How To Market Your Honey | Creating A Honey Brand

hello bearded bee people welcome back to being kbs it took a while for us to be able to say that we actually have a loyal honey customer base but we do now we have a lot of people who love our honey and look for it in stores and tell their friends about it and we've learned some things in acquiring that customer base and in trying to get rid of an ever increasing amount of honey over the course of the last bunch of years so if you're interested in how to get rid of your honey and how to grow your business into a viable honey operation stay tuned because that's what i'm going to chat about today on b k bees when you first start off trying to create honey and create a clientele base and get rid of that honey i think it's really really advantageous that you start off with a brand um this doesn't have to be super professional or super like really well done it just has to be something identifiable rather than just honey in a mason jar now that honey in the mason jar is bound to be whoever you sell it's his favorite honey the best honey they've ever tasted in their life but when they have friends over and talk about it it is really really a good idea to have a brand in front of them that they can then find themselves in a local store or online now as far as online goes i do think that that's advantageous to get a website going if you're interested i am a web developer so there's a link in the description below to my web developer page or you can just send me a message or whatever just go to brettcosma designs.com either way um i don't think a website is absolutely essential because i don't think that selling honey on websites is a profitable thing because it costs so much to ship it and there are local um honey producers in these various people's backyards so uh we don't do a whole lot of online honey shipping but having a website there to tell people where to go and get it and to reinforce that brand idea i think is a good idea um if you can do it and when you can do it but either way regardless of the website i think it's a good idea you know just have your kid draw a design of a bee and write out your name and apiaries it really doesn't matter what the brand is just matters that you have one and that when people are trying it and considering it the best honey that they've ever had they know what brand it is and where to go get it next time during those first couple of years you're not going to create quite as much honey as you want um if you're doing a really good job of passing out business cards and giving people samples and telling people that you create honey you'll have a lot of requests but you'll also have all of the friends and family that you want to gift honey to it is a really really good idea to try to make it your best effort at not turning anybody away don't ever tell anybody that you don't have honey because there are other beekeepers that you can acquire honey from to satisfy these customers and i think that that's a really important thing because once again there are those other beekeepers there are other places that those people can go and if they continue on this oh my goodness i just saw being kb's honey at my friend's house it was so good i'm gonna go get some well i'm gonna make sure that they have b and k b's honey when they come to me asking for it that's not a problem for us we have about 15 buckets right now in my mother's basement but as far as satisfying local customers over the course of me trying to make bkb's a viable honey operation i've made every effort to not turn people away and now i'm at the stage where i sell buckets to other beekeepers who are trying to satisfy their customers so it never really stops you know you'll be able to deal with these other beekeepers and satisfy this local market regardless of at what stage of honey operation you are in the local people around you are going to be your key customers obviously once again it's really difficult to ship honey across the country but what i mean by that is the local community the people who talk about the local business and the people who share ideas back and forth amongst business owners and business and business frequenters those are the people who you really want to become aware of your honey and in that i think a good effort is to place ads on all of the local classified pages that you can find whether that's on facebook or craigslist or any of those things they're usually free and very easy to set up and that is a really really good way to start getting your business name into those local community conversations and to start making relationships with business owners that may at some point want to sell your honey in their store another good idea in terms of locally marketing your honey are farmers markets and i mean this uh with a caveat because most farmers markets that are worth going to and that are well frequented are a commitment style thing you have to be there every week and commit from the beginning to the end of the year the problem with that is beginning beekeepers who are just trying to start a honey sales business don't have the honey usually to supply from the beginning to the end of the year and more advanced beekeepers who might have the honey don't have the time during the beer to be there every single week now if you can figure something like that out by either buying somebody else's honey or joining forces with a produce seller or having your wife or husband or whatever other family member or friend man the farmer's market booth for you on times that you can't be there then absolutely do that that's a great great way to get honey out to people who are in search of stuff like that um but otherwise in most areas that i've found that have active like farmer's market community there are special event farmers markets that