Us v's Facebook and others

Extracted from the Farm Tender weekly Newsletter - Sign up and get the email every Wednesday morning before 5 am. www.farmtender.com.au

By Dwain Duxson

I get asked quite a bit about Facebook. How do you go with them? Are they your biggest competition? What do your customers think?

And what I will say is that we would be a bigger business without them. But would we be a better business? Probably not because competition keeps you on your toes.

Do I lose any sleep over them? No, but they do drive us to keep on getting better.

And yes, the business models are different. Ours suits some and not others and vice versa.

And with all due respect, there are others that are competition as well who command an equal amount of respect.

A very respected marketing person I follow closely is always saying when marketing, don't mention or compare yourself to your competitors because you give them a free ride. But, to that argument, this is not a marketing campaign. It's an observation or story about how I think it actually is.

We have a rule of thumb that we never "own" the customer. We believe the customer has a right to do whatever they want, whenever they want. Sometimes we encourage the customer to use other parties to sell something or say it's in their best interest to have an item listed everywhere.

That's why it's an interesting space. So many people are having a crack at it, all with unique models and varying audiences.

I still say to this day that the smartest thing I ever did when starting Farm Tender was to include everything, and by that, I mean Grain, Hay, Machinery, Livestock Handling Equipment, Fertiliser, Livestock etc.

We find that when Farming conditions are either tough or good, different categories rise to the top when different situations present. For example, Hay and Feed Grains come to the fore in a drought. When there are good seasonal conditions, Machinery & Equipment and Farm Inputs rise to the top. It's so diverse, and one day we will bring all our data to the surface and show you what happens.

We have customers that use our competitors in conjunction with us. Some use us exclusively. Some leave and come back. Some leave and never come back. It's all part of it, and the only way we are going to win more business is to keep getting better.

We keep trying.

End of message.