Interview Summary

Anthony Smith, Head of Digital at Red Stack Media, an agribusiness growth agency, joins Kiran Kapur to discuss marketing in the agriculture and horticulture world. Anthony Smith explains the unique marketing models in the sector, including business-to-business (B2B), business-to-consumer (B2C), and the specialised business-to-farmer (B2F) model, which requires a hybrid approach. He emphasised the importance of communicating with farmers in language that resonated with their business goals, such as profit and yield. A central theme was the generational shift occurring in farming, which was driving the adoption of digital marketing and technology. Anthony Smith detailed how digital channels, particularly Google Search and Facebook, were effective for reaching a research-driven farming audience. He provided a detailed case study of a client, StowAG, to illustrate how a targeted digital strategy led to a significant increase in ROI and revenue with a reduced budget.

 

Key Points

  • A key distinction was made between agriculture, defined as broad-scope farming on land (arable, livestock), and horticulture, which was more often large-scale, business-run food production under glass.
  • The industry required a unique "Business-to-Farmer" (B2F) marketing approach, which blended B2C consumer-style engagement with B2B messaging focused on business benefits and profitability. [07:50]
  • Effective communication with farmers necessitated using familiar terminology (e.g., "nurturing," "planting seeds") and focusing on outcomes like profit and yield, rather than overly technical jargon. [13:22]
  • The agricultural sector was experiencing a significant generational shift, with a younger, more digitally-savvy generation of farmers emerging, making digital marketing increasingly crucial. [10:18]
  • Farmers were described as a highly research-driven audience. [11:52] As a result, digital channels like Google Search and, surprisingly, Facebook, were very effective for engagement and driving action.
  • A well-executed, sector-specific digital strategy could yield dramatic results, as evidenced by a case study where a client's ROI on ad spend increased by over 400% while their budget was reduced. [26:36]
  • The modern agricultural industry was far more technologically advanced than commonly perceived, utilising AI, autonomous tractors, and drones. [31:27]

 

Interview Transcript

Transcripts are auto-generated.

 

Kiran Kapur (00:00):
Hello and welcome this week. We are in the world of agriculture and horticulture.

Anthony Smith (00:06):
The average age of farmers has been on the age of 60 plus. There's going to be a point where that generational shift happens, and we're trying to encourage agribusinesses to be there and ready for when it happens, and not kind of get left behind.

Kiran Kapur (00:20):
My guest is Anthony Smith, Head of Digital at Red Stag Media. Anthony, welcome. Can we start with what we mean by agriculture and horticulture?

Anthony Smith (00:29):
Yeah, of course. So obviously very similar things, but quite some quite key differences there. So when we talk about agriculture, it's really quite a broad scope term. We're really talking about from arable farming, so people that grow crops that go into fruit production, all the way through to livestock farming, so people that produce beef, lamb, across that board and also into dairy as well. So when we talk about agriculture, it's really quite a broad scope. It's really talking about that kind of farm business. When we talk about horticulture as a term, it is really then talking about more vegetable growth and fruit growth. So that's when we look at people that are growing under glass. So it is less of a farming operation, it's more so kind of a large-scale food production company. And you find that they are less-off farmers, they are more kind of just a professional outfit growing under greenhouses. But yeah, it's kind of a key definition between, I suppose agriculture is out on the land and then horticulture is more so grown under glass essentially.

Kiran Kapur (01:39):
That's really interesting. So I think for most people, if you are outside the industry, agriculture is what you think of, it's farmer Georgia in a field, you sort of get the idea. So can I explore the horticulture a little bit more just because that's probably the new area. So a horticultural business, it's not just a farmer in an orchard, it is under glass and in a greenhouse.

Anthony Smith (02:02):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. So you do find that these are, as I say, more large-scale operations, and there's a lot of obviously time and money goes into developing the facilities more than anything else. Like I said, we are not growing things exposed to the elements and trusting the ground and the weather. It's more so that we're looking at irrigation systems and how the lighting and the glass is formed and developed so that we can grow the best possible produce for the best possible yield as well. And you do find very much that, whereas it'll be a generational farmer that's running an agricultural farm, you do find that a lot of the horticultural businesses, you do get some that are still kind of family owned run by that kind of farming community, but a lot of them are then run by larger-scale operations that are then running logistical signs of it and distribution as well. So yeah, horticulture, it is very much a business-run thing rather than a pharma-focused thing.

