Hudson Valley Farmers’ Market Academy RESOURCE LIBRARY

Branding and Marketing Strategies: Defining Your Vibe & Maximizing Your Reach

Our presenters for this session included:

Oscar Rivas from Du GOOD Studio

Brenda González from Finca Seremos

Matthew Donnelly from Ash Hopper

Liz Birch from Rabe x Birch

You can rewatch the recording of the first session here:

Branding & Marketing Strategies: Defining Your Vibe and Maximizing Your Reach  including a transcript and archive of messages from the chat

Free and low-cost resources mentioned for brand & marketing development included:

Chat GPT

99 designs

Canva

CapCut

Center for Agricultural Development & Entrepreneurship (CADE)

Strong Brand Social F* The Algorithm! Workshop

Some “homework” to ponder related to defining your brand/creating a logo:

Matt proposes you ask yourself:

1. What do you want your customers to feel?

2. What do you want them to remember about you?

3. Does your brand’s look, message, and experience match those feelings?

Brenda proposes you ask yourself

1. What elements of your mission do you want your brand/logo to focus on?

2. If you had to choose 3 key values to incorporate into the logo/brand, what would they be?

3. Are there references you’d like your brand/logo to take references from? (other logos, orgs, or iconic tools of your trade)

4. What are the words you hope the community you serve would use to describe you?

Social Media Strategies: From Posts to Purchases

Free and low-cost resources mentioned for brand & marketing development included:

Instagram

• “Business Account” features (analytics, tagging capabilities)

• “Collaboration” tool for cross-posting

• “Stories” for sharing customer content

• “Alt Text” feature for SEO optimization

Facebook (select “post to” feature but folks are finding it less helpful lately)

TikTok

Bluesky

Square Squarespace Toast (email marketing integration)

Some “homework” to ponder related to social media strategies:

Jennifer proposes you make a reel of yourself at market showing what you have! Tag your market and vendors, and share it to your stories

Rian proposes you take some time to journal on your mission statement and values. Define what your brand is (or isn’t).

Shay proposes you take the simplest content idea from your saved folder and just make it! Overcome that initial barrier to content creation, which is usually just momentum.

Promotions, Loyalty Programs, and Cross-Market Collaborations

Some thoughts from our speakers on initiating the kinds of programs we discussed:

Wendy encouraged Square users to look into their built-in loyalty programs. People love to be rewarded and it has led to a repeat, loyal customer base for her business. 

K.C. encouraged us to think about recipes as collaborations: involve the products of other vendors in order to increase your product diversity. A secondary benefit is that collaborating creates opportunities for exchange of ideas and mentorship!

Haile encouraged us to think of collaboration as “co-world building” (borrowed from science fiction and fantasy and applied to branding) because it emphasizes defining the underlying values of each business and working in alignment.

Our breakout session exercise: 

Brainstorm which vendors at your market might be aligned with your business’s underlying, core values. Imagine a potential collaboration! We randomly assigned pairs and worked together in the session, but in real life you might think these questions through before reaching out:

• Who is your audience? What do you envision creating?

• Does your collaboration entail purchasing from one another? Creating a product together? Will you promote one another on social media?

• What are you willing to put in in terms of time, money, effort? What are potential deal-breakers?