Boosting Visibility with SEO and Social Proof
Boosting Visibility with SEO and Social Proof
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In this week's discussion, Emily chats with Katie Olthoff, co-founder at ChopLocal, an online meat marketplace connecting customers with independent farmers and butcher shops all over the country! ChopLocal provides a platform for small-scale farmers to sell their products while also offering marketing support to help them reach a wider audience. Katie joins Emily to discuss topics like search engine optimization, social proof, email marketing and more!
TUNE IN FOR TOPICS LIKE:
1:23 Katie’s career journey and ChopLocal’s origin story
4:48 Evolving from marketer to co-founder
6:18 Getting farmers & butchers to join the platform
9:39 Types of consumers visiting ChopLocal to shop
14:35 Building demand and attracting new consumers & farmers to ChopLocal
16:58 Tweaking SEO to bring in the right buyers
18:37 Creating social proof through local creators
20:27 Intentional purchasing and the consumer buying habit shifts post-pandemic
22:45 Why you have to have an email marketing strategy
27:37 How to plug in and get connected with ChopLocal
29:15 The beauty of a non-linear career journey
Listen to this week’s Local Marketing School conversation!
Other episodes you'll enjoy if you enjoyed Katie’s episode:
#9: Integrating Into the Community and Keeping Social Media Fun | Hannah Kirkpatrick, Fareway
#10: Engaging Customers with a Purpose-Driven Mission | Katie Kardell, Century Farms Distillery
Don't hesitate to reach out! We'd love to hear from you on Instagram and find out which episodes you're enjoying the most. Your feedback is so important to us! Please take a moment to rate the show and leave a review - it supports our ongoing Local Marketing School journey and helps us develop more content that addresses what you’re hoping to learn more about!
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This podcast is produced by Hummingbirds. Learn more about Hummingbirds at hummingbirds.com
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Emily Steele (00:13)
All right, hello everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Local Marketing School. I'm Emily Steele, your host, and I'm so excited to have our guest today, Katie Olthoff with ChopLocal with us. I've gotten to know Katie and her company over the last years. Last year as she is a hummingbird customer of ours and it's been so fun to actually learn about different brands that I've become customers of from her platform. So, excited for us to dig into what she's doing in the world, but I'll tee us up with a little bio from her. So, Katie is an Iowa farmwife and mom, and she's been working in ag communications and marketing for over 10 years. She's a former teacher and small business owner who loves to create educational resources to help farmers and butchers shops grow their businesses. Katie co-founded ChopLocal in 2020 and was named one of Cattle Business Weekly's top 10 industry leaders under 40 in 2021. She was voted most likely to be on who wants to be a millionaire in her senior class and believes life is better when you can see cows out your kitchen window. Katie, welcome to the show.
Katie (01:15)
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Emily Steele (01:17)
You're so welcome. So tell us a little bit about your background. I know we just like did a little bit of the snippet there and how did you get ChopLocal started?
Katie (01:25)
Okay, yeah. So mentioned in there, I am a farm wife. I didn't grow up on a farm, but I married a farmer. And I was a teacher. That is my bachelor's degree is in elementary ed. So I taught for several years, had my kids, stayed home with them on the farm part-time. I say part-time because it lasted a few months and then I started getting bored and antsy. And so Iwas actually a mommy blogger. That was not in my bio, but I started 15 years ago this summer. I started my blog. And back then, I think this will tie in as we talk about hummingbirds later on, but back then, growing your social media following was a lot different than what it is now. And kind of the whole influencer space, we didn't have influencers back then, we had mommy bloggers.
Emily Steele (02:02)
Yep.
