Digital Marketing of Farm Tour Proves Successful

According to University of Florida research, farm tours give the public the opportunity to not only see where their products originated, but also how they were produced and what farming techniques are actually used. The 12^th Annual Kenton County Farm tour was held Saturday, September 17, 2022. This tour included ten hosting sites that offered a variety of agriculture or horticulture experiences. In addition to the ten stops there were 11 local craft artisans, 8 local farmers selling local produce, three wineries offered wine and five of the farms offered items to purchase directly off the farm. This year there were over 12,000 visits to the host farms.  

Historically the primary marketing of the Kenton County Farm Tours, was newspaper ads and flyer distribution to local businesses. For 2022, all marketing efforts were online for the first time for the Kenton County farm tour. By using social media websites, posts, and the local on-line newspaper the farm tour engaged a lot of potential visitors to the farm tour. LinkNKY is the local online newspaper and for the three weeks leading up to the farm tour, there were over 520,000 views of the farm tour banner with over two hundred clicks to the Kenton County Extension service webpage. The three weeks prior, the Farm Tour Facebook page reached 7400 people with 682 people actively coming to the page to view a post or posts.  Of those that came to the page, 84% are women, 16% are men, and the largest demographic is 35 to 54 year olds.  (This is the demographic that was targeted since we hoped to attract families with young children.)  In addition to our office Constant Contact, Good to Grow enewsletter, in the weeks leading up to the tour we promoted on Instagram, and the day of the event we promoted a TikTok video that was viewed 445 times. While paper maps were available in our office and the local libraries, links to the map were offered from every social medial outlet as well.  Based on the success of this marketing campaign, plans are underway to promote future agriculture programs via digital technology.