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Marketing in Agriculture
Objectives and Goals 
At the end of this module you will be able to:
• Get a deeper understanding of the agricultural and food sectors and their marketing
• Familiarise with new skills related to agricultural marketing so as to improve the online visibility and competitiveness of your business
• Acquire new knowledge and practical competences in marketing
An Introduction
An Introduction
• By Marketing, we refer to the overall activities, processes and initiatives implemented by the organisation to engage customers’ market and strengthen the attractiveness of the offer.
• Marketing is a very analytical activity that combines creative and critical thinking.
Starting from Business plan
• A well-planned strategy represents the very core of marketing and business planning: all the projections, finalities and motivations are showed in order to be executed properly. Staff members are paramount to the successfulness of the plan itself and stand as an integral part of it.
• It can be said that are three essential layers when it comes to a business plan:
1. Actions to take
2. How to implement them
3. Financial sustainability (the profitability of your business in the long-run)
Elements of a Business plan SWOT Analysis
Meaning…
• Strengths: What allow us to achieve our objectives?
• Weaknesses: What disrupts our efficiency?
• Opportunities: What helps us in achieving our objectives?
• Threats: What might destabilize our performance?
Typical SWOT elements...
• Strengths: virtual reputation and identity, robust models of internal QA…
• Weaknesses: unskilled employees, poor communication and visibility efforts…
• Opportunities: high-growth market, new available technology…
• Threats: new entrants with robust competences, changes in customers’ preferences, barriers to new, markets…
Local Digital Marketing
There are several ways in which you can exploit digital markets in your favor. These are mainly represented by:
• Digital promotion – social media presence
• e-Commerce
• Sponsored advertisement
The importance and impact of social media, namely Facebook, does not go unnoticed: products will benefit of all the attention gained by the promotion held on this platform.
• Find a niche
• Cultivate an online community of people that might be interested in your offer
• Identify keywords consistent with the public of interest, and the interest’s of the public
Commodity
Examples of catchy keywords are represented by: cereals, coffee beans, sugar, palm oil, eggs, milk, fruits, vegetables, beef, cotton and rubber, etc…what we usually refer to as commodity.
The main discriminatory factor between commodities is the price, as it is relatively difficult to find any of the aforementioned good associated to well-known and established commercial brands.
…so how do you “brand” commodities so that customers and (potential) clients can orientate their purchase behaviour? (i.e. turning them into branded goods).
Benefits of brand for seller:
Benefits of brand for customer:
Three dimensions
The measure in which brands generate values depends on how they interrelate three dimension:
1. Meaningfulness: what this brands stands for, what are the values that it portraits and stand by, why people should care…
2. Uniqueness: how it manages to stand out and diversify from competitors…
3. Reliability: why people should trust this brand, how it manages to reassure customers of its quality…
Three simple steps to reignite your market competiveness
1. Study your revenue and cost structure, how can you be more efficient without penalising quality?
2. Exploit new opportunities from the seasonality of your commodity’s price
3. Benchmark your offer to competitors’ moves on the market: plan your communication and visibility strategies accordingly.
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The aim of this module is to help targets in:
• Get a deeper understanding of the agricultural and food sectors and their marketing
• Familiarise with new skills related to agricultural marketing so as to improve the online visibility and competitiveness of your business
• Acquire new knowledge and practical competences in marketing
FAO, Commodity Marketing, https://www.fao.org/3/w3240e/w3240e06.htm;
Agricultural Marketing: Concept and Definitions, http://jnkvv.org/PDF/10042020083748concept%20of%20ag%20markeing_EgEcon530.pdf
Mridanish Jha, Effective marketing strategy for branding a commodity with special reference to consumer goods,
How to brand sand, https://www.strategy-business.com/article/16333
Acharya, S.S. and N.L. Agarwal (2011), Agricultural Marketing in India, Oxford &IBH publishing Company Pvt Ltd., Fifth edition.
Singh, Hardeep, M.K. goel, and A.K. Singhal (2012), Challenges in Rural and Agriculture Market, VSRD International Journal of Business & Management Research, Vol. 2 (6), pp. 299-304
Thomas von der Fuhr, Commodity Branding – the Ultimate Marketing Challenge, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/commodity-branding-ultimate-marketing-challenge-thomas-von-der-fuhr/
+ 34 951 16 49 00