Katie (02:21)
So the whole space was a lot different too. But I did my mommy blogging thing with the goal of becoming pioneer woman. That did not happen. But she inspired me to start talking about my farm, our home renovation, that kind of thing. From there, I actually had a small business that was located on another local farm where I sold like vintage home decor and you know, repurposed barn doors and things like that. So we did this pop -up shop, use social media primarily to market it along with these events, obviously, with the pop -up type situation. Through all of this, I learned about social media and communications and I started working with some of the agriculture organizations in the state to help them with their social media.
ended up at the Iowa Cattlemen's Association for about five years and was there when the pandemic started. And what I really saw was between the producers, the farmers that I was working with at the Cattlemen's Association, as well as my friends in the agriculture community, was there was just this huge upheaval during the pandemic as far as being able to get your animals processed. You know, it seems like a distant memory now, but grocery store shelves were empty of meat. You couldn't find what you needed. People were going directly to the farmers to buy their meat instead because there was so much supply chain disruption. If you remember, like the trucking companies were behind and the grocery store workers couldn't get things on the shelves fast enough and all of this. And so kind of while this was all happening early in the pandemic, another Iowa farmer, Jared, who I knew kind of through the grapevine, Jared came up with this idea for ChopLocal and the idea was Etsy but for meat. So we connect a lot of independent farmers and butcher shops, get them on one platform to sell their meat and then be able to help them market to consumers. So he came up with the idea, I came in, heard about it, came in and helped execute it and that was almost four years ago now.
Emily Steele (04:18)
Wow. And so when you had kind of heard of this, where you like, did your marketing brain kind of go off of like, like this is where I see like myself coming into the company or how did you think about like kind of that co-founder relationship?
Katie (04:51)
Yeah, so at first it wasn't officially a co-founder relationship. It was really, he was gonna hire me to do marketing. And that is what happened. Jared's very involved in several agriculture businesses, including his large farm operation, and so very, very busy. And so he hired me to kind of come in and do marketing and to work with getting producers onto the platform, as well as connecting with the consumers.
Katie (05:20)
And a few months into it, I remember him telling me that I could call myself a co-founder and I cried. When I first heard about it, I fell in love with the idea. And he came up with the name, I think the name ChopLocal is so clever. If he hadn't named it that, I don't know if I would have loved it as much. But it's funny because when I first heard about it, I actually sent my boss at the time, I sent him a message and was like, isn't this so cool? not knowing that I would end up leaving my position to work for Chop Local. So.
Emily Steele (05:49)
Yeah, yeah, so four years. Okay, so this is starting and you at the time when you joined, were you already starting to source like relationships with farmers and butchers and all of that or was it like where was where we got when when things had started?
Katie (06:10)
Yeah, yeah, we were starting to, and we had a much different, not much different, but we had a different kind of fee structure or business setup at that time. We were planning on charging commission only to these producers. And so I had a network of farmers that I knew already through kind of working in the different organizations and my mommy blogging days with other farmers and so I started reaching out to them to get some of them on the platform. Ultimately, we switched our business model to now it's kind of a SaaS driven marketplace. So we work, we charge a monthly fee for them to use our software to do their sales online. And primarily we work with farmers and butcher shops that don't have an online sales channel anywhere else. Like they don't have their own store and we're able to provide them with support on the technology as well as the marketing. And then with my teaching background, I mentioned I love to do the educational stuff as well. So coaching them through their own marketing has been something we've added the past couple of years that I've really, really enjoyed.
Emily Steele (07:23)
Cool. So can you give me a scenario? Like you're talking to a farmer who's like never done anything like this. What's the pitch? Like how do you get them excited and on board?
Katie (07:32)
Yeah, so typically we are looking for farmers who have been like selling their meat at a farmer's market, right? And they're really dependent on the weather that day and the amount of traffic that comes into the farmer's market. And it's, you know, we're in the Midwest, our farmers are all across the country, but since we're based out of the Midwest, a lot of these farmers in the Midwest have a very short farmer's market season, but they've got meat year round that they want to sell.
