From the lab to the field, Helena Agri-Enterprises educates and empowers growers with innovative solutions, precision ag services and the latest proven technologies. In 2021, Helena saw an opportunity to help almond growers achieve better yield. To do that, Helena created Almond Wise, a season-long plan that pairs innovative products with technology services to educate almond growers about ways to maximize their return on investment. Trilix enjoyed helping the Helena team promote the program through branding and digital and social media marketing efforts.   

Almond Wise aimed to increase awareness, establish new grower relationships and develop a season-long partnership between Helena and growers. The Almond Wise campaign targeted Helena’s current and potential customers who produce almonds. The vast majority of the nation’s almond growers are located within a handful of counties in California, so the company requested help to focus marketing efforts there.

The first Almond Wise campaign included an integrated approach and tailored messaging that educated growers about products that would improve processes during each stage of the growing cycle, from pre-emergence to post-harvest.

Before beginning, Helena needed to nail down the look and feel of the program.

Branding Almond Wise

Paul Burger, creative director at Trilix, helped Helena develop a logo that aligned with the company’s brand while highlighting the crop for which the program was designed. Paul and Nate Brown, senior creative writer at Trilix, worked with the Helena team to develop the creative visuals and messaging behind the campaign.

Helena landed on the tagline “Knowledge to Yield” to convey its goal of providing growers with strategies and product and service recommendations that improve yield.

“Messaging spoke directly to growers’ seasonal needs while encouraging effective, beneficial planning from pre-emergence to post-harvest.”

Nate Brown, senior creative writer at Trilix

Expert agronomists at Helena knew that to truly see improvement in yield, growers would have to use targeted applications early, before critical growth stages. Messaging and visuals for digital and social ads needed to introduce the program and then highlight each phase, emphasizing to growers the importance of securing their almond plan early.

“Messaging spoke directly to growers’ seasonal needs while encouraging effective, beneficial planning from pre-emergence to post-harvest,” Nate said.

Growing Audiences Online

Before kicking off digital and social media marketing efforts, our media team built a retargeting campaign with target and lookalike audiences.  

Trilix relied on Helena representatives in California to tell us the most opportune time to send out messaging specific to each growing phase. Then, we deployed that messaging via digital display and social media ads to key areas in California to capture the attention of existing and prospective customers.

“With our digital campaign, Helena was able to partition almond growers living in certain areas of California and add them into an audience pool,” said Haley Austin, digital media analyst. “We then served Almond Wise digital display and paid social ads using seasonal and brand messaging to grow Almond Wise interest among key audiences. Coordination between the Trilix Media and Communications Departments allowed Helena to reach growers who are more likely to engage with Helena and their almond-specific products.”

“These efforts show the benefits of homing in on a specific audience — in this case, almond growers within a few counties in California — and how the responsiveness of digital advertising allows us to retarget to those with the most potential of interacting with the brand.”

Ron Maahs, CEO at Trilix

Targeting was optimized throughout the campaign to reflect a pool of individuals with higher intent to engage after they consumed content on Helena’s website.   

“These efforts show the benefits of homing in on a specific audience—in this case, almond growers within a few counties in California—and how the responsiveness of digital advertising allows us to retarget to those with the most potential of interacting with the brand,” said Ron Maahs, Trilix CEO.   

Sharing on Social

Helena’s robust digital communications strategies not only introduced Almond Wise but also helped almond growers learn new ways to ensure their crop is covered during each stage. Emily Esleck, senior communications specialist at Trilix, used Helena’s FieldLink blog content to align Almond Wise efforts across social media platforms.

Helena developed educational blog content to bolster key messaging throughout the season and improve search engine performance. Those blog articles were then linked through the digital and social media ads. Digital and social ads also linked to an Almond Wise website landing page.

Additionally, the Trilix video team produced an Almond Wise campaign video that answered one question: “What is Almond Wise?” Using this video in social media advertisements and on the website landing page helped educate viewers. The video garnered more than a thousand engagements on social media. Digital ad analytics showed that tens of thousands of online users watched the Almond Wise video, and web visitors stayed on the site longer once the video was posted to the Almond Wise landing page.

The Almond Wise campaign enabled Helena to precisely and effectively market to certain growers in a specific geographic region all while almond growers learned more about Helena products and best practices to increase yield. We look forward to the continued success of this campaign.