Linnaea here from Alderspring Ranch! Today we’re talking about branding and how you can “brand” your farm or ranch business. This is a good place to start with marketing your business because your branding is going to impact every aspect of your marketing efforts.
Don’t forget that it’s important to know your customer before you move on into branding! You can find the article on defining your customer here.
Also, if you want to follow along with this article and get this drilled down to a step-by-step process on defining your brand, download the free worksheet below!
What’s covered in this article:
- What is branding?
- Two examples of strong branding: YETI and Hydroflask
- How you can brand your product
- How to summarize your brand in a few words
- How to convey your brand to customers
- Final thoughts/summary
First, what is branding?
Branding is about sending a consistent message to your customers about who you are, what you do, and what makes your products unique. This is done through words, images, and design, as well as the experience customers have with your brand. All of these elements should work together consistently to convey a single message.
Branding is important because it shows your customer how you’re different from all the other options out there.
To think about what branding is, think about some of the most popular companies out there and how they differentiate themselves through branding. For example, YETI and Hydroflask both manufacture high-end water bottles. They offer similar products, but their branding is different. When I think of YETI, I think, “built super strong. Made for ultra hardcore adventure people.” When I think of Hydroflask, I think “high quality. Made for hipsters & urban dwellers who want to get away on an adventure.” Sure, there’s crossover between these two markets, but the two brands each convey a subtly different message. Let’s look at how they do this.
Two examples of strong branding
HYDROFLASK:
The first thing I see when I visit their website is a large image of people eating lunch, and next to it, the words, “Cool, let’s do lunch.” Followed by the product: “Insulated lunch box. Cold for hours.”
Something to note: most websites start by telling you who they are and what they can do for you, not immediately with a product. You SHOULD start with the “what you do for customers” bit, NOT a product. Hydroflask can start with a product because they are a well-known brand. Someone visiting their website probably already knows who they are and what they do.
Now, let’s think about what this first image and text conveys. The image is of some people in an urban setting, in nice clothes, eating lunch together. These look like people who work in an office and are meeting for lunch. Looks like they brought their lunch in a Hydroflask lunchbox. And guess what? It’s still cold! With this branding, Hydroflask is targeting someone who lives in a city and needs to bring a lunch to work and would want that lunch to stay cold.
Now let’s visit Hydroflask’s Instagram account. The bio says: “Let’s Go! Two words that kick off every adventure. Today is wide open. You lead. We’ll follow.”
When you scroll down their account, you see lots of pictures of people adventuring and recreating. Families with pets, young singles, lots of smiling people. These are the people that Hydroflask is targeting with its branding. It’s asking you to put yourself in those people’s shoes.
YETI:
When I first visit their website, there is a product just like there is on HydroFlask’s website. Again, this is because YETI is a known brand. They don’t need to tell you who they are. You already know that. For you, however, as a small business, you probably need to start with “what you do” before going into products.
The first words are “The Ice Pink collection. Our newest lineup is inspired by powdered peaks at first light.” In the background is a snowboarder coming down a steep hillside in a mountain scene. This immediately conveys adventure. Daring. Ruggedness. That’s the message YETI is sending you.
Let’s look at their Instagram. Their bio says “We make gear that helps you stay out longer, travel farther, and live harder.”
And when you scroll through the images, you see just that. The photos are edgier than Hydroflask’s, less warm and cheerful. The people aren’t all smiling—these are serious adventurers. The photos are also less staged and professional than Hydroflask’s, and even this seems intentional. “These are real people out in the wild living their adventures,” it conveys. “It’s rugged and imperfect out here.”
So in short, these are how two brands that offer a similar product sell in very different spaces, to very different people. They’ve each created a unique brand, and they tell you through images, design, and words exactly what that brand is. And remember from the “know your customer” lesson how you need to target a specific customer? Well, YETI and HydroFlask both do that really well. They know exactly who their customer is what branding will appeal to that customer.
So how do you brand your product?
Well, luckily you already have a brand, even if you haven’t defined it yet. Your brand is composed of your values, and presumably you already have those (I hope you have values anyway. If you’re just in ag for the money, then I’ve got nothin, and you should also know that small-scale agriculture is really not the fastest way to get rich quick).
You saw above that YETI and Hydroflask both had brands that I could describe with words. Hydroflask: “happy, warm, adventurous, urban, bright, inspiring.” YETi: “edgy, rugged, adventurous, real, wild.” (Yes, there’s some crossover between the brands but the words are slightly different).
I can do the same thing with the Alderspring brand: “family, pure, authentic, pristine, wild.” That’s our brand, in a nutshell, and all of our messaging and imagery helps convey that feeling to customers.
Note that we didn’t do this intentionally with every single photo we’ve ever taken. Because those elements are part of our values, they naturally come out in our photos and words. It’s not like I’m standing there taking photos and thinking, “Wild, wild. This has to say WILD.” But when I put together our website or when I am designing graphics, I am very intentional about the images, words, and colors I use and how those convey our brand.
Your brand, in its barest form, can come down to just a few descriptive words as well.
