TACTICS:
Partnered with the Customers by engaging them in the marketing process of the business. Help development training and documentation for the franchise model.

FURTHER DETAIL:
I worked directly with Gary Pike and Susan Barton, founders of Urbanize Farms first by building a world-class website and then by establishing a program by which the clients could start to depend on marketing from Urbanize. We created a customer map that provided an easy link to locally grown products, and offered visitors to our website and social media a simple “click and find” map to find the nearest vendor carrying our products. 

We retook all photos and video of the farm and used them in the marketing, website and social strategies and integrated a CRM system to allow the tracking of all customer sales correspondence. This eventually led to the development of a fairly large list used for marketing and special product offers. 

We developed a Web-App that allowed customers to place orders from their smartphone replacing the old way of contacting customers every morning at 6 am to get orders for the following day. Some clients still wanted that personal connection by phone, but many of them jumped at the chance to be able to place orders on their own terms.

Our restaurant offering helped establish new clients in new markets and opened the door to the full line of locally grown micro-green products. Our restaurant business also allowed access to an intricate network of referrals between the restaurants that was previously unavailable. Once that network was established, it became very easy to introduce new offerings directly into that group of existing customers.

Finally, we went about the task of documenting all processes, training and the farm footprint that would be necessary for a Farm Franchise model to be established. The CRM that was now incorporated into the sales processes of the business allowed us to project exactly how many phone calls, emails and personal visits it would take for a new Farm Franchise owner to establish customers in a new territory. 

Urbanize Farm was the initial business in Minneapolis and St. Paul Minnesota and now established is a franchise model that will roll out in the near future as Urbanize Farms.

I continue to provide guidance and support to the project.