How to Promote an Agribusiness at Field Days and Agricultural Shows

Promote at a field day in three stages: tell your customers you’ll be there before the event, give them a reason to stop at your site on the day, and follow up with each enquiry within a week. In many cases, the return comes more from the before and after than from the stand itself.

If you’ve paid for a field day site and are relying on passing traffic, our agricultural marketing agency can help connect your promotion before the event with your follow-up afterwards. A site fee buys you a spot. It doesn’t buy you the right people walking past it.

Start with your own customer list

Field days are crowded. Visitors often arrive with a short list of people they intend to see, so a useful place to start is telling your existing customers and enquiries where you’ll be and what you’re bringing.

Send an email and SMS about two weeks out, and a reminder the week before. Include your site number, a map link, and one reason to call in, such as a machine on display, a technician for questions or a show-only price.

Give people one reason to stop

A stand that tries to show everything is easy to walk past. Pick one thing: a pump running on a test rig, a tank cut in half, a free soil or water check, or a chance to discuss finance options.

Name it in your pre-event posts and on a sign at the front of the site. “Come and see the new boom sprayer controller working” gives a farmer a reason to detour. “Visit us at site 142” doesn’t.

Capture each enquiry properly

Business cards and paper notes get lost between the paddock and the office. Decide beforehand how you’ll record each enquiry: a QR code to a short form, a tablet at the stand, or a shared note in your phone.

Capture three things: their name and contact details, what they’re looking at, and when they expect to buy. A note such as “bore pump replacement before harvest” gives your salesperson something useful to follow up on. Buying timing helps you decide who needs a call first.

Our guide to landing pages for rural and agricultural customers can help you build an event page with a clear offer and a straightforward enquiry form.

Make use of the event’s own channels

Check what the organiser offers through exhibitor listings, site maps, event apps and social channels. Complete your listing fully, add your demonstration or special offer where possible, and include your site number.

Tag the event in your posts and use its published name consistently so visitors can connect your promotion with the show they’re attending. At larger events such as AgQuip in Gunnedah, pre-event visibility gives people a way to find you among the exhibitors.

Use local press and radio before the show

Rural press and local radio can help you reach buyers who won’t see your social posts. Consider a short advertorial or radio advertisement in the fortnight before the event, with the same reason to visit that you’re using elsewhere.

Keep paid digital promotion focused too. Target the show’s catchment region and run a small campaign in the two weeks before, directing people to your event page. Make sure that page gives them your site number, what they can see and how to book a conversation.

If you’re also planning the rest of your year around planting, spraying and harvest, our seasonal farming cycles marketing calendar shows where field days sit in it.

Book meetings at your site

For bigger purchases such as machinery, irrigation and storage, give buyers a next step beyond a quick conversation at the stand. Offer a booked time at your site or an on-farm visit, and put a “book a time” link in your pre-event messages.

Meetings give your salesperson time for a planned conversation, and they give you a count of interested buyers before you arrive.

Follow up within a week

The follow-up often decides whether the event paid, and it’s where a lot of agribusiness marketing at events falls down. Within seven days, send a personal message from the person who spoke to them, referring to what they discussed. Tag enquiries by interest and buying timing so you can follow up the “this season” group first.

Then keep the rest warm with useful information relevant to their enquiry. Where contacts have agreed to marketing, you can also use your list to build a custom audience for ads in the following weeks. For ideas on what to say, see our guide on how to market a business to farmers and rural customers.

Our agribusiness social media guide can help you choose where to distribute that follow-up content and which platform suits the buyer.

Measure what the field day brought in

Record which enquiries came from the field day and track them through to quotes and sales. Compare the results with the full cost of attending, including the site, transport, accommodation and staff time.

For longer buying cycles, keep tracking after the first week so you can see what those conversations eventually produced. A busy stand is encouraging, but qualified enquiries, quotes and sales tell you more about whether to book again.

When field days aren’t worth it

Field days are expensive in site fees, staff time, transport and set-up, and they don’t suit every business. They typically work best when you sell something farmers like to see, touch or compare, and when your buyers are concentrated in the show’s catchment.

If your product is bought online in a few clicks, or your customers are spread across several states, the same budget may do more in search and social. Good agricultural marketing treats the show as one channel among several, not the whole plan. Before you book, ask what you’d need to sell to cover the cost, and how many of your target buyers are likely to attend.

Need help planning your next field day?

We help agribusinesses decide which shows are worth the site fee, book conversations before the gates open and follow up properly afterwards. Marketing to farmers at events works best as part of a wider plan, so we start by looking at where your buyers actually go. If you’ve got a field day coming up, our rural marketing agency team can help map it out.