Marketing in a Shifting Agriculture Landscape  

Right now, the agriculture industry is experiencing a rapid technological transformation. From cloud-based software and mobile apps to automated machinery for precision farming, technology is quickly evolving how our ag clients do business.  

Keeping up with these fast-moving changes requires adaptability — and a marketing partner that understands both agriculture and technology. Here are a few ways Jump is helping clients navigate marketing challenges in a shifting agriculture landscape: 

Leverage Customer Service 

The ag community is a close-knit industry where reputation and customer satisfaction play critical roles in business success. With smaller margins for error, exceptional customer service is not just nice to have — it’s essential for customer retention.  

We help our clients leverage their great customer service by bringing it forward in their marketing materials. Across all media platforms (website, collateral, etc.), we ensure that customer service and satisfaction messages are prominent and consistent. 

Video testimonials from both employees and customers bring these messages to life. We also actively listen for case studies and stories that highlight customer satisfaction to craft videos that engage potential customers and potential employees. 

Adapt to Rapid Technology Changes 

With ag tech evolving at lightning speed, it’s vital to keep pace and ensure messaging and functionality align with current tech trends. One way we help clients stay a step ahead is to create tools they can quickly customize, such as websites with CMS capabilities for easy content changes. 

We also collaborate with client sales teams, staying up to date on innovations, so we can help them communicate advancements in customer-friendly ways that are consistent with the brand. Partnering with our clients in this way allows us to support their efforts to push future-focused solutions to their customers. Similarly, we also assist our clients during industry events, where hands-on learning can help customers understand and adopt new technologies. 

Navigate Acquisitions and Consolidations 

As smaller ag companies are increasingly acquired by larger ag-tech firms, the customer landscape is changing. While fewer customers remain, they often come with larger user bases and more complex needs. Jump has been in the ag space long enough to see this shift firsthand. 

To adapt, we’ve scaled our marketing strategies to suit these larger user bases. This means creating digital campaigns that can be turned on and off easily, depending on demand. We also support mergers from a PR perspective, crafting careful communication strategies that ensure a smooth transition for both internal teams and customers. 

Develop Clear Brand Architectures 

As ag companies grow their products and services, one challenge they face is clearly communicating how everything connects. To ensure consistency, Jump creates brand architectures that establish a clear parent brand, as well as product sub-brands. This future-proofs the company and accommodates any upcoming changes. We also help clients develop rebranding strategies when they acquire companies and/or products, so they align with the company’s main identity. 

Solve Unique Challenges 

Experience is the best teacher, and ours has taught us some specific things about marketing in the ag space. First, farmers are not a monolith. While younger farmers are quick to adopt new processes and technologies, older generations are more resistant to change, inspiring us to be more creative and flexible about how to bridge this gap. 

And speaking of technology, it’s moving fast. In a lot of cases, it’s moving to the cloud. While this brings a lot of benefits, it also raises concerns for some farmers and ag retailers. To frame the discussion in a positive way, we highlight the efficiency benefits while also addressing concerns like data security. 

At the end of the day, our success in the ag industry comes down to two things: listening and being open to creating new solutions. Much like our ag clients, reputation is very important to us. And that will remain true no matter what changes the industry faces. 

5 Keys for Ag Websites To Convert Visitors into Leads

Often in the agriculture industry when a potential lead visits your site, they likely already know a bit about your business. Whether through trade show appearances, industry publications, word of mouth or cold calls, your first impression is often elsewhere. And because of that fact, it’s even more reason your website should go beyond just making a good impression and guide visitors through the buyer’s journey until they’re a highly qualified lead.

Website needs will vary depending on your specific business – such as seed company, equipment manufacturer or ag retailer – but we’ve found there are at least five factors everyone in ag should consider when it comes to their website.

Establish Consistent Branding

A strong visual brand ties all the finer details of your ag business together, but a recognizable logo isn’t enough. After getting to know your company, a customer should be able to identify and have a brief understanding of your elevator pitch. Tight and modern overall brand positioning not only builds market awareness, but trust in your company.

Optimize Web Content

A mistake many make when approaching website creation is prioritizing search engine optimization, or SEO, above all else. It’s certainly an important consideration, but your site should benefit a human first and algorithms second. Website content and navigation should break down complicated processes into easy-to-understand pathways and address the target audience’s industry-specific knowledge levels and needs. It’s vital to develop relationships with your sales team, talk with customers, attend conferences, and read product manuals so you understand exactly who you are talking to, what needs to be conveyed and how they need to hear it.

Keep the Website Flexible

It can be tempting to design a flashy website with heavy animations and complex graphics, but often that makes it harder to adjust your website later as your ag organization’s priorities shift and products evolve. Selecting the right content management system (CMS) for your specific company and website will allow for easy access to make updates and optimize the journey for your visitors.

Create a Simple and Effective Contact Form

If you’re relying on customers to reach out only through phone or direct email, you’re not leveraging your ag site to its full potential. In our experience, a user visits a site for multiple reasons from purchase intent to customer service requests to job opportunities. To ensure all leads are funneled correctly and to remove barriers from the process, a contact form plugged directly into customer relationship management (CRM) software makes for faster and more efficient processes from lead to conversion.

Invest in Paid Search Support

Even if a company attains category dominate SEO, boosting your ag website with paid search will improve discovery and protect your company against constantly changing search engine algorithms and platform updates. Search and social media companies and device manufacturers can change their practices at any time and without notice, and that has the potential to alter search position and impact organic discovery. By maintaining an always-on paid search campaign you can lessen the impact these unexpected changes have on your company and gather a wealth of analytics that can be used to optimize your marketing efforts.

Jump Company recently implemented these strategies in a website redesign for an Ag client resulting in a record 10% increase in visitors and over 60% increase in monthly conversions. With over twenty years of agriculture industry marketing experience, Jump has enjoyed watching our partners’ companies grow alongside their crops.