Five Ways to Keep Your Ag Business Strong During the Covid-19 Crisis

In this Covid-19 crisis, it is natural to want to hunker down, bury your head in the sand and wait for the storm to pass. Now is one of those times. However, with serious challenges comes the opportunity to rise to the occasion and emerge stronger on the other side.

As the owner of a small Ag business, it is your job to guide your organization through this turbulent time. After all, how you act, and react, in the short term will determine how quickly your small Ag business rebounds when things return to normal.

Many small Ag businesses find their marketing budgets taking a hit. For example, many agricultural trade shows are being canceled, resulting in lost leads. Loss of foot traffic and supply chain issues are other significant issues.

If you are wondering how to keep your small Ag business visible and relevant during this crisis, US Farm Data has some suggestions:

1. 1. Stay classy. Don’t slash prices or offer unreasonable deals to remain busy. This will only serve to cast your brand in a poor light. Instead, focus on keeping sales steady and adopt a business-as-usual attitude.
   2. Focus on the facts. Social media is flooded with toilet paper memes, frightening statistics and fear mongering. Limit the information you share to things that will benefit your target market of farmers and ranchers and that you know to be true.
   3. Do some housecleaning. If your website has not been updated in five or more years, now is the time to get that done. The same goes for landing pages. Tasks like these are often put on the back burner because of time constraints so take advantage of the opportunity.
   4. Adapt to the needs of your customers. Not every business has the ability to quickly adapt its way of doing business but if you can, get creative. Something as simple as free delivery will mean a lot to customers today and they will remember what you did for them long after this crisis has passed. 
   5. Look to the future. Make sure that you have an effective online strategy in place for when things begin to stabilize. Get your marketing emails written and read to go. The more you do now, the smoother the transition will be when things go back to normal.

Unfortunately, many small Ag businesses are going to take some sort of hit to their bottom line but panicking won’t do any good. Instead, concentrate on the fact that we will all get through this rough patch and the economy will come back stronger than ever.

Call us today at 800-960-6267 or visit us online at usfarmdata.com if you need help with your new marketing strategy. If you find this article helpful, please bookmark our blog for helpful advice on marketing to farmers and ranchers.