How to reduce your brand down to a few words
Spend a little time thinking about what you want to convey about your farm/ranch and product, in just a few adjectives. If you’re not sure, start by looking at other farmers and ranchers out there and just seeing what adjectives pop into your head when you look at their websites and social media. Then look at those adjectives in a thesaurus and see what other words are there.
Do any of them resonate with who you are and what you do? More importantly, do they also resonate with who your customer is? Don’t forget that ultimately you have to appeal first to your customer demographic!
One thing to be paying attention to when you look at other producers is just how well they’ve created a brand. You might visit some websites and find yourself confused by their messaging. Maybe they don’t seem to have a brand at all. If so, why do you think that is? Try to identify where their messaging is confused or where they lack messaging altogether.
It’s also worth checking out some of the bigger food brands. ButcherBox, Crowd Cow, Thrive Market, Kettle & Fire, and Epic (the Epic people are excellent at branding. Look at their colors, their imagery. They convey a real sense of their brand).
How do these companies brand themselves? How are they using design, words, and images? What words come to mind? What do they do well?
Don’t forget, however, that these big brands come across as very impersonal because they are impersonal. As a small producer, showing your face to your buyer is perhaps your biggest advantage. Don’t seek to duplicate the big brands so well that you make yourself seem like one of them.
Most importantly, remember to create a brand to appeal to your target customer!
The reason YETI and HydroFlask are so successful at branding is that their branding is very targeted to a specific customer. YETI targets hardcore adventurers (or people who IMAGINE themselves as hardcore adventurers–that’s an important distinction. Sometimes branding is mostly about speaking to what people imagine themselves as). HydroFlask targets urban adventurers and families. Here at Alderspring, we try to appeal to citydwellers who care about the environment, want only the best quality and health attributes, and also want to escape for a minute to a wilder place and a simpler way of life…which they do, vicariously, through our Instagram stories, newsletters, website, and even through eating our beef.
So who is your customer? If you’re not sure who your customer is, go back now to the “define a customer” article and really nail down your customer demographic.
So let’s say that your demographic is a mom with kids, because you are a mom with kids and you therefore understand her needs and problems. Your brand will naturally appeal to her.
Now you can drill your brand down to just a few words, focusing on (1) your root values and (2) what would appeal to that mom. You might come up with the following words: “fresh, wholesome, homey, happy, natural” (I know “natural” is a highly overused word…but let’s use it here in its basic meaning without all the connotations brought in by big ag marketing practices). These are words that should both capture who you are as a business and what your customer wants to see.
Those words, in a nutshell, are your brand. Now you have to convey the sense of those words to your customers (not necessarily the words themselves, though you can use them. Focus, though, on getting their meaning across). Those words can be used to inspire the imagery and storytelling on both your website and social media.
How does this work? Well, let’s try it out on some of these words.
How to convey your brand to your customers
Fresh.
When you think of “fresh,” what images come to mind? What colors? What words?
When I think “fresh,” I think of bright cheerful colors and images. I think of green grass and water. If you’re a produce farm, you might convey this with lots of bright, colorful images of your vegetables. If you produce some kind of meat, it’s a little harder, but still possible. Just think green grass, bright colors, blue skies, and vibrant product photos.
You can also convey this through design. Bright accent colors would convey “fresh.” Your logo could use color too, though tastefully (some logos go straight into cheesy with overuse of color).
Wholesome.
Wholesome is a little harder than “fresh,” but there are still image connotations. Think happy smiling family photos. You can convey the same sense of “wholesome family” in product photos… family around the dinner table, kids holding up a cut of meat or putting it in a box, etc.
- Random side note about kids in marketing: When we kids were younger, my parents were really careful about maintaining our privacy, especially when we were too little to know the difference. That was in the age before Instagram. Now it’s become even more common to share every detail of your life with the internet. Despite that, we still try to maintain a level of privacy and there are things we just don’t share (for example, we rarely post videos or photos from inside our home, partly because privacy and partly because our home is usually too chaotic to film). That’s not to say you can’t use photos or videos of kids in your marketing. We do, but how and where kids appear, and what you will and won’t share, is just an important thing to establish from the outset.
Homey.
Similar word to “wholeseome,” similar imagery to go with it. Think working around the farm, lots of family photos, warm, cozy colors in your graphics. Family photos, shots of people eating together and laughing together.
See what I mean? Drill your brand down to just a few words, and you can then use your brand words to inspire ideas for your imagery, colors, and the text on your website.
Some other things worth mentioning…
Now, you might be reading this and thinking, “This girl is crazy. No customer is going to think that much about how a picture makes them feel.”
And you’re right, the customer is not going to think about that. But regardless, a picture or the use of certain colors are going to make them feel a certain way. It’s what happens to you when you look at YETI’s website versus HydroFlask’s. You get a sense of their brand, even if you don’t think about it.
You might also be thinking, “I don’t have time to overexamine every single photo I take or every color I use.”
You don’t, and you don’t have to do this! As I said earlier, we don’t think about this constantly. But drilling your brand down to a few words helps you understand what you want to convey, so you can be at least a little purposeful about it when you’re putting together your website or any other marketing materials.
You might also be thinking, “I’m not a professional photographer. How am I supposed to get pictures like this?”
