A grant can help make a farm diversification project financially possible. It can’t guarantee that customers will turn up once it’s finished.
Whether you’re considering holiday accommodation, a farm shop, an event space, a visitor attraction or another diversification project, there is a commercial question that needs answering alongside the funding application:
Who is going to buy from it, and how will they find you?
I don’t advise on grant eligibility or write funding applications. My part of the conversation is the marketing side: understanding the potential customer, looking at demand and working out how the new venture could attract enough of the right people to make it viable.
That work is worth doing before you’ve committed significant time and money to the project.
Start With What You’re Actually Selling
It’s easy to describe a diversification project by what you’re building.
Three glamping pods. A farm shop. A wedding barn. A pumpkin patch.
But that doesn’t necessarily explain why somebody will spend money with you.
Take glamping. The physical product might be a cabin or pod, but customers could be looking for a romantic weekend away, somewhere suitable for a family break or a quiet base for exploring the area.
Those different customers may have different expectations, budgets and ways of finding somewhere to stay.
The same applies to a farm shop. Having locally produced food isn’t necessarily enough to give somebody a reason to drive past a supermarket and visit you instead.
Before you start thinking about advertising, be clear about what makes the project attractive from the customer’s point of view.
Who Is the Customer?
“Everyone” isn’t a particularly useful target market.
A better starting point is to think about who is most likely to buy, where they are coming from and what would make them choose your business.
For a visitor attraction, your market might predominantly be families living within a relatively short drive. Holiday accommodation could attract customers from much further away. A wedding venue could have a completely different catchment again.
This matters because it changes how you market the business.
Someone looking for a pumpkin patch near home may find you through Google Maps or local social media. Someone planning a weekend away could be comparing options through Google, accommodation platforms, tourism websites and recommendations.
Understanding the customer gives you a much better starting point for deciding which marketing activity is actually worth paying for.
Is There Evidence That People Want It?
A good idea and a viable business aren’t always the same thing.
Before committing to a diversification project, look for evidence of demand.
That could include:
- what potential customers are searching for online
- how much search demand exists in your area
- which competing businesses already operate nearby
- what those competitors offer and charge
- reviews showing what customers value or complain about
- local tourism and visitor information
- enquiries you’re already receiving
- performance from a smaller trial before making a larger investment
None of those things proves that a project will succeed.
Together, though, they can help you make a more informed decision than relying on the fact that a similar business appears to be doing well elsewhere.
If you’re still at the stage of deciding what the diversification could look like, I’ve covered some of the options in Farm Diversification Ideas: What Could Work for Your Farm?.
How Will Customers Find the New Business?
This is where the marketing plan starts becoming more practical.
You don’t necessarily need to be everywhere.
The right channels will depend on the project and the people you’re trying to reach.
A farm shop might benefit from strong local visibility, Google Business Profile, roadside signage, local partnerships and social media.
Holiday accommodation might rely more heavily on organic search, booking platforms, destination websites, good photography and relationships with local attractions.
A wedding venue will have a longer buying journey and may need to help couples picture the experience before they’re ready to arrange a viewing.
I’ve covered some of these projects separately in my guides to marketing a farm shop, glamping and farm stay marketing and wedding barn marketing.
The important thing is choosing marketing activity because it makes sense for the customer journey, rather than working through a standard list of channels.
Include Marketing in Your Financial Planning
When you’re working out the cost of a diversification project, marketing can easily become something that’s dealt with at the end.
You’ve budgeted for construction, equipment, planning, professional fees, a website and perhaps branding. Then opening day approaches and somebody asks how customers are actually going to hear about it.
Marketing doesn’t necessarily require an enormous budget, but it should be considered as part of the commercial plan.
Think about both the initial launch and the ongoing cost of attracting customers.
That could include website maintenance, advertising, booking-platform fees, photography, content, printed materials or professional marketing support.
More importantly, start thinking about what the numbers need to look like.
How many bookings, visitors or sales do you need? What is an average customer worth? How much capacity do you actually have?
Those figures help determine what you can reasonably afford to spend attracting a customer.
Don’t Wait Until Opening Day to Start Marketing
Your marketing plan shouldn’t begin when the building work finishes.
Depending on the project, there may be useful work to do well before you’re ready to open.
You might need to build the website, arrange photography, develop relationships with other local businesses, plan launch activity or start building awareness of what’s coming.
For seasonal projects, timing becomes particularly important. A maize maze or pumpkin patch has a relatively short window in which to generate the bulk of its revenue, so discovering in September that nobody can find the website is rather late to start solving the problem.
If you’re considering that kind of project, I’ve written separately about marketing a maize maze or pumpkin patch.
You don’t need to start advertising something months before people can buy it. You do need to work backwards from when you want customers to arrive.
What Happens When the Grant-Funded Work Is Finished?
This is perhaps the most important marketing question.
Funding may help you get a diversification project off the ground, but the business needs to work after the funding has been spent.
That means thinking beyond the launch.
Can you attract enough customers at a price that makes the venture worthwhile? Will demand be seasonal? How often do you need customers to return? How dependent will you be on paid advertising or third-party platforms?
You won’t have perfect answers before launch, but working through those questions can highlight weaknesses in the plan while there’s still time to change it.
Marketing isn’t something you add to a finished diversification project.
It should be part of deciding whether the project makes commercial sense in the first place.
Planning a Farm Diversification Project?
If you’re applying for a farm diversification grant, speak to the appropriate funding or agricultural adviser about eligibility, application requirements and the current schemes available.
If you need help with the marketing and commercial side of the project, that’s where I can help.
My farm diversification marketing support starts with the business itself: the customer, the opportunity, the competition and what needs to happen to generate demand.
Or, if you’re still working out whether the idea is commercially viable, book a free 30-minute Seed Session. We can look at the project and where marketing needs to fit into the plan.
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