Artisan salespeople, local farmers, and traditional, organic food producers have seen a steady decline in sales since the advent of ubiquitous online food shopping and low-price supermarket food. It’s an independent food sector that’s struggling to get by, and that’s despite a growing trend in wellness and environmental consciousness. This article aims to help the producers of local food and drinks to establish a greater foothold in the market, by sharing insights on how to sell online, promoting your products to an online audience hungry (and thirsty!) for your unique, home-grown products.

Set Up Your Site

A website doesn’t need to cost you thousands of dollars. You may choose to hire a professional web designer who’ll build you a bespoke website replete with all the bells and whistles that web users enjoy using, but this may cost you an arm and a leg and may not be the most efficient way to curate your own site. Instead, use web hosting platforms, such as WordPress, in order to build a template-driven website that looks and feels great, but doesn’t break the bank. Make sure you spend time designing a compelling brand to create visual conformity and excitement on your website, too.

Sales Pages

Of course, the main purpose of your website is to sell local produce to local consumers. As such, your sales pages are incredibly important in promoting your products, the deals you run, and how exactly each product is made. Be sure to include great photos and compelling descriptions on these pages, and show your delivery limitations where necessary. At the point of sale, make sure you’ve activated an enterprise ecommerce platform such as Shopify to help you process orders with ease, ensuring that your site visitors are comfortable parting with their cash in exchange for your excellent line of products.

Marketing Your Products

With the marketplace for food and drink saturated, you need to think wisely about who your products are targeted at. You’ll already know the general demographic of your customers from those who trade with you on a daily basis from your home or farm. They’re likely to be:

• Of a middle or high income
• Environmentally conscious and health-conscious
• Appreciative of local businesses and local enterprise
• Local people who’ve lived in the area all their lives
• Young professionals or older ‘silver surfers’ who like to order food online

With these insights, you’ll be able to drive a bespoke marketing campaign targeted at the consumers who are most likely to want to trade with you going forward.

Establish Partnerships

The final tip in this how-to guide is to look into the establishment of local partnerships – with other online stores, restaurants, hotels, and cafes – all of which may be interested in selling your produce to their customers. This is a neat, quick and simple way of increasing your customer base and creating a case of sales that you can count on each and every week. Reach out to other local businesses in order to enquire about setting up a mutually-beneficial partnership that boosts your profits.

There you have it: some of the best ways to help your local produce enterprise grow thanks to the online boost in sales you’ll be able to generate with the creation of a website, sales pages, and a smart marketing campaign.