How to Make Marketing Your Equine Business Fun

Are you addicted to endlessly scrolling through horse stuff online? Of course you are. Emilie Jones shares how you can use that to your advantage.

Photographs: (c) Emilie Jones / High Standards Equine

Wait a minute. Did I just say marketing is fun? No, I did not fall off my horse and hit my head one too many times. If you own a boarding or training barn, run a tack store, put shoes on horses, paint horses on canvas, take pictures of horses, sell supplements, or even provide insurance policies on horses – you have the best kind of business to market. Or at least you will think so soon.

When most people think about marketing their equine business, they think about costly advertisements that require an agency to create, and annoying phone calls to people who just want to take your money. While traditional marketing techniques like word of mouth and print advertising still hold value in the equine industry, there is a noticeable shift towards online techniques that benefit smaller businesses, and those who don’t consider themselves marketing experts. What online technique am I referring to? Social media.

Do you use Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest for your personal use? You can, and should be using those platforms for your equine business as well! These free marketing opportunities are all about engaging in conversation with your potential customers. That means you should talk about horse things with horse people! What better way to “take care of business” than to do what you already enjoy doing? By sharing information, links, articles, pictures, and videos about horses with your audience, you will begin to create conversations and interactions with them. If you share information regarding your specific area of interest (example: equine nutrition supplements) you will appear as an educated expert in that field. This creates brand awareness and loyalty with your followers.

Instead of worrying over what to post on social media and how to advertise your business on it, start looking at social media as a fun way to connect with your customers and potential customers! By doing this, you will start to see the full advantages that social media marketing has for your equine business.

Emilie Jones is a graduate of Penn State University with a bachelor’s degree in Marketing and Management. She combines her corporate and agency marketing expertise with over fifteen years of hands-on equine experience. Emilie blogs weekly sharing business and marketing tips for trainers, boarding farms, tack shop owners, equine product companies, and all other equine businesses at www.highstandardsequine.com.