Digital Marketing for a Small Urban Agriculture Start-Up

When I was working with a small urban-agriculture start-up in New Orleans, I got to dip my toes in the water with digital marketing. What excites me about digital marketing is that there is no limit to the potential outreach of your marketing campaign. At this small start-up, we grew microgreens, which are the shoots of salad vegetables such as arugula, Swiss chard, or kale picked just after the first leaves have developed. They are a nutrient and flavor dense ingredient that is in high demand within the upscale restaurant world. Using an updated newsletter system, revamping the Instagram page, and curating an event that would be publicized, we were able to gain a wider customer base for our small start-up. Being involved in digital marketing in this start-up, I gained some crucial marketing insights based on my personal experience. 

Since we were such a young and small company, we were only able to take on a certain amount of clients. As we began to grow, we wanted to expand our outreach and find new customers in the hospitality industry, as well as individual private customers. A lot of our early marketing was done by word of mouth because it was such a niche market at first. We cold called a few chefs, made relationships, and made deals. In our growth, it was important to have our name get out to as many potential customers as possible. We had to figure out the best way to do this.

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Updating our Newsletter

Our problem was that our social media presence was essentially just an Instagram page with a small following, as well as a monthly newsletter announcing what product was going to be available over the course of the next month. We decided to update the newsletter to be sent out twice a month with recipe ideas, added photos of the product, as well as the staff, and to add little stories about who we are and why we do what we do. The adjusted newsletter style was a big hit with our customers because it gave them context and a story, as well as ideas of what to cook with our product, but we still needed to gain more subscribers. 

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Being Active on Instagram

At this point, the marketing team decided to revamp the Instagram page in a similar way to the newsletter. The added personal touches, recipe ideas, and an increase in the frequency to which we posted helped a lot. Using Instagram stories and creating Reels and TikToks, we saw an almost instant boost in social media interaction with our account. 

Collaborative Events

The last thing that we did to help boost our visibility was a collaboration with a Pop-Up restaurant also based in New Orleans. We held a private collaborative event where a well known local chef who used our product curated a dinner around our product. Fifty of the most influential chefs in Louisiana were invited and the whole event was photographed and reported on by a local food publication. Once that article came out, we were able to reach a far more wide audience for our small business. We gained about 200 new followers two days after the piece was posted, which doesn’t seem like a lot, but it actually raised our followership by about 25%.  

Over the course of my time at this Urban Agriculture start-up, I learned a lot about digital marketing in a small, growing business. I found that creating and sharing a personal story makes the customer experience richer and makes customers feel a personal investment when supporting the business. I also saw that having a more active Instagram page with hard posts, stories, and reels really helps boost customer interaction with the business. Finally, I found that tactfully curating a collaborative event can help spread your outreach in a big way. Overall, I learned that digital marketing is crucial to help further growth in a young and small start-up.

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