To succeed in agro business, a pragmatic approach to marketing has to be adapted. It is the lack of this and going about activities with no plan that often leads to the failure of agricultural products making it from their production points to the final consumers.
This blog post identifies some of the problems which could affect agricultural outcomes and offers some solutions.
- Strategy:
In agricultural marketing, failure to plan is synonymous to failure to strategize and failure can also be the end result. It is important to plan beyond budgets and financial records.
To plan an efficient strategy, it is important to carry out an in depth research on the market, prices, target audience, and competitor activities. This will help prevent you from marketing goods that nobody wants to buy or goods with low demands.
You know how a good football strategy has substitutes lined up in case a replacement is needed, a good agro marketing strategy will provide fall back plans in case things go wrong. Agricultural activities are dependent on nature and nature is often unpredictable which could cause losses.
An agricultural marketing plan should have the following:
- Executive summary
- Business summary
- Competition
- SWOT analysis
- Core Buyer Persona
- Target Market
- Pricing strategy
- Ongoing marketing efforts
- Budgeting
2. Abandon Obsolete marketing techniques:
The world is changing and everything is changing with it. Transport services, housing services, entertainment services have all adapted changes into their delivery and agricultural marketing must do same to thrive.
The inception of platforms such as social media, transit, amongst others have changed the face of marketing. A larger market can be reached and physical limitations are no longer an issue. However, some farmers still haven’t leveraged on these opportunities and are still hung on inefficient marketing techniques.
It is important to measure marketing activities to determine what should be replicated and what should be abandoned otherwise, repetition of a failed technique could run down business activity. Some of the marketing techniques that can be adapted are:
- Social media marketing
- Websites/Blog posts
- Email marketing
- Attending networking events
- Consultation services
- Pay per click
- Newsletter
These techniques can be adapted after proper research on how to effectively reach target market has been conducted.
3. Food packaging, Food storage, and Food transport are very important:
Agricultural products are as perishable as they come and as a result, storage should not be an afterthought of their production. A lot of food is lost or wasted through the supply chain from initial production to final consumption and some of the underlying causes of this are poor packaging, poor transportation, and poor storage. An estimated ⅓ of the food produced globally goes to waste for factors that can be prevented through proper planning.
Poor packaging and transportation has been identified as one of the major reasons for tomato wastage in Nigeria. Storage and transport should not be an afterthought during agro marketing but should be a priority as their neglect can result in heavy financial losses.
