When you look around at all the equine businesses. It’s clear that the ones who market do better and go farther than those who don’t. Here are 11 free ways to get started marketing your equine business and reaching the people who need your services and/or products.
1. Building Relationships
This is the number one marketing method you can do for free! All you need to do is mingle with other horse people and/or pick up the phone. Try reaching out to businesses that don’t compete with you, but who serve the same target market. Also, make sure they’re legit and that you agree with their practices.
For instance, if you’re a dressage trainer, build a relationship with a custom saddle fitter that you feel comfortable referring students and clients to. If you give beginning riding lessons to children, build a relationship with a trainer who focuses on taking older children to the next level in their sport. This relationship should be a two-way street where you refer clients to them and they refer clients to you.
2. Flyers
For the cost of paper and ink in your home printer, you can get the word out about your horse business locally. Create flyers with a simple, professional image and some brief information about your business or event. Don’t forget to include contact information! Print them out and distribute them on bulletin boards in tack and feed shops. This marketing platform works especially well for promoting equine events.
3. Email Marketing
I didn’t include websites in this list because, unless you’re a web developer, building a good looking website for free is often not an option. So, assuming you’ve already paid someone to create your stunning website, email marketing is one of the most useful free methods of marketing. It can work wonders for keeping your warm market engaged and also reaching out to new clients and customers.
Offer on your website to send email updates about events at your farm or upcoming clinics. If you’d like, you could offer a free ebook or a coupon in return for people giving you their emails. You can set up email automation with free systems like MailChimp that will send a welcome email and/or the freebie when people sign up on your email list.
4. Business Facebook
Having a business Facebook page is free, shows you data about how much engagement your posts have had and allows you to schedule posts ahead of time. Also, facebook likes it better if you promote your business from your business page rather than your personal account. You can always share posts from your Business Facebook page to your personal timeline though.
If you don’t have a website yet, a Facebook page provides people with your hours, location and contact info. However, I recommend purchasing your own website as soon as possible because you don’t own the social media platforms. They’re meant to direct traffic to the webspace you do own.
Now, to grow on Facebook, you need engagement in the form of likes, comments, and shares. To truly win at the Facebook game, you should post every day. Try to keep links and things that direct people off of Facebook to a minimum (Facebook wants people to stay for as long as possible). Play around with different types of posts until you find what your audience wants to see. When you figure out what works and what doesn’t, try to post more of what works and receives engagement.
5. Business Instagram
Just like a Business Facebook page, having a Business Instagram account is awesome for seeing which posts are getting the most engagement, how many actions were taken on your account in the last week, and when your audience is on Instagram the most.
Stories are one of the most important things for growing on Instagram, so make sure that you post one daily about what your business is up to. You can also post appropriate quotes, advice about your area of expertise or just some cute pictures of your animals.
Some people post on Instagram every day, but daily stories are becoming more important to the algorithm. Plenty of Instagram stars only post two or three times per week, whilst uploading stories every day. Much like Facebook, decide when to post based on when your audience is the most active and what types of posts receive the most engagement.
6. Blogging
Again, if you have a website, blogging is an often overlooked yet effective method of equine business marketing. You can send out the link to the blog in emails and post the links on social media. If you sell an equine-related product or want people to sign up for an event, blogs can be a useful part of your marketing funnel.
For example, imagine that you email a blog link about trailering problems to your mailing list. One of your recipients clicks on it and reads the blog. At the end of the post, there’s a box that advertises the latest clinic dates and encourages readers to grab their spot before it sells out. If the reader clicks on that box, it takes them to a sign-up page for the clinic.
What just happened? You have a new clinic attendee through an email, blog post, then sign-up page marketing funnel! Remember that no matter what you blog about, your topic should solve a problem or answer a question that your target market has.
7. Guest Blogging
If one of your blogs is particularly popular and helpful, you can send it to some similar horse websites and blogs to see if they’d like to publish it. This method of marketing can get you out in front of fresh eyes who haven’t heard about your business before.
8. YouTube for Equine Business Marketing
Perhaps you prefer speaking to writing. If you have an iPhone camera and a place where you can record some decent quality sound, you can start making YouTube videos that answer the questions that your ideal clients are wondering about.
To make a good YouTube video you need a camera or a phone with a good camera, a place with nice lighting such as in front of a window, a quiet place without much reverb so your sound quality turns out, some time to research keywords, and a free iPhone video editing program.
If you don’t have decent editing skills and don’t want to take the time to learn a free editing program, then this may not be a free way to market your business. But, if you already have the skills/ and or the time to learn, creating YouTube videos can be an awesome, free way to promote your business widely online.
9. Facebook and Instagram Live
Here’s a way to promote your business through video without all of the editing, videography and keyword research. If you’re comfortable talking in front of a camera, try having Facebook or Instagram lives to talk about riding tips, training tips or have a Q&A with your audience.
Make sure to advertise ahead of time when your Facebook live will air and what it will be about. These social media lives can really help you grow, get more engagement on both platforms, and connect with people in a more personal way.
10. Have a Contest
This probably should have been number two because it’s so effective! Giving something away for free is not always free, but man is it effective! People love free stuff. People also love competition. Why not combine the two and have a competition with something valuable as the prize?
You could have an equine nutrition quiz game on Facebook for seven days. At the end of seven days, the winner receives a free month’s supply of hoof supplement. Or, you could have a five day Instagram photo challenge. The winner receives ten free lessons at your barn.
Wow, that was a lot of free methods for marketing your equine business. Which one will you try first? Remember that just like riding, you need to stick with one marketing method or plan for a while before you see your work come to fruition.
