Marketing That Grows From Strong Roots
A good product is the starting point, not the strategy. What carries it to a shelf, a buyer or a repeat order is the foundation underneath: a brand people remember, a storefront built to sell, and a reason to come back.
1,000 to 3,000 stores for a fourth-generation dairy that started with a farm kitchen and a plan: a thousand in year one, three thousand soon after. Read how
One Brand, One Year, Five Numbers
Every number below came from one engagement with Painterland Sisters. Brand, website, launch and press, built in that order. The story behind it is further down this page; this is what the work itself returned in year one.
1,000+
new retail stores in year one
60k
new website visitors
43%
average email open rate
712k
social media reach
40
media features
Target market, messaging and brand guidelines
Before any design work, we named who the brand was for and how it should sound, so every piece after that pulled in the same direction.
A storefront that reflects the brand and sells
Built to be easy to run and to carry the playful heart of the brand, rather than a template with a logo dropped into it.
Forty features, including national press
A campaign that put the brand in front of buyers and consumers at the same time, including Forbes, Country Living and the trade titles retailers read.
Flyers, rack cards, spec sheets and coupons
The unglamorous material a buyer meeting actually needs, produced fast enough to keep pace with a national rollout.
Run by us until their own team could take it
Strategy, web, social, ads and email managed in-house here, then handed over as they hired. The goal was always to give it back.
Co-packer over building a plant
The most important marketing decision was a business one: partner on production so the money and attention could go into brand and distribution instead.
Not a portfolio yet. These are real deliverables and real results from one engagement. Screenshots of the design work belong here too, and that is the next thing this page needs.
The same brand later landed national distribution in Whole Foods and works with more than a hundred dairy farms. Read the full story
The Product Is Ready. The Foundation Isn't
Most operations we meet are not bad at marketing. They are doing pieces of it, in different directions, with nothing underneath holding it together.
There is a logo, but no positioning. A website, but it was built once and never revisited. A social account somebody keeps up when there is time. Each piece is defensible on its own and none of them add up, because nobody ever decided who the brand is for or what it stands for.
So the work does not compound. A buyer meeting, a farmers market stall and an Instagram post all say something slightly different, and a customer who meets you in two places does not recognize you the second time. Recognition is the thing that makes marketing cheaper over time, and it only comes from consistency.
"We know the ads are running. We don't know if they're working."
Not a client quote. It is the sentence we hear most often on first calls, in one form or another.
Then there is measurement. You are paying for an agency, or ads, or a website, and you could not say with confidence what it returns. So marketing stops being an investment and becomes a cost you tolerate. That is usually a foundation problem rather than a spend problem, and it is why we start by looking at the numbers rather than the creative.
Where Your Buyers Find You, And Where You Want Them To
The distance between those two answers is the work. Pick the closest fit for each.
The Margin Decides What The Marketing Can Cost
A generic agency will build you something handsome, then price the work as if you had the margins of a software company. You do not.
We Price The Channel Against Your Margin
Cost to serve is different for a market stall, a wholesale pallet and a single box shipped cold. We work out which channel can carry the spend before recommending it.
Built For A Buyer Meeting, Not A Feed
Packaging, spec sheets and a story that survives a category review. The pretty version and the version that opens a door are not always the same thing.
Handed Back, Not Held Hostage
We run the work until your own team is ready, then train them and step out. An agency that needs to keep the keys is selling you dependency.
Marketing that ignores your cost structure will look excellent and lose money. That is why this sits next to the accounting rather than apart from it.
A Hundred Ideas, No Plan, And A National Brand
Hayley and Stephanie Painter wanted their family's fourth-generation dairy to thrive for another generation. They had enough ideas for five businesses and no idea which one to build. We started with a $3,500 grant and a business structure, chose a co-packer over building a plant so the money could go into brand and distribution, and settled on skyr yogurt because the market research supported it. Then we built the brand, the website and the press campaign, and brought in a CPG expert as their fractional VP of Sales.
“We would simply not be where we are today if it weren’t for the supportive team at Good Roots.”
– Stephanie Painter, Painterland Sisters
Read the full storyAlso worth reading: Dragonfly Hill on turning a business into a brand, and Delicacy Meats on building demand for a facility before it opened.
Most People Start At One
Every engagement starts with an audit rather than a proposal. What we recommend depends entirely on what we find, and each step stands on its own.
Marketing Audit & Brand Snapshot
Where almost everyone starts
We look at the brand, the storefront, the content and the spend side by side against what your buyers are actually searching for. You leave knowing what to keep doing, and what to stop.
Brand Foundation
The step most operations skip
Positioning, messaging, identity and packaging, decided once so everything after it pulls the same direction. This is what makes the work compound instead of starting over every season.
Storefront & Content Build
Once the foundation is set
A site built to sell on GrazeCart, Shopify or WordPress, with the content and email behind it. Built for you to run, not for us to keep billing against.
Fractional CMO
Ongoing, month to month
Strategy and execution without the full-time hire: ads, email, social and PR run by people who know your margins. Most clients arrive here after step two, not instead of it.
Full Integration
Engagement-based
Marketing working in lockstep with the accounting and the plan, so a channel decision and a margin decision stop being two separate conversations.
The Right Fix Depends On Where Your Buyers Look
Same foundations, different order of work. Pick the one that sounds like you.
Farms & Ranches
Turn word of mouth into a brand that travels
Reputation inside your county is an asset. What it needs is a form it can travel in: a name, a story and packaging that work where you are not standing there to explain.
Processors & Makers
Make the case for the price before it is seen
Premium pricing is a story problem before it is a spreadsheet problem. Packaging, spec sheets and positioning that hold up in a category review.
Food Entrepreneurs
Get on the shelf, then stay on it
Landing the first account is one problem. Selling through fast enough to keep it is a different one, and it is decided by brand and content more than by the pitch.
Running a CSA or farm store? Filling the boxes before the season starts is a marketing problem with a deadline attached. CSA & Farm Direct
Everything We Actually Do
Most people reading this have never worked with us, so here it is without the packaging. We sell these as engagements rather than line items, because buying a logo when the problem is margin is how marketing budgets get wasted. But you should be able to see the whole list before you call.
Brand and identity
- Target market and positioning
- Messaging and brand voice
- Logo, identity and brand guidelines
- Packaging and label design
- Print, signage and rack cards
- Photography direction
Website and storefront
- Website design and build
- GrazeCart, Shopify and WordPress
- Online store and checkout setup
- CSA and subscription sign-up flows
- Search optimisation and local search
- Analytics and conversion tracking
Getting the word out
- Email campaigns and automated sequences
- Win-back and lapsed-customer campaigns
- Social media strategy and management
- Paid advertising and retargeting
- Public relations and media outreach
- Content, newsletters and storytelling
Selling and strategy
- Marketing audit and brand snapshot
- Fractional CMO
- Wholesale and buyer-facing materials
- Sales collateral and spec sheets
- Launch planning
- Team training and handover
Not sure which of these you need? That is what the audit is for, and it usually finds you are already doing three of them and should stop doing one.