55: How Karli Miller Used Customer Research to Build 2 Big Farm Brands

May 6, 2020 by Corinna

This past February I got a chance to do some consulting work with Karli-Miller Hornick from Main Street Farms in Cortland, NY. Before we met, I asked her to take a month and do some deep-dive customer research interviews with her clients to help make our job of message-building easier.

It worked.

So first… a little bit about Karli. Karli Miller-Hornick began her entrepreneurial career in 2011 as the Business Manager at Farmigo, a software platform that helps farms manage their CSAs from member sign-up to delivery reports. At Farmigo, Karli partnered with over 300 farms nationwide to help them streamline and manage their CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) experience. After working at Farmigo, she joined Main Street Farms in 2017 as their CSA manager and worked with the team to build the CSA from 100 members to 350 members in one season with Corinna’s guidance.

In this episode, Karli shares her experience building a strongly branded CSA farm as well as a new CBD oil company called Head and Heal. She shares how she used her customer research to help inform her marketing in both her businesses. She shares her success in selling out her CSA by creating 3 unique offers during 3 different registration periods. She also talks through how her private Facebook group went wild after a few tweaks in content strategy, and helped her build an amazing virtual community asset to her CSA offer.

So much gold in this episode! If you’re a CSA farmer struggling to find your message, you’ll take away a lot of advice from Karli.

Hit play and let’s get started!

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Some of the resources mentioned in this episode:

• Find my Facebook group for farmers! I jump in here every week to teach farmers tips and fundamentals of marketing.
• Karli talks about the importance of customer research. She took my Customer Research Bootcamp course. This course will walk you through the questions you should be asking to do find your unique market “message.” I walk you through how to uncover your product’s unique customer avatar, what information you need to unearth, and how to use that intel to build out your message.
• My CSA Membership Academy — This tool has been a lifeline for my CSA members, and the price goes up in a month. Join this online library on a monthly or annual basis and get access to the “success path” I’ve created for my CSA members to help them become really good at using their box.  I have a lot of farmers who purchase the Academy to help them get ideas and templates for their own training system. Join now for a month, and cancel anytime!
• Want to use my 40-page A to Z Vegetable Storage Guide for your farm this season? It includes an entry for every vegetable and fruit we might provide to our customers, including storage and freezing instructions, as well as cooking tips. I use this guide as the primary email lead generator on my website. But it’s also a gift I offer to my CSA members. When you purchase this digital file, you’ll receive an unbranded PDF version of this comprehensive storage guide so you can literally just attach it to your email as-is. You’ll also receive a copy of the digital Master File shared with you on Canva. So you can take the file and customize it however you want. This product comes with lifetime permission to photocopy, digitally share, modify or cut-and-paste the guide for your own marketing purposes. To see the first 4 pages of this guide free, click here.
• Learn  more about Karli’s CBD company HeadandHeal.com
• Learn more about Karli’s CSA farm Main Street Farms.

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My hope is to feature guests periodically on the show. If you know someone who is innovating in the area of marketing as a farmer, please send me an email at mydigitalfarmers@gmail.com.

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