Action-First Marketing: Evolving from Awareness to Achievement in Agriculture

When reviewing marketing plans with agricultural companies, one question often reveals an important opportunity: "What specific action do you want farmers to take after seeing this campaign?"

The responses are typically thoughtful and well-intentioned. "We want them to be aware of our new product." "We want them to understand our superiority to the competition." "We want to establish ourselves as innovation leaders."

These are all valuable marketing goals, and for much of agriculture's history, they were sufficient. When product differences were clear, distribution channels were limited, and information was scarce, awareness often translated directly into consideration and purchase.

But market dynamics have evolved.

Today's agricultural customers have unlimited access to information, countless options to evaluate, and sophisticated tools for decision-making. In this environment, awareness alone doesn't automatically drive business results. The opportunity lies in evolving our approach to focus not just on what customers know, but on what they do.

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The Historical Role of Awareness in Agricultural Marketing

Awareness-building has been the foundation of agricultural marketing for good reasons. In markets where personal relationships and local presence dominated, being known was often enough to be considered. Trade show participation, print advertising, and field signage all served the critical function of establishing and maintaining market presence.

This approach made perfect sense when information channels were limited and farmers relied heavily on familiar brands for purchasing decisions. Building awareness was building business because awareness naturally led to consideration in markets with fewer options and less information.

Many successful agricultural companies built their market positions through consistent awareness campaigns that kept their brands top-of-mind when purchase decisions arose. This strategy worked because the path from awareness to action was relatively direct and predictable.

But as markets have evolved, the relationship between awareness and action has become more complex. While brand awareness remains important, it's no longer sufficient to drive purchasing behavior in increasingly sophisticated agricultural markets. This isn't a failure of awareness marketing, it's a natural evolution of market dynamics that creates new opportunities for those ready to embrace more sophisticated approaches.

The Emergence of Action-Oriented Marketing

The shift toward action-oriented marketing represents an evolution in how we think about customer engagement. Rather than measuring success by how many people know our brand, we can measure success by how many people take meaningful steps toward solving their challenges with our solutions.

This evolution starts with a fundamental reframing: instead of asking "How can we increase awareness?" we ask "What specific behaviors will lead to customer success, and how can we encourage those behaviors?"

Consider the difference between these two objectives:

• Traditional objective: "Increase awareness of our new product among corn farmers by 25%."

• Action-oriented objective: "Engage 500 corn farmers in ROI assessments, leading to 50 product trials and meaningful business conversations."

The first objective creates activity that may or may not contribute to business growth. The second creates a clear pathway from marketing activity to business results, with measurable checkpoints that enable optimization and demonstrate value.

This shift doesn't diminish the importance of brand awareness, it builds on it. Action-oriented marketing often creates deeper, more meaningful awareness because people remember and share experiences that helped them solve problems more than messages that simply captured their attention.

Understanding Customer Progression

Action-oriented marketing recognizes customers as individuals progressing through stages of engagement, each requiring different influences to encourage continued advancement.

Agricultural purchasing decisions typically involve several progression stages:

• Problem Recognition: Customers identify challenges requiring solutions. Marketing's opportunity is helping customers understand their situations better through diagnostic tools and educational content.

• Solution Exploration: Customers research potential approaches. Marketing can provide education about solution categories and approaches, establishing expertise and trust.

• Option Evaluation: Customers compare specific solutions. Marketing can facilitate comparison through tools, calculators, and evidence that help customers make confident decisions.

• Purchase Preparation: Customers prepare for decisions. Marketing can reduce perceived risk through trials, guarantees, and implementation support.

• Transaction Completion: Customers execute purchases. Marketing can reduce friction through convenient ordering, financing options, and delivery flexibility.

• Success Achievement: Customers implement solutions. Marketing can enable success through training, support, and optimization assistance.

Each stage presents opportunities to provide value while encouraging progression. By understanding where customers are in their journey and what they need to move forward, we can create marketing that serves rather than interrupts.

The Power of Behavioral Metrics

One of the most exciting aspects of action-oriented marketing is the ability to measure meaningful progress rather than just exposure. When we track customer actions rather than just impressions, we gain insights that can transform marketing effectiveness.

Consider how metrics evolve when we shift focus from awareness to action:

• Instead of measuring reach, we measure engagement. How many people actively interacted with our content rather than passively consumed it?

• Instead of tracking impressions, we track progressions. How many people moved from one stage of engagement to the next?

• Instead of calculating share of voice, we calculate share of engagement. What percentage of active market participants are engaging with our solutions?

These behavioral metrics provide actionable insights that awareness metrics cannot. They reveal which marketing activities drive meaningful engagement, which messages resonate with action, and which channels facilitate progression.

