One of the missions that Good Food brands strive for is sustainability. But in order to foster sustainability, especially in the field of agriculture—the genesis of the Good Food movement, we need to support the ones who cultivate it: our farmers. While farmers are undoubtedly great at growing fresh and healthy produce, finding sustainable ways for their products to reach the tables of their target market isn’t always an innate skill.
This is where Myrna Greenfield comes into play as the “good egg” who helps farms and farmers in need. As the “top egg” of Good Egg Marketing, a company she hatched in 2010 that offers professional advice to small food-related businesses and other non-profit organizations. Over the years, Myrna has worked with several farmers, and she discovered one common problem: planning their marketing strategy can be daunting for farmers.
In this episode, Myrna shares some practical marketing solutions that farmers and other small businesses can use to build loyal customers and increase revenue.
Virginia Foodie Essentials:
Key Points From This Episode:
Other Resources Mentioned:
More About the Guest:
Marketing Your Farm author, Myrna Greenfield, is the “Top Egg” at Good Egg Marketing, a Massachusetts-based business that offers sales and marketing strategies, branding, and digital services for farms and food companies, small businesses, and non-profits. Greenfield hatched Good Egg in 2010 to promote good food and good causes. She’s taught workshops and provided services to more than one thousand farmers.
Connect with Myrna Greenfield/Good Egg Marketing:
Follow The Virginia Foodie here:
One of the missions that Good Food brands strive for is sustainability. But in order to foster sustainability, especially in the field of agriculture—the genesis of the Good Food movement, we need to support the ones who cultivate it: our farmers. While farmers are undoubtedly great at growing fresh and healthy produce, finding sustainable ways for their products to reach the tables of their target market isn’t always an innate skill.
This is where Myrna Greenfield comes into play as the “good egg” who helps farms and farmers in need. As the “top egg” of Good Egg Marketing, a company she hatched in 2010 that offers professional advice to small food-related businesses and other non-profit organizations. Over the years, Myrna has worked with several farmers, and she discovered one common problem: planning their marketing strategy can be daunting for farmers.
In this episode, Myrna shares some practical marketing solutions that farmers and other small businesses can use to build loyal customers and increase revenue.
Virginia Foodie Essentials:
Key Points From This Episode:
Other Resources Mentioned:
More About the Guest:
Marketing Your Farm author, Myrna Greenfield, is the “Top Egg” at Good Egg Marketing, a Massachusetts-based business that offers sales and marketing strategies, branding, and digital services for farms and food companies, small businesses, and non-profits. Greenfield hatched Good Egg in 2010 to promote good food and good causes. She’s taught workshops and provided services to more than one thousand farmers.
Connect with Myrna Greenfield/Good Egg Marketing:
Follow The Virginia Foodie here:
Note: We use AI transcription so there may be some inaccuracies
[00:00:00] Myrna Greenfield: Have a miserable goal. Understand who you're trying to be, who your target market is. Pick at least one tactic and then decide in advance how you're gonna know if it's working, how you're gonna measure it.
[00:00:14] Georgiana Dearing: Welcome to the Virginia Foodie Podcast where we lift the lid on the Kraft food industry and tell the stories behind the good food, good people, and good brands that you know and love. If you've ever come across a yummy food brand and wondered how did they do that? How did they turn that recipe into a successful business?
[00:00:34] Georgiana Dearing: Then we've got some stories for you.
[00:00:40] Georgiana Dearing: Hello and welcome to the podcast, foodie Friends. If this is your first episode, then thank you. I'm George Steering and I provide marketing strategy and coaching for good food. Good food brands are companies that are not only making and selling delicious packaged foods, but they're also paying attention to how their business can have a positive impact on the planet.
[00:01:01] Georgiana Dearing: That means they spend extra energy finding and sourcing nutritious ingredients that come from sustainable resources. And because of that direct line from the shelf to the farm, I am asked a lot about marketing for small farms, and I can tell you more than you thought you wanted to know about marketing packaged food.
[00:01:22] Georgiana Dearing: But I don't consider myself an expert in marketing for farms, and that's why I'm excited to bring you today's guest. Myrna Greenfield. Myrna owns Good Ag Marketing, a Massachusetts based agency, and with a few decades in the good food industry under her belt. Myrna wrote the book on farm marketing, literally her book Marketing Your Farm provides a detailed look at marketing, small, medium, and large size farms.
