Agribusinesses range from food production to packaging, processing, and distribution of farm products to farm equipment. If it involves food, it falls under agribusiness. Not all businesses cover all sectors of agribusiness; most companies work within one or two of the broader sections. Some of the big names in agribusiness include John Deere (manufacturing tractors and farm equipment), Syngenta and Bayer (pesticide industry), the Food Corporation of India, Nuziveedu Seeds, Louis Dreyfus Company, and more. The list is endless.
Digital marketing for agribusiness depends on the sectors you intend to compete in. Every sub-industry or subsector of the agribusiness industry may seem competitive at first glance, but with time and a good strategy, you have a great chance of penetrating even the toughest sectors of agribusiness.
At Admarkon, we create strategies to excel in the digital marketing industry. We begin with research in each industry, identify gaps that can be filled, create solutions tailored to the sector, and market your business and products across all possible areas of digital marketing.
What We Do
Competition Analysis:
The first step in digital marketing is to find out what your competitors are doing and do it better than them. We analyze the top 10 companies in your industry that are performing well. These companies are typically brands, big players, and the best in the industry. While you may be daunted by the size of your competitors, in the digital world, you are only as strong as your marketing strategy. We’ve seen big companies perform poorly online. For example, Nuziveedu Seeds, a company with a turnover of $131 million, doesn’t rank in the top 30 Google searches for their product keywords. This gap in digital presence shows that even big names can struggle. With our competition analysis, we dissect each of your competitors, identify what they do well and what they don’t, and create a strategy that aims to excel in every way possible.
Research and Analysis:
The second stage of strategy creation is research and analysis. We consider factors such as where you stand compared to your competitors and what it will take to reach their level. If you already have a website, we check its domain rating and past performance to see if there have been penalties. We conduct deep research on social media platforms and assess your competition’s performance to understand what works for them. We estimate the quantity and type of content you need to create for your website and social media platforms. Once we have a comprehensive understanding of the industry specific to your product, we document the research and analysis in detail.
Planning Your Digital Marketing Campaign
Planning determines the success or failure of digital marketing. Your digital marketing plan should be detailed, including every small aspect. Create a spreadsheet with notes, dates, and tasks involved. Be even more detailed if you are an organization and assign tasks to individuals. What should the plan include?
Content Creation For Agribusiness:
Content is king. But why is content important? It provides reach and authority. Search engines favor websites with comprehensive information on a particular topic or industry. Have you ever seen a website with just 5, 10, or 20 pages ranking well on Google for a particular keyword? I haven’t. Even the smallest topics, which may seem irrelevant, can be expanded into a vast array of content. For example, you could run a burger outlet with one single burger, yet write 10,000 articles about burgers. The more content you create on a particular topic, the more likely you are to be considered an authority on the subject. Google loves content-rich websites. Moreover, the more content you write, the more keywords you cover. Think of anything people are searching for and create content around those keywords. When it comes to agribusiness, content makes the difference between you and your competition. If your competitors have been blogging for five years at one blog post per day, they would have approximately 1,500 articles. Your objective is to create 10 times more content than your competition at a pace that is humanly possible (not copy-pasting content from AI).
SEO, Optimized For Agribusiness:
Content creation is good, but you need to take your content to your customers through all available mediums. When it comes to search engines, optimizing your content is crucial. Start your content creation journey with keyword research to understand what your customers are searching for. Align your content with your audience’s needs, and deliver better content than your competitors while keeping it engaging. A well-optimized website can deliver 3 to 10 times more traffic and conversions than a poorly optimized or unoptimized website. Take advantage of simple SEO processes to improve visibility, but seek professional help to significantly increase your traffic.
Social Media Marketing For Agribusiness:
Social media platforms are excellent for agribusinesses. People love to see content on organic farming, plants, agriculture results, packaging processes, and the impact of food on health. No matter what sector of agribusiness you are in, do not ignore social media. Your content doesn’t always have to be about what you’re producing. If you’re in food manufacturing or packaging, you may find the content repetitive and boring. Your customers may feel the same way. But your content doesn’t have to focus solely on food packaging. It could highlight the difference food packaging makes in people’s lives. Look at social media accounts like GoPro or Red Bull. They rarely feature their products directly on their profiles but instead focus on related themes like adventure sports or travel. Be creative with social media—understand your audience and deliver accordingly. Choose your social media platforms wisely. Don’t try to create a presence on every platform. Select one or two platforms where you can consistently create content. I recommend following the trends and choosing platforms where your competitors are already successful. If your competition is on Facebook and Instagram, pick the one where you feel you can create content consistently, perhaps even five times a day! If you don’t find your competitors on a particular platform or their accounts are dormant, slow, or lacking in activity, chances are they didn’t find success there.
Best Social Media Platforms for Agribusiness
- YouTube for Educational Videos: If you can create excellent educational content, YouTube should be your platform of choice.
- Facebook: For content that people want to see, read, and comment on. Facebook generates good user interaction and sensible comments compared to Instagram, where comments are often emojis. If you believe your content can elicit a response, conversation, or debate, Facebook is a great choice.
- Twitter: A male-dominated social media platform that is great for agribusinesses.
- Instagram: For visual content. If you’re in a sector with relatively poor or boring visual content (like food manufacturing), change your strategy and approach to keep your audience interested.
Other platforms include LinkedIn (great for educational and organizational content) and Pinterest for visual content that is search engine optimized.
Email Marketing and Cold Emails
Whoever said that email marketing doesn’t work should reconsider. We’ve achieved over 2.5% conversion rates for agribusiness websites through email marketing. Cold emails may seem tricky and sometimes “unethical,” but when done right, your email recipients will communicate with you and reach out for your products and services. Email marketing requires detailed planning and expertise. For instance, you need to know when your target audience is most likely to read your emails. Do they check emails on weekdays or weekends? What day of the week and what time of day are they most likely to respond? And what kind of offers attract them the most? You also need to plan a series of follow-ups for each email you send. Emails are not one-off messages. You need to follow up and respond to replies from your audience. Be prepared to create a strategy for this. For agribusinesses, we suggest building an email list right from the beginning. Utilize social media, your website, and other means to acquire email addresses from prospects.
PPC Marketing
Organic traffic, though highly recommended and often the most economical, is slow to build. It requires high authority and excellent content, and it takes time to rank on Google. On the other hand, PPC (Pay Per Click) marketing is a faster but more expensive option. PPC is recommended for agribusinesses with either high-volume sales or high-value products. For example, seeds are often purchased in large quantities (30kg or more), and high-volume products can cover the cost of PPC and still yield a profit. Similarly, machinery and tools priced above $500 typically do well with PPC marketing. Think of products like mowing tools, tractors, and grass cutters—high-value products with significant profit margins.
Remember, we’re not talking about offline marketing. If your competitors are investing in print media, billboards, and radio stations, good for them. However, these mediums require a substantial investment. Digital marketing costs are a fraction of what you’d spend on a billboard. A static billboard might cost you $4,000 a month, while a digital billboard could be as much as $20,000 per month. While offline marketing is a great investment, it comes with time limitations—after a month, your billboards come down, and the same goes for radio and print media. With online marketing, your message stays as long as you want it to, at a relatively low cost.
