Marketing Mindset

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Permalink Reply by Sherwood Botsford on May 16, 2009 at 9:47am

I'm a start-up tree farmer, and have two problems:
1. I'm unknown, and in an out of the way location.
2. Most of my trees are still small, so I need to educate people about the advantages of small trees.


My solutions to date:

1. Informative chatty web site. I don't sell from the web, but I used it as an education tool. It works well enough that yesterday a young couple rented a uhaul trailer, and drove 8 hours to stuff their trailer and pickup with trees. This is the highlight of my season so far.

2. Running continuous ads on Kijiji and Craigslist. I run a main ad that I pay $13 per week on kijiji to keep on top. I also try put a couple of ads per week pushing a particular tree. E.g. I had an extra 30 white spruce that I lifted and bagged then the order got canceled. Ran ads for spruce at $8 per foot. Sold that 30, lifted another 20, and sold them, now I have to go out and get another load. The Kijiji ad generates about 5 email messages per week, and about 10 phone calls per week.

Between the two of these, I have already sold more this year than last year, and it's still Bud Week. (Only about half the trees have broken bud.)

3. I spend a couple hours a month trying to find new listing services where I can get locally listed for free. This has two advantages: I'm more findable, and the link to my site from an indexed site ads credibility to my web site. Between these listings and the improved content, I show up in the first two pages of google searches for "tree farm edmonton"

I now have my products listed on Nurseryman2.com. While I don't expect (and can't deal with) U.S. orders, they are working on local searches, and they are gradually getting more Canadian content.

Further work:

1. More work on the web page. I need to build a database about the trees I sell, comparing them to eachother in terms of appearance, growth requirements, hardiness. (Quick: What is the overall difference in landscape use between jack pine, lodgepole pine, scots pine, red pine?)

2. More work on the web page -- columns of advice on how to use trees in the landscape.

Sherwood Botsford
Sherwood's Forests Tree Farm
"Trees for Rural Living"
http://sherwoods-forests.com
sfinfo@sherwoods-forests.com
(780) 848 2548

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Permalink Reply by Paul Rusnak on May 21, 2009 at 9:24am

Great feedback, Sherwood. Sounds like your digital efforts are paying off. I think a lot of companies like yourself are facing similar problems in getting their name and other information out in the marketplace. With today's high-tech mass-communication tools available, why is it that there are still companies not taking advantage?

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