´Formulation is The Key´ - Success for Yara Australia in The Broadacre Sector
In an era where pioneered products are novel today and plagiarised tomorrow, it is always important to direct marketing strategies which constantly re-enforce both the quality and consistency of product formulation in conjunction with a professional market support package.
This strategy is paramount in a "First, Best & Different" strategy to win commercial business at good financial margins over against companies who attempt to copy our products and compete on price alone.
As part of Yara Australia´s December 2005 marketing launch for the broadacre winter cropping season, a series of meetings and presentations were held by Mark Ridings & Tony Wetherall of Yara Australia with key distribution partners in Western Australia (WA). This was part of a focussed marketing program including the release our new Australian cereal manual combined with press releases and rural television advertisements.
This region alone is a key market sector for Yara Australia and represents over 8 million hectares of broadacre crops. This features major broadacre crops such as wheat, barley canola and also minor broadacre crops such as peas, beans and lentils.
Given the challenging physical and chemical soil characteristics of Western Australia (WA), there is enormous scope for zinc (Zn), manganese (Mn) and copper (Cu), both single and composite flowables, in this broadacre sector (in conjunction with NPK inputs) to meet the nutritional requirements of the crop.
In a major meeting between Yara Australia and our key WA distributor, a presentation was given to their entire WA agronomy team, which overviewed the product benefits and efficacy of the Phosyn branded Zn, Mn and Cu products which can be used for soil, seed and foliar applications.
A new addition to the presentation was a ´live´ product demonstration, featuring some visual experiments highlighting the very efficient mixing and dispersion characteristics of these high quality flowable products.
Also, using the ´iPacta´ CD Rom (as pictured on the left), it was also possible to give an interactive internet tankmix demonstration. Members of the audience, which included specialist agronomists, were invited to shout-out typical spray combinations of Phosyn flowables with other Ag-Chem products which were then answered by the tankmix.com database in ´real-time´.
The presentation was well received and as an outcome of the marketing program, Yara Australia has secured all of the broadacre product business from this major national distributor, which is by far the largest re-seller in WA giving the Alliance Partners the dominant market share in this lucrative agricultural region.
Author: Mark Ridings, Yara Australia
Published: January 2006