273 What the Oshkosh Air Show Taught Me About Building Brand Community and Culture

My Digital Farmer Podcast

A few weeks ago, I drove my two boys up to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, for their annual weeklong Air Show.

The EAA Venture Air Show in Oshkosh is the largest air show in the world, and for seven days, it also becomes the busiest airport in the world. Hundreds of thousands of people visit this air show every year.

We first discovered the event a few years ago when my son Jed first started getting into aviation. Everyone told us, "You need to go to Oshkosh."

Well, they were right. If you're an aviation enthusiast, you eventually end up at Oshkosh. In fact, I would argue that it's almost the equivalent of making a holy pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

Our first trip to this aviation experience was other-worldly. It was so over-the-top, and it turned us into rabid superfans of aviation. In fact, it was SO powerful, I remember thinking, "I need to do a podcast about this. The brand culture here is so potent."

The thing about Oshkosh is that there are some very specific principles at play that are creating community and turning us plane nerds into superfans. In this podcast, I wanted to point them out to you. I show you how you can take these same principles and put them to work in your farm business, so that you create a community among your customers.

Because people come for your vegetables. They come for your meat and your flowers. But they stay for the community.

As a farm, you must learn how to build a community to achieve longevity. Oshkosh (and this podcast) will show you how. This turned into a great episode!

This podcast was sponsored by Local Line, my preferred e-commerce platform for farmers. Are you looking for a new solution for your farm? I can't recommend it enough. Easy to use inventory management, great customer service, continuous improvement, and a culture dedicated to equipping farmers with marketing expertise, Local Line should definitely be one of the e-commerce solutions you consider as you switch. Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code: MDF2024. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline

Some of the resources mentioned in this episode:

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Episode 203: How to Build a Glamping Enterprise on Your Farm -- Everything You Need to Know with Kasey Marshall - I mention our vacation to Canada to see the Cold Lake Air Show, and our hosts Kasey and Renaud Marshall at 350Farms! Kasey was on my podcast last year to talk about their glamping operation. If you want to learn how to set up a glamping operation, THIS IS THE PODCAST to listen to.

Farm Marketing School - my monthly online marketing school membership just for farmers. Farm Marketing School is an on-demand library of marketing workshops and project plans that will help you build some of the most important marketing elements in your farm business like: building a promotion calendar, setting up your Google Business Profile, auditing your sales funnel, updating your home page of your website, building your first email nurture sequence, acquiring and deploying testimonials, and practicing different types of offers. You get to chose what you want to study and build each month. These projects are designed to be completed in under 30 days, so that you slowly build your marketing system piece by piece. Use the step by step project planner and resource folder to help you jumpstart your work. Take advantage of my new marketing crash course inside or take the onboarding assessment tool to help you identify where your funnel is broken and what project to do first. To see what courses are currently inside of FMS, or to try out Farm Marketing School for a month at mydigitalfarmer.com/fms Start and cancel your membership anytime.

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