Marketers must be feeling a wee bit humdrum. A recent YouGov online survey involving 990 participants scored marketers low on job content, integrity, leadership skills, and earning potential. Marketing they thought was simply a promotional tool and not a business strategy or indeed a philosophy. Ironically the same survey regarded marketing as central to business success.

As a regular attender over several decades at Kelso and, more recently, at Lauderdale Agricultural Discussion Societies I particularly look forward to meetings on “How I Farm”. I usually leave inspired and, if not, certainly with some new ideas. Sometimes a few negative thoughts about my own farming creep in with ambitions to do better.

Last week the two speakers at Kelso who told us how they farmed were James Logan of Athelstaneford Mains and Will Pritchard from Pembrokeshire. James grows 850 acres of cereals and 400 acres of potatoes. He is involved in contract farming, has two companies which process and market his tatties and pulls his weight in the SNFU. Will Pritchard owns 1200 dairy cows on 1200 acres, has a contracting business and is developing a herd of Wagyu beef cattle. He is chairman of the largest farmer owned supply co-operative in Wales and is a presenter on a radio farming programme. Since his visit to Kelso he has featured on BBC 2 with Kate Humble when he showed off his Wagyu cattle and told us how he marketed their mouth watering beef.

Both speakers are obviously running successful farms. What interested me most was the effect of their marketing programmes on their profitability. This emphasis on marketing would, in my view, be the common factor in the most successful of the many “How I Farm” presentations which I have listened to over the years.

When, around 1980, my cattle operation moved in stages from suckled calf production to pedigree breeding the initial reason, as it so often is, was simply to breed some bulls for using at home. Our native breeds had, after three decades of enormous prices and a buoyant export demand, fallen out of favour. This had been exacerbated by the advent of the Continental breeds, particularly the Charolais. Up to then, like my Father and Grandfather before him, I crossed an Angus with a Shorthorn. When we bought a Charolais bull the effect on our calf sales was enormous. Our Charolais calves weighed 50kg more at sale time and the golden colour gave buyers confidence that they would continue growing. As our herd was self contained which, because Brucellosis was rife at the time, was important, we still used Angus and Shorthorn bulls. The steer calves were severely discounted.

Pedigree Angus breeders had for about a decade been trying to breed bigger cattle. This was usually at the expense of conformation. Any of the bulls I fancied which were bigger and at the same time well made were way beyond my limited means so I was encouraged to try to breed something which suited me better.

Eventually we had some bulls to sell and did quite well for beginners. Our first two bulls were reserve champions at consecutive Perth Bull Sales and a third was top seller. The problem was the price. Even prize winners struggled to make two thousand guineas which, even then, wasn’t much. Bringing a bull to Perth after deducting commission, breed society levies and accommodation in addition to the enormous amount of time and feed required to have them looking the part, cost £819 per bull. There wasn’t much left after that. I had either to do something different or give up so I decided to try to sell the bulls on farm. The problem was that I had an unpopular product and no reputation whatsoever.

I learned a great deal about marketing over forty years. It is of course a given that one must be confident in one’s product and must continuously try to give clients a good deal. It is important that when things go wrong. As they sometimes do even in the best operation, that a supreme effort is made to put things right. Without these basics no marketing programme will succeed. The next step is to make potential clients aware of your product or service. Forty years ago, in the beef and sheep world, this usually happened almost by default through sale reports in agricultural publications such as The Scottish Farmer. Specific advertising in breed magazines usually featured a picture of a bull or ram with a few details of his show winnings or prize when sold.

I devoured books, tapes and CDs about marketing and discovered methods other industries used to promote their products, which hadn’t been used in agriculture. It should be noted that despite marketing and selling (not one and the same incidentally) having a sometimes sleazy image, none of these advocated using questionable tactics. Some were quirky and nearly all were new to me. I remember one tape in particular. The interviewee had honed his technique cold calling door to door in council estates selling wigs. Anyone, I thought, who could make a living doing that was worth listening to.

So; my own view of marketing is diametrically opposite to the 990 participants in the YouGov survey. It should be the mainspring of a business. Anyone considering a niche enterprise in the hope that it will develop into mainline must learn to market their wares. It pays to remember that your product is not what you put in or what it costs you. It is only worth what your customer gets from it and will pay for. Always drink upstream of the herd.