Katie (08:00)
And so we look to those farms that have kind of started to build that customer base, but maybe haven't moved those customers online very effectively yet. And we talked to them about setting up your online store. We, I should have had these numbers in front of me, but we've done an annual survey to see how much more farmers can sell if they do have an online store. And it is almost 2X versus the farmers that are selling only farmers markets are only locally. So we talk to them about that and then we coach them through the process of getting their store set up. We actually do a lot of the setup for them, but as far as getting their product descriptions optimized for conversions and also optimized for search engine optimization, like we work with them on all of that kind of thing. And those are things that if they set up their online store on their own, they have no clue exists. They don't even know where to start with that kind of thing.
Emily Steele (08:50)
Yeah. Okay. So you're like, hey, for this fee, like we'll help you get all this set up and like, then like the added value is that you're putting their brand in front of all of the people who visit your site, right? So you're like, we're building a network of people like think about the Etsy's of the world who are searching for this. And so then you think about the other side of the network, the consumers. So these individuals who stumble upon ChopLocal are then like kind of sifting sorting, like how are they? How are they thinking, or I don't know if you've dug into this, I'm sure you have over the last four years, how are they thinking about where they buy their meat from as they come to the site?
Katie (09:38)
Yeah, so, gosh, that's a multifaceted answer here, I feel like. So we have consumers that come to our site for a variety of reasons. It could be that they want a specific production practice or type of meat, like grass-finished beef, for health reasons. Or it could be that they just feel a lot more comfortable supporting a small business instead of the major meatpacking corporations.
Katie (10:07)
And in that case, they might be looking for green finished, highly marbled beef versus the grass finished. So everybody's kind of looking for something different. And so in some cases, the customers will come and they will find somebody that is really local to them. And they will feel really good about supporting that local farmer butcher shop. I know you're an example of that, Emily, which we can go into, but and then we also have customers, like I said, they're looking for something really specific that they can't find locally.
Katie (10:36)
And so they will source it from one of our farms that's maybe a little bit further away from them, but still have that really good comfortability and that warm fuzzy feeling about buying directly from these small businesses or these farmers.
Emily Steele (10:50)
Mm -hmm make so much sense. Yeah, I can share like my little story. I got to be a hummingbird for a ChopLocal About a year ago or so. I feel like maybe a little longer and as I was perusing like trying to make my decision about like which farmer which brand to really think about I had this like it all happened so fast, right? I remember my best friend did a campaign like a week or two ago and she had selected her meat from West 40. She did like a little tour of going into the shop. I was like, that's in Ankeny that's five minutes away from my parents house. And so I just had this like aha moment because you know I spent a lot of time in my parents side of the world and so I made a similar decision. I was like okay proximity like love that it's in Ankeny, love that my best friend already had a really good experience, texted her about it too right. You see things on social media and sometimes you go like extra validate it like with a quick text to someone and so did that and like I've been a customer of theirs you know when I'm in Ankeny like It's always one of my like, if we're going to go into that side of town, like I always stop there and I have such a great relationship. So you were that connection point, ChopLocal was to now me being a long -term customer at West 40. And so I think it's so cool. Like I was sharing, like I disintermediated in the sense, like I don't always order through ChopLocal to go to West 40, but like that, I mean, that's like the value provide above and beyond your platform and your offering is like, we're going to introduce you to your next customer who hopefully will will be a customer for life, whether it's through a platform or through an engagement with you in real life. Does that feel true?
Katie (12:25)
Yeah, exactly. And I love it. I love that story. And West 40 is a phenomenal vendor for us. She would be great to have on this podcast also, Teresa would be. But yeah, that's kind of been our goal. I remember again, early in the pandemic, I saw an interview from the Etsy CEO and he said something about like the next phase in SaaS companies or the next phase in these online businesses, the best type of these businesses are the ones that are allowing other people to create businesses off of their platform. And that to some extent is like what we have been able to do through Hummingbirds. It's helped us grow our business. And then at the same time, like I love hearing these success stories about how our farmers and butcher shops are growing their businesses because of our platform. We can't always track that. I can't say, hey, Emily stopped in again. That's because of us. But we have a great relationship with our vendors. And I think that they realize that they do see that. Sometimes it's more anecdotal than it is where in this world of digital marketing, we want to be able to track where every purchaser or conversion came from. And we can't always do that. But love to hear the success stories.
