Farm to Folder: My Advice on Marketing Best Practices for Agritourism Operators

• Interned for Visit NC Farms as an agritourism marketing intern (full academic year).
• Worked for NC State Extension as an agritourism project coordinator (one semester).
• Visited 18 farms offering agritourism.
• Interviewed approximately 12 agritourism farm owners and operators.
• Reviewed the websites and social media of approximately 1,400 farms offering agritourism in NC, as part of a database management project.
• Volunteered weekly as part of a greater project on Interfaith Food-Shuttle’s Farm (one semester).
• Attended the NC Agritourism Networking Association Conference and Farm Tour and the National Extension Tourism Network and Tourism and Travel Research Association combined Conference.

My background prior to this includes farm work experience on a variety of farms across three continents, as well as ideating and executing a farm camp based around Highland cattle. I am entering my junior year as a double major in agricultural business management and parks, recreation, and tourism management with a concentration in tourism and event planning at NC State University, giving me unique insights into agritourism.

Evidently, I’ve had exposure to agritourism from many perspectives. For the purpose of this reflection, I’ll focus on what I’ve learned about marketing that can benefit agritourism operators. I realize that many agritourism farms have both a tight budget and a limited amount of time available for marketing. With those constraints in mind, here is what I’ve found to be essential for marketing your agritourism operation.

1. Participating in the digital landscape is not optional.

The majority of consumers are turning to digital sources of information when they choose what to do with their time and money. For this reason, having at a minimum, a free Instagram, Facebook, and Google Business listing is essential. All three need to be updated with your hours, location, contact information and offerings. Ideally, you are able to leverage Instagram and Facebook for marketing multiple times per week, but at a minimum you should be posting every three weeks so potential customers can see that you are still active and open.

Having a website is an extra expense but a powerful tool. If you choose to have a website be sure that it is properly updated with at least your hours, location, contact information and offerings. With your website, unlike social media, you’ll have to remember to remove content that is no longer relevant. For example, be careful to remove information about your holiday events once the season has ended. Having a customer be directed to your Christmas offerings when they search your site in March is not a strong start to your relationship with the customer. Furthermore, be sure to renew your domain name and hosting on-time so that your site stays live. An expired website will only confuse your customers.

2. Make your business visible to the press and media.

Your digital presence has the ability to attract not only customers but people willing to promote your business like writers, influencers, and other content creators. The easiest way to leverage your digital presence to create relationships with these creators is by directly sharing with them what opportunities might exist for them with your farm. Consider creating a “Media” tab on your website. This tab should include contact info, photos of your farm, and concise ideas for what types of stories a creator might be able to tell about your farm. For example, they could tell the story of visiting your spring strawberry festival. This media tab is something you can share with creators when you meet them, but is also discoverable by creators searching for content ideas online.

Depending on the type of creator you’re working with, some might come out to your farm and take all of their own photos and videos. But this is not always the case. To prepare for when a writer or other promotional group does reach out to you, keep a digital file of your best farm photos and videos, so you’ll have your best digital content easily accessible.

3. Have a personal LinkedIn account.

LinkedIn is not just for getting a job. It can be a place to learn new skills and see new ideas that could benefit your business. Having a LinkedIn account also makes you more accessible. You never know when there’s a university student looking to reach out to you about a class project, or another farmer that wants to share industry knowledge with you.

While I recommend updating your LinkedIn profile with your basic personal information (name, location, a photo, work experience and education), I don’t think you need to create content on LinkedIn to get the benefit of it. The main benefits for a farmer are going to be increased accessibility and the possibility of skill sharing.

4. Don’t rely on content generated by artificial intelligence.

At this point, AI is still fairly new to most of us and yet the marketing industry is already seeing pushback against AI-generated content due to its lack of authenticity. This is particularly important to consider in the agritourism industry where authenticity is a major part of the product. If your potential customers can tell that your content isn’t authentic, what will they think of the experience you’re hoping to engage them in?

5. Get help with your marketing and more.

While “use your resources,” is advice that might be as old as time, it’s still good advice. When it comes to finding marketing resources, you can find my current suggestion on this Marketing Strategy and Resources document I recently made with NC State Extension. Pay particular attention to the “Local & Government Partnerships” section. NC Cooperative Extension, Visit NC Farms, various associations, your local tourism office, and your local community college’s small business center are all great resources with people who may be able to actively help you promote your events.

Furthermore, consider reaching out to your local university. Many professors love to integrate real-world applications into their classes and things like designing a marketing plan, creating graphics, collecting data or organizing larger events for your farm have the potential to all be easily integrated into university content. As a student myself, I can speak to the fact that the classes that give us a real world application like this are usually the most engaging and the ones that I learn the most from.

In addition, Visit NC Farm’s “Industry Resources” tab will always be a great place for finding more resources.