Statewide farmers market campaign
Buy Fresh Buy Local Nebraska, a farmers market promotion program, needed to build support for rural farmers markets. Markets across the state vary in quality, with some being merely a few trucks of produce. These markets can’t improve, or survive, without state-wide awareness and interest in farmers markets.
Competing with big-box stores
Despite a culture of agriculture, many rural Nebraskans do not attend their farmers markets. They feel pride in their community, but it’s easier and perceptually cheaper to shop with one stop at a big-box store. They’re more concerned with price and accessibility than sourcing.
We couldn’t compete with convenience, so it was important to tap into their values and pride, focusing on who Nebraskans could support at their local markets. The key message: shopping at a farmers market strengthens your community. This message was the foundation for the “Go to Grow” campaign. The campaign utilized digital display ads and promoted Facebook posts targeted to three Nebraska regions whose markets lacked attendance.
The digital display ads combined the repetition of the “Go to Grow” slogan with bold, friendly design. Different sizes varied the copy with community-focused benefits. The ads were placed on local news sites within the three targeted regions.
Highlighting the real people behind markets
Facebook promoted post visuals utilized the campaign’s graphics as a consistent frame around real photos of vendors. Three of the promoted posts were targeted to the three key regions, featuring vendors from the respective areas. Two of the promoted posts ran statewide. This medium allowed more room to tell authentic stories, give a face to the farmers market and explain how supporting vendors would directly benefit their community and reinforce their values.
Growing results
The Facebook promoted posts and digital display ads ran from approximately July through October during the farmers market season.
During that time, the Facebook promoted posts reached 123,825 individuals and received 362,948 impressions with 973 link clicks. Impressions from the promoted posts accounted for 95.64% of all impressions on Buy Fresh Buy Local’s Facebook page. The digital display ads received 571,530 impressions with a click-through rate of 0.22%, which was 275% more than the 0.08% goal.
In total, the campaign garnered 934,878 impressions, nearly double the goal of 500,000.