A presentation from the Equine Business Conference presented by Michigan State University, University of Minnesota, University of Nebraska, and Iowa State University, and partly funded by the North Central Regional Center for Rural Development. Presenter: Peggy Miller, Iowa State University

1. Marketing Your Equine Business

2. Three C’s Analysis
Customer Needs
Customer
Company Competition
Options
Evaluation of Decisions &
Options Implementation

3. Customer
• Who are my customers?
• Why do they use my
services?
• What are the demographics
of horse owners and horses in
my market area?
• Are there service and product
needs that are not being met?
• Are there opportunities for
growth and expansion?
• Who are my good/profitable
accounts?

4. Customer Relationship Management
1. Find more: Has your practice targeted all the potential customers
in your marketplace?
2. Win more: Are you maximizing the full purchasing potential of
existing customers?
3. Keep more: Are you retaining your best customers? Have you
developed deep customer loyalty, or are you just the best of the
available options in your practice area?

5. Company
• What are the strengths and
weaknesses?
• What are the core
competencies of this
business today?
• What are the short-and
long-term goals and vision
for the business?
• What opportunities exist in
our unique practice area?

6. Competition
• Who are the competitors in
the area?
• What are the competitors’
strengths and weakness?
• What services do I offer
that I have in common and
that are different?
• What is the competitors’
reputation?

7. Marketing Framework
Practice Professional Goals
Marketing Analysis
Customer Behavior
Target Market
Strategic Plan

8. Branding
• Heavy hitter
• Develop a brand for your business.

9. Marketing Tools
• Clinics • Trade show booth
Hosting/Giving • Open house
• Join a speakers • Feature stories
bureau • Sponsorships
• Guest lecture • Publicity & Pr
• Write a book or e-  Top horses &
book successful students
• Write & submit  Re-prints
articles  Press releases

10. Using Features & Benefits
• Barn colors • Grooms
• Show • School horses
record/competition • Farrier
success • Arena footing
• Horse care • Clinicians
• Facility • Barn social climate
• Assistants • Safety protocol

11. Audio/Visual Marketing Tools
• Student lessons • Internet video
• Professional examples • U-tube video
• Sales horses • Taped interviews
• Trainer/rider promotion • Audio commentary
• Stallion promotion
• Professional training
videos
• Audio promotion

12. Making a Media Match –
Choosing Your Target Audience
• Internet, Internet, Internet
 A Website is necessary, if not
required.
• You are now a web publisher and
your website will not sell itself.
» What’s in a name?
www.whoami.com
» Call To Action
» Do you need to
advertise your
advertisement?
» You Bet.

13. Analytics
“Analytics” – Yes, you need them.
• Is getting hit a good thing?
• Visits doesn’t mean you had visitors
• www.compete.com “check it out”

14. Search Engine Optimization
• It’s all about SEO
– Search Engine
Optimization
• Will they find you
or will you be lost
among the
millions?
• It takes years, $$$,
or intelligence to
earn position.

16. An integrated social media strategy
It’s important to have a new media strategy attached to
your BUSINESS… no matter what the business is.
• Do you want to spread your CONTENT and expertise
to new audiences?
• Do you want to reach new audiences in the exact way
they choose to communicate?
• Do you want to be seen as a leader in your industry?
• Do you want to hear literally everything that’s being
said online about your business, horses, customers in
real time?
• Do you want to be seen as a trusted source of
information?

17. What Can You Do with Social Media?
• Offer a peek behind the • Find potential customers
scenes
• Reach more markets
• Share your expertise
• Target your online
• What does your company advertising
do
• See where your customers
• Put your website’s content
are
to work
• Let customers help each
• Be Candid--BUT do NOT other out
talk about others
• Build a community beyond
• Interact with visitor—really
your barn doors
• Don’t try to create a stand- • Let customers contribute
in for yourself

18. What Can You Do with Social Media?
• Help others promote you
• Don’t pretend to be • Cultivate relationships that lead
someone else to sales
• Help employees bond • But don’t promote too
aggressively
• Reward Customer loyalty
• Find ways to engage visitors
• See what people are saying offline
about you • Find influential people in your
• Make amends with industry
dissatisfied customers • Boost your credibility by helping
others
quickly
• Look for talent off the beaten
• Don’t go on the defensive path
• Keep customers in the loop • Connect with potential partners

