If you’ve ever struggled to take your audience from interested to actually becoming paying customers, this conversation is for you. You’ll get practical strategies and advice so you can build demand for your horse business in a way that sets up for long-term success.
Welcome to the show notes! Remember, this is a brief summary from the How to Market Your Horse Business podcast. You'll want to listen to the entire episode for all the good stuff!
Like many of my recent podcast guests, Megan Harris has always been a horse girl, even though she didn’t come from a horse family.
She and I share similar stories in that her professional career didn’t start in the equine space. Yet it’s been an asset as it gives her a depth of marketing knowledge she may not have garnered in the horse world.
Now, Megan is using her years of marketing experience in the tech world to serve the equestrian community, specifically as the chief marketing officer for NF+, previously Equestrian Masterclass from Noëlle Floyd.
Which brings us to this idea of building demand for your horse business.
If you’re not familiar with Equestrian Masterclass, it’s the brainchild of Noëlle Floyd who was a jumper and photojournalist with a blog that went viral. That virality and love for learning led to the creation of Equestrian Masterclass, providing accessible knowledge and education from top trainers and riders in the form of digital courses, audio lessons, and more.
In the past few months, Equestrian Masterclass has evolved and rebranded to NF+ which you’ll hear more about from Megan. Equine Affaire (where we met) was actually their first public booth display as NF+ to spread awareness and build demand for the platform.
As Chief Marketing Officer for NF+, that’s one of Megan’s biggest charges – generate demand for the platform.
And in this episode she’ll share with you some practical ways you can build demand for your horse business, too.
You may not have an international education platform, but you do have an audience of people you’re best fit to help. This conversation will give you strategies and practical takeaways so you can build a successful horse business that allows you to keep doing what you love for the long-term.
What does it mean to build demand for your horse business? (What’s demand generation?)
Demand generation means you’re bringing leads into your pipeline. In simpler times, it’s building interest and getting the right people in the door to your business.
They express interest in your offering and then you have to educate them and nurture them down the funnel to become a customer.
But then you want them to express their interest in a way that you can be aware of, such as providing an email address. We’ve talked often on this podcast about listing building, and list building is a form of demand generation.
As you build demand for your horse business, you want to guide every qualified lead through each stage of their customer journey with clear messaging.
Awareness: Bring awareness to the problem they face.
Interest: Educate them about the different options they have to solve their problem.
Consideration: They are now listening and considering their options.
Evaluation: They are looking at your offering, and probably comparing