Beth Hauptle is the program’s Director of Marketing and Public Relations. Beth has been in the field of PR and marketing for non profits for 24 years.  Here Beth talks about some of the ways the Outreach, PR and Marketing team support AWA farmers and provides a few tips about branding for small farms.

Our Team Helps Our Farmers with Marketing

• Develop relationships with retailers, restaurants, farmer’s markets to help expand the market for your products.
• Provide a kit of marketing materials for farmers who are approved for the program.  Included are:  brochures, signs, pens, magnets, note pads, post-it notes, and other promotional materials.   Metal gate signs and farmer market banners are also available to you free of charge.
• Advise on creating an online presence or with more traditional marketing methods.
• Assist with label design and approval.
• Host events to promote your products.
• Attend conferences or workshops with you to help you spread the word about the benefits of being approved.
• Write and send press releases about your farm.
• Feature news about your farm on our website, blog, print newsletter and press releases.
• List your farm and retailers offering your products in our online searchable database.
• Promote your farm in conference and event program advertisements.

Branding:  Key to Building Lasting Relationships with Your Customers

In the public relations and marketing graduate classes I teach at George Mason University, I cover everything from press relations to brochure creation, internet marketing to direct marketing, and all topics in between—from the good old press release sent by snail mail to the online viral marketing world of Twitter, Facebook and MySpace. For my students, these are the tools by which they will earn a living, but at the core of what I teach them are some basics every farmer should know.

Branding and creating brand value for your farm business is simple. It represents the sum total of everything you do. Not just a logo, not just a slogan, not just a product, but everything you do, as well as when, how and why you do it.
Customers experience your brand at various “brand touchpoints,” and these are key to fostering a positive brand experience. A few examples of these touchpoints include how you answer your phone, how quickly you return messages, how neat and tidy your facilities are, and the attractiveness and quality of the label you use on your products. Most of these apply whether you are direct marketing or conducting business-to-business operations.

Having a unique and effective brand manifests itself in various ways. Think about how you want people to remember or talk about you. You want your customers communicating positive brand values, such as your responsiveness, fairness and the quality of your products. It is a useful exercise to write down the values your family and employees embrace and agree together that these are the brand values you wish to communicate to those you do business with.
As an organization—from auditors to outreach staff—we work hard to create brand value for the Animal Welfare Approved label. The more successfully we work together in this endeavor, the more successful you will be in marketing your products. You know that more than just wanting a product, conscientious consumers desire the entirety of what Animal Welfare Approved means to them: sustainable, high-welfare, pasture- or range-raised, safe, healthy, family farmed, traceable, rural or local.

Recognized, well-branded products almost always command higher prices. When you have two similar products side by side, and one of them has no branding, consumers often select the more expensive one because of its excellence or the reputation of the brand holder.

Brand is what makes your business and farm stand out among the clutter. It’s what makes people choose Tide over Cheer, Crest over Colgate, Animal Welfare Approved over Naturally Raised. It’s the familiarity, trust, connection, habit and relationship that consumers have with you and your product.

I am honored to have the opportunity to work together with our Animal Welfare Approved farmers to strengthen and grow the recognition and value of our shared brand, “the one independent label that means healthy, safe, environmentally responsible, family farmed, and humanely raised.”