Promote your business and products effectively. Determine what unique attributes put your farm and products a notch above the rest. Then be sure to announce those qualities “loudly” and repeatedly through every promotional venue you can imagine. Think creatively! Look everywhere for promotional opportunities, such as good signage around your operation, fliers and brochures, product placement at another business, or even a web site. (Be careful when advertising in traditional print publications because the return can be disappointingly low for the money spent.)

7. Be prepared for your customers’ needs to change. Your customers’ needs will change over time. Therefore, you will need to be flexible in the development of your market plans. The most successful direct marketers will tell you that their customers are “moving targets”, and that their direct marketing “success” is measured differently every year.

This material is based upon work supported by Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service, US Department of Agriculture, under Agreement No. 00-52101-9707. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of the US Department of Agriculture.