[00:01:49] Georgiana Dearing: And in today's chat we cover her book and she shares insights to the good food industry, along with practical tips for getting some simple marketing projects underway. Take a listen. I think you'll find something interesting that you can start right now.
[00:02:13] Georgiana Dearing: Hello, Myrna. Thank you for joining me today. I know that we've had some weird scheduling things. We're still having winter and weather and wellness, that it's coming back and forth, so I'm really glad that we were finally able to connect and that you're here with me today. So could you take a moment and just introduce yourself to our audience?
[00:02:36] Myrna Greenfield: George, it's so great to connect with you. It's been a while. I'm glad we're both reasonably healthy again. So my name is Merna Greenfield. I live in Boston, Massachusetts, and I am a marketing consultant for small farms and food related brands. And I'm also the author of a book titled Marketing Your Farm.
[00:02:55] Myrna Greenfield: So
[00:02:55] Georgiana Dearing: could you give our listeners the name of your company before we dive into your book? I'm here to talk to you about your book, but I would love to get a little more back.
[00:03:05] Myrna Greenfield: Sure. My business is called Good Egg Marketing. I love that. I am the, I am the top egg and I hatched the business in 2010, and with a focus on good food and good causes because I'm a foodie, just like you.
[00:03:20] Myrna Greenfield: And to me, I've done food related things in a lot of different ways throughout my life, but this was the opportunity to combine what I know about marketing with my love for farms and food related stuff. Well, I love
[00:03:33] Georgiana Dearing: a good egg pun so good for you. That was great. Thanks. Well, who are your best over the years?
[00:03:40] Georgiana Dearing: Like who has been your best customer? Give me an example of the people that you've been working.
[00:03:46] Myrna Greenfield: Sure. Well, I have a particular love for farmers and it's crazy because I grew up in the suburbs and had nothing to do with farms and hadn't tasted an avocado until I was in high school. But it was an opportunity for me to, the more that I spend time on farms more, I appreciate what farmers do, and I've developed a lot of expertise on what's effective marketing for farmers.
[00:04:09] Myrna Greenfield: So I do spend a lot of, I'd say at least half of my clients are. Do you
[00:04:14] Georgiana Dearing: have any success stories? Like what's your favorite thing that you've seen happen for a farm?
[00:04:19] Myrna Greenfield: Sure. Well, even on a very simple level, I work with a farm in Western Massachusetts called JusTme Tree Farm, and they do maple syrup farming, and they do a wonderful job.
[00:04:29] Myrna Greenfield: They have wonderful quality of maple syrup. And they were selling at farmer's markets. They were selling online and they'd been in business selling for quite a while. And when I started working with them, I looked at their labels and they just looked like they came from different companies. They just didn't go together.
[00:04:47] Myrna Greenfield: Oh yeah. And so the simplest possible advice you could give, but create a consistent look for your labels. And it's one of the examples I use in my book. I have a before and after picture. They didn't need help in knew who they wanted to go for design, they're. Low budget enterprise, but it did the trick.
[00:05:04] Myrna Greenfield: So that's an example of how even simple marketing can really help farm increase their sales.
[00:05:11] Georgiana Dearing: Oh, that's a really good example. I love a good packaging story too, so. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. How did you end up deciding to write a book about farm marketing?
[00:05:21] Myrna Greenfield: Well, initially the book was going to be for small farmers, aircraft, food brands, because I do work with both, and I realized that it was hard to be authentic.
[00:05:32] Myrna Greenfield: Talking to both, even though there's so much overlap between a lot of craft food brands and farms in terms of what their marketing tactics are, who their target markets are. I just felt like I was most authentic when I was speaking directly to farmers. And so I had been working on marketing plans and doing other marketing for farmers since 2010, and I found that every time I was writing a marketing plan, I.
[00:06:00] Myrna Greenfield: Painstakingly writing out the basics about what is a website and how to think about the website and search engine optimization. I was just kind of printing it out over and over again, and I thought, wouldn't it be great if I had a book that encapsulated all the things that I share with my clients, and I could just send them the chapter, add it to the appendix if I was doing a marketing plan.
