There's no escaping it - digital marketing has become the best way to reach the modern farmer.

 In 2017, 90% of farmers were using their smartphones and tablets in their daily work life - with over 75% of these using their smartphones for email. The days of relying on a newspaper ad to launch your latest product are over.

The best way to reach your audience is now online. Remember, to get the most out of your online advertising, you need to bring back potential customers to a professional, modern website that is optimised to convert casual visitors into paying customers.

With so many different advertising options out there for agricultural buyers and suppliers, it can get confusing (and costly) if online marketing isn't done right.

Whether you’re looking to launch your new product to the market or are just looking for a new way to promote your services, we've created this helpful introduction to the world of online advertising for the ag industry.

1. Advertising on Industry Experts' Websites

If you're new to the world of online marketing, this is probably going to be the most familiar entry on this list for you!

For years, the ag industry has relied on placing ads in local newspapers, farming magazines and farming directories. With the shift from traditional to digital, you might have noticed a lot of the places you used to buy ad space have gone online.

It's exactly the same premise as before, just instead of a paper ad being printed, the newspaper/magazine will add your advert to their website.

The benefit of advertising on the websites of industry's biggest names means you have access to all of their subscribers and visitors. The downside? You have to fight hard to get noticed amongst all those other companies advertising too.

2. Retargeting Adverts (AKA Programmatic Ads)

If you're investing any money at all into online advertising, this is pretty much an essential element.

When someone visits your website, they're assigned a tracker ID that will display your ads to them repeatedly when they visit other sites. You might have noticed after researching something online that you keep seeing adverts for that exact item or similar products. This is retargeting ads in action.

The great advantage to implementing this type of online advertising is there are thousands of websites that will show your ads to people who have visited your site, including the likes of: The New York Times, Fox News, ESPN, Recipes.com - and so many more.

The average customer will interact with a company SEVEN times before actually purchasing from them. By repeatedly reminding them of your amazing products and services, you're touching base with them, building that relationship - without having to put any time or effort in.

This latest innovation in advertising enables you to pay for the potential customer, not the ad placement.

3. Google AdWords

When most people hear 'online advertising' they think of Google AdWords - and for good reason!

According to Internet Live Stats, there's around 5.5 billion Google searches PER DAY. That's around 63,000 search queries per second.

A true staple of online advertising, Google AdWords potentially gives you access to the millions of people searching for information on your industry.

The key to AdWords success is narrowing down who your ads appear to. If you sell John Deere tractors in Ohio, you don't want to waste money on someone from France clicking on your ad to figure out where their nearest tractor dealership is. They're just not going to buy from you (just think of the import taxes!)

Getting the best return on your investment in Google AdWords means fine-tuning who your ads appear to. You want to know exactly who you're marketing to: where they live, what they do and what they're searching for. When you can pinpoint exactly who your customers are, you can choose to target them and pay to showcase your details above your competitors.

4. Google Shopping

A sub-sector of Google AdWords, Google Shopping are a fantastic way of showing off your products to people that are searching for the big brands and names in the ag industry. Rather than appearing for generalised searches, Google Shopping ads are best used for specific products.

A great aspect of Google Shopping ads is they allow you to appeal to potential customers with more than a couple of lines of text. They show users a photo of your product, a title and description, a price, your store name and more.

Google Shopping is a great way to promote your online and local inventory, boost traffic to your website (or local store) and outperform your competitors on Google.

5. Social Media Marketing

Young farmers are still more likely to use social media to promote their businesses, but older farmers are quickly catching up.

Keep farmers engaged with your company by advertising on the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. Figure out where your target audience likes to hang out and implement an ad campaign on that platform.

The great thing about advertising on social media is your audience can be as broad or specific as you would like. You can hit every farmer in your state or just those in your town. You can even narrow it down to their income levels too.

When you choose to advertise on social media, each platform gives you measurable and quantifiable statistics on what's working and what's not - helping you to invest your money in adverts that actually work.

6. Promotional Item Giveaways

Ok, we're going to start this one off by saying this is not for everyone!

Essentially, a promotional item giveaway (or a free product giveaway) is where you choose to giveaway an item in exchange for people giving you their contact details (most likely on your website) or by liking and sharing your social media post. After a set period, a winner is chosen and they receive a free item.

Promotional giveaways can potentially bring you a huge amount of brand awareness. Depending on the item you choose to give away, they can continue to have a beneficial effect on your company long after you have stopped promoting them.

Things like t-shirts, bags, pens and rucksacks may enter daily use amongst your target audience. The most popular (and most shared) items are usually free products given away - but you don't see many crop nutrients being handed out for free!

7. Email Marketing

Email marketing is proven to be the cheapest option of advertising to customers there is.

Once you have a number of customers' email addresses, you can start sending them promotional emails (sometimes called nurture emails). As each person you're emailing has already expressed interest in your product or service, you're going to get a much warmer reception (and higher success rate) than if you were contacting random people in the industry. The result? Your emails are going to get more opens, clicks and conversions.

With email marketing automation software, you can now prepare customized and personalized emails months in advance and schedule them to send out at set times of the year.

As with everything ag, preparation is everything in any marketing campaign.

We’ll show you how to use what you already know — plan now, harvest later – to revolutionize your marketing. Get planting those seeds today.