Morgan Seger has taken her experience from working at Land O Lakes and transitioned to a role as an independent digital marketing consultant focusing in ag retail.
“I spend a lot of time working with my clients around their brand voice, what they sound like and how are they meeting their customers where their customers are spending their time, which we know is a lot on our phones on our computers,” she says.
With more of a focus on digital marketing, Seger says it’s about recognizing what has changed, but also what has not. Her focus is helping the ag retail business enable stronger relationships with their farmer-facing employees.
“It has changed a lot but at the end of the day, the way our ag retailers meet their customers hasn’t changed a whole lot,” she says. “It’s more about providing air cover for employees so when they go out on the farm that customers have a good understanding of the organization, what they stand for, and what kind of value they can bring.”
Her key tip is for ag retailers to provide more valuable information online.
“If you think about a customer’s behavior, there’s a whole lot more research online before the buy things because it’s so easy to access. So making sure that we’re putting a voice out there and we’re providing good sound information for them to learn from so that way it reinforces a relationship at the front gate,” Seger says.
Specific for the year ahead, Seger sees a potential big upswing in the use of artificial intelligence in marketing and communication. And while she says ag retailers should be experimenting with those tools, she has one word of caution.
“I would say don’t take it at face value at least quite yet,” she says. “There’s a big risk everyone starts sounding like everyone else.”
An often overlooked or misunderstood communication tool has been social media.
“Social media is one of the things that we tend to think it’s a side piece,” she says. “It wasn’t ever really a huge priority. it was just if someone has something let’s get it posted so that way we can show up online and we’re seeing a lot more. We’re seeing a lot less transactional relationship and a lot more just being social online has made a big difference for our clients.”
As for how to measure the return on investment in marketing, Seger advises using the analytics easily available for digital marketing to inform next steps.
“Each month with my clients I do a deep dive into their analytics,” she says. “We look at follower growth and reach and what performed the best and what maybe didn’t hit the mark or what was something we spent a ton of time on it just totally flopped. And then we brainstorm collectively around why is that, why didn’t we meet the mark.”