First off, you don’t have to have perfect pictures, especially on your Instagram, newsletter, or other everyday things. Phone photos can work perfectly well for this! A lot of the photos you see on our Instagram feed, especially photos from the range where it’s hard to carry a camera, were taken with a phone. And we don’t even have good phones! Until this fall, I had a Galaxy s7, and Melanie has a Galaxy s10. So there’s proof that you don’t need the newest phone for this.
- Side note on phone photos: Melanie is actually putting together a quick “how to improve your phone photos” article over on our website, Deep Roots Branding. She’s planning on releasing that in our newsletter, which you can subscribe to here.
Now, phone photos can’t do everything. They aren’t always super sharp, so they don’t show up too well on full-width website images or in brochures or other print formats. For that reason you may want to hire a professional photographer if you’re planning on doing print marketing materials of any kind, or just for some “hero” images for your website.
The other part of branding: Messaging
Branding isn’t just about images, colors, and design. It’s also about words.
When you’re designing a website or creating a social media profile, the first few words your customer reads should tell them:
- Who you are
- What you can do for them
- Why you’re different
We’ve tried to do this with the first line on the Alderspring website. See the screenshot below of what a viewer first sees when they visit our site:
I was very intentional about the way I put this first piece of our site together. That top image area, called “above the fold,” in website lingo, is the first thing a customer sees and is going to determine whether they scroll on or exit the page. It darn well better catch their interest. Right below it where you see the “Meet our Family” text is below the fold (not immediately visible on their screen when they visit our site). That below the fold area is still critical, though. It needs to keep their interest.
So here’s a breakdown of what’s happening on this first bit of the page:
- We start out with a few of our branding words right away. “pristine,” “wild,” and “family” is all there. We also hit on who we are there, which remember is one of the three things!
- This first text also captures what we can do for them (thing #2)! We can ship great beef to their doorstep. Then we’ve got a button right below that for them to visit our store.
- Incredibly important side rant: There are a surprising number of websites that don’t IMMEDIATELY tell the customer how they can actually BUY the product. DON’T MAKE IT HARD FOR THE CUSTOMER TO BUY!!! I can’t say this enough. If you can ship to their door, TELL THEM THIS. If you deliver locally, TELL THEM WHERE. If they pick up at a dropoff location, TELL THEM HOW. If you’re out of stock or not selling product yet, get them to subscribe to an email list where you’ll let them know as soon as they can buy. Always ALWAYS make it easy for the customer to buy or you will miss out on sales you could’ve easily had!!!! Okay, end rant.
- The other thing we’ve got going here is the imagery, which is almost worth more than the text. And this is where essential Item #3, how we’re different, comes in. What makes us unique is the very remote country we herd in, and the fact that we do it all on horseback. So that’s front and center here, with somebody on a horse in the mountains with the cows in the shot (but not the focus of the shot–nobody wants a close-up picture of a cow because they don’t want to think too much about the fact that they’re eating that cow). I actually don’t love this image aesthetically so as soon as we get our hordes of summer photos sorted out I plan to change it, but I’m still going to look for a picture that highlights those same elements (mountains, cowboys, wilderness), because those are the things that make us stand out. Additionally, this image by very nature conveys some of our branding words. Remember they were “authentic, family, pure, pristine, wild”? This image works to capture the sense of some of those words.
- Okay, let’s move below the fold. Front and center is our family. This is another thing that makes us stand out. I want to make it instantly clear that people are buying from a real family here, and this isn’t some marketing gimmick. I’ve kept the text short because if your text gets really long, nobody is going to read it at all because it’s too intimidating at first glance. Don’t write novels at the top of your website. From text, I moved right into pictures. Our pictures are one of our strengths so I’m 100% going to use that.
I’m not going to go in-depth into the messaging on the rest of our website (this is already quite a long post). But the rest of the text on your site should also hold true to those three requirements.
Every bit of text should be contributing to telling the customer one or more of these three things:
- Who you are
- What you can do for them (this includes making it easy to buy)
- How you’re different
Note: If all this is sounding complicated or you’re just not sure what you want your brand to be, Melanie and I can personally work with you one on one to create your branding using our branding blueprint. Visit our website here to learn more about that.
A final thing about branding…
This should go without saying, but don’t try to sell your product as something it isn’t. A perfect example is the milk jug in the grocery store that says “from our family farm!” with a nice family picture on the back, when we all know this milk actually came from a huge factory-style milk barn instead of the lovely pastoral happy family pasture scene shown on the jug.
Customers are fed up with marketing gimmicks like that and are very suspicious of them. This is why they are looking for you as a small producer in the first place, and yet we see a lot of small producers who either try to pretend to be a big company so they seem more “official”, or worse, intentionally misrepresent their brands by not being upfront with the consumer.
The way I see it, good branding is about showing your customer who you are and what you do in an authentic way. Good branding–and good marketing–should never be about manipulation. Why does everyone seem to think that this is what marketing is? At its heart marketing is about providing a customer with something they need.
So please, create a brand that is first and foremost honest and open with your customer. They will reward you for that by giving you their trust.
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