Monthly Spotlight
The Southeast Dairy Business Innovation Initiatives
Featuring Jeanie Lim and Michelle Childs
Describe your initiative.
The Southeast Dairy Business Innovation Initiatives (SDBII), funded by the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service and based at the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture, helps dairy producers across the Southeast build more resilient, value-added businesses. In partnership with the Center for Profitable Agriculture, NC State University, the University of Kentucky, and the Kentucky Dairy Development Council, SDBII provides technical assistance, education, and grant support to help producers modernize and diversify. Within this effort, Drs. Michelle Childs and Heejin Lim lead UT’s marketing and branding team, assisting local dairy producers in developing strong farm brands and direct-to-consumer marketing strategies. Through Extension publications, statewide workshops, and sessions at the Southeast Value-Added Dairy (SEVAD) Conference, the team delivers practical, research-based tools that empower producers to strengthen customer relationships and improve profitability.
What’s your why?
Our “why” is rooted in connecting research to real-world impact. Small dairy producers across the Southeast face mounting market pressures, yet their stories, values, and community roots are their greatest strengths. We believe that effective branding and consumer engagement can transform these strengths into competitive advantages, helping local farms not just survive but thrive.
By equipping producers with marketing skills, strategic insight, and the confidence to share their unique brand identity, we help ensure that Southeastern dairy farming remains a vibrant part of our regional economy and culture.
Our marketing and branding team bridges academic research and farm-level decision-making by translating proven marketing frameworks into practical tools for dairy producers:
- Customer Experience Management (CEM): We help producers view every customer interaction, from packaging and farm tours to social media engagement, as part of a holistic customer journey. Using customer journey mapping, producers visualize each stage of interaction, from discovery to purchase and post-visit follow-up, to identify key touchpoints that shape perceptions and loyalty. This approach fosters emotional connection, consistent storytelling, and repeat buying behavior by ensuring that every step in the customer experience communicates the farm’s brand values and personality.
- The DAST Framework (Design, Ambient, Social, Trial): Adapted from retail research, this model helps producers enhance their sales environments. Improvements like clear signage (Design), pleasant atmosphere (Ambient), friendly interaction (Social), and product sampling (Trial) can increase engagement and sales.
- STP Model (Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning): We guide producers in identifying ideal customer groups, selecting key markets, and crafting a brand position that communicates authenticity, such as “a family farm crafting small-batch cheese that supports Tennessee agriculture.”
Through workshops and Extension publications, we transform these frameworks into actionable decision guides, empowering producers to strengthen customer loyalty, increase profitability, and sustain the legacy of local dairy in the Southeast.
Important lesson learned for doing this work.
Through our SDBII marketing and branding work, we learned that meaningful impact happens when research meets producers where they are. Many small dairy businesses possess authentic stories and community trust but need accessible tools to turn those strengths into effective branding and customer engagement. Translating academic models like customer experience management and the STP framework into hands-on, practical exercises, such as mapping a customer’s journey from first contact to repeat purchase, proved essential for adoption and success. Producers value clear, actionable guidance and visible results, such as improved farm store traffic or stronger online engagement. Most importantly, we found that co-creating strategies with producers, rather than for them, fosters deeper trust, confidence, and long-term capability, turning knowledge into action and helping sustain the vitality of local dairy economies across the Southeast.
Impact made on UT and the community.
Impact on UT
- Strengthened UTK’s Extension leadership: The peer-reviewed Journal of Extension article on customer journey mapping (2025) positions UT as an innovator in translating marketing science for agricultural outreach, reinforcing UTK’s reputation for evidence-based Extension.
- Scalable Extension assets: Three Extension publications (PB1927, PB1930, SP1045) created a coherent toolkit (journey mapping → branding essentials → place branding) that agents can deploy statewide, elevating program consistency and quality.
- Teaching–research–Extension integration: The work provides current, UT-authored cases and tools that can be embedded in courses, student projects, and Extension trainings, tightening the land-grant loop from scholarship to practice.
- Interdisciplinary collaboration: Joint authorship across Marketing/Branding and Animal Science/Extension showcases UTK’s cross-unit capacity to address value-added dairy challenges.
Impact on the Community
Sustained capacity building: By making materials open and reusable, county agents and producer groups can keep running programs locally, multiplying impact without new development costs.
Actionable skills for producers: Workshops, Elevate Your Farm Brand (Knoxville, Jackson, Murfreesboro; Mar 2024) and the SEVAD conference session Segmentation and Positioning Strategies (Jul 2025), equipped dairy entrepreneurs with step-by-step branding, STP targeting, and customer-journey tools they can apply immediately.
Regional ecosystem support: Delivering at SEVAD expanded reach beyond Tennessee, supporting Southeast value-added dairy growth through shared language, methods, and templates.