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Unit 2: Marketing Opportunities and Strategies for Sustainable Farm/Ranch Businesses

Topic 4: Marketing Strategies

A marketing strategy describes where, how and to whom a product or service will be delivered. Marketing strategies can be described under two main categories: intermediary marketing or direct marketing. With intermediary marketing, the farmer sells their product to another person, business or entity before it reaches the customer. In the traditional wholesale model, farmers often have little say in the price they receive for their product since that is determined by market forces beyond their control and the decisions of others in the marketing chain (wholesaler, broker, processor, retailer). To gain more control of their pricing, farmers can try to work with other types of intermediaries (such as specialty retailers, packers, processors) or with restaurants and food service companies to market their products.

With direct marketing strategies, farmers and ranchers sell their product directly to customers through farmers’ markets, community supported agriculture, and other channels. These types of marketing strategies take more work and require a different set of skills and higher level of engagement compared to wholesale market strategies. Nonetheless, there has been significant growth in the direct market sector the past several decades. For example, the number of farmers markets nationwide increased from 1,755 in 1994 to 8,268 in 2014. Farmers and ranchers across the country are now embracing these strategies on their own or with a collaborative marketing group.

We’ll explore these two types of marketing (direct and intermediary) in the next few pages of this unit.