[00:06:24] Myrna Greenfield: That's really why I decided to.
[00:06:26] Georgiana Dearing: I like that. I like that. I will send a client a blog post and say like, I talked about this over here. Exactly. Yeah. Oh, what a great idea. To just say, we're gonna talk about this, and here's a little reference for you. I like that. Put a
[00:06:42] Myrna Greenfield: lot of effort into putting images in and putting in graphics.
[00:06:46] Myrna Greenfield: I work with a fabulous graphic designer and because I wanted to make it as simple as possible, some people are visual learners, some people are more words people, and so I wanted to try to convey it as clearly as I could. Well,
[00:07:01] Georgiana Dearing: I have to say that like I had you on, because I'm asked all the time about farm marketing and you talked about the overlap between good food brands and farm marketing, and I thought there is overlap, but there are things that you suggest in there that I just wouldn't have thought about as a first step.
[00:07:20] Georgiana Dearing: For smaller brands, and it's, some of it is just like old school marketing. Right,
[00:07:27] Myrna Greenfield: right, exactly. There is a lot of old school marketing in there, as well as some of the latest digital marketing tactics because I think a lot of people just get dazzled by social media and they just kind of think, oh, all I have to do is post.
[00:07:41] Myrna Greenfield: Three times a day on Instagram and people are gonna find me and my sales will go through the roof, and we know that that's a rare brand that hits it that way on TikTok or Instagram and a lot of the old school stuff. From having the right signage to having even print can still be very effective. Direct mail can still be very effective, especially if you use measurement techniques.
[00:08:06] Myrna Greenfield: So I felt like I wanted to give everybody the soup of marketing because so many. People who go into business, they go into business because they love whatever food product they're producing. Or they love farming. Yes. They don't love marketing. They don't know business, and I feel like they're missing some really important tools for their success.
[00:08:27] Myrna Greenfield: So I feel like having a place that could either be read from start to finish or else be a reference to look up one specific thing. Oh, what did you say about websites? I'll just go to the section about.
[00:08:40] Georgiana Dearing: Yeah. Yeah, that is a great toll. You're kind of inspiring me like. I've had this book idea on a back burner and I thought, oh, so here's a reason to have it.
[00:08:50] Georgiana Dearing: I love efficiency, so get it in one place. Right.
[00:08:54] Myrna Greenfield: That's great. Right. That's funny cuz I've started advising people about self-publishing, which you never do to make money, but, but certainly helps in terms of promoting your business and the fact that you have all these blog. As well as all the wisdom you've collected from all these podcasts.
[00:09:09] Myrna Greenfield: You've got the material there, so it's, you can just use chat. It's some kind of AI to string it together for you.
[00:09:17] Georgiana Dearing: Yeah. Thank you for being my cheerleader, but I, I'm gonna turn this back to your book because one of the things I loved about it is that you've broken it into no plan due in measure, and I thought, wow, those are such helpful concept.
[00:09:30] Georgiana Dearing: For people who are new to marketing, but I also thought it was really interesting that you literally have three ways to get started. Like for whatever size farm you are, you say, do this. And I was like, oh, that, that makes this book really invaluable.
[00:09:48] Myrna Greenfield: Thank you. Yeah. I really have felt like the idea that just because you're a farm, that you need the same marketing tactics that another farm needs is crazy.
[00:09:59] Myrna Greenfield: It doesn't work that way in other types of businesses. It doesn't work that way for the micro brands versus the giant C P G companies. So, you know, I just felt like it was helpful to give people tips so that they could think about where to focus and not feel bad. Mm-hmm. That they're not trying to do everything at.
[00:10:18] Myrna Greenfield: Do
[00:10:19] Georgiana Dearing: you ever get resistance to doing some of the things that you suggest?
[00:10:26] Myrna Greenfield: I laugh. Oh my God, do I get resistance? Especially marketing planning people. Virtually no one likes to do a marketing plan. I just did a webinar for a group food related brands last week, and I did a questionnaire in advance to ask how many of them had a marketing.