Emily Steele (13:22)
I know, totally. Yeah. Yeah, we do too, right? On the side of hummingbirds, like we can't say like, because that person posted on social about you one year ago, you now have 10 new customers. Like that's not how the world works, right? But if your business is growing and you're evaluating the channels you use, like you can start to like pull, like draw some conclusions. It's never black and white. And we never will be in this day and age too, especially when it's about like local behavior. But I totally like resonate with that. Like if you were just e-commerce only. Right? And people could never go to these shops. Like, your metrics would be very different, but the value provide is in person as well as online. So it just like gets a little more gray. Right? Yeah. Okay.
Katie (14:26)
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Emily Steele (14:31)
So as you're starting to like scale up some marketing efforts. You know, you got to get the word out about Tropical on both sides of the network. You need it for consumers, you need it for farmers. What are some of the ways you're getting in front of, let's talk about two of them. So the ways you're getting in front of farmers and then the ways you're getting in front of potential customers.
Katie (14:47)
Yeah. So honestly, the way to get in front of the farmers that has worked the best for us, and this is partly, partly based on like my strengths and the things that I love to do. The way to get in front of them has been through educational opportunities. So we do webinars throughout the year. We have, so we, we've launched kind of a side brand called ChopLocal University and it's all resources for our farmers and butcher shops on marketing their small business. And this comes from my background with like what I did with my little pop-up vintage shop and you know my experience being online as a blogger through social media, you know 15 years of social media I guess.
Emily Steele (15:26)
Yep. Yep, yep.
Katie (15:35)
And as well as email marketing, as well as what we've learned, I mentioned conversion rate optimization earlier, the things that we've learned about SEO and CRO from our e-commerce platform. You know, we know that ChopLocal is not a great fit for all the farms and butcher shops out there, but we know that we have valuable information that we can share with them. And like our goal is, again, to boost all of these businesses, move more local meat. And so. We do free and low cost educational programming and that has been a great way to get in front of them and then figure out which of these farms or butcher shops are a good fit for ChopLocal, get them onto the platform and the ones that aren't necessarily a good fit from a business model standpoint, we can still generate some revenue from them with our educational offerings. So yeah, that has worked really well for us so far.
Emily Steele (16:19)
And I would think too, like if someone gets value and they're like from a class or something like a webinar and they're like, well, ChopLocal is not really for me and my stage or whatever. They've got enough value that they have a network of other farmers too that they're like, hey, have you heard of ChopLocal? Like just gets back to that word of mouth, especially when you're isolating very targeted groups of people too. Like they all talk to each other in some way, shape or form. So They've got to learn about each other, you from each other.
Katie (16:57)
Yeah, yeah, the reputation piece and the social proof. And I think when we talk about consumers, well, let me switch to consumers. Are you ready for that? Okay. Okay, so consumers, we have worked quite a bit on search engine optimization, because it is a great way to draw in people that are looking specifically for these meat products or terms like meat farms near me or something like that, you know, and like I would never call it a meat farm. Our farmers would never call it a meat farm, but that's what a lot of consumers are using for their search terms. So we've worked on search engine optimization, but once you get them to the website the first time, like it's not over there. That's not when they, they don't always make their purchase the first time that they visit our website. And so we use some, retargeting ads on social to get them to come back. But we also try to push them to our social or our email list so that we can really build that relationship with them, help them find the farmer that's right for them. We have a survey that they can fill out where they get a coupon, but we also send a personalized recommendation that says this is where you should order from based on where you're located, based on what you're looking for. And then a huge part of getting them to move from, you know, getting them to move through awareness to consideration to becoming actually a buyer is that social proof. And so we've tried to really prominently show reviews on our website. And that's one of the ways that Hummingbirds has been so beneficial to us is by having that user generated content on social media where we can show people this is what the box of frozen meat looks like when it arrives. Look at all these people unboxing their meat and having a great experience or you know, when we did the local campaigns and a couple, a few hummingbirds went into West 40 Market and did a video right there in the shop to show people what it looked like. Like that type of content has been really great for us.
