Digital Marketing for Digital Saathi in Karnataka

Brief

Cargill has set a global goal of training 10 million farmers in sustainable agricultural practices and improving access to markets by 2030, and Digital Saathi is a step in that direction. Cargill hopes to connect with over 3 million farmers over the next five years using this hyper-localized service platform.

Digital Saathi offers digital agriculture advisory services and improved market access to smallholder farmers in five Karnataka districts: Davangere, Bellary, Haveri, Chitradurga, and Shimoga. Peer farmers, Farmer Producing Companies, agri-suppliers, buyers, traders, and processors will all have easy access to small and marginal farmers. Digital Saathi offers farmers digital solutions such as discussion forums and market prices, weather forecasts, pre- to post-harvest information, and other information.

Marketing & Communication Objectives

Increase brand awareness, curiosity/interest, and engagement with the brand Digital Saathi, thereby building trust and value proposition with the key stakeholders
Encourage organic installations and boost transactions (to purchase crop inputs, buy advisory and sell crops) across a variety of stakeholders – farmers, agri-input suppliers, FPCs, Traders, and Processors
Primarily, design a mass media campaign targeting in rural markets to build brand awareness, farmer onboarding, and transactions on the platform
Onboard 85000 farmers and do registrations
Outreach, Onboarding, and increasing the number of transactions

Target Geography

Karnataka – especially rural markets, namely, Davangere, Haveri, Shimoga, Bellary, Chitragurga, Chamraj, and Mysuru

Target Audience

Farmers/Farming Households
Agri/Crop Input Retailers or Input Distributors
Farmer Producing Company (FPC, company formed and owned by farmers)
Local Traders and Processors present in Karnataka

Secondary Target Audience

Crop Input Manufacturers
Food companies/processors (outside of Karnataka)
Agriculture Institutes/KVKs/RSK
State Agriculture Departments
Other Agri-tech players/Competition
Local communities

An Integrated Approach

First, we identified the digital promotion platform: Facebook. Our approach was an integrated marketing strategy in which we used vernacular and informative posts on Facebook

We also used the missed call in this strategy by mentioning a phone number on the creatives that were posted on Facebook.

Creatives were designed in a way that used a vernacular mode of communication to connect with people easily.