In a recent youth entrepreneurship summit, Billionaire Chris Kirubi stumped my though that agribusiness is Kenya’s economic future. Well most of us know this and would really love to invest in agribusiness but the challenge of marketing makes most coil away from this lucrative field. However, Joy, a 20-year successful poultry farmer has found ways of beating this challenge. Here, she shares her ideas on successful marketing of eggs and other poultry products from her farm in Nairobi.
1. Bypass the middlemen: Most poultry farmers rely on middlemen to help sell their products. In so doing, they lose a lot of profit after a hard job. If you want to sell faster and make more money, then you should sell both in wholesale quantities and retail quantities. The best way to sell your poultry products in retail quantities is by setting up a simple outlet. Look for a good location to rent a store and then use it to stock products from your farm.
2. Take your business online: This is perhaps my most successful marketing technique today. Everybody hangs around the internet these days. If you want your business to thrive, you cannot close your eyes to the internet. Your social media account, and mostly Facebook, is a very good place to promote your business and increase awareness for your products. Take a nice photo of your products and post it up there. Soon people will start asking you for the price. Take a short video and post it on Facebook showing how you produce your eggs and how well you keep and feed your chicken. This serves to create confidence in buyers and hence attract them.
I have a lady that I am following on Instagram who regularly posts pictures of attractively packaged, fresh products from her poultry farm on her page. She has a lot of followers and people keep asking her where they can get her products in the south even though she’s based in the North. I am very sure that a lot of Northerners patronize her too.
If you want to sell your products faster, you should have a strong internet presence so that people can order for products online and even those that do not order online would be able to recognize and buy your products when they see it in supermarkets or grocery stores.
3. Become a supplier to Hotels and Restaurants: Do not shy away from approaching hotels, restaurants and other eateries. Write a brilliant proposal with clearly thought-out incentives that you can offer and send it to managers of hotels and restaurants. Offer to be their major supplier of poultry meat and eggs. Hotels and restaurants always have foods with poultry meat or foods made with eggs on their menu and it might surprise you how challenging it is for them to get regular suppliers. You can help them to have access to a regular supply of fresh eggs without stress. However, most of hotels and restaurants already have people supplying them, so you should think of how to outsmart these people by offering mouth-watering incentives.
4. Employ Marketers: Yes, I know that sounds weird but marketers for your poultry farm can increase your sales by more than 30%. Just employ some commission-based marketers who would earn a certain percentage from the sales they make. I was surprised to find out that some of my friends have way better connections and sales language than I ever imagined. I only posted for this vacancy on my Facebook wall and got a couple of friends who I pay on commission. Right now I am struggling to supply all their markets.
5. Feed your Birds well: Yes, this is a marketing idea too. When you feed your birds well, they produce big and good quality eggs which are what the consumers want. This automatically makes your products top choice for consumers. This calls for paying attention to the type of foods you feed your birds with because good food equals good eggs and quality meat.
6. Advertise your products: Engage in simple and affordable advertising and promotions of your business. You don’t have to be in Citizen TV or Daily Nation but advertisement is crucial. People mostly buy products they know or have heard about: this is the essence of advertising. For me, I use online advertisement on blogs and by marketing my Facebook page. I also print out small attractive cards that I give to my friends and connections after church or such gatherings.
7. Take on home delivery services: Home delivery services work like magic. This is because a lot of people who love eggs are often too busy to make trips to the grocery store. You can take advantage of this to offer home delivery services to people who prefer to buy fresh eggs or people who find it easier to order for stuffs from the comfort of their home. You could also serve senior citizens, the physically challenged or sick people who cannot make trips to grocery stores to buy meat and eggs.
8. Use Attractive Packaging: It does not cost so much as most people would think. Yet the advantage of a good attractive package of eggs so great you would think it works a miracle. When designing packaging materials for your poultry products, ensure that it stands out from every other product in the market. Another thing you must know is that people look now out for nutritional information when they buy food items. So, you should consider adding some information about your products like calorie contents, protein, vitamins and all other information that health conscious people would want to know about.