Kiran Kapur (03:07):
Thank you, because that wasn't a distinction I'd come across before. So Red Stag Media describes itself as an agri business growth agency, so I assume agribusiness covers agriculture and horticulture, so is that the overall term?

Anthony Smith (03:23):
Yeah, so we tend to use that term really to talk about anyone that's selling into farm or selling into horticulture. So yeah, agribusiness is, it is quite a large scope. It's anywhere from crop inputs through to software that goes onto farms all the way through to agritourism, the likes of Pitchup who run campsites on farms as well. So yeah, in agribusiness really is that catchall term.

Kiran Kapur (03:55):
We'll have to explore that one a little bit further. Really, really fascinating. And the other thing I noticed from looking at the website is that agribusiness encompasses B2B and B2C, and I think you're going to tell me there's a third one as well. So can we just explore the differences in those? So there's business to business, so what would that encompass in agriculture?

Anthony Smith (04:20):
You tend to find that that is more looking at the larger-scale operations. So I know we spoke about horticulture often being larger-scale operations, but you also get farming businesses that are essentially a business made up of multiple farms. You tend to have a contractor running multiple plots essentially, and they will run very much as a business. So you find that we have a lot of people that sell likes of financial software, herd management software, and that element of it where it's more of a business perspective where you're managing large scale operations, so whether that's large numbers of animals or just large acreage in terms of how much crop they are growing, but it tends to be that business to business side is very much focused on business benefits and how much profit can potentially be made out of the potential product that they're developing.

Kiran Kapur (05:23):
And business to consumer. There was a lovely case study on your website about a company that's selling turfing, so presumably that is literally business to end users.

Anthony Smith (05:37):
So they essentially do a little bit of both again, but a lot of it is direct to consumers. So they do work with the likes of councils and things like that to do turf for those, but they do do a lot of their specialities as well. Flower turf as well, which is very much sold to gardeners essentially. So yeah, that is very much the smaller end of the scale and like you said, selling product to that end consumer. There's also looking at from an agricultural to consumer perspective, so that further step down the line is, how farmers sell their produce to the open market and to the consumers themselves. We do find a lot of farmers are taking that next step in, essentially cutting out the middleman a little bit. So rather than trusting supermarket contracts to come in and take the produce they're looking at and exploring how they can develop a product and a brand that they can then position as a direct-to-consumer brand. So you get a lot of farms that'll run a farm shop on site, and so it's very much about promoting the local British-grown produce that can be accessible for people on their doorsteps.

Kiran Kapur (06:55):
And veg boxes and various other things that farmers can do.

Anthony Smith (07:00):
Yeah, a hundred percent.

Kiran Kapur (07:01):
You've also mentioned business to farmer, sort of a third way of looking at things.

Anthony Smith (07:07):
That is our bread and butter essentially. We do find that when we look at a lot of businesses that we work with that are, as I said, our kind of wheelhouse, people that sell to farmers and they're the type of businesses that we tend to work with. And it's very much looking at it from a different perspective. You do have elements to business to consumer because the farmers themselves are consumers of products, but you're also looking at it from a business element where essentially to keep the farm open, to keep their livelihood going, they need to run it as a business and get that, make sure they're making a margin each year to make it sustainable. And we do find that over the years has caused a little bit of confusion for the businesses that we've worked with, especially when you talk about off-the-shelf software and off-the-shelf products from a marketing perspective, they're very much tailored. They're either B2C or their B2B, and they do the job. We find that we've had to actually develop our own products off the back of this, to help businesses really kind of combine the two and look at that mixed way of putting together the messaging where you are talking to the consumer, but you're also communicating business benefits and the economic value of the product or service that you're offering.

Kiran Kapur (08:33):
Yes, that's quite an interesting message. So you yourself have a lovely blog on LinkedIn where you're talking about how to use a CRM system, and what I loved was you put it in ways that a farmer would understand. So you talk about nurturing it, tending your CRM like a crop. Would you sort of expand on that one?