[00:10:44] Myrna Greenfield: And about a quarter didn't have a marketing plan, and then about two thirds of them said, well, I have an informal marketing plan. So basically I came up with this idea called speed marketing plan because, oh, I wanted people to get used to the idea that you don't have to spend. Hours and hours or a lot of money that the key elements that I find most important in planning are have a measurable goal.
[00:11:11] Myrna Greenfield: Understand who you're trying to meet, who your target market is. Yeah. Pick at least one tactic and then decide in advance how you're gonna know if it's working, how you're gonna measure it. Yes. And so yes, as you get bigger, you do need to have a full marketing plan that maps everything out, but it would be so helpful for almost any business to just try out one tactic at a time so they can see is this something that makes sense to do or not?
[00:11:38] Myrna Greenfield: Yeah. Does this
[00:11:39] Georgiana Dearing: work for me? Yeah, I have something similar. It's a quick start guide just to say, do this. Mm-hmm. And in my monthly coaching I just say, okay, it's this month next. You need to do this right now. Just do this. That's very smart doing.
[00:11:55] Myrna Greenfield: That's very smart. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's great. People do love to get told what to do.
[00:12:00] Myrna Greenfield: Just start. Not that they don't resist, but you know, if they're gonna do anything, they love to know. Have somebody who knows more than them say.
[00:12:09] Georgiana Dearing: I find it's really funny. I find a lot of clients who will tell me I can't, or I don't, or My business is special. I can't do it this way, except that they're actually implementing a piece of what they should be doing.
[00:12:23] Georgiana Dearing: Right? I can't plan my time except I can only talk to you between eight and 10 on Thursdays, because that's my time of week where I can accept appointments, and I'm like, okay, well, you are planning your time. Right. You're planning to limit your interruptions to Thursday mornings. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Just little things.
[00:12:43] Georgiana Dearing: Mm-hmm. I just, mm-hmm. Think it's really, really funny. I'm not talking smack about clients as much as with emerging brands, it, there are some things where you have to guide them into it, into marketing, so it's good to hear that it's happening to you.
[00:13:00] Myrna Greenfield: Yes. Yes, that's definitely true. You really do. For some people the sticking point is finance, and you know, I do some business planning with people, but what I really love is marketing, and that's what I focus on primarily, but mm-hmm.
[00:13:14] Myrna Greenfield: Sometimes I do get into the financial side of things because. If they don't know what their break even point is, oh, they could be digging themselves into such a horrible hole. Mm-hmm. And so it's interesting because for some people, marketing is a thing that scares them more than anything. And others, it's the financial side and other things, I'm sure.
[00:13:33] Myrna Greenfield: Mm-hmm. But we all have our areas that we tend to avoid. I don't claim to be any different. That's why coaches, I think, really help people because they get people past those tough points, tough spots, get over the hurdles so that they can keep moving. Well, you
[00:13:50] Georgiana Dearing: mentioned measuring your actions. What are realistic targets for, say, a farm that's new to marketing themselves?
[00:13:59] Georgiana Dearing: Yeah, I was thinking of their speed marketing example and you said attract 25 more customers to a seedling sale. Like how did you come up with those measures? It
[00:14:09] Myrna Greenfield: obviously depends on your scale. So in that case it would be a small farm. I would call them a micro farm, but whatever number it is, it should be based on maybe 10% or at most 25% more than the previous year.
[00:14:22] Myrna Greenfield: And it could be based on how much you sold the previous year. Mm-hmm. The number, the quantity of. Or the number of individual transactions that you did, any of those could be a good benchmark. And then you just decide you're gonna do at least one new thing that you didn't do the previous year to try to reach mm-hmm.
[00:14:42] Myrna Greenfield: More folks. And so for some people it might be printing up some postcards. And you're gonna send it, not to mail, but to hand out. And you know, it could be, there's a local business that you're friendly with. It could be like the local ice cream store where everybody likes to hang out and you'd drop off the bats of those postcards there.
[00:15:01] Myrna Greenfield: What I would suggest people do possible is maybe the postcard says, bring in this postcard, and if you buy four seedlings, you get the fifth one free. Oh yeah. So you know, it's basically a coupon. Mm-hmm. And then you can tell. It was effective to have the postcard. Mm-hmm. In addition to, obviously if you, your sales increased over last year.
