Agoro Carbon Alliance helps farmers and ranchers earn additional revenue by taking positive climate action through their land-based businesses. When the company initially formed, it had healthy backing from 115-year-old global soil company Yara International but was nonetheless a startup in need of brand awareness and customers to gain market share in an increasingly crowded space.
Challenge
As Agoro Carbon planned to launch in the U.S., it set a goal to secure one million acres worth of American farmer and rancher sign-ups within the first several months. To help reach this aggressive growth target, Agoro Carbon partnered with INK to deploy an integrated communications strategy that would garner interest from the nation’s farming and ranching community.
INK helped us achieve rapid growth goals in the new carbon market through broad brand awareness and direct-to-farmer campaigns.
Ashley Bruner
U.S. Growth Marketing Manager, Agoro Carbon Alliance
Solution
INK recognized that securing coverage in widely-read national media wouldn’t generate the confidence and trust needed among this agricultural audience to drive sign-ups. Instead, INK homed in on a bottom-up approach that focused on hyperlocal channels to meet farmers and ranchers where they were and engage with them on a community level. This meant securing coverage and buying ads in local media outlets and agricultural trade publications and building a presence within local agriculture/trade events, agricultural community forums, and community-level social media.
Essential to capturing the attention of farmers and ranchers was layering on a strategic creative approach. To add context and evoke the feeling of familiarity, INK developed creative assets that paired localized visuals with Agoro Carbon’s messages. These assets were worked into a variety of visual touchpoints, including printed brochures, local newspaper ad placements, digital display ads, paid social ads, and more. We also utilized testimonials and photos of Agoro Carbon’s employees to humanize the brand and provide the audience with a real person with whom they could connect.
INK broke the campaign into three two-month phases: Build, Amplify, and Solidify. In each phase, INK deployed an updated set of unique messaging, narratives, and materials through specific channels to push Agoro Carbon’s target audience through the sales funnel.
Results
By the end of the six-month campaign, INK’s bottom-up, three-phased approach had helped Agoro Carbon secure one million acres worth of sign-ups in its American pipeline. And the bonus? We hit the goal ahead of schedule.