Anthony Smith (08:57):
Yeah, a hundred percent and that's kind of come, as I said about that kind of developing software point. So we very much felt that there needed to be a product that was there for the agricultural community. That spoke those kind of phrases and terms and felt familiar to both the businesses selling into farm and also for the farmers themselves. When we mean the CRM system that we've developed called Agri is very much that kind of area of business to pharma and the terminology across there, again, like you say, it is talking about nurturing, yield, growth, even. How can we plant seeds essentially of growth and that kind of terminology. It kind of brings it into that world and I think, like I say, it has the dual effect of being understandable for the businesses using it, but also crucially as you say for the farmer at the end as well. It's something that is going to talk directly to them, especially in a more modern world where there's a younger farming generation coming through that will very much consume media and consume marketing content through other means, whether it's from a fashion perspective or just from a general Amazon style e-commerce perspective.

(10:18):
They are experiencing one experience in one world, but then we find that traditionally a lot of agricultural businesses are very, very traditional in their approach and we have been in a period where the average age of farmers has been on the age of 60 plus and the people that are actually the decision makers on farm, and it's really looking at how we can bring that modernised digital technology while still maintaining the crucial messaging that has resonated with the farming communities because there's going to be a point where that generational shift happens, and we're trying to encourage agribusinesses, people starting to farm to be there and ready for when it happens and not get left behind.

Kiran Kapur (11:09):
It's really interesting from just a communications perspective of trying to get the messages right. As you say, you've got a generational thing but also trying to, it's talking in the language that your receiver will understand. So the fact that you talk about planting a seed and nurturing it is how you grow your CRM I think is a lovely way of enabling your consumer, your customer to understand what you're talking about.

Anthony Smith (11:37):
Yeah, definitely. And I think we have a team of writers who are ex-journalists that specialise in crafting those messages, which I'm very lucky from my perspective that I can have that messaging within the digital side of the campaigns. But yeah, a hundred percent, it needs to resonate with the end audience and I think a lot of them can feel very left behind in terms of the way they've spoken to or not patronised, but kind of it's hitting that fine margin. Especially with a farming community, because there's a fine line between assuming too little knowledge of what they understand and then assuming too much. We do get some businesses that approach it, especially from the agronomy side of things, so the people that look after or advise farmers on what their products are and how they should look after their crop and if there's any issues with the crop, et cetera.

(12:36):
For those people, don't get me wrong, they are essentially on the verge of being scientists, and they are very, very good at what they do and very knowledgeable, but the companies that provide those services at times come across that way as well and speak in a very technical and a very, very detailed manner. Whereas essentially when you step back and look at it, the farmers that are engaged in the services of an agronomist, it's because they don't fully understand or don't have time to get into the nitty gritty of the science behind the crop. And that is why the agronomist role is there. So to then talk to them as though you're talking to an agronomist is very difficult to get the message across and kind of explain why it's important to a farmer. You could talk about what ingredients go into a particular fertiliser that make it good for the soil, et cetera, but at the end of the day when a farmer's looking at that product and deciding whether to buy it, it's is this going to make me a profit? Is this going to increase my yield for a cheaper price or the more money I'm paying for it is going to increase the yield I'm going to receive off the back of it. And I think as you say, it's very key to look at what you're trying to communicate, but also approach it from the side of the customer to make sure that you are actually getting the messaging across that's actually going to mean something to them.

Kiran Kapur (14:07):
Yes, I think how one communicates is so often overlooked as being a sort of fairly, we get very excited about measuring marketing and I do want to come onto that in a sec, but actually just physically understanding your customer and communicating in the way that they understand and that is meaningful to them. I can understand something that could still not be meaningful is really, really important. So you are Head of Digital at an agribusiness growth agency, so I don't think people who are outside the agribusiness necessarily automatically think there's a lot of digital involved. I've still got this bucolic image of a farmer in a field, sorry, that's still the way my mind tends to go with agri. So where does the digital side come in and why is it so important in this industry?

