Marketing is the beating heart of business. The right marketing strategies can bring about massive success to business. Marketing is a force that will impact your business regardless of the industry you are in. Whether you are in the agriculture or banking industry, marketing has proven essential for the growth and development of your venture.

With the immense growth and development of the agriculture sector in Kenya, I thought it is about time I share some insights in the marketing arena.
Over the last several years, web technologies have revolutionized our markets, it has changed the way consumers shop and buy goods. In this guide, we will explore how farmers can leverage the power of the web to reach out to more customers and profitable markets. This article will equip you with right strategies required to sell agricultural products online.

Digital marketing or online marketing is the art of using the internet to advertise, connect with customers and obtain sales leads. Today, online marketing is one the most efficient ways to market goods and services.

Advantages of internet marketing

a). Easy to manage. You don’t need a store or a physical location to market online, all you need is your cell phone or a computer and internet connection.

b). Cheap. It is relatively easy to market your products online. Most of the online marketing channels are free and more effective than traditional ones.

c). Reach customers all over the world. With digital marketing there are no boundaries, you can reach customers beyond your local region.

d). Gives you a competitive edge. It levels the field for small scale farmers to compete with large scale farmers.

e). Easy to measure the success of digital marketing. You can see how many customers came to check your products in a specific period and also monitor how your client base is growing.

These are a few benefits of using the internet to market your agricultural products.

Effective strategies to market your products online

1. Using e-commerce sites
Market trends are changing all over the world, online shops have received huge success as consumers prefer to buy from these online stores. Most ecommerce stores such as Farmers Trend Virtual Agrovet allow businesses to connect with customers on their platforms.

You can leverage this opportunity and connect with your customers by posting your products on these platforms.

2. Personal web store
It is perfectly fine to sell on third party e-commerce stores, but it is even better to have your online store. With your web store, you have 100% control, interact with customers directly, determine product layout and determine your store design.
As the saying goes, with power comes responsibility, if you decide to own an online store, you have to get some few things right (management and marketing). Here are the two critical things you need to run a successful e-commerce store.

-Well designed website
You need a well-designed custom website where you can nicely display your products and enable customers to easily order and pay. For a professional website, you should consider hiring one of the best web design companies in Kenya.

– Website marketing
There are various strategies used to market websites, but the most common ones are SEO (search engine optimization), social media marketing and search engine marketing. It is imperative that you get the marketing part right because it will greatly affect your online store success.
Not everybody knows the technicalities of web marketing, and that’s okay, you don’t have to be an expert on this since you can rely on the services of digital marketing agencies in Kenya such as Weblinks Technologies which is one of the top marketing agencies in Nairobi.

3. Social media marketing
Every day there are millions of customers in social media, and this presents the next big opportunity for farmers to sell their products. With a huge number of customers on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Linkedin it means your customers are a click away. It is easy to market to users on social media as most people are already familiar with most social media platforms. Social media marketing agency can give the needed consultancy to get you started.

4. List your business and products
To market to the local marketing companies, you should list your business (farming business) with local business directories.
Listing your farm, puts your farming business in the spotlight.

5. Email marketing
Build an email list of your clients and potential clients and send them an email at a consistent interval, maybe once a week or once every two weeks or a once a month. This will strengthens business consumer communication and increases your sales eventually.

These are just a few strategies used in marketing agricultural products online. The most important thing when applying the above strategies is to make decisions based on real market data, for example, when investing in search engine marketing, you should know and target what ( the keywords) customers are searching for. You can get the market data from market research firms in Kenya to make the right decision and avoid wastage of money. It is a advisable to always to keep a digital marketing company within your reach as it will contribute greatly to your marketing success.