Emily Steele (19:01)
I love that. Yeah, so interesting to think about like the top of funnel and search and like how people are, did you say meat farms? Is that how some people are searching?
Katie (19:17)
Yeah, or half a cow. Half a cow is a huge search term for us. And we do have people, we would call it freezer beef or half a beef, but it's typically not a cow. It's usually a steer. But, you know, consumers don't know. They don't, you know, and, and farmers don't know anything about social media. Sorry.
Katie (19:40)
They don't know much about social media, but they don't know anything about search engine optimization. Okay. So like they have no clue how to do this for themselves. And so there is really kind of a gap there that we can come in and fill. And I always say, like, if I was lost in the middle of the Pacific ocean, would I rather be on a lifeboat by myself or would I rather be on a cruise ship? And being on ChopLocal is like being on the cruise ship.
Katie (20:09)
And having your own website is like being out there on the life raft where nobody can find you and nobody's gonna see you and it's your job to draw attention to it and get people there.
Emily Steele (20:13)
Totally, yep, like just the amount of value to be like, we're gonna introduce you to hundreds, if not thousands of people on a regular basis and growing, right? Like I have to imagine like just the interest from consumers continues to increase of like intentional purchasing and like really trying to understand where their food comes from. And that has been an interesting thing I've realized with COVID too of just like the intentionality behind purchasing when you start to see like businesses in front of you shutter, you're like whoa, it can actually be my responsibility to help keep these businesses alive and they do matter, right? So it felt like there was kind of an awakening in that way. I don't know if you do experience that too with what you hear from consumers.
Katie (21:01)
No, definitely. And I'm seeing that now for a long time post COVID, our small town lockers and butcher shops were really, really, really busy. And now there's a variety of things that are the cattle markets are different, which that's too deep to get into now. But there's a variety of reasons that it's slowing down for these lockers and butcher shops. And now they're struggling a little bit.
Emily Steele (21:20)
Okay.
Katie (21:29)
And so seeing that dynamic change a little has been interesting. The other thing I'm thinking about is that my small town right now is undergoing, my small town is a destination. You should come, Emily. You should come and, and you like, seriously, it, we have like three or four little vintage shops and a coffee shop and a little general store and like people plan day trips and take a bus trip to Jewel, Iowa. There it is. Jewel, Iowa. Okay. Jewel, Iowa is going under Okay, it's undergoing some serious construction on Main Street right now with to do with fiber optics and I think water lines and it's all blocked off and there's no place to park. And I have heard that these small businesses, their business is down like 75 to 85 % from a year ago and it just crushes me. The other thing that happened with one of these businesses is they had 20,000 Facebook followers from around the state.
Emily Steele (22:04)
yeah. Mm.
Katie (22:26)
Their Facebook got hacked. They did not have an email list. They are rebuilding that social media following. And I am just like, gosh, I wish you guys had an email list so you could connect with all of these people because you take that issue combined with the road construction and it's just been a really hard summer for them so far.
Emily Steele (22:27)
Yeah, I think that's those are good pieces of advice not the construction you can't do anything about probably what your city is like planning to do with like sewer lines and all that but like the way I used to teach a class called the come back again method and like very much very very similar to you in the sense of like I love like teaching people how to think about Local marketing is why this podcast exists, right? Like how do you get people excited to visit you and then come back again? What are the things and that one of the first things I always talk about is like an email list it feels so like I'm just collecting emails when people check out. I don't care how you do it. It's paper. Some people still do paper in a notebook right by the checkout. Some people it's integrated with their Shopify or whatever they use for payment. It doesn't collect the emails because yeah, your Facebook page, the algorithm changes, business accounts get very little traction on social anymore. And so it's like, you've got to really think about how you're keeping in touch with your customers because it's always cheaper to retain a customer than get a customer. So...What are you doing there? So sorry, I got really passionate about it, but I mean, I'm talking to a fellow marketer, so you get it.
