Create a New Category in a Niche Market: Our Work with Growers Edge

Challenge: What the Heck’s a Crop Plan Warranty? Strategy: Let SMEs Do the Talking, Then Publish and Distribute Like Crazy Results: Funding, Acquisitions, Product Launches, and Team Growth

Create a New Category in a Niche Market: Our Work with Growers Edge

If you’ve ever lost sleep over climate change, here’s some good news: around the world, innovators are developing seeds, fertilizers, crop treatments, and farming techniques to adapt agriculture to a shifting climate while also reducing its overall impact.

In fact, many of the solutions we need already exist, but most farmers haven’t yet adopted them. The problem? Money.

New products introduce uncertainty, and farmers are on tight margins: they can’t afford any extra uncertainty (aka any new threat to their income at harvest).

That’s where Growers Edge comes in. A kind of “everything store” for ag finance, it makes financial products that help move innovative crop inputs from manufacturers’ facilities to retailers’ shelves and then into farmers’ fields – where they can make a meaningful difference.

That was the theory, anyway. But when Growers Edge approached Propllr in 2024, they didn’t yet have the brand or product recognition they needed to get their products into the agriculture ecosystem at the scale necessary to drive real change.

Challenge: What the Heck’s a Crop Plan Warranty?

In 2024, the flagship product Growers Edge offered was its Crop Plan Warranty, a cash-back outcome guarantee attached to innovative new crop inputs (like seeds and fertilizer). A versatile offering, it increases adoption of powerful new technologies by reducing the risk farmers face when trying new products.

But because the Crop Plan Warranty product could do so much, Growers Edge struggled to explain it succinctly to the ag retailers and manufacturers who could benefit.

Getting more customers on board was crucial, and not only for growth reasons. The company had plans to raise a Series B and needed to show more market traction to do so.

Strategy: Let SMEs Do the Talking, Then Publish and Distribute Like Crazy

Almost everyone at Growers Edge has a background in ag, so the industry knowledge runs deep. This, we knew, was the raw material we had to tap.

So we got on the phone with SMEs across product and sales to hear from them about Crop Plan Warranty: what was working, what was landing, what questions they got over and over. From there, we built owned content that solidified key messages, got the sales team’s buy-in, and watched as they used it to nurture leads, then promoted that content on relevant social channels.

We launched a newsletter that the team used to track areas of interest.

And we placed media stories that highlighted the ways new capital products could facilitate product adoption.

At every point, we collaborated with the people closest to customers and products to make sure our messaging was breaking through.

Results: Funding, Acquisitions, Product Launches, and Team Growth

Since we started our partnership, Growers Edge has…

  • Established Crop Plan Warranty as a familiar product among ag retailers and manufacturers.
  • Raised $25 million in funding.
  • Launched new financial products to serve ag lenders, retailers, and manufacturers.
  • Acquired two companies to expand its capabilities as the “everything store” for ag finance.
  • Heard directly from potential strategic partners who reached out after seeing media placements.
  • Grown its following across relevant channels.
  • …and the CMO who brought us on board got promoted to President.

One key to their success: Growers Edge maintains an innovation mindset across the business, including marketing and comms, with a willingness to try new things, assess their performance, and adjust as needed. Together, we’ve learned fast, adjusted course when needed, and doubled down on what works.

Since we started our partnership, Growers Edge has…

  • Established Crop Plan Warranty as a familiar product among ag retailers and manufacturers.
  • Raised $25 million in funding.
  • Launched new financial products to serve ag lenders, retailers, and manufacturers.
  • Acquired two companies to expand its capabilities as the “everything store” for ag finance.
  • Heard directly from potential strategic partners who reached out after seeing media placements.
  • Grown its following across relevant channels.
  • …and the CMO who brought us on board got promoted to President.

One key to their success: Growers Edge maintains an innovation mindset across the business, including marketing and comms, with a willingness to try new things, assess their performance, and adjust as needed. Together, we’ve learned fast, adjusted course when needed, and doubled down on what works.

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