Moreover, behavioral metrics align marketing measurement with business outcomes. When we can demonstrate clear connections between marketing activities and customer actions, marketing's value becomes undeniable.

Implementing Action-First Approaches

Transitioning to action-oriented marketing doesn't require abandoning everything that's working. It's about evolving and enhancing existing approaches to drive specific behaviors alongside awareness.

Start by auditing current marketing activities through an action lens. For each activity, identify not just who it reaches but what it encourages them to do. Activities that can't identify specific behavioral objectives become candidates for enhancement or reallocation.

Develop clear behavioral objectives for every marketing initiative. What specific action should result? How will we measure it? What will success look like? These questions transform vague goals into concrete targets.

Create pathways that make desired actions easy and valuable. If we want farmers to use an ROI calculator, we need to ensure it's accessible, intuitive, and provides immediate value. If we want them to attend a demonstration, we need to make registration simple and the value proposition clear.

Design content and experiences that naturally encourage progression. Educational content that ends with diagnostic tools. Calculators that lead to consultations. Demonstrations that facilitate trials. Each interaction should open doors to deeper engagement.

Measure and optimize based on behavioral outcomes. Which content drives the most engagement? Which tools generate the most qualified leads? Which experiences create the strongest progression rates? Let behavior guide investment.

The Multiplier Effect of Action-Oriented Marketing

When agricultural companies embrace action-oriented marketing, something interesting happens: the actions themselves become awareness drivers. Farmers who use helpful tools tell other farmers. Those who attend valuable demonstrations become advocates. Success stories spread naturally through agricultural communities.

This multiplier effect means that action-oriented marketing often generates more meaningful awareness than traditional awareness campaigns. The difference is that this awareness comes with proof of value, personal endorsement, and specific examples of success.

Consider the difference between a farmer seeing an advertisement claiming "superior performance" versus hearing a neighbor describe how a specific tool helped them identify thousands of dollars in potential savings. Both create awareness, but only one creates awareness that drives action.

The multiplier effect also improves marketing efficiency. When customers become advocates through positive experiences, customer acquisition costs decrease. When tools and content provide genuine value, organic sharing reduces paid media requirements. When every interaction encourages meaningful progression, conversion rates improve across the board.

Real-World Applications and Opportunities

The shift to action-oriented marketing is already showing results across agricultural sectors. Seed companies are moving beyond variety promotion to provide selection tools that help farmers optimize for their specific conditions. Equipment manufacturers are creating comparison calculators that help farmers evaluate total cost of ownership rather than just purchase price.

Input suppliers are developing diagnostic tools that help farmers identify specific challenges before recommending solutions. Technology companies are offering trials and pilots that let farmers experience value before committing to purchases.

These approaches share common characteristics: they provide immediate value, they respect customer intelligence, they facilitate decision-making rather than pushing products, and they create engagement that naturally leads to deeper relationships.

The opportunity exists across all agricultural sectors to evolve from awareness-focused to action-oriented marketing. It doesn't require massive budgets or revolutionary changes. It requires a shift in mindset from reaching audiences to engaging participants, from delivering messages to facilitating decisions, from building awareness to driving progress.

The Path Forward

The shift to action-oriented marketing represents one of the most significant opportunities in agricultural marketing today. It's not about doing more, it's about doing differently. It's about evolving our approach to align with how modern agricultural customers research, evaluate, and make decisions.

The tools and technologies to implement action-oriented marketing are available and accessible. The frameworks for understanding customer progression are proven. The benefits of behavioral metrics are clear. The opportunity is waiting for those ready to embrace it.

As we move forward, the question isn't whether to maintain awareness efforts or pursue action-oriented strategies. It's how to evolve our awareness-building expertise into action-driving excellence. It's how to transform our understanding of agricultural customers into experiences that help them succeed.

The future of agricultural marketing lies not in choosing between awareness and action, but in recognizing that true marketing excellence drives both. Awareness without action may be incomplete, but action naturally creates the most powerful awareness of all, the awareness that comes from experience, success, and advocacy.

The evolution from awareness to action isn't just a marketing opportunity. It's a chance to create more value for agricultural customers while building stronger, more measurable marketing contributions to business growth.

The time for action-first marketing in agriculture has arrived. Let's embrace it together.

Let's transform your marketing into a growth engine. Contact us today.

David "Laz" Lazarenko is a founding partner of Think Shift Inc. and author of the upcoming book "Benchwarmers: Unlocking the True Potential of Agrimarketing." For over 25 years, he has partnered with agricultural organizations to transform marketing from sideline support to strategic leadership.