Convert Farmers Market Customers into Online Customers

Last week at the Carolina Meat Summit, we heard two interesting (contradictory) perspectives:

1. Casey Roe, who specializes in marketing for farmers, said her clients have success transitioning farmers market customers into off-season/online customers.
2. A farmer told us he's having trouble getting his farmers market customers to order online in the off-season.

That got me thinking this morning - what needs to be in place to successfully transition your face-to-face customers into online customers?

Here are a few things that came to mind:

1. Email marketing is key. Encourage email sign-ups to keep in touch with customers in the off-season. Then, you need to consistently and effectively deploy email marketing!

2. Your online store MUST be optimized for the customer! I've been looking at a lot of different online stores lately and I continually see the same issues: slow page-load speeds, difficult to find products, unclear order fulfillment information, and photos/descriptions are not enticing. By the way, most of the platforms designed specifically for farmers (and one of those platforms in particular) are notoriously hard for customers to use, so that could be a big barrier to success.

3. Start training your customers NOW to order online. Use coupons or incentives (swag or samples) to encourage them to order online in advance of the farmers market, and repeatedly remind them that you have an online option so they can continue to support your farm when the market closes.