Courses / Market Your Business

Course Content

Selling Your Kelp
Your Farm is a Business Building Awareness
Define Your Target Audience
Understanding Motivations Retail Customers Wholesale Customers Developing Personas
Refine Your Story
What’s Your Story?
Outreach to New Customers
Reaching New Customers Retail Customers Wholesale Customers Web Presence
Resources & Tools
Kelp Product Sell Sheet Example
Download file
Processing + Markets Forum
Lesson 1 Selling Your Kelp

Back to: Market Your Business

Your Farm is a Business

Many of us have come to ocean farming because of a passion to fight climate change, preserve working waterfronts, or feed people delicious and nutritious food. While this passion is the spark that encourages us to take action, we must accept the practical reality that an ocean farm must also be a profitable business if it is to sustain itself long-term and achieve its desired impact. 

Definition

Business, noun

The activity of making, buying, or selling goods or providing services in exchange for money. Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Kelp ready for sale

Business is not rocket science; humans have been engaging in commerce of one kind or another for thousands of years.

At its simplest, a business does three things:

  1. Creates a product

  2. Markets the product in such a way that it is perceived to have value

  3. Sells the product for more than it cost to create

Products don’t sell themselves. Even if you’ve got the best kelp in the world, if you aren’t able to convince people it’s worth anything or sell it for more than it costs you to run your farm, your business will fail. The best way to increase your likelihood of success is to not leave sales and marketing to chance: make a plan, stick to it the best you can, reflect on it afterward, and improve a little bit every year. 

This is why we’ve laid out the courses for both your farm and business activities as a seasonal progression. At different times of the year, you’ll want to think about investing in different parts of your business. Just like farming, there might be a change of pace with periods of sprints and lulls, but growing and tending your business is a year-round activity.