Launching an Online Community During COVID

For the Love of Farming

When a group of award-winning farmers wanted to expand their reach to help others build successful careers in agriculture, they realized that an online community would be the perfect vehicle for their knowledge and experience. But to transition from primarily presenting at regional farming shows to an online, membership-based platform, the team needed to build its new platform from the ground up: technology stack, content strategy, marketing plan, and sales enablement strategy. And they needed to do it all in record time.
 

Sowing Success

Within six weeks, Refactored created a website that provides a platform for members to share and receive farming advice and a marketing strategy that helped XtremeAg acquire paid national partners and sponsors. The project was unfurled in multiple phases: After an initial launch of member services, a second phase included all XtremeAg’s member-restricted content. A third phase enhanced the community’s gating and promotional programs and implemented technical support for site tools including Sitefinity, FreshDesk, and Stripe.
 

Robust Results

The founding farmers’ decision to launch the XtremeAg site proved prescient in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. The site currently offers two membership tiers—bronze and silver—with an additional gold tier to be launched in the future. The site has produced hundreds of hours of video for members, with content updates, such as field reports and tutorials, published daily. Each member also has the ability to ask the farming pros a set number of questions per month via XtremeAg’s built-in FreshDesk functionality, further enhancing brand loyalty and utility.