Figuring out where to start with your equestrian marketing can be like finding a needle in a haystack. You are told all the channels and strategies you should implement to be successful but where do you even start? Creating a solid platform for your marketing efforts is the key to ensuring that your marketing is successful and future-proof.
1. Have a strategy
You wouldn’t put the cart before the horse, so why start your equestrian marketing practices without a strategy? A marketing strategy helps you define where you are at now, where you want to be, and how you will get there. A great equestrian marketing strategy should include your:
- Current marketing efforts
- Current performance
- Target audience
- Goals / targets
- Objectives to achieve your goals.
Your marketing strategy is your personal marketing guide for the following year. It should be reviewed annually so that you can see what equestrian marketing efforts are working and what are not.
2. Equine CRM system
Do you have a long list of customer emails that you send generic emails to? Or don’t even collect customer information? Then you really need CRM.
A customer relationship management system is a great step in equestrian marketing, allowing you to manage your horse business relations with your customers. A CRM stores all your customer’s data, conversations and history to improve your customer relationships. Most CRM’s are customisable so you can add fields such as a customer’s horse type etc.
The best thing about a CRM is the automation it allows. You can easily send segmented emails to customers, send birthday emails, cart abandonment emails and more.
Our favourite CRM software are:
- User-friendly interface
- Let’s you reorganise modules
- Automation – follow up emails
- Keep track of conversations
- Behaviour based segmentation
- Marketing automation
- Track user activity
3. Define your target audience
The biggest mistake that equestrian business owners make is trying to market their business to anyone that owns a horse. I have spoken to multiple clients that want to market to anyone and everyone related to horses. The issue with trying to market to everyone is that you really end up engaging with no one. Customers need to feel that your product or service is speaking to them on a personal level.
Once you have defined your product or service and then defined your ideal customer you can then understand their needs. This will allow you to craft specific messages that identify with your target audience. It’s fine to have more than one target audience in your equestrian marketing strategy but each target market should have a specific message.
A great way to narrow this down further is to create a target persona. Your target persona is your ideal customer, they embody your lead generation strategy. Your target persona goes beyond demographics and focuses on specific hobbies, buyer behaviour and consumer needs, it’s also great to give them a name and a face.