It’s never fun to find yourself running an equine business without any clients – because clients are usually what brings in the money! When your stalls aren’t as full as you like, you probably find yourself scrambling to come up with creative ways to market your equine business. In fact, that’s probably how you ended up here! Before I get into a few marketing suggestions, I want to make one thing crystal clear: In order to be successful with any type of digital marketing, you need to be consistent. These creative tips to market your equine business require a consistent effort – so keep that in mind.
Provide Free Value in Facebook Groups
Facebook is one of the most under-used platforms when it comes to marketing your business. For equine professionals who are on Facebook, they often don’t take advantage of it fully. There are a ton of Facebook groups built for horse owners to search for professionals and ask questions about their riding or training.
Join a few of these groups and provide tons of free value to owners and other industry professionals. When you consistently show up with help, you position yourself as an expert and build up relationships with those you interact with. You’ll find that potential clients are much more likely to work with you when they see how much that you have to offer them.
Engage on Instagram
Using Instagram to market your business isn’t a new idea – I know. But here’s the thing: you need to use it correctly in order to see results. If you’re a hunter jumper trainer, you shouldn’t follow every other hunter jumper trainer and interact with just them. You should be engaging with potential clients and other professionals in the industry who you hope to work with in the future.
Create an account where you follow and engage with your dream clients regularly. Post thoughtful comments and share content that you think they would find useful. Offer helpful information in your captions, and genuinely try to provide value to your followers.
You’ll have luck finding your target audience through the use of hashtags and the Instagram search tool.
Marketing Tip: Pick hashtags that you think your clients would be using, rather than ones you’d use to describe your business.
Start a Blog to Market Your Equine Business
Blogging is a great way to build up your credibility over time and market your equine business. Writing blog posts can help to increase your ranking on search engines and also serves as a place to provide helpful information for horse owners and potential clients.
The posts that you create for your blog can also be repurposed into content for your social media platforms – which is definitely a plus.
Interact with Others at Horse Shows
Showing up at horse shows is a great way to meet clients (obviously) and other professionals in the equine industry. Head to a show and spend some time socializing! As with the Facebook groups, give more than you expect to receive. Providing free value to clients gives them an incentive to work with you. This technique to market your equine business may also help you make a few new friends!
Partner with Other Industry Professionals
This is a fantastic way to build up your referral base. Reach out to other professionals that you’ve loved working with in the past. Offer to add them to your referral list, and send as many clients their way as possible. If they enjoy working with you, you’ll likely end up with a few more clients thanks to them. If you haven’t worked with any professionals in the past, reach out to a few of your favorites on social media. Suggest getting together for lunch or coffee, and build a relationship with them. If you click, you’ll build a relationship that will help to market your equine business and theirs.
Learn to Market Your Equine Business
Don’t get me wrong – traditional marketing certainly has it’s benefits when it comes to growing your equine business. There will always be a time and place for it. But creative marketing strategies can help your business grow by attracting the exact type of client you’re looking for. It can also set you apart from other businesses who may not be as interested in expanding their reach. As a special bonus – it can also be really fun!
If you’re ready to implement these creative marketing ideas for your equine business but need a little help, get in touch with me. I’d be happy to come up with something to help you meet your goals.
