REAL Food and Farming

It’s perfectly possible now for businesses to exist and thrive in remote rural locations, where many advantages exist over competitors in towns and cities. One of the most cost effective ways of promoting yourself is by leveraging existing technology and strategic use of the internet.

Small businesses and retailers can compete on a level playing field on the internet with their much bigger competitors, particularly if they can find a niche market and target their sales at a particular range of consumers. This is ideal for food producers who are producing a quality product that appeals to the growing number of consumers who appreciate where their food is sourced and will go to the trouble of finding it. The same applies equally well to a number of other types of business who can outsource production and concentrate sales efforts and customer information on the internet.

In many cases there can be a significant cost saving over urban “bricks and mortar” based businesses for companies and entrepreneurs who can operate from home or farm based offices without the large investment and overhead of town and city centre rent and rates and all the expense that goes with it. Retailers can encourage footfall to their web based shop without the need for expensive high street frontages, the key for them is not necessarily the volume of traffic visiting their site, but that those that do visit are walking through the door expecting to buy something and with the means to do so.

Perhaps the most important aspect of running an on line business, as with any other business, is to put an emphasis on customer service and building trust. In order to part with cash on the internet a customer must be totally confident that they are going to receive the product or service that they are buying. Of course a web site offers the perfect opportunity for providing the information and background that potential customers and clients need to feel that confidence and trust.

Of course the main thing for any web site is that it can be found and so it’s important for any on line business to make sure that it gets listed in the major search engines and then achieves a prominent position when potential visitors are searching. This is something that I have covered in my own blog and will also touch on a little more over the coming weeks here.

I hope this is a useful introduction and will help rural businesses to think a little more about using the internet, as the weeks go by I hope to post more articles about web marketing and also offer some case studies.