With 2020 over and 2021 underway, we’re starting to see the light at the end of the pandemic tunnel. The past 12 months have been difficult for almost every industry, and the B2B agriculture industry no longer looks the same.

Now, it’s time to look ahead and map out your key marketing strategies to make 2021 your best year yet. Gone are the days of print ads in trade magazines. Instead, we’re faced with an interconnected world that expects more from B2B brands than ever before.

Here are some of the best agribusiness marketing strategies you can put in place this year.

1. Segment Audiences and Personalize Communication

Not every customer is the same. They have different needs, different goals and different ways of communicating. This means that sweeping campaigns that try to target everyone at once are no longer appropriate.

Let these stats soak in: 88% of marketers see a definite lift in business when they use personalization. It can deliver 5x-8x the ROI on marketing spend and increase sales by more than 10%.

If you approach a corn grower to offer help with his specialty crop operation, the spend is not going to reap the results you want. In an ideal world, you’d have unique discussions with every single prospect, but obviously this isn’t always easy.

Personalization helps you target segmented groups with similar needs. You can group together like-minded growers and send them content adapted to their needs.

Key personalization techniques:

• Segment your email list
• Send relevant communications to each segment
• Create tailored marketing material and sales collateral for each segment

2. Become an Expert

Today’s farmers spend a lot of time researching the latest products and solutions. They can spend hours trawling through information, product pages and demos, which is why it’s important that you put your brand in front of them at this point.

This means creating educational content that answers their biggest questions and gives them the information they need at exactly the right time.

For example, a corn grower might know that he needs a new tool to speed up operations, so he has researched a couple of products and is now choosing between options. If you show up with solid content that positions you as the expert, there’s a high chance he’ll choose your product over that of a competitor.

Motorleaf has a whole blog dedicated to providing useful, educational content for its audience that positions the company as an expert in the industry.

How to become recognized as an industry expert:

• Create educational content on your blog
• Publish e-books and whitepapers
• Host or contribute to webinars or events
• Post guest articles on authoritative and relevant blogs that your target audience is reading
• Share educational content on social media
• Release your own research findings

3. Multichannel Marketing

The sales cycle is no longer linear. Prospects find their own way to purchase depending on their needs. For example, one agribusiness might find you through a Google search and inquire about purchasing immediately when they land on your product page. Another might arrive on a blog post, sign up to your email list and make a purchase three months down the line.

As a result, it’s important to tap into different marketing channels to ensure your message reaches the right people where they’re already hanging out.

Today, there are plenty of tools available to help you track conversions, tap into data and create campaigns on every single marketing platform.

Start by identifying the platforms your customers are already using and create campaigns to reach them there. Test and tweak your ads and content until you find a content mix that works well.

For example, you might run Facebook ads to retarget prospects who’ve already visited your site, create an email sequence to target warm leads, and publish educational blog posts to attract first-time visitors via search engines.

Key multichannel marketing techniques:

• Identify your top-performing channels
• Create content across a variety of channels
• Test and optimize the results on each channel

4. Involve the Customer

Customers are an incredible marketing tool right at your fingertips. Today, social proof is everything—even in the B2B world. Buyers in the agriculture industry want to know that they can trust your brand and that they’re making the right choice.

Use customer-generated content like reviews, photos and stories to promote your products. 93% of buyers actively seek reviews before they make a purchase, while 84% trust reviews as much as a recommendation from a friend or colleague.

AgriWebb has sprinkled customer reviews around their website, including on their homepage, on their product pages and embedded in their customer stories.

How to involve customers:

• Collect customer reviews and populate your site with them
• Create a social media hashtag and encourage customers to share their photos and videos
• Reshare any customer-generated content

5. Technology for Interactivity

It’s an exciting time for the B2B agriculture industry. The influx of new technology has made it easier than ever to create innovative products and reach customers in exciting ways.

Dull forms of marketing should be pushed to the wayside and be replaced with fun, interactive methods. This could be anything from a spin-off app, social media contest, or even gamifying the sales cycle.

Hectare Agriculture’s app Tudder is a great example of an interactive and fun marketing method. Farmers can “match” bulls with cows in their local area for breeding purposes; it works much like a modern-day dating app.

Not only is it a memorable way to get the job done, it will keep customers coming back for more because it’s a fun and easy way to do a repetitive task.

Key interactivity methods:

• Build a spin-off app that complements your services
• Gamify the sales cycle
• Create fun interactive videos or guides
• Run a social media contest

Up Your Marketing Game in 2021

2021 will be big for the B2B agriculture industry. After a year of uncertainty, we’re now emerging into a new world full of technology and opportunities. Get ahead on your marketing strategy today to reap the rewards later in the year and beyond.

Think about new and innovative ways you can reach prospects, whether that’s through educational content, customer stories and reviews, or bringing an exciting new app to market.