Meat Marketing 101: Webinar with Matt LeRoux

As a farm or butcher shop selling meat direct-to-consumer, you already have a product that today’s consumers want. Now, you must create an effective marketing strategy to get your product in the hands of customers. A marketing strategy is critical for farm-to-table businesses, and we’ve gathered the resources to help you develop a great one!

Led by Matt LeRoux, “Marketing 101: How to Sell Your Meat Online” gave webinar viewers the necessary guidance to develop a marketing strategy that is specifically tailored to meat and seafood businesses. LeRoux, an Extension Associate with Cornell University, has over 20 years of experience in serving farms while specializing in market strategy.

Here are some of the key points LeRoux covered in the webinar:

Develop a Clear Market Strategy When you sit down with your team to develop a marketing strategy, there is one word that should be top of mind: specific. You want a strategy that clearly provides your operation with a sense of direction and purpose. This can be more easily achieved with a marketing strategy that specifically identifies the product you are selling, the customers you are selling to and the reasoning behind the actions of your target customers. Your clear and specific marketing strategy provides you with a focused identity.

While the initial development of your marketing strategy can be cumbersome, the work allows you to improve your efficiency. A specific strategy increases the payoff for each dollar and hour spent on marketing.

Don’t Try to Market to Everyone Your specific market strategy should identify a target population. Whether it’s busy moms, grilling enthusiasts or consumers focused on health, your marketing strategy should pinpoint an audience that your efforts will be focused towards. Many operations make the mistake of trying to market their products to everyone. In this case, your resources will be spread too thin, and it will be difficult to see the return on your marketing efforts. Identifying a target audience is key in making your marketing labor most effective.

To be clear, creating a marketing strategy that targets a specific population does not mean that you will alienate non-target customers. By serving your target population well, additional customers will continue to be drawn in.

Market-Driven Strategies are Key As a vendor, it will always be more important for you to understand your customers, rather than to educate them. Implementing market-driven strategies allows you as a vendor to identify consumer desires, and then provide them with a product that fits their needs. Instead of wasting your resources trying to persuade and convince consumers that they need your product, design your product around what they already want. Market-driven strategies pull customers in by showing them you have the products they need.

For a more in-depth discussion and examples on how to develop your operation’s marketing strategy, watch the webinar recording below!

LeRoux also presented another webinar focused on pricing your meat. Be sure to check out the recording of Profitable Meat Marketing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fneXfOzaVc&t=2978s