—story and photos by Matt Milkovich
Building a business brand for your agritourism farm or U-pick orchard has never been easier. Today’s digital landscape contains numerous tools to create names, symbols or other identifiers, and it offers the means to reach more potential customers than ever before.
The Ohio State University speakers discussed branding’s benefits for agritourism farms, as well as its potential pitfalls, at the Ohio Agritourism Conference in Walnut Creek in July. Three of the speakers also run agritourism farms of their own, and they each shared their experiences with brand-building through customer loyalty programs, employee training, social media and more.
Your farm’s brand needs to build an emotional connection with customers, and social media can be a great way to do that, said OSU direct-marketing specialist Christie Welch.
“Share when your tractor breaks down and you can’t do what you need to do,” said Welch, who also runs a U-pick berry farm south of Columbus. “People want to see the real you.”
Welch said roughly a third of your social media posts should be about farm events, another third about what’s for sale (but not presented in a “salesy” way that might be a turn-off), and the final third about industrywide events (crop-killing freezes or droughts, for example).
OSU extension educator Rob Leeds, who also runs Leeds Farm, an agritourism business north of Columbus, said every interaction with customers should reflect your farm’s brand — even if it’s bad news, such as explaining to a disappointed parent that their child isn’t tall enough to ride the zipline. In such cases, employees are trained to politely but firmly explain that it’s a safety issue, and the Leeds Farm brand prioritizes safety above all else, he said.
Employees are an extension of your brand, so empower them to solve problems quickly and independently, he said.
“Going up the chain of command takes time,” Leeds said. “Solve the problem in the first five minutes, and the customer is happy and will come back.”
Increasing customer retention by even 5 percent can greatly increase profits. New customers are hard to attract, but long-term customers have a vested interest in your success, Leeds said.
Hornyak Farms, an agritourism operation and U-pick peach orchard east of Cleveland, rewards returning customers with single free-entry coupons, said OSU agritourism program coordinator Kate Hornyak, who also co-manages her family farm.
One of the audience members, Cindy Zaino, who manages Branstool Orchards northeast of Columbus, shared her own example of a successful branding and customer loyalty program: The VIPPs — Very Important Peach Pickers.
For a fee of $100, Branstool’s VIPPs get the early scoop on ripe U-pick crops, sales and other events. They also get a bag and tea towel with the orchard’s name on it, a six-pack of donuts and a 10 percent discount on up to 10 packs of fruit. Many of their long-term customers were more than happy to become VIPPs, Zaino said.
“Think you can’t charge people just to come and buy produce?” Welch asked the audience. “Oh yes, you can.”
Zaino also gave an example of branding’s potential legal complications. She was in the midst of planning a new pickle-themed event last year, which she initially called the Big Dill Pickle Party, when she received an email from an attorney for a large event company who said that name could easily confuse potential attendees of his client’s pickle-themed events.
Zaino was skeptical that anybody would confuse a tiny event in Utica, Ohio, with larger events in big cities. Her farm also hosts an annual fall event called Applepalooza, named after the Lollapalooza concert festival, and no one had ever raised a copyright complaint. She offered to change the name of the pickle event to Darn Big Dill Pickle Party, but that was still too close for the attorney. The word “party” was apparently the problem, so Zaino finally settled on Darn Big Dill Pickle Fest. The experience was frustrating, but the pickle-themed event is a hit with customers, she said.
One of the pitfalls of branding is potentially running afoul of trademark or copyright laws, said attorney and OSU program director Hannah Scott.
If a business is thinking about using a particular phrase or tagline for an event, it would be helpful to hire an attorney to do a trademark search to find out if the name will encroach on another business’ existing trademark, Scott said.
Creating a logo or other art to reflect a brand also has intellectual property implications. In general, employers own the copyright when a work is created by employees in the scope of their employment, but things get a little “sticky” when the work is created by an independent contractor. If, for example, you hire a third-party graphic designer to create a logo, it’s advisable to create an agreement that details who owns the copyright for the finished product, Scott said.
Social media can present similar dilemmas. Say a customer takes a cute photo of their kids wearing your merchandise at your fall festival, posts it on their social accounts and tags your business. Generally speaking, a customer controls the ability to use their name or image for commercial purposes. If you want to use the photos in future advertising, you might need a release that allows use of the images for commercial purposes, she said. •
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