Katie (23:47)
No, I'm, yeah, I don't know when this is gonna air for sure, but I'm teaching an email marketing course right now as part of ChopLocal University because I feel, yeah, same thing. Like it's so important. And when we talk about, especially for my farmers market farmers, like holiday meat gift box sales can be huge for you if you have an email list and you can connect with these people outside of farmers market Saturdays, you know, but you've got to get that infrastructure in place and you've got to be planning ahead for that. And that's something that they're not always thinking about. And, you know, social media is important. Like that's the it is, but it's not, it's not the only thing, right. And,
Emily Steele (24:18)
Totally. It is. I know.
Katie (24:38)
I hate to put more on people's plates and that's, I guess that's why we do Chop Local is because we don't want to put more on people's plates because we know that entrepreneurs, whether it's a farmer selling their meat or a butcher shop that's trying to adjust to all of these changes in the world right now, they have so many other things going on. And so if we can simplify it, that is fantastic. And I'll put a plugin for Hummingbirds because...When I launched Chop Local, especially because of my blogging background, I was like, well, I know all these food bloggers. We're going to talk to all these food bloggers. We're going to do influencer marketing. And I started gathering some media kits from them. And I had them in a spreadsheet. And I started pricing it out. And my gosh, it was very overwhelming for me. And it was very pricey. And as a new brand, it just didn't work for us.
Emily Steele (25:08)
Yeah, yeah.Totally.
Katie (25:32)
And then we still have a very small team four years later. So like when we can outsource to somebody that we really trust and that is providing us with a ton of value, like Hummingbirds, they have made our influencer, which it's not the same thing, right? As working with a major, it's not, but getting user generated content and doing the campaigns with the Hummingbirds team, like they...email me and remind me when we have a campaign coming up. They email me and say, hey, Katie, reminder that I need you to pick your hummingbirds by Friday, or I can pick them for you if you want me to. And like, I can talk to your team and tell them, like, I'm looking for people that already have some food content that haven't worked with any of my competitors. And they're really good about picking out those birds for me and making it so easy and hands off. And I literally just sit there and watch the user generated content come in and like,This is amazing like this and I hope that's how my shop local vendors feel but that's how I feel about hummingbirds. So
Emily Steele (26:32)
Yes. I love that you've had such a positive experience. And I didn't tell Katie she had to talk about this. So just anyone listening like this is authentic like her experience. So I really
Katie (26:39)
Yeah, yeah, no, it has been great. And then our producer, our farmers that have benefited from the campaigns think it's really awesome too. A lot of times the birds will tag both ChopLocal and the farmer. I'm really excited for some of the new cities that you are expanding to because I have farmers in those areas too. And so just hoping as we both kind of grow from the Midwest outwards that it's, it's going to be great. So.
Emily Steele (26:52)
Mm -hmm. I know we'll just keep following each other. Where are you going? Whatever sure go next? We just will just call Katie. You'll create our whole city strategy lot. I Love it. So what's going on ChopLocal in the future? Like any big things coming up or changes or anything to announce I know your email like that's super helpful to share like ChopLocal University so if anyone's listening and Resonates is like a butcher shop or farm or like please go see all the value that Katie and her team created but anything else?
Katie (27:14)
Yeah, no, not really. Just kind of plugging along. We continue to expand out, like I said, outside of the Midwest. We have farms and I think farms and butcher shops in about 25 states. We almost every region of the US. And our goal is really to have a farmer butcher shop within 400 miles of every meat eater in the lower 48 states. And then beyond that, we want to get to a hundred within a hundred miles of every meat eater so that everybody's really got that local connection. We if you are interested in buying meat from us, if you're interested in being a consumer, we do offer discounts and promotions. If you sign up for our email list, we also it's a little bit harder. Our vendors ship frozen meat and it's a little bit harder to ship it in the summer. So we don't do as many promotions in the summer. But starting at Labor Day through Christmas is huge for us. And so lots of opportunities to take advantage of our sales and promotions. And we'll also be doing our hummingbirds campaigns again. We're taking a little break for the summer, but we'll be launching those again Labor Day through Christmas. And so if there are birds listening or potential birds listening that want to take part, this would be a great opportunity for you guys as well. Yeah.