19. Facebook
Facebook has become the most widely recognized name in social networks. Social
networks allow people to join, and “friend” members or invite others to join and then
share and exchange information.
It’s no long about ‘IF’ you should be utilizing Facebook, but ‘HOW’.
Facebook business account only
1) Business accounts are designed for individuals who only want to use the site to
administer pages and their ad campaigns.
1) Allows you to build a simple business presence by creating public business
page
2) Limited access to the profiles of people who interact with or “fan” your page.
3) Decent option for people who don’t want to do anything more than create a
presence on Facebook. I
4) If you do not already have a Facebook personal profile you simply create a
page or ad here.

20. Business/Personal
2. Personal profile for personal use, and business fan page for business
use
a) Originally people created a personal profile because it was nice to reconnect
with friends from the past and sharing about life with family and friends.
Mixing Personal with Business or vice versa.
Bad Idea
Best solution is to create a Facebook Fan Page
b) Allows you to create a business only page with a great deal of functionality
and settings that allow you to open your page up to the world far beyond
your current Facebook friends.
c) Your updates and posts on your fan page spread to the wall of all those who
become a fan on your page making your business presence even greater.
d) Still a very close relationship between your personal profile and the fan pages
you administer.
e) In this case, privacy settings on your personal profile probably become very
important. You can visit your Facebook Profile Privacy Settings to make
updates.

21. Creating a Facebook page

23. Consider these privacy tips for
business use:
1) Use the “Friend List” feature.
• Allows you to make lists to group people based on how or
why you know them—family in one group, business contacts in
another, cooking club in another, etc.
• Important - you can issue different privacy settings per list and
therefore be very selective about, for instance, what your
business-related contact might see.
2) Turn off photo tagging.
• An often-used feature on Facebook is to tag photos with the
people in them.
• If you don’t want all your business contacts to see you kicking
back with a few beers, than make sure photo tagging is limited
in your privacy settings.

24. 3) Protect your photos.
• Change the settings on your photo privacy (a separate
page) so that your darling two-year-Old's birthday pics
are kept in the family—unless of course you want to
share them with business contacts.
4) Don’t share who your friends are.
• Even before someone becomes a friend they can, by
default, see who you are friends with, just without any
details.
• You don’t have to make this information public and
there might be some good reasons in this case not to.
• You can change your profile setting called ―Friends‖ to
show select groups of none at all.

25. 5) Choose who can see contact info.
• Many people put personal contact details in their personal
profile, and as your business use increases and your start
approving people you don’t know, you may not want them to
have your personal email address and mobile number.
6) Control your wall settings.
• Good idea to control who can view posts to your personal
wall.
• If you allow your good friends to add comments, photos, and
updates, you may not want the business contacts to view
this—change who can see wall posts from friends using the
lists you build by visiting your profile settings page.
• You can also control who can post to your wall page, but this
shouldn’t be a big issue if you control who can see posts. Of
course, you can also ban individuals from posting.

27. BLOGGING-What Is It and Do I Really
Need to Blog?
A blog is a software that allows anyone who can
type to post content to a website or blog home
page. It resembles a journal..in reverse
chronological order.
A blog is your ticket to creating:
• Content
• Context
• Connection
• Community

28. • WordPress.com:
Is a hosted version of the WordPress software that
allows you to easily create a blog that is hosted by
WordPress. The benefit of this approach is that
there is no real setup, you simply sign up (it’s
free), choose a theme, and start
blogging.WordPress.com
The down side of this WordPress is that you do
not have as much control as if it were set up on
your on website domain.

30. Tips for getting more from Blogging
1)Read, follow, and listen.
You probably won’t get much in the way of
results from blogging until you know what and
how to write.
The best way to do that, and by the way
something I’ve done and continue to do daily, is
read lots of blogs.

