The Mississippi River overruns its banks and levies. Tens of thousands of acres of farmland are underwater. It’s a disaster for farmers now. It will be a crisis for us soon enough.

Farmers are ahead of the curve because they live and die every day on the principle of sowing and reaping. We just know shopping and buying.

Always be planting

You can learn a lot from farmers when it comes to your advertising. Farming and advertising are about about sowing and reaping.  Farmers don’t drop seeds today and show up tomorrow expecting a harvest.

Taking a longer view of your advertising leads to better returns for you in the same way farmers get them:

1. Choose your crop:

Define success in specific terms first: know your outcome before starting. Remember: being is the first step toward having.

2. Plant good seeds:

Populate ads with promises that matter to customers. Selling what matters to you is casting seeds on hard earth. What is it customers really buy from you?

3. Tend your fields:

Manage the customer experience. Deliver what your ads promise.  Are offers easy to find?  Does your staff understand the deal?

4. Harvest on time:

Good things come in time–your customer’s time.  They’ll buy when it’s right for them. Do you understand their buying cycle?

5. Care for your soil:

New customers are expensive. That first sale earns you the opportunity to make another. Are you setting it up or merely hoping for it? Customers are the soil from which profits sprout. How are you nurturing yours?

There’s a sixth lesson you can take from farmers along the Mississippi. After flood waters recede, they’ll be back, turning the soil, starting over. Because they understand tomorrow’s harvest won’t come unless they plant today.

The same goes for you. Get busy planting.

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