are uh not usually commitment based it's usually like a one-off thing in fremont's a city that we kept bees in uh in the lower peninsula they have a harvest festival at the end of the year that you can join uh i forget exactly how much it was but it was really really cheap we usually made a good deal of money and a bunch of new uh clients and customers another good thing to do in terms of technology and internet marketing are videos like especially honey harvest videos posted to your personal page or posted to any local groups because that honey flowing out of that extractor or those cappings getting cut off of a honey frame are incredible marketing material so get some cool b-roll shots of that make a post and put it everywhere those kind of posts are really going to get shared around and the people who have tried your honey are going to be the most vociferous advocates they're going to be the loudest supporters in sharing that video and making sure their friends and family see it so every time you have a honey extractor out or every time you're spinning frames get a little bit of footage get some you know wonderful pulling out the wax cappings and chewing on it footage because people like seeing that kind of thing they don't really understand where honey comes from and when they see how beautiful and wonderful the whole process is it's really really a good piece of marketing as your operation grows you're going to want to graduate beyond meeting people at a local four-way stop to sell them a quart and graduate into supplying local stores now i think you should seek this out before you think you should because as soon as you have a few extra jars getting it into a local store is a good idea even if you run out or have to go buy a five-gallon bucket from a local friend beekeeper um getting it out there getting it in front of people's faces when they're out in the local community going to these stores is a really really good thing and it's also a good thing when people call you and say hey can i get uh you know two pounds of honey i have you know some friends coming over and i want to gift it and you really can't or don't want to meet them you can say hey go down to the local you know quick stop or whatever we have it there and that is usually good another idea in terms of stores is don't limit yourself to food stores or health food stores or anything that you would think of when you want to go out and see connie out we have our honey and hardware stores a couple of restaurants uh we have them in a couple of just like local buy local stores a couple of resale shops a few food stores but either way my point is a lot of these local stores are going to be keen to the idea of selling your honey especially if it says the city name on the label uh just because that's a really good sort of uh reciprocating business deal to make so when you're in a store make sure you've got a couple of jars in the back seat of your car so that you can say hey is there a manager here or is there an owner here because i have some awesome local honey that i would think you would want to sell here and a lot of times they're going to be interested at least to have the conversation and if you have a sample jar and they taste it then man you're well on your way to making some sales when you start getting into these stores and when you're starting to try to compete for spots in these stores i think it's really advantageous that you offer every honey product there is to offer and sometimes it's easier said than done cream tiny processing isn't necessarily an easy thing to do and comb honey is a pretty big investment in terms of resources to profit but my point here is not every single honey producer that you that you're competing with in your local area sells comb honey and creamed honey and has honey sticks so if you can do all of those things without violating any laws you know and heating anything in your house and don't make infused honey in your kitchen that kind of stuff is at least in michigan illegal you have to be in a registered kitchen to be able to produce that kind of stuff but within the laws and within the resource availability that you have i think making an effort to offer more than just the one and two pound jars of liquid honey uh it will get you into more stores and it will get more people talking about your honey brand okay that's what i think i have i probably will come up with a couple of other ideas and kick myself for not mentioning them in this video but those are the things that i've learned over the years uh yeah try to get a brand early don't turn away any customers make sure that you're satisfying everybody who wants your honey uh what else was i talking about get into those stores start talking to those stores before you think you have enough bees and honey for that because there's going to be somebody else that's going to go talk to those stores and you probably have enough if not buying a 200 five gallon bucket of honey from the local beekeeper is going to be well enough you're still gonna make money off of that kind of venture so don't turn anybody away get in those stores get yourself a nice bee brand and i think you will start making some money off of these bees we love so that's the goal right try to turn what was a money pit into something that can start recouping some of that investment so hopefully this helps you in that effort if you have any questions comments or concerns leave them in the comments section below i'd be happy to chat with you there but otherwise get out there and have some fun with your bees see ya

Channel: B&K Bees

Views: 20,184

Keywords: beekeeping, honey sales, honey extraction, beekeeping lesson, beekeeping tutorial, bkbees, b&k bees, brett kozma

Id: 1BBDhfqe0U4

Length: 11min 48sec (708 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 20 2021