One of my favorite horse blogs, Fugly Horse of the Day, often blogs about how barns present themselves online.  This post sums up many of the blogger’s points about marketing.

Her main point is usually how the horses are presented.  For instance, videos ought to be professional and show the horses skills — if you are selling a dressage horse, show it doing dressage, not running loose in the arena or being petted by children.  Riders should be properly attired for the discpline, too, as it looks more professional and pulls together a more impressive presentation.

She also has some comments about websites and marketing approaches, however.  Horse farms don’t necessarily need to hire an expensive web designer, but the website should be neat, clean, professional, easy to navigate, and all on the same theme.  One of her pet peeves is websites where every page is different, the navigational buttons don’t appear on every page, obnoxious music makes the visitor want to click away, etc.  The copy also needs to be professionally written and designed for the search engines — which not everyone can do for themselves, so don’t worry if you need to hire a writer to help you with this aspect of website marketing.

Finally, the ads needs to be professional.  Too often, barns post poorly written, inadequate ads on Craigslist — which basically do nothing except give people the impression that you are nothing but a backyard breeder or white trash barn owner.  If writing is not your forte, again, this is an area where you would do well to hire a little help.

The horse industry is one of those where there is a lot of disparity — everything from the expensive horses and elite horse farms, to the proverbial backyard breeders.  Unfortunately, what many of the latter don’t realize is that the upper end is where all the money is — which is why it is incredibly important to keep presentation in mind when you market your barn online.

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