Potential customer leads for you!

The GOTG website invites customers to add themselves to a contact list if they believe their area is not served by a Goats On The Go® affiliate. Each year after training we post this list for you to review…but this year there’s a catch. To access the list you will need to create an account on FarmLaunch.me.

FarmLaunch is our new catch-all website for Goats On The Go®, Sheep On The Go®, and future brands. This site will serve as your dashboard for accessing information about your affiliate status and resources to use in your business. If you’ve read this far, you’ve already had to create an account and log-in, so congratulations!

Now, back to that customer list. Whenever someone is convinced they don’t have an affiliate to serve them, double check to make sure there really isn’t one nearby. So, if you’ve been an affiliate for a year or more, there probably aren’t any new leads to be mined in the list, but it’s worth a quick peak anyway. If you are a brand new affiliate, you should definitely download the spreadsheet, sort it by state, and check to see if any of those customers are in your territory. The list can be found in the “Business Tools” page of FarmLaunch.me.

When you find an entry in your territory, definitely reach out to them right away! They wanted to hire us in the past, but we were unable to serve them. Keep in mind, though, that it may have been a couple of years since they originally inquired, so you’ll have to explain who you are to jog their memories.

This list is only posted for a couple of months each year after the Affiliate Training & Conference, so please download a copy ASAP!

Let your customers praise you!

We were asked recently by Guy Masters if there is a good place to direct customers to leave reviews about Goats On The Go®’s targeted grazing services. Turns out, that’s kind of a complex issue. Should customers review Goats On The Go® broadly, or their local affiliate who actually provided the service? What’s the least complicated way to direct customers to the right place to leave a review? What should we do with negative reviews left by pranksters, axe-grinders, and animal rights activists who didn’t even hire us?

It seems best that customers review their own local affiliate who did the goat grazing rather than the overarching brand. Since customers have likely already visited the affiliate’s individual profile page on the GOTG website, they should be able to get back there to leave a review. And, in keeping with our “your business, your decision” approach to things, you should be able to use the review service that you prefer.

So, I’m here to remind you there is space on your profile page for a couple of custom link buttons. Many affiliates use these buttons to connect customers to their Facebook business pages, and each Facebook business page has its own review function. A button can be added to link directly to your Facebook review widget, or to some other review tool such as the one incorporated into a Yelp or Google Business listing, or even to your local chamber of commerce website.

No matter which option you choose, here are some best practices you should consider:

  1. Always use your affiliate descriptor in any business listing, business page, or review service so customers can distinguish you from the brand as a whole. So, “Goats On The Go® Lawrence KC” instead of just “Goats On The Go®”.

  2. Make it easy for your customers to give you a positive review. Send a follow-up email once the project is complete with a direct link to your chosen review service, or to your profile page on the GOTG website (be sure to let us know that you want a review button added, and send us the link it should contain). You might say something like, “Did you love the work our goats did for your property? Click here to leave a review. The herd craves your feedback!”

  3. You will get negative reviews from people who never hired you. Ignore them. By giving the review link directly to actual customers after projects are done, you can be assured that most reviews will be legit — and positive. Facebook’s review tool simply asks if the user would recommend the business or not. Then it uses some magic algorithm to incorporate page “likes” and post “shares” to produce a 1 - 5 star rating. This helps to ensure that one vicious or goofball review will not do much damage.

How do goats kill unwanted vegetation?

We all know there is nothing magic about how goats eat that instantly kills unwanted plants with a single grazing. So how is it that we can tell our customers that goats will help them control their weed and brush problems? By what mechanism(s) do the goats control vegetation?

We touched on this at the Affiliate Training & Conference in March, but here’s a more complete explanation that might help you communicate with your customers and the press.

  1. Goats turn a jungle of vegetation into something much more manageable. Even one pass from a herd will reduce the space taken up by the unwanted vegetation, improving sight lines, reducing thorns that stick and vines that grab, and generally making the area a safer and more pleasant place to be. This allows customers to target their follow-up efforts. They can cut and treat exactly what needs it instead of indiscriminately chopping with machines and spraying herbicides.

  2. Goats reduce competition for the establishment of better vegetation. Each pass from a herd of goats provides more space, sunlight, and nutrients for preferred vegetation trying to get a foothold. People’s “preferred” vegetation is often native vegetation. Plants native to North America (sorry, Amanda, I don’t know if this applies to Tasmania) evolved with vast herds of grazing animals. Consequently, they benefit from an occasional, short-but-intense grazing — the same affect provided by prescribed fire. The problem vegetation we’re called to control with goats is often non-native, invasive brush and weeds, which do not tolerate grazing well.

