Marketing Strategy Tips for Equine Business Owners
It’s been a bit quiet around here in Scandinavia, so I thought I’d write up a step-by-step assessment on how your equine business can get started with online marketing.
This blog is for horse business owners and equestrians who have that perfect idea but don’t know how what or where to start in terms of marketing their equestrian business.
This blog will also cover why you need to define your goals and how to track. If this sounds like the space you are in, then sit back, put your feet up and stick around.
Does your equine business have goals?
One of the key places to start - no matter what kind of equine business you are running is defining a goal and measurement plan.
This term is one borrowed from Google, and it’s all about defining the purpose of your horse business – whether that entails an app, a website, or an online equestrian shop.
Once you’ve defined your overall goals, you can start to set up KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), which should be even more detailed. As an example, your online equestrian business may own an online tack shop. A KPI would be to increase your revenue – by doing so, you need to attract more customers or be better at retaining current customers.
Focus on the measurable insights: Revenue, new vs. returning customer and reoccurring purchase %
Now that you’ve defined what your goals are and how to measure them, you can setup a reporting plan based on your monthly data.
In this online tack shop example, it would be a great idea to start tracking how many new customers you acquire per month.
Now you’ve got your goals in place and your KPIs defined (please note that you can easily add more KPIs as you define more goals and measurements to track). The next step in this online equestrian tack shop example is to track your measurable units such as average order value, number of transactions, revenue, etc. You can easily track these KPI in Google Analytics, which is a tracking software made specifically for this purpose by Google.
Apply a Project Management tool for your equestrian business
As an equestrian or horse business owner, let’s face it, you probably have tons of work to do each day. Tasks that involve the daily management of your equestrian niche.
My question to you as the busy equestrian business owner you are – how and where do you keep track of your tasks, and more importantly, your ideas?
My equestrian marketing tip number one for anyone wanting to keep track of their strategy and be consistent in their execution is to acquire a tool that can manage the overview for you.
Trello is one of my absolute favorite tools to use when it comes to managing tasks. I usually use the columns To-Do, Done, Ideas, and External sourcing. This enables me to see which projects underway and which tasks are completed. It also allows me to remember all the ideas I might get unexpectedly but do not have time to act on until another task is completed.
It’s crucial to have a place to write all ideas down so that you can revisit them later.
Create content that builds relations
If you are just starting with marketing your equestrian business online, you should look to spend your time and efforts on online marketing activities that will give you a good head start without having to spend too much.
To get that head start, you need data to analyze and guide your next steps. To get that data, you need to generate traffic to your equestrian website (one of the KPIs from the measurement plan).
Instead of purchasing expensive print advertising in magazines or purchasing expensive spots on broadcasting channels including TV, I recommend you invest time and effort in crafting content that will create relations instead.
No matter what niche your equestrian business is occupied with – whether it be an equine breeding facility, a dressage trainer, a riding school, an online shop, or a children’s summer camp, you have the opportunity to create and craft content that will make a connection with potential clients and customers.
This type of marketing is the new sales wheel, and it is gaining tremendous traction.
One of the best ways to start with driving traffic to your site is connecting a blog to your equestrian business’ website. Good content doesn't only drive readers (traffic) to your site, it also lays the foundation to climb to the very top of Google’s ranking.
Now, multiple factors come into play to determine whether your equestrian website will rank well. However, if you can create relevant, engaging content that brings value to your target audience, and have a well-functioning blog in terms of site structure and page speed, you’ll find that this alone can bring you quite far.
Through your website traffic, based on the data that is collected in Google Analytics, you suddenly have a looking glass into your target audience’s preferences. This is a valuable insight for your equestrian business as your online presence evolves.
Creating a funnel that attracts new equestrian clients
Remember the sales wheel I mentioned earlier? Well, the marketing funnel is an elaboration of that sales wheel.
The funnel is an online marketing terminology for the journey that your potential client or customer goes through – from the very beginning of discovering your business to ending up as a customer/client. This is a great way to visually understand the process you must set up to attract clients and customers.
To sum up: to acquire potential customers and clients from different sources, and at different times you need to create a funnel.
Do you see the difference between the two funnels? Previously you had to push a message to people, repeatedly. Today, it’s all about creating the right environment to convert your visitor into a customer. Creating content that educates your visitor on how your product or services provides them with value is a great place to start.
Are you launching a blog but don’t know how to start or what to write about?
Then take a glance at the blog I wrote that I packed with tips and tricks on how to source topics for content that will engage your specific target audience: 5 blogging tips for your equine business
Questions?
Feel free to comment below send me an email, I’d love to hear from you!