[00:15:21] Myrna Greenfield: Mm-hmm. Your sales may increase over last year, but you won't necessarily know why. Right. It would be, the weather was better, but if you have something tangible like the postcard, but there are other things you can do. For example, I was so skeptical about QR codes up until Covid. And then suddenly we were all using QR codes and people understood what they were.
[00:15:43] Myrna Greenfield: You could print up five different patches of postcards. With a different QR code on each one. If your goal is to get people to go to your website and then you can measure how many people used each of the QR codes, and you can say, oh, yeah, well that particular place I dropped the postcards off had a much better response than the other place I brought it to.
[00:16:04] Myrna Greenfield: Oh, so yeah. There are lots of simple things that you can do that enable you to do a little bit of measurement to say, if postcards are a bomb, then you say, I'm not doing postcards. Next year if they work for you, then next year you can do postcards and then add another new element. Mm-hmm. And test that element.
[00:16:21] Myrna Greenfield: So you can't always test one thing at a time, but in a lot of cases,
[00:16:25] Georgiana Dearing: you. No, and that's pretty interesting because postcards now printing a postcard is very inexpensive. Yeah. And there are sites that will handle variable data. So you can have your designers set the art up and then just make five pages.
[00:16:41] Georgiana Dearing: With a different code on each page. Exactly. Send it, and that's a great idea. I've been talking about sort of direct mail pieces lately, but honestly, it's a postcard that's not being mailed. It's postcard sized is what you're
[00:16:54] talking
[00:16:55] Myrna Greenfield: about. Right? Right. Yeah. I mean, postcards are just, as you say, I mean, it's so much cheaper to do a color postcard than it was a while back.
[00:17:02] Myrna Greenfield: The process had gotten so inexpensive and because, as you say, you could get the printer to. Do different versions for no extra cost or virtually no extra cost. So there's other things like rack cards. I also am a big fan of, or sometimes if you demo at a lot of stores, it's good to have something that people can take away with them, but an awful lot of people don't want it take any paper.
[00:17:26] Myrna Greenfield: Mm-hmm. And so you can have a little stand, like an eight and a half by 11 flyer and a plastic stand with a qr. Right on your demo table. Oh, sure. So people can demo, can scan it and go to your website if that's what you want them to do. Mm-hmm. If you're doing a particular promo, you can send them to a particular landing page on your website.
[00:17:47] Myrna Greenfield: We have so many great tools now that we can use that people didn't have before. Have to be intentional.
[00:17:55] Georgiana Dearing: I think this is great information and you're sparking all kinds of things that could apply not just for farms, but for packaged foods, any really small business. This is really cool. I'm so glad I had you on.
[00:18:09] Georgiana Dearing: I feel like I'm getting smarter today. Yeah. Thank you. Well, you've written the book. What's next for you? Are you gonna be speaking or traveling? What's the next thing for you and good ag market? Thanks
[00:18:24] Myrna Greenfield: for asking. I really love doing talks on different topics, whether it's branding or creating a marketing strategies.
[00:18:31] Myrna Greenfield: So I did a lot before I wrote the book, but I am getting more offers now, which is great, and also doing webinars. So I'm just hoping to get some more speaking engagements and more one-on-one consulting as well. I wanna also, Write some more articles based on the content of the book, because not everybody's gonna read the book, but I've got all this content now and all these ideas to share, so, mm-hmm.
[00:18:58] Myrna Greenfield: It's just a question of carving out a little bit of time and figuring out how to take that piece and make it a standalone. Mm-hmm.
[00:19:06] Georgiana Dearing: So you are in Massachusetts, but how far is your reach for clients? We're all remote now. How far out do you extend for your client? I would
[00:19:17] Myrna Greenfield: say the majority are definitely New England, but I have had some national clients.
[00:19:21] Myrna Greenfield: I work with a lot of food related nonprofits and many of those are nationals. It's really kind of fun because I have worked at nonprofits in my past life, so I understand. What the separate challenges are for branding. Mm-hmm. Or mm-hmm. Communication strategies for nonprofits. And it's surprising how many food related nonprofits there are.
