One of my first major tasks this summer as a Business Development Intern at Green City Growers (GCG) has been developing and executing their school garden marketing campaign. The company, who installs raised bed vegetable gardens basically anywhere there is sunlight and space, is moving away from working primarily with residential clients towards more corporate ones. Though the farmers at GCG enjoy working with families and helping them tend their personal clients, these residential cases are extremely time-consuming and not very lucrative. Therefore, Green City Growers has made a strategic pivot and has begun marketing primarily towards restaurants, corporations, and schools. A lot of the marketing material has not been developed yet, since there is just one person on staff responsible for marketing, so I have been responsible for creating collateral for the campaign.
Basically I am trying to convince schools in greater Boston to hire us to install vegetable gardens and run education programs for their students. I don’t really have a marketing background, so it has been a learning process for me to develop material with the intention of selling something. Fortunately it’s a service I believe in, which makes it easier. I’ve been doing a lot of content marketing, filming a video with the coordinators of the garden education program, writing a education-themed newsletter, publishing relevant blog posts, and sending out e-mails to a ton of Boston area school administrators. So far, several school administrators have expressed interest and scheduled meetings to learn more, and I’m hoping there will be more when people get back from summer vacation. It’s been pretty cool to see tangible things happen as a result of my efforts. Though I’m not sure if I want to go directly into marketing in the future, I think that by getting into the mind of the consumer I’m already learning skills I will use in the future.
Perfection