Build credibility and farmer trust with empathy
We learn that empathy in marketing plays a crucial role in establishing brand credibility and building relationships with customers. Some brands do it better than others when marketing to farmers. Some completely fail, because they don’t seem sincere, don’t understand the problem their brand can solve for farmers, and/or don’t understand the needs and mindsets of farmers.
Well-executed empathy respects the intelligence of farmers and the lives they lead. Well-executed empathy in marketing talks to farmers in their language as peers, never patronizing or alienating them. There are six simple ways for brands to effectively empathize and credibly connect with farmers.
- Know your brand’s limitations, and use appropriate cause-and-effect statements. Farmers can achieve strong ROI by controlling profit-robbing weeds with an herbicide, but an herbicide doesn’t make the farmer more profitable, smarter or more competitive.
- Don’t state the benignly obvious, like “you can’t control the weather” or “you work hard.” Farmers know these things. Farm work is more than back-breaking work; there’s a lot of brain-work, too. By the way, most farmers don’t mind working hard – they like the work and the tangible and intangible rewards that come with it.
- Don’t indicate or imply that farming is gambling. Yes, there are uncontrollable variables like the weather and markets, but farmers believe part of their job is to manage the risk through good decisions – which may or may not include your brand.
- Provide the why, not just the what of your brand benefit. Substantiate superior and superlative statements. How does a new technology make farmers more efficient and compared to what? Farmers are skeptical and need to know why your brand is “bestest” or “mostest.”
- Don’t remind farmers that farming is tough or their margins are tight. They know it; they live it. And don’t think for a minute that they don’t see your brands’ costs as part of the problem.
- Portray or speak to farmers in contemporary, relevant terms. While faded red barns and vintage pickup trucks are comforting images to the ag-naïve, they annoy farmers and destroy your brand’s credibility. Language and images should be a balance of the earthy lifestyle of farming and the sophistication and technology of agriculture.
- In “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Atticus Finch taught Scout about the importance of empathy when he told her, “you never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view […] until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” It’s as true today as when Harper Lee wrote the line in 1960.
Empathy is the single most important trait for getting along with people. It is perhaps one of the most important sales and marketing tools, too. If done right. When executed well – with deep knowledge of farmer audiences and objectivity about their brands – ag marketers earn credibility and the trust of farmers. Otherwise, it’s just superficial, irrelevant and annoying.