  3. Goats minimize reproduction. Many problem plants reproduce by spreading seeds. When our goats eat the flowers and berries off of targeted plants, they significantly hamper the plants’ ability to produce viable seeds. When goats remove nearly mature seed heads from plants before they drop to the ground, the seeds are destroyed in the goats’ digestive systems. Each year our goats can eliminate the plants’ entire seed crop. There will still be seeds in the soil from previous years, but over time we can “burn out” the seed from the soil by letting the plants germinate and then grazing them before seed-set.

  4. Goats cause plants to “stress out.” From the middle of each growing season until the end, perennial plants are using their leaves to collect sunlight and turn it into energy, storing it in their roots in preparation for the colder, lower-light dormant season. When spring comes, these plants must use that stored energy to produce new leaves so they can start collecting sunlight again. Right after full leaf-out, most plants are at their most susceptible. They’ve used most of their reserves to make new leaves and haven’t had time yet to collect a lot of sun. If we graze these plants in the spring or early summer, the vegetation will have to once again call on its root reserves to recover. Now imagine if we repeat the grazing in the late summer (when the plant should be storing energy for winter, not using it to survive), and then again in the following spring. It’s the repeated stress followed by forced recovery that can eventually kill a plant using goats and only goats with no cutting or herbicide. And, looking back to #3, a plant just worried about recovery and survival is unlikely to reproduce effectively.

So, there you have it — the main four mechanisms for controlling vegetation with goats. Of these, #4 is the least understood and often the hardest to communicate to people, but it’s probably the most important, especially when trying to get conservation-minded customers (who hate invasive plants, carbon monoxide, and chemical herbicides) to commit to large scale, long term projects.

So, you've attended affiliate training. Now what?

Thank you to everyone who attended the 2021 Goats On The Go® Affiliate Training & Conference in early March. Despite the many challenges of trying to hold the event in-person while also broadcasting the content live, it went off without a hitch (mostly)!

So what now? Here are some actions you might want to take — the five P’s of preparing for your first grazing season.

  1. Participate in the affiliate community. You found it really valuable to visit with other affiliates and hear some of their case study presentations at the event right? Don’t let that feeling of community and support end! If you haven’t already, search for the “Goats On The Go® Affiliates” group on Facebook and request to join. Within a day or two you’ll be given access, so you can ask questions, express concerns, share victories, and get encouragement from the entire affiliate network. Also, feel free to reach out to other affiliates directly for help.

  2. Plan a launch party. Peg and Tim Harbaugh started their goat grazing business near Dubuque, Iowa by inviting the community to see their goats in action, eat some food, and hear about their new business. The press loved it! Reach out to the Harbaugh’s for advice on how to organize and publicize your own launch party. Find them on the Facebook Group or here.

  3. Print some business cards. Go to FarmLaunch.me to access all affiliate resources for both Goats On The Go® and Sheep On TheGo®. Navigate to “Goats On The Go® Resources” and select “Promotional Tools,” then click on “Business Card Template”. You’ll be directed to create a free Canva account (always click “Maybe Later” when prompted to upgrade to a paid account — you don’t need it). You can use Canva to customize the business card design for yourself. You can even order prints from Canva to be delivered to your door!

  4. Publish a press release. Planning to do a launch party? You need to publicize it, and writing a press release is a great way to get started. There are several examples you can use at FarmLaunch.me. The trick is to use your press release to write the story for the reporter, then get it in their hands. Use a catchy subject line if you email it to the press. “Goats are entire staff of new Ames company” was the headline of the first press release that launched Goats On The Go, LC back in 2012. The reporter actually said it was a hook he couldn’t ignore. Emails are great, but don’t be afraid to pick up the phone and use any personal contacts you may have with the local print and TV news.

  5. Practice a project. Find a friend or neighbor with a property that could use some goat attention. Visit it. Use the site visit form from FarmLaunch.me. Work up a quote (but don’t send it). Load the goats. Drive to the site. Install the fencing. Unload. Observe. Let them stay overnight (it’s like dropping your kid off at kindergarten for the first time). Load the goats. Pick up the fence. Drive home. Even if your practice project will happen on your own property, pretend it’s a half-hour away. Load the goats in the trailer, drive around for awhile, then drive home and set up your fencing while the goats wait. Try to make it as close to a real project as possible. Then, offer to do the same thing as a demo for a popular, local park. If they agree, publicize it!