How to Market to Farmers: Why Facebook Ads Still Do the Heavy Lifting

There’s still a stubborn myth hanging around in some marketing teams: farmers are hard to reach online.

They aren’t.

We’ve just surveyed 942 farmers from across the UK in our latest Marketing to Farmers report, and the picture is clear.

Farmers are online, they’re researching, they’re comparing, and they’re buying with digital playing a major role in that journey. In fact, 68% of farmers browse social media at least once a day, and browsing social media now sits alongside emailing and using search engines as one of their most frequent digital activities.

So the question is not whether digital belongs in your marketing mix.

It does.

The real question is where to focus if you want results.

If you’re working out how to market to farmers in a way that is measurable, targeted and flexible enough to keep up with the realities of the sector, Facebook Ads remain one of the best places to start. Not because they replace everything else. Not because print, events or direct mail have stopped mattering. But because Facebook gives you something few other channels can match all at once: scale, targeting, speed and control. And in agriculture, that combination matters.

The evolution of farmer advertising

Farmer advertising used to follow a familiar pattern. A press ad in the right title. A spot on local radio. A presence at a key event. A direct mail piece landing at the right time.

That still has value. We see it in our own data. Events and trade shows still carry real weight, with 27% of farmers ranking them as the number one channel of influence, and 59% putting trade shows in their top three research sources. Offline has not disappeared. It still works, especially when it connects with digital activity.

But the old model has limits.

You cannot shift a print campaign overnight because the weather has changed. You cannot test multiple headlines on radio. You cannot always see which message drove the enquiry and which one fell flat. Traditional channels often ask for more commitment before you have enough feedback to improve what you are doing.

Digital changed that.

You can test creative. Test audiences. Test offers. You can move budget around quickly. You can spot what is working and make it work harder.

And there is a reason that matters so much in agriculture. Timing is everything. Seasons move. Priorities change. Workloads spike. Cashflow gets squeezed. Our report shows cashflow, farm input costs, climate and weather, and profitability still dominate farmers’ concerns. If your marketing cannot react to those realities, it gets left behind.

Why Facebook still stands out

Not every digital channel deserves the same share of your budget.

If you want broad farmer reach, Facebook is still one of the strongest platforms in the mix. Daily use has grown again, from 53% in 2023 to 62% in 2024 and 66% in 2025. That puts it well ahead of YouTube at 33% and Instagram at 37% for daily use, and miles ahead of LinkedIn, which 69% of farmers never use.

That matters because Facebook still gives you reach across a wide spread of farming audiences. It is not just a younger platform. It is not just a brand-awareness play. It is embedded in day-to-day behaviour across the sector.

And the wider context matters too. Our data shows 78% of farmers use social media at least weekly, while 63% often search on social media for products or services. This is not idle scrolling. This is research behaviour.

That is where Facebook Ads earn their place.

You are not trying to drag farmers somewhere new. You are showing up where they already spend time, where they already consume content, and where they are already open to finding products, services and brands.

Facebook’s biggest strength: targeting

Reach is one thing. Relevance is what makes the difference.

A lot of traditional farmer advertising is still quite blunt. You pick a channel because farmers are there. Fair enough. But that still means paying to reach plenty of people who are not right for your offer, are not ready to buy, or are not the person making the decision.

Facebook lets you narrow the field.

You can target people based on interests tied to farming, machinery, livestock, rural business and agricultural media. You can build custom audiences from your own data, whether that comes from past enquiries, brochure downloads, event leads or existing customers. You can retarget people who visited your website and did nothing. And you can build lookalike audiences to find more people who behave like the customers you already want more of.

That matters because there is no such thing as one farmer audience. Our report is clear on that. We say it plainly: there is no single “farmer” persona, and brands need to get more specific if they want to influence the right decision makers. The buying decision is also rarely as simple as one person calling all the shots. In our research, 33.9% said they make all buying decisions, 21.6% make most key decisions, and 32.7% are joint decision makers.

So when people ask how to market to farmers, the honest answer is this: stop thinking in broad stereotypes. Start building campaigns around the right personas, the right pain points and the right stage of the buying journey.

Facebook helps you do that.

Why it works so well for seasonal campaigns

Agriculture is not static. Your paid media should not be either.

That is another reason Facebook Ads work so well in this sector. You can start small, test your message, and scale once you know what is landing. You do not need to sink a huge amount of money into a campaign before you have proof.

That flexibility matters for smaller agribusinesses trying to make budget work harder. It matters just as much for larger businesses who are tired of spending heavily on campaigns that look polished but do not shift performance.

It also matters because of when farmers are online. In our report, 73% say they are online after 6pm, and more than a quarter spend the most time online after 9pm. That means your audience is often engaging outside the traditional working day, when they finally have a bit of room to browse, watch and compare.

Facebook gives you the ability to meet them there, with spend that can move up or down depending on the season, the offer and the pressure points in the market.

What good Facebook ads in agriculture actually look like

The platform matters. The creative still matters more.

Too many ads aimed at farmers feel like they were written by someone with clean boots and no real point to make. They look polished, but they do not feel grounded. They talk around the value instead of getting to it.

Good agriculture ads do the opposite.

They show something real. A machine doing the job. A product solving a problem. A farmer explaining what changed. They use language that gets to the point quickly. They do not dress up simple benefits in corporate fluff.

Our data backs that up. The most useful content formats for farmers in 2025 were product demos and videos, both at 58%, followed by testimonials at 45%, social media posts at 43% and case studies at 42%. Blogs sit much lower at 15%, which tells you something important: written content has a role, especially for SEO and AI visibility, but on social, visual proof carries far more weight.

That is why video matters so much on Facebook.

And it is not just a nice extra. Before buying a new product, 95% of farmers visit a website, 92% read reviews, 86% search on Google, 81% watch a video about it, and 63% search for it on social media. The journey is digital long before the final sale happens face to face.

So if your ads are driving clicks, your website has to finish the job. Trust matters. Brand matters. Our report shows 50% rate lack of trust in a website as the biggest online buying challenge, while 26% say a lack of brand confidence stops them from buying online.

The ad gets attention. The brand and the website close the gap.

So, what is the best channel for farmer advertising?

There is no single silver bullet in marketing. There is no one channel that does everything.

But if you want a channel that reaches farmers at scale, lets you target with far more precision, works with the season rather than against it, and gives you room to learn and improve as you go, Facebook is still one of the strongest options on the table.

Our research makes that hard to argue with. Farmers are active online. They are active on social. They use digital channels to research products and services. Facebook use is still growing. Social search is now normal behaviour. Video and demos are what they want to consume. And the brands that show up consistently across channels are the ones that stick in the mind.

That is why Facebook Ads still do the heavy lifting.

Not because they replace every other tactic. Because they give you a smarter way to show up, stay visible and drive action from the right audience.

Want to know how to market to farmers with more confidence and less guesswork? Get in touch with us. We’ll help you build a Facebook Ads strategy that fits how farmers really research, compare and buy.