2 Mistakes Farmers Make When Issuing Calls to Action

What do you want your customers to do next?

This question should be at the fore-front of your mind every time you create any piece of content, be it Facebook posts, blogposts, Instagram videos, email blasts, or IG reels.

This was not something that came naturally to me in my early years as a CSA farmer and marketer.

But I have learned that if you let this one question drive your content, you will see higher leads and conversions.

Do you want them to:

• subscribe to your Facebook page or Instagram channel?
• Watch a video? Comment on your reel?
• Subscribe to your freebie download (so you can get their email address?)
• Head to the farmer’s market that day?
• Open an email?
• Buy your product?

When you position yourself as the guide in your customer’s journey, you need to be ready to tell them what to do next. (Because that’s what guides do). For more information on the Storybrand Framework for marketing, get this book by Don Miller.

This is why the “call to action” (CTA) is so very important. And too often, we don’t give it enough thought.

Here are the two most common mistakes I see farmers (and other businesses) making when using “calls to action” in their content.

Mistake #1: The call to action is always “buy, buy, buy…”

Your social media channels are opportunities not just to sell, but more importantly to find, energize, and warm up your potential buyers.

So although it is absolutely appropriate to occasionally direct people to purchase a product from you, if you do it too often, people begin to be turned off.

Especially if the product you’re selling is a high-ticket item (like a CSA membership).

Remember, your audience needs to be warmed up for a pricey purchase like CSA, so your pictures, blogposts, and videos need to be strategic in moving the customer through the buyer’s journey.

A great way to warm up a cold audience is to show a video and bring yourself into their circle of influence. Asking someone to simply watch and learn from you is a great first step that has very little commitment.

After they’ve consumed your “free” content for a while, they’ll be ready to take it to the next step, so you need some content and calls to action for this phase of the journey.

Telling someone to download a piece of content in return for their email address is a natural second step for someone who is warming up to your brand.

These are called “lead magnets” in the digital marketing space, and can be things like “How to find a great CSA” checklist, recipe or meal formulas, a “Freezing Vegetables” guide, a harvest calendar, or a 3 part video series. Customers will be ready to give you their contact information in return for these assets. And then you can set your true sales machine in motion.

My most popular lead magnets continue to be a PDF entitled “6 Questions to Know If CSA Is Right for You?” and “The CSA Vegetable Harvest Calendar.”

Once they have consumed the content and become a subscriber, you can start creating stronger calls to action like “Buy my CSA.” Once they know and trust you, they are much more likely to purchase.

When creating content for my social media posts, I always try to keep a healthy balance of posts that are for the “awareness” phase early on, the “subscribe” phase when they’re warmed up, and the “buy now” step to get them to purchase.

So for example: Before I decide to create a Facebook Live video, I ask myself two questions:

• Who is this for? — My insiders? My warm audience? Cold audience? I will speak differently depending on who I’m targeting with the content.
• What do I want to ask them to do next? – every single person is moving down their own version of the customer journey. What is the next natural step to get them to? Am I trying to turn leads into first time buyers? CSA members into brand ambassadors? I know which call to action will move them further down the track, so I choose my CTA accordingly.

I try to spread my calls to action around, so that things don’t get too predictable or repetitive.

Here’s another common mistake I see farmers making in marketing…

Mistake #2: Not using a call to action at all.

Oh man, I’ve been guilty of this SO often.

The thing is, asking people to do something feels sales-y sometimes, doesn’t it? And we don’t want to come off that way.

So we just post a picture of the harvest, and hope they get the hint that they should go to our website and buy a CSA share.

The problem is, your customers need you to tell them how to interpret the stuff you post. They will not always be able to connect the dots themselves.

Here’s how I got over this fear of being sales-y…

I started creating valuable content that taught my audience.

It’s a lot easier to ask someone to do something once you’ve added value to them first.

Last spring, I posted a video challenge to try eating rhubarb stalks raw. No call to action to buy – my call to action was to eat some raw rhubarb dipped in sugar…

The response was electric – I actually ended up boosting the post because it got so much engagement.

This week, I plan to do a short video of Farmer Kurt eating kohlrabi raw with peanut butter – his favorite way to eat this veggie. So many people don’t know you can do this, and I know it’s going to create a buzz.

But in this post, I’ll also add a soft call to action to check out my CSA Membership Academy — a $19/month “Netflix for foodies” where they can access videos, ebooks and a foodie community to help them learn how to eat every veggie under the sun.

I feel comfortable going for the “buy now” ask, because I’ve been regularly showing up in my channels for the last few weeks, with other calls to action, teaching people how to eat unusual things.

So remember: Every time you post on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, send an email, or write a blogpost, you should try to have a goal behind your action.

You should know the answer to this question: “What do I want them to do next?”

Then you need to tell them to do it.

Here are some examples of how I did this recently:

• I did a Facebook live video of the CSA boxes getting packed on the assembly line. I was ready at the end with a call to action – not to buy my CSA – but rather to see if CSA would be right for them by downloading my “Is CSA Right for You” questions at sharedlegacyfarms.com/rightcsa. (When they do, it automatically subscribes them to my CSA email sales sequence).
• I posted a picture of a garlic scape, how you can use it, how you can freeze it, then told people they can find out what’s for sale at the farmer’s market each week by subscribing to my email list at sharedlegacyfarms.com/market.
• I posted a picture of the box contents on a beautiful wooden background, labeled each one, then told people to sign up for the CSA 4 Week Sampler share, and gave them a direct link to my sales page.

Notice that I only used ONE of these posts to do a hard sell, sending them right to my sales page. The majority of my calls to action were for other stages of the customer journey, and were often trying to get leads.

One idea for helping you with a CTA strategy is to create your own “Top 10 Calls to Action” cheatsheet.

On this cheatsheet is a list of my top calls to action that I can use, along with the URL link associated with them.

My CTAs tend to fall into 4 buckets, corresponding to my 4 sources of income:

1. CSA
2. Online Store pre-orders
3. CSA Membership Academy
4. Bulk Buyers/Canner

These categories are my business’ funnels. Yours will be different depending on what your products are in your product suite.

Before I create content, I look at this list and decide which of the CTAs I want to use.

This allows me to “spin” the content based on where I’m going with it at the end.

For example, a quick video tutorial about garlic scapes could lead to multiple calls to action:

1. My online store email list
2. A push about the CSA Academy, and how you can learn to eat veggies with this tool
3. The garlic scape ebook which starts down the CSA track

If I want to plug my CSA, I can teach about something and then push my audience to one of these URL lead magnets.

• /rightcsa – The 6 Questions to Ask Before Joining My CSA
• /mastertools – my Essential Kitchen Tools Guide
• /guide – The Beginner’s Guide to CSA ebook
• /calendar – my harvest calendar
• /sampler – sales page for my trial CSA membership

Having a list of common CTAs at my fingertips can really help me keep things fresh, and it helps direct what content to make in the first place.

How you can apply this:

1. Take some time to figure out what your primary “funnels” in your farm business are. What types of customers do you have? What “tracks” do they follow?
2. Create 2-3 calls to action for each of the tracks.
3. Write these calls to action down on a cheatsheet that you can easily access before you create content.
4. Use a call to action in every piece of content you create.

Remember, your customer is coming to you for a reason. Your goal is to help them realize they have a need you can fill, and help them get results.

To do that, you’ll need to be their guide.

And guides call the customer to action. They identify the next natural step for their customer to help them get what they want.

Take the time to identify your calls to action. Create a short list of CTAs that you can easily reference.

And then start using them. Good luck!