[00:19:41] Myrna Greenfield: But to get back to your question, I do do some national work with clients and certainly up and down the East Coast. A few years ago, before Covid, I was a speaker at the Pennsylvania Sustainable Ad Conference and so on. Mm-hmm. Definitely if it's the right offer, I'm happy to go. But to be honest, most of the work I do, even with people who are only five miles away, oh my tends to be remote.
[00:20:05] Myrna Greenfield: I love meeting with people in person, but even before Covid, I did an awful lot with people over Zoom and phone calls and
[00:20:13] Georgiana Dearing: emails. You know what? As you say that, I have a client meeting coming up this week and I asked for it to be in person just so I could leave my home. It's funny. It's like I need
[00:20:23] Myrna Greenfield: to, I know it's, it's kinda like a pleasure.
[00:20:25] Myrna Greenfield: Oh wow. I get to wear professional clothes and shoes and see what someone is in person. Well,
[00:20:33] Georgiana Dearing: before we close out here, I wanna switch topics just a little bit. Are you comfortable sharing the names of some of the nonprofits that you've worked with? I'm curious. Sure.
[00:20:43] Myrna Greenfield: For example, one of the first ones I worked with was the National Farm to School Network.
[00:20:47] Myrna Greenfield: I was already doing some part-time consulting with the Massachusetts Farm to School Network, and it was really exciting to be able to work with them on a national basis to think about. Communicating what they do for their different audiences. A lot of farms are nonprofits, so I've worked with some nonprofit farms.
[00:21:05] Myrna Greenfield: I'm working with a group right now in central Massachusetts that is uhhuh, basically it's called Local Food Works, and they're trying to build up. Aggregating local food, making local food more accessible to people in this northern part of Massachusetts, north central Massachusetts. Yeah, so that's an another opportunity to work with a very collaborative group of people coming from all the different sectors.
[00:21:29] Myrna Greenfield: It's really run the gamut. Wow.
[00:21:31] Georgiana Dearing: I have another follow up question to that, and that's the farm to School network. Was that an Alice Waters project at some point or is that different from
[00:21:39] Myrna Greenfield: her? She has been an incredible influencer with this farm to school and really influencing school food directors. But she's kind of done her own thing.
[00:21:50] Myrna Greenfield: She's the sort of person who would be a great keynote speaker or something. Yeah. At the National Farm to School
[00:21:55] Georgiana Dearing: conference. She has something with schools and I was trying to figure out if that was her ex.
[00:21:59] Myrna Greenfield: Exactly.
[00:21:59] Georgiana Dearing: Yeah. So in the farm to school, is that where you are connecting local farms to be providing fresh.
[00:22:06] Georgiana Dearing: Product into school systems for their cafeteria or is that what that is? Yeah,
[00:22:12] Myrna Greenfield: yeah. It's actually grown so far beyond farm to school. It's extended down to preschool, like to nurseries, and it's been very popular at universities and colleges, but it also, everything from prisons to hospitals to assisted living, communi.
[00:22:30] Myrna Greenfield: Are thinking about if anyone that does bulk purchasing is potentially customer, not just even for farms, but there's an organization in Boston called Commonwealth Kitchen that has been very effective at getting some of the local, what they call anchor institutions. Mm-hmm. Like colleges and universities to staff up on hot sauce from a particular brand that's owned.
[00:22:54] Myrna Greenfield: Say a black-owned business? Yes. Or woman-owned business. So there are a lot of groups all around the country that are doing not just farm to school, but farm to institution work. And one of those things that benefits everybody because it can help farmers and producers, small producers, find a market against the people getting access to local healthy food.
[00:23:18] Myrna Greenfield: Things that. Sometimes very reflective, particular culture and are just kind of fun and unique. And so there's been some really great work happening all over the country with the Farm to institution, farm to school, so I'm very happy to be part of it. Another area I've been working in quite a bit that we didn't even touch on is a agritourism.
[00:23:40] Myrna Greenfield: Mm. And that's where so many opportunities and some of those go into farms that produce a brand consumer packaged good. Mm-hmm. That they bring people to the farm and then they have a market. We have a lot of that selling.
[00:23:55] Georgiana Dearing: Yeah. From our wine industry. And now we have a really strong cider industry across.
