Delivering a Better Fertilizer Buying Experience for Savvy Farmers
A strategic plan integrating website, content, and digital marketing helped ADM Farm Direct Fertilizer grow sales and awareness outside of its existing customer base.
BACKSTORY
The farm fertilizer market is competitive. There’s rivalry among established, long-time suppliers for the lowest prices, quickest delivery, and best customer service. Daily market shifts that influence prices add even more complexity. ADM Farm Direct Fertilizer brings some calm to the chaos by allowing producers to buy products directly from the source—ultimately saving time, money, and stress.
In the fall of 2020, ADM expanded this direct-to-producer approach and launched the Customer Portal website. Now producers can see available products, get online bids, and place orders based on their fertilizer needs and desired delivery date, and access account records and resources.
PROCESS
Calling on our team’s diversity of experience, some informed research, and much collaboration, DKY was able to plan a multifaceted approach that included:
- Identifying the right target audience: business-minded producers who grow primarily corn, wheat, and soybeans in the U.S. (and, eventually, some key regions in Canada).
- New pages and content throughout the website to drive engagement, educate farmers, and compel them to register in the customer portal.
- An improved website navigation, with strategic calls-to-action.
- A DKY-produced podcast episode with a supporting long-form article touting the direct-to-producer wholesale pricing.
- Multichannel support that included paid search, programmatic display, email, organic and paid social, and PR.
- An internal training program for ADM fertilizer representatives to educate them on how to promote and utilize the new portal.
GOALS
The ADM Farm Direct Fertilizer team identified a few primary marketing goals:
- Communicate their expanding products, benefits, features, and tools
- Develop a digital hub where these could be showcased
- Promote it all to a larger, highly targeted audience of relevant producers
BRAND AND MARKETING SERVICES
- Website Strategy and Updates
- Paid Search
- Social Media (Paid and Organic)
- Programmatic Display Advertising
- Content Writing
- Collateral Design
- Email Marketing
- Reporting and analysis
INTEGRATION
DKY’s content team ensured consistent messaging was featured across print and digital touchpoints, including the ADM Customer Portal website, pillar page, marketing emails, feature articles, and advertising campaigns. Messaging reinforced how ADM Farm Direct Fertilizer offers a one-stop shop to save producers time and money when it comes to making decisions and purchasing fertilizer for their operations.
Using a variety of creative elements—high-quality imagery, podcasts, and monthly blog posts—the DKY team planned and produced fresh, relevant content in our paid campaigns. We also executed organic posts for a consistent cadence that kept the ADM target audience engaged and informed.
