By Liz Hammond of Local Food Marketplace and Tricia Phelps of Taste the Local Difference

Online sales through Local Food Marketplace increase your products’ accessibility, offer convenience to your customers and develop key marketing touch points that you otherwise wouldn’t have – but you need to harness these opportunities to get the most out of them.

We teamed up with Taste the Local Difference (TLD) for a four-part series focused on quick, easy, and impactful marketing resources for farmers, food hubs, and markets! Taste the Local Difference specializes in marketing local food and to help amplify their efforts. TLD represents thousands of local food businesses across the value chain, and they all have one thing in common: limited time and resources.

Part 1: How to use Press Releases to Promote your Online Store

This time of year is typically spent prepping for special events, spring sales and market kick-off season. For that, there is no better tool in the toolbox than a press release. Third Party Marketing is all about word of mouth, the best kind of marketing we can get. Unfortunately, a lot of people take a back seat to this strategy and think about word of mouth as a passive activity that they have no control over.

Wrong.

You can gain control over word of mouth, by creating a press release and sharing the specific words you want people to know, with the partner organizations, media, and customers you want to help spread those words.

The thought of preparing a press release can feel very intimidating, but press releases can have a major positive impact for your online store with minimal effort involved! In this blog post, we explain why you would want to write a press release and how to write one. (TLD has even provided a free press release template for you to use!) Using these resources, you’ll be able to create and send professional press releases in no time!

5 Reasons to Write a Press Release

Why would you want to write a press release for your online store? Maybe your online store will be hosting your first pick-up day of the season or you’ve moved locations. Events like these are perfect opportunities to spread your message to constituents – be it local news, partner organizations, or customers – in your own words, and garner local media coverage!

Here are 5 reasons to write a press release for your online store:

• • • Plant sales and special events
    • Expanded delivery area
    • New pickup locations
    • Major product changes (e.g. now carrying meat and cheese)
    • New partnerships (perhaps workplace programs)

 

How to Write and Send a Press Release

• • • • First, make a list of contacts. These should definitely include TV, news, and radio media but think broader than that as well. What community organizations are mission aligned with your business? What institutions or employers communicate with a large volume of people in your area? Find the contacts and develop the list, keeping it updated as often as possible.
        If you’re an online farmers market or food hub, you probably already have connections to local news outlets either through sponsorships, tabling, or even as your customers. Make a list of all your current contacts and connections to reach out to first. Then, research contacts for local media outlets you don’t have an immediate contact with either from their websites, social media, or other sources to add to your list. For easiest and fastest communications, try to collect e-mail addresses for main contacts and then phone numbers for following up.

     

• • • • Then, download this free press release template to help you get started, and write a press release in third-person that tells your story. Be sure to highlight important dates and information, but keep it short and sweet.
        Press releases are short, sweet, and informative. For our example, an online store would want to highlight the time, date, and location of your opening pick-up day. You’ll also want to mention any new, exciting products and vendors you’ll have this season, or maybe updates to your vendor layouts. This is a great opportunity to share your story in your own words and invite the public to attend! Try to create a template you can use to send to all outlets, rather than writing a new release for each contact.

     

• • • • Finally, send it out about 2 weeks in advance. You want to give your outlets enough time to share, and without too much time that it gets lost. The timing should be relevant enough to put on their immediate to-do list.
        Once you have your contacts collected and your press release written, you’ll want to determine the ideal time to send out your release. In our experience, sending out your press release 2 weeks in advance of your event is recommended. If you’re hosting a special event plant sale for your online store with plants available for pick up on an event day, 2 weeks in advance is a great amount of time to send your press release. This not only keeps the event relevant for the news, but also provides enough time for outlets to add the material to their schedules. Don’t worry about sending from a newsletter or through a mailing service. You can send your press release directly from your e-mail to your contacts list, and even send by mail if necessary.

     

• • • • Don’t be afraid to follow up to get the impact you want. Offer to do an interview or share a social post that they can quickly copy and paste to their social media or website. You’ve given them all the information they need to help share your message in whatever way they can.
        Staying current and in the public focus is not a passive achievement. If you haven’t heard back from someone, reach out by phone and send another e-mail to make sure they received it. For any outlets that express interest, following up with a phone call can help ensure your message is shared and build better connections.

     

Press releases are an amazing way to promote your online store and build connections with your local news media and organizations. We hope this blog post helps alleviate any of the intimidation about writing and sending out press releases!

If you want to learn more about what Local Food Marketplace and Taste the Local Difference can do for your local food business, register for an upcoming webinar and keep an eye out for more marketing tips on the blog from LFM & TLD! You can gain access to 1:1 support and customized marketing strategies from Taste the Local Difference here.