31. 2) Write what people search.
• If you’re one of those folks who has resisted blogging
because you don’t think anyone would read your blog,
don’t worry; they probably won’t.
• Most blogs aren’t read like a magazine, or like you
might view it. They are found.
• In other words, post the answers to the questions,
problems, and challenges that you know your market is
asking and seeking and your blog content will become
the single greatest online lead generation tool in your
mix.
• Discover the exact phrases people in your market are
using when they search and write valuable content
around that and people will find your blog before they
know your competitors exist

32. 3) Ask for participation.
• Blogging is one of the first ways to build an engaged
community.
• People talk about building community on Twitter and
other social sites, but few things can compare to the
engagement that can surround healthy debates, reader-
generated content, and suggestions in blog comments.
• Write your blog posts in ways that invite people to
comment. Ask for their ideas, and even ask them to give
their opinions.
• Often, some of my points are amplified and made better
through the comment stream that can surround them.
Over time, you will build community participation and you
may find that blogging is more fun when it becomes a
conversation

33. 4) Engage your comment community.
• When people take the time to offer
thoughtful comments you should take the
time to respond when appropriate.
• If a debate is in order, it’s OK to start one.
Visit the sites of your comment community
and engage in their writing. Link to their
content in your blog posts and on Twitter.

34. 5) Amplify your message.
• One obvious way to get more exposure for your blog is to
post links to Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn with each
new post.
• As long as that’s not all you do, this can be an effective
traffic strategy.
• Another great way to amplify and broaden the exposure
for your blog is to guest blog. Many, sometimes high
traffic, blogs welcome well written content from guests.
• Look for blogs that should have your same type of reader
and offer samples of your writing. Be sure that your posts
will receive a byline and link back to your blog and then
also promote the heck out your guest appearance.

36. Using Twitter
What is it?
• In simplest terms, Twitter is a free service that allows anyone
to say anything to anybody in 140 characters or less. It’s a
what you are doing right now.
• Is that all? NO
 It allows you to connect and network with others in your
industry or others who share your views.
 Allows you to get an instant access to what’s being
said, this minute about your
organization, customers, employees, horses or shows?
 Gives you a steady stream of ideas
Do you want to promote your product and services directly to a
target audience…. NOT A GREAT TOOL FOR THAT.

37. • One of the most important and frequently underutilized
objectives for Twitter is as a way to monitor your brand
and reputation.
• Anytime anything is being said about your
company, products, people, or services you can track it
and respond instantly.
• You can also use a set of readily available tools to track
what’s being said about any search term you like. This is
another way to find people with shared interests.
Twitter Search:
Allows you to monitor anything you can search.
Use it to see what is being said back to you @your
business name.
It allows you to stay current with what is being said—both
positive and negative.
Allows you to respond immediately

40. Managing the Social Media Beast
The system is the solution
• One of the hardest challenges for many people just
entering the world of social media is to determine
how to accomplish the seemingly endless list of new
tasks that they find themselves asked to complete.
• Participating fully in social media as a business and
marketing strategy requires discipline, automation
routines, and a daily commitment.
• Now, you’ve got to balance that with the fact that
much of your activity is about building long-term
momentum and deeper networks, and that doesn’t
always make the cash register ring today.

41. A Typical Day of Social Media
Write a blog post at least once a day.
• Check for and respond twice a day
Scan Twitter followers for relevant conversations
• Check Twitter via TweetDeck which allows for preset
searches @Name of your business, your name of
horse, etc.
Post relevant YouTube Videos
• Scan and research comments to the video twice a day.
Write a Facebook entry at least once a day.
• Search Facebook for your business name twice daily
and return comments.

42. Don’t Forget the Print
• Breed Publications
– Pros. – selective demographic, largest
region, higher quality buyer
– Cons.- cost, lead time
• Sport or Discipline Publications - Rodeo,
Ranch, Barrel Racing, Recreational Riding,
Reining, Hunter, etc.
– Pros. – very selective demographic, larger
region
– Cons. – product must fit the readers. More
professional reader and highest quality
buyer
• Regional Mixed Breed Publications
– Regional buyers are more likely to buy
• Public Newspapers and Shoppers
• Club Newsletters
• Posters/Fliers

43. Graphic Designers and
Photographers
• Go the extra mile and pay
for best
• Equine experience
• They are “artists” and they
have copywrite, even when
you pay the bill.
• They are “artists” and for
good creative work they
need TIME.

45. QUESTIONS?