Emily Steele (29:07)
So fun, I love it. This has been so cool to learn about ChopLocal and your journey and just all the things. I think it's so cool to hear people's journey leading up to where they are today. You think about mommy blogger days and what you were doing in the marketing role you had and like It all, like, to me, sometimes, it's like, that makes sense that I'm here where I'm at and I can bring this knowledge that seemed really random at the time, like me doing mommy blogging, like, you know, maybe it didn't make sense at the moment or felt like, okay, this is interesting, but like, look at the, like how it's shaped what you get to do today. I think it's so cool.
Katie (29:39)
Yeah, absolutely. It's one of those things where even as a former teacher, like I never, especially as a former teacher, I never thought I would end up doing anything else. I just wanted to be a teacher, you know, but there are so many things. And this maybe this is tying in more to kind of the entrepreneurship journey. Like there are so many things that I loved about teaching or that I was, you know, were my strengths in teaching. You and I've kind of chatted about this before, but like, connecting with people and being able, figuring out ways to share information in a way that really resonates with them, whether that is through ChopLocal University or it's whether marketing to our consumers, those things that I learned in teaching have carried through with me. It's to what I'm doing today. There's just been a change, obviously, in the channels that we use and the way that we do it. And even, like I said, I no longer qualify for those 40 under 40 awards. So as we've moved, as I've moved through my career and I've gotten a little bit older, I've seen all of these changes in our communications techniques. And I just, it's gonna be so interesting to see where social media is five, 10 years from now, right? Cause I never would have imagined where we're at today five years ago. So.
Emily Steele (30:48)
Totally, yeah. And just like seeing curious, I think as marketing professionals, entrepreneurs, just being like, yeah, what does it look like if we experiment here, we try this? And like It's like these channels do change so quickly and what we used to be able to like even rely on like five years ago you put like a dollar into Facebook ads and you get five dollars out or something like it just was so predictable in so many ways and now it's like feels it's just it's different and like it will always evolve and here we are figuring it out as we go. -huh.
Katie (31:35)
Yep. That's pretty much it in a nutshell, is figuring it out as we go. So, yep.
Emily Steele (31:45)
Yep. Yep. I'm having the courage to keep figuring it out every day, every day. I love it. Okay, so people are like hopefully inspired to connect with ChopLocal either as a customer or farmer. How do they, what should they do next?
Katie (31:55)
Yeah, so ChopLocal.com definitely, it's Chop like Pork Chop. Hopefully people will pick that up by now. Chop like Pork Chop. ChopLocal.com is the consumer facing online farmers market is what we call it. That's one thing I learned early on is that our farmers weren't necessarily familiar with Etsy. I know probably a lot of our listeners probably are, but the farmers weren't always. So we call it an online farmers market.
Emily Steele (32:04)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.
Katie (32:25)
is at ChopLocal.com. If you are a farmer or butcher shop and you're looking for these resources, you scroll to the bottom and there is a link that says for farmers and butchers. And that'll take you to ChopLocalUniversity.com.
Emily Steele (32:40)
Cool, well thanks so much for taking time to be on the podcast to share your story and what ChopLocal's up to. I am such a big fan as a customer self and someone who has been able to be a hummingbird and experience your offering. So thanks so much, really. It means a lot that you came on the podcast today.
Katie (32:57)
Yeah, no, I appreciate the opportunity to kind of chat and always appreciate connecting with other business owners and the opportunity to keep working with Hummingbirds. I'm excited for that as well.
Emily Steele (33:04)
Yay. Amazing. Thanks, Katie.