Anthony Smith (14:53):
Yeah, I think, don't get me wrong, from an agricultural perspective, it is probably one of the last bastions in terms of print media, and there's still the likes of the Farmer's Weekly and the Farmer's Guardian that are widely read and consumed. Events are still very much a major thing within agriculture as well. There's a number of events throughout the year that are massively attended and tailored to different sectors of the agricultural market, but as I mentioned before, there is a shift coming and as a lot of business have been very traditional in put full page ad in the Farmers weekly and see where that goes. But from a digital perspective, one that's very hard to measure, the actual effect of running those adverts, unless you're really keen on tracking branded search and things like that, it is very difficult to track the influence of those pieces and the likes of the events as well.

(15:54):
The events are fantastic and getting in front of farmers and talking face-to-face, but how can we capture data off the back of that, and where can we extend that experience for the sales team and the customer beyond the face-to-face moment at the event? And I think those are a couple of key ways that we look at it in terms of bringing agriculture in, but also as I've mentioned before, bringing it through to that next generational audience, we are looking at digital experiences and very sophisticated digital marketing from the likes of e-commerce, from retail, from other aspects of their life and the way that they consume things and it's why shouldn't they have that experience within the agricultural industry as well? Why shouldn't the companies selling to them allow them the same experience and the same user experience? And if you come to meet them from a digital perspective, you've got much more chance of them engaging and getting involved with your brand and with your product because you are talking to them on a medium that they understand and are used to kind of engaging with.

(17:06):
I think as well, just from a tracking perspective, as I mentioned, the kind of advertising and the print advertising, we very much look at how we can adapt and optimise campaigns and that's very easy essentially from a digital perspective is being able to test and learn and then adapt from that. And it is bringing that idea through to the businesses that we work with as well because we look, as I said, the likes of the Farmer's Weekly and the Farmer's Guardian are fantastic, but you look at the print advertising in there and it's the same across any print advertising that the numbers you're looking at, you could pay upwards of 5,000 pounds for a double page spread and you think, well, the conversations we have with companies are, if you put that 5,000 pound behind, say a Google search campaign, you're going to have a much larger reach and a much more trackable and optimisable campaign than you have from putting one kind of double page spread in a print medium. So it is a bit of an attitude shift because as I said, a lot of agricultural businesses are very traditional in their approach and they are on the similar ends of what the farmers are. They're essentially an older generation that have been doing it for a long time and have been very successful, but it's looking at how we can help them grow and using digital as that kind of catalyst to help that happen.

Kiran Kapur (18:41):
So does it matter which audience you are talking to? So I can imagine if you're talking to a B2C audience, inevitably that is likely to be younger or wider age range at least. So I can see how a digital fits in there. Is it different when you're doing business to pharma for example?

Anthony Smith (19:05):
It isn't it. I think there are times our particular channels where we do see a lot of engagement. So for instance, we actually had a conference a few years ago, and we had a farmer's panel on there and essentially it was an opportunity to fire questions at farmers to say, how do you like to be spoken to? How do you like to be communicated with? And one of the farmers that we had on there said look, if a farmer has a question, he googles it, and it's a very research-driven industry. There's a lot of research going on by farmers to understand how to fix a part on a tractor, weather systems can they expect in the next coming months, how can they improve their yield of their crop, what fertiliser should they be using? It is very, very research-driven, and we found because of that, the likes of search advertising across the board, especially from a Google perspective, is very strong for those research-driven terms.

(20:10):
And we also because of that look, approaching from an SEO perspective as well. So we work with a number of companies where we essentially create content hubs around particular issues or topics. So for instance, and obviously it's kind of ended now, but when we had the SFI scheme running for farmers that was run by the government, there was obviously a lot of questions from farmers of what was eligible to begin with, what could they claim for, what kind of grants were available to them, how could they be used, what's the benefits of using it on X crop, et cetera. So we were able to create content around that that was informational content to advise farmers on the questions that they had, and obviously then using various conversion methods to then extend that process from providing the informational content and extending it on to the conversion aspect of it, whether that be a downloadable white paper or contacting the team to find out more information.

