7 Ways To Maximize Your Time When Starting a Farm Business
It can feel really frustrating if you’re not sure what you’re doing is bringing about results in your farm business.
Did you know that most of the time, 20 percent of your effort correlates to about 80 percent of the results that you get? Yep, it’s true. I have seen this time and time again in my own life and business.
Discovering the business-oriented tasks that make the biggest impact on your farm business means that you can do more of what works and less of the things that aren’t showing the results you want.
Here are some things that will prove to be a good use of your time and also how to find ways to evaluate what you are doing to see if something is working.
Learn Your Craft And How To Market It
Whatever your main service or product is, it’s imperative that you continue learning about it. You never want to become stagnant in your niche.
Not only learning about that one thing but learning about how to market your business to the right people. Understanding your audience, how your work impacts them, and industry standards will make you an expert in your niche.
This will help you make decisions and clearly understand what your audience wants so you never have to wonder.
It could be something as simple as subscribing to magazines so you can keep tabs on where the market is and what people are talking about.
Or joining a few active Facebook groups and spending 10 minutes a day reading through the newest posts as well as the comments. These things will give you a clear idea of the direction things are going in your niche.
Country Lifestyle Action Planner
Create your step-by-step plan to build the country lifestyle you’ve dreamed of that is right for you!
Avoid Busy Work
It can be very easy to get into doing things that SEEM like they are important. But they are not moving the needle forward like doing another task would.
For example, you may be telling yourself when you get on Instagram you are doing research. But you actually end up scrolling through the feed of your favorite influencers which isn’t helping you learn anything about your market or the latest trends.
When you sit down to work, ensure that the work you do impacts something in your farm business.
For instance, listing another product for sale and promoting it to your audience will generate more sales. Make sure you can draw a line right to the impact of the action before you do it.
Is That New Method or Strategy Supposed To Get The Result You Want
When you learn about a new method, for example, a new marketing tactic – take the time to study it before you implement it.
For example, chatbots are awesome, but they’re not right for every single business out there. Are they right for yours? Maybe. It goes back to your goals and what you are trying to do with your business.
But only you will be able to decide that.
When it came to tic-tok I decided to pass because that app just gave me anxiety being on it and I also have a big issue with who owns it. It should not be on any American phone… but that’s just my opinion. But it looks like it may not be an issue in a year or so anyway with the potential of it being band.
Set Goals And A Timeline For The New Method or Strategy
Once you choose a new method or strategy to put into play, set goals for it.
Your ultimate goal if you are a farm business owner should be to increase sales, leads, or brand awareness.
Set a goal for yourself and the new tactic. Give it a set amount of days and track it so you can see if it is really working for your farm business. If it is a social platform or content strategy then give it 30 days.
If you are testing out a landing page or sales copy you would have at least 100 visitors to the page.
Through tracking and measuring, you can improve processes to get more out of them. BUT never change more than one thing at a time so you know what caused the effect. Also make a note of the way things were before you made a change to the page, post, typography, color, or whatever it is. So you can switch it back if you didn’t like the results.
Track Your Farm Business Numbers Often
Always look at the numbers on a regular basis. And by regular basis, I mean once a month tracking your results if it is on your website.
If you are tracking your social media results once a week. The best thing you can use to do this is a Google spreadsheet or a printable to handwrite the results.
Choose your top 4 results or goals that you’re trying to reach.
Don’t do more than that because you’re going to just overwhelm yourself and try to do too much at once. Start with one goal and get it to where you want to be then work on the next one.
Always check the numbers before you implement a new idea and then check again after the campaign ends is a good test of a new marketing method.
Give It Enough Time to Work
When you implement any new idea, don’t think you can do it one day, and that’s it. Most business ideas, marketing plans, and the like will take more time to start generating income or results. Set a time limit but give it enough time to truly generate enough data to get a result.
You need to wait About 30 days or if you don’t have a lot of traffic to that post or page then wait until you have at least 100 preferably 1000 visitors to that poster page before you make another change. so that way you know what the overall percentage is.
Also if you are going to try to do a new marketing method don’t try it for 3 days one week and 5 days the next week then completely skip a week and week 4 you post all 7 days.
That is inconsistent and inaccurate. You won’t get the results you want. It’s like trying to lose what and not actually tracking your calories. You can still get fat by eating fruits, vegetables, and meat.
Keep Going Even If You Don’t Feel Like It
There are going to be seasons when you just don’t want to keep going in your business. But you have to ask yourself, if I quit what am I going to do with that time? And if you are a Christian, am I supposed to quit? If the answer is no. Then you need to dig deep and find the strength to keep going.
You will have weeks, months, or even years when you don’t feel like continuing on in your business. This is something I have told myself often is I can quit, but I can’t quit on a bad day. And often times I don’t really want to quit. It’s just a bad day.
Be Willing to Change Directions
When you check the numbers and notice things going differently than you planned, you’ll want to be able to change directions as fast as possible. UNLESS you are happy with the way things are going even though you didn’t see it coming.
The only way to do that is if you are creating goals that are measurable in a way that allows you to check the progress.
If You Dislike Something, Stop Doing It
Remember, if you hate doing something, you don’t have to do it. You can automate it or outsource it if it’s something that needs to be done.
But you may also be able to skip it. For example, if your audience isn’t even on Instagram, why are you bothering?
OR you need to find a way to batch it so you only have to spend a few days a month thinking about it.
If you are like me and don’t like dealing with social media. Take a few days a month and create all the content for the month. Schedule it all out then you’re done.
Determining the best use of your time has to do with what you like doing, what you can afford to do, and what impacts your business the most.
The trick is figuring out what impact your actions have on your farm business results. And compare them so that you can keep doing the most impactful tasks for your business.