[00:24:01] Georgiana Dearing: So a lot of those farms become destinations because of their tasting rooms. Yeah.
[00:24:07] Myrna Greenfield: Yeah. I'm working with a craft brewery trail mm-hmm. In New Jersey, and it's really fun. They're just, just the pilot stage, so there are so many opportunities for them to bring people to local breweries and distilleries and wineries.
[00:24:22] Myrna Greenfield: So, so much is happening, as you know, and I, I just really enjoy being in this sector and getting a chance to work with the small producers and help them figure out ways to tell their story more effect.
[00:24:35] Georgiana Dearing: This is so exciting. You were talking about the farm to institutions and then a agritourism, and I've been talking about this regionally and that farming, you know, people get this romantic idea of a farm, of a thing, like a farm is a thing.
[00:24:51] Georgiana Dearing: There's actually many ways to be a farm.
[00:24:55] Myrna Greenfield: Absolutely. Yeah.
[00:24:56] Georgiana Dearing: Right sizing what you're doing is a part of it. I just interviewed a woman who's on a micro farm and she calls herself salad centric and she grows salad ingredients and then goes to market with pre-made salads. That is so smart, which is a very specific thing.
[00:25:14] Georgiana Dearing: And then she also has a line, it's actually, I got connected with her. It's just got a line of dressings. But that is a way of being a farmer. That is a type of work. But then you've got farms who farm for the restaurant industry or farm directly just to distributors and let them spread their products around.
[00:25:34] Georgiana Dearing: There's so many different businesses within the farm industry and I. Sometimes the general public gets focused on the romance of farming. Yeah, and
[00:25:46] Myrna Greenfield: there's a chapter in the book where I really help people think about all the different aspects of what they do from pricing to product services and experiences that they're offering.
[00:25:56] Myrna Greenfield: So that they kind of open up and think maybe there's some other ways that I can bring in revenue. Mm-hmm. That makes sense for the types of people who are already buying from me. And you buy markets.
[00:26:08] Georgiana Dearing: Yes.
[00:26:08] Myrna Greenfield: Right. It's really super hard to make a living as a farmer just by selling your vegetables, however wonderful your vegetables are.
[00:26:18] Myrna Greenfield: And so, so many farmers are adding value added products. Yes. Or a agritourism or other. And you know, they really need the support in order to stay viable, and that's why I like sharing ideas with them and encouraging.
[00:26:34] Georgiana Dearing: Well, I really have enjoyed this conversation. I feel like I learned more. I think I can answer some more questions.
[00:26:41] Georgiana Dearing: When people ask me about farm marketing, I certainly know the book to send them to. It's a starting point. Before we say goodbye and all that, can you tell people how to find you if they're interested in contacting? Sure.
[00:26:56] Myrna Greenfield: I have a book website called Marketing Your farm.com. That's really easy to remember.
[00:27:01] Myrna Greenfield: Yes. And I have a website for Good Egg Marketing. That's good Egg marketing.com. So they can easily find me in either location. Good Egg Marketing has a Facebook page, it has an Instagram page and a LinkedIn page. So I think if you Google Good Egg Marketing, I'm pretty easy. Fine. You're fine. Right.
[00:27:20] Georgiana Dearing: Well, I really appreciate you spending some time with me.
[00:27:23] Georgiana Dearing: I know we had that back and forth, but I'm so glad to see you and hear you and catch up with you. So thank you for joining me.
[00:27:32] Myrna Greenfield: Thank you so much. I really appreciate the chance to talk to you, and it's been a lot of fun.
[00:27:37] Georgiana Dearing: So I also wanna thank the listeners today for joining us and following along as I learned about farm marketing.
[00:27:44] Georgiana Dearing: And if you enjoyed this episode, please hit that liker share button. It is the easiest thing that you can do to support a small business. And please also subscribe to the Virginia Foodie wherever you stream, and you won't miss another bite of good food marketing. Thanks for listening. And if you wanna learn more about how to grow your own food brand, then click on Grow My brand@vafoodie.com.
[00:28:08] Georgiana Dearing: If you're a lover of local food, then be sure to follow us. We are at. VA foodie on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Join the conversation and tell us about your adventures with good food, good people, and good brands.