(21:16):
But from that perspective, as I said, it's very research-driven. So search is huge for us, but also from a Facebook perspective, surprisingly, we get a lot of engagement from social advertising on Facebook, especially from the farming audience between probably 35 and 60 plus. We see a lot of engagement on there for business solutions as much as we do for the consumer side of things. So that being said, it's probably the only social channel that we see that kind of engagement on. TikTok for instance, or YouTube shorts and things like that are fantastic for that informational content higher up the funnel when we're talking to, as you said, that broader scope from both the business and the consumer perspective. But when we want to really drive action, it tends to be the search stuff and the advertising on Facebook as well.

Kiran Kapur (22:20):
So Anthony, can you give me an example of an agribusiness that you work with that you are working with and doing the digital work for?

Anthony Smith (22:29):
Yeah, so we actually work with StowAg, so they're a country store specifically set up for farmers. They'd be going quite a number of years. They're family-run business, so they have physical stores based around Oxfordshire and the wider area. They're also an e-commerce business, so their website is set up for e-commerce, and we run their Google shopping advertising as well as some social advertising for them. We actually took the contract over about a year ago from a generalist agency. So they were just a generalist digital agency based up north as well. But we took it over, we'd actually done a small project with StowAg to promote the opening of one of their new stores. Which went really well in terms of getting RSVPs and getting people down to the store opening, which was a campaign we ran on Facebook. And from a messaging point of view, they were really happy with how we'd kind of communicated to farmers directly, which they had not been able to really do effectively before.

(23:35):
So that's how we won the contract to do the Google advertising as well. So when we took that over, we essentially looked at the advertising that had been run so far, which had performed effectively well, but had a look at it from an agricultural perspective to see were there any ways we could adjust this campaign, split it into specific categories to make sure that it resonated more with farmers and essentially drove more conversions and more sales for StowAg. So what we did was look at it from essentially two perspectives. So we said, okay, we can either split it into categories based on what type of farm we're approaching. So obviously some items are more tailored towards livestock farming, some are more tailored towards the arable side, or do we look at it on a seasonality basis? And ultimately, we looked at it from that seasonality point of view because they had such a wide range of products, and we found that when we were trying to speak to individual sectors within agriculture from a Google shopping perspective, some of the categories were so small that it just wasn't viable from a budget perspective.

(24:49):
So we split it into those kind of seasonal categories so we could adjust spend accordingly. Over time, we moved it onto a new compassion shopping service called Product Hero from the one they was using before. And by doing that as well, we were able to split it into essentially dynamic product tags. So we use Product Hero's system to braid the products into essentially what they call heroes, villains, zombies, and sidekicks as well. And that essentially looks at the return on investment that each product's able to generate. Is it your superhero, is it really pushing above the target return on investment that you're looking to drive or is it a villain and it's really digging in and costing you a lot per conversion because of that. What we did was split it into the product categories, and the heroes are really trying to drive profit. We know they're likely to convert, so we get those driving as much profit as possible.

(25:54):
The villains we give a small budget to, but the same return on investment target, so that they essentially have to work a lot harder for the conversion, and that tends to force them to only appear on longer tail keywords, which essentially have a higher chance of conversion. So instead of coming up in more general broader terms, we focus on the long tail keywords to really drive home essentially the economy of it. So as I said, we've been running that for just around a year now. The growth year on year that we've seen, we've increased the return on investment for them on the ads by over 400%. We're seeing the revenue grow by around 70% year on year as well per month, and the click price dropped around 30% as well. So we've done that all with a 60% less budget than what they had last year on the ads. So we've been able to grow that account to a year on year return. Investment has grown by over 400%, the revenue growth has been over 70% and we've driven the click price down by roughly 30% I think year on year, which has all been done with A 60% lower budget than what they were spending last year.

(27:14):
So yeah, it's been really, really successful and I think by all means, I know StowAg's had some extra publicity over the last couple of months, which hasn't gone amiss and is definitely helping with, I suppose, the brand trust more than anything else because we are positioning these products on Google shopping results, so we are tagged in people searching for product. So I think the extra brand exposure that they've been lucky enough to receive from other areas has definitely helped grow the trust, and I think that's helping with the then conversion rates off the back of that.

Kiran Kapur (27:57):
Yes, the other side would be Clarkson's Farm.

Anthony Smith (28:00):
Now that one.

Kiran Kapur (28:02):
He's been talking about them. Apparently, they do. Great beanies. Anthony, thank you. That was a really detailed but really interesting case study of how to do, how you apply digital marketing techniques into this business area. Before I let you go, I have to ask, how did you end up in agribusiness, because that's not your original background, isn't it? You have the fantastic time working at a cricket club.

Anthony Smith (28:27):
Yes. Yeah, interestingly, so I kind of cut my teeth as it were in professional sport. So I worked for Lancashire Cricket for a number of years, started off promoting the international matches at the stadium, so the likes of England cricket, and lucky enough to work a Ashes series or two, which was really, really exciting. The matchday experiences is beyond anything you can imagine being able to work something like that. I then looked at opportunities for personal growth. I was a juniorish level at the club, and I had a lot of drive essentially to progress my career and try and progress personally in a sense. As I say, I managed, I was lucky enough to cover an Ashes series. I saw the start of the a hundred competition and was part of promoting the inaugural season of that at the club, and I felt like I got to the point where I'd experienced what I could experience there and also where were the next opportunities for me to grow from a marketing perspective and essentially learn more.

(29:47):
That then took me onto a management position for a property company, funnily enough. Which I ran and kind of set up their marketing function from scratch, which was a great experience in one, being able to formulate for a company what that marketing function should look like and what the priorities should be with limited resource, but also the opportunity to put together a team that was of my choosing essentially, which helped to learn from a leadership perspective. And I spent about a year there and I just felt that the property industry wasn't for me, essentially. It was an investment-focused company. It was very corporate. It's kind of not my world as such. I'm a very outdoorsy person, and big lover of the countryside and being out in the great outdoors, and I saw an opportunity to come up with Red Stag Media, and from someone that loves the outdoors, I thought, fantastic, this is going to be brilliant.

(30:54):
I had that same vision of farmers and fields. I'm just going to be going out and helping selling tractors and this, that and the other, which was ultimately the vision that I had for it. And I'm lucky enough, and something I like to remind 'em of. I actually got passed up at the first opportunity, they took someone else on who then declined the offer, and I was the second choice. I like to get that in from time to time, especially when I run a successful campaign. But yeah, I managed to get the opportunity to then come into agriculture, and it was one of the steepest learning curves I've ever experienced in my life. Especially from understanding how sophisticated the agricultural industry is. As we've spoken about the digital marketing aspect, maybe not as advanced as other industries, but for the technology and the advancements within the industry itself.

(31:57):
When we talk about farm machinery, the likes of autonomous tractors and drones that are able to spray fertiliser and insecticide, et cetera, on specific plants and weeds that are identified through AI systems and things like that, it completely opened my eyes to a world that I never knew existed. And I think there is an aspect of, and it's talked about a lot and understanding where food comes from and how it gets towards as an end consumer, but I think there's a hell of a lot goes on behind the scenes that we aren't party to and we don't see from a consumer's perspective. So yeah, started off there as a marketing manager, really trying to get to grips with the industry and understanding the customer essentially, and understanding who farmers were, what their experiences are, like, what they want to see from businesses, and really kind of understanding how they like to be talked to. And then, yeah, I suppose three years on it is kind of gone from strength to strength and yeah, I've been lucky enough to work on some fantastic campaigns, all the way from multinational biopharma companies, all the way down to local companies selling the likes of wildflower turf and things like that. So it's been a fantastic journey and yeah, just an industry that's very, very fascinating once you start to dig beneath the surface, as it were.

Kiran Kapur (33:37):
One of the things I told you before we started recording was, I love the fact that your website, on your Meet the Team page. It's not Meet the Team, it's Meet the Herd. Oh, yeah. Adding all those sort of farming and agribusiness elements to what you talk about I think's really interesting.

Anthony Smith (33:53):
Yeah, definitely.

Kiran Kapur (33:53):
Anthony Smith, Head of Digital at Red Stag Media, thank you so much for your time and your input there. It was really interesting to learn about an industry that I think quite a lot of people from outside just don't fully understand, so thank you so much indeed.

Anthony Smith (34:07):
Yeah, no, it's been a pleasure. Thanks for having me.