Managing Vendors Online
Managing Vendors Prior to Launch
- Onboard Producers to Your Market Hub by inviting them to register >> Link
TIP: If the Producers you have spoken with do not fulfill your product variety needs, you need to round out your market:
- Word-of-Mouth: Network within your community to find the specific product Producers your market is missing
- Email: Email producers who you know of who may be able to fulfill your product needs
- Collaborate within Network: connect with other market hubs near you and scan their producer list to find what you are looking for. FarmDrop is a network of 200 producers, some of them active and others not, so don’t be afraid to enagge producers in other areas and invite them in to your market hub.
- Get in touch with info@farmdrop.us to connect with other producers, and get our business analysis of what and who.
Engaging Producers:
As soon as you have organized a committed group (minimum of 6) of Producers to create your successful Marketplace, you will be able to grant access to your Producers to their Training and Market portals, but first:
- See what producers have an active social media, good pictures, good following… and start building on that. Be strategic!
- Engage producers that are in key areas for potential pickup locations as well to spread your reach out further.
- Set expectations around collaborative marketing, have them add banners to their website, or their social media, as a requirement (maybe at least 4 posts a month, can either be story or feed).
- Help them understand the photos, product titling, product editing, and help them navigate if you will be offering EBT, Wholesale or other programming so they can get a full understanding of the potential of their FarmDrop store.
- Engage producers in collaborative logistics systems to help ease the pressures of distribution per producer.
Digital Marketing Guide for Producers
- Help your Producers create a quality online store with these tips for marketing >> Link
- Throughout this process FarmDrop HQ provides email templates through the Active Campaign email marketing portal, to help MHMs focus their communications for each stage of launch.
- Both producers and customers will need to be communicated with regularly during this important set up time, where the market is being created, and the rest of the community will need to learn about what’s underway.
- You can ask producers for photos and stories, extended bio information that you can use to add content to your emails so customers can start to get to know each of the producers on your market hub.
Ready to Open your Online FarmDrop Market Hub?
Please email info@farmdrop.us to let us know you are interested in proceeding with the next steps of this process!