The Farm at Rocky Top: How to Reduce Confusion & Build Awareness

www.thefarmatrockytop.com

NEED:

The Farm at Rocky Top is a wedding and event venue, located in Salem, Alabama, situated on 300+ acres. As most venues with land begin, Rocky Top was a private family farm until Jan and Joel acted on a dream to share the property as a wedding and event venue. As the business grew from weddings to October pumpkin patches, to a December Christmas attraction, so did the websites, social media profiles, and branding. All was successful - the events, the following on social media, the traffic to the websites. But it was all siloed. None of it was working together to benefit each other.

Jan reached out to us and asked if we could clean up the brand, the websites, and platforms so that it was easier to manage and less confusing for the customer. She was also ready to refine the business and elevate the brand. Meaning she wanted to build their reputation as a venue for the biggest and best Pumpkin Patch, Christmas designation, and Spring Market. She didn’t want to just be known as a wedding venue as she began to limit that availability.

AUDIENCE:

Their audience used to be brides and those looking for a venue for their personal event. Now the audience

has grown to families of all ages looking for an attraction during the holidays.

SOLUTION:

Our team has loved working with Jan through the process of auditing, refining, elevating, and strategizing. We first audited all the branding, websites, and social media profiles. We met with Jan to understand her vision for the farm in the future and how she wanted to build a focused and consistent reputation. We discussed her three signature events and brainstormed the name of each so that they were cohesive. We presented a full branding direction with refreshed logos for the farm and event logos for Pumpkin Patch, Country Christmas and May Hay Days. We defined the color palettes for each, fonts, and graphics to help communicate all that happens at the farm throughout the year.

We then moved to merging social media pages to create one Facebook page and Instagram page. This allows you to build one following that will build retention and repeat business. When you have different profiles and pages for the areas of your business, you are working harder to gain followers and customers. It's harder for people to find you and realize all that you do.

We then designed one website that housed all the services and events that Rocky Top offers. We made it so that the top of the home page can be customized to whichever main event is happening at the time. We also made the navigation simple so that if you come to the website as a bride looking for a wedding venue, you realize you can attend Pumpkin Patch in October. Or if you want to bring your family to Country Christmas, you realize they are a venue in the summer.

Lastly, we created a strategy for her marketing and social media to build awareness of her events. She had been boosting posts on Facebook. We helped her think through a strategy that incorporated organic social media postings, giveaways, targeted ads (not boosting a post), collaborations, influencers, memberships, community calendars, etc.

LESSON:

1. Don’t make people work to find you.

Too often we assume that people will know how to find our website, location, or social media. Make

sure your social media handles are consistent with your website URL. Make sure there are links from your social media to your website. And links on your website to your social media and other platforms. Create a Google My Business account if you have a physical location and have all your links there. Don’t assume someone will spend time digging.

2. Refining your business and elevating your brand go hand-in-hand.

When we elevate a brand, we talk about the business processes, services,

people, and customer service. And when you want to refine the business or

niche-down, you need to assess the brand and make sure it is still representing the business now. They can’t be viewed exclusively. So if you made changes to the business recently, it might be time to audit the brand. And if you have re-branded your logo, have you gone deeper into the business?

3. You confuse you lose.

I see this issue a lot with small businesses that know their business so well that they forget to make it simple and easy for someone to know all that you do and offer. There is an art to telling the right amount of information at the right time. Organizing what you offer, how you offer it, and what you want your customer to do to get it is crucial for a successful business and website. Think of it like a grocery store. If they didn’t have sections/departments/ aisles, it would be very hard to find the food you needed. Break your offerings (product or service) into categories (we like to keep it to 3 or 4 if possible) and then go into details from there. You can stay at the category level for your elevator pitch, social media bios, and marketing. And your website can go into more detail.

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