My Recommended Digital Tools
When you’re first starting out in digital marketing, the path can feel overwhelming. I also know how tight farmer budgets can be. And I don’t ever want to spend money on a tool unless I KNOW it’s making a difference.
To get you started, here are my recommended list of tools that can help you get your online marketing plan up and running. I currently use all of these to run my CSA farm. These links are affiliate links, which means I may get a commission if you purchase. ~Corinna
Marketing Textbook: Building a Storybrand
Don Miller has written a ground-breaking book that will change the way you think about marketing. You’ll learn how to get crystall clear in your messaging, so that you can find your ideal audience and speak to their needs. I consider this required reading for anyone in myDigitalFarmer’s lab.
SHOP AMAZON
Best Copywriting Book
The title says it all: “This Book Will Teach You How to Write Better.” Get ready to forget everything your English teacher taught you. This short book is around $3 and contains the essential golden rules of sales copywriting. I read this in about 30 minutes, and it pretty much summarized the practical tips you need to immediately write better emails. Totally worth it. I’ve seen huge returns on this investment.
BUY BOOKOnline Store or Website Builder: Local Line
Our farm uses Local Line to collect our online store pre-orders. You can set up deliveries, pick up sites, and beautiful order pages that make it easy for the customer to navigate. Offering variable weight pricing for meat producers. It integrates with your favorite email service provider. Plus, they now include a subscriptions feature, as well as offer marketing services. I also like the affordable fixed monthly price (no percentage of sales fees). The customer service is outstanding, and every few months they add on new features to improve the platform. I am a proud affiliate for this product.
TRY LOCAL LINE
Email Provider:
ConvertKit
I’ve tried a lot of email providers, and ConvertKit is still my favorite. It’s easy to learn and use. And it boasts high deliverability rates to inboxes. Plus you can segment and tag your audiences, create automation rules, and create landing page forms. I am a proud affiliate and earn a commission on every new order placed.
TRY CONVERTKIT
Email Provider: Active Campaign
Although I personally use ConvertKit because of their text-only email focus, I’ve heard from many farmers that they wish they could have an email provider that allows them to use pretty templates as they build their emails. For this kind of need, I recommend ActiveCampaign over MailChimp. It’s got all the bells and whistles you’ll need and a better chance of avoiding the promotions tab.
LEARN MOREPOS system: Square
This is another great e-commerce platform, and we use it for our point of sale system at our one farmer’s market. It is easy to learn and use, and we can easily track what sold for future planning. The payment gateway system to swipe the credit cards is solid and reliable. You can also create online stores with this platform.
TRY SQUARE
Graphic Design: Canva
Canva is a free graphic design tool that helps you build infographics, lead magnets, ebooks, cheatsheets, social media updates, youtube thumbnails — in short all of your content marketing assets. It is so easy to use with its drag and drop builder. This tool will make you look like a graphic designer pro.
TRY CANVACSA Innovation Network
The CSA Innovation Network is a resource base of programs and tools built by and for individuals and organizations supporting Community Supported Agriculture development. The purpose of the CSA-IN is to generate and facilitate idea sharing across the CSA community and to build awareness of
the value of CSA to consumers. They offer periodic trainings to CSA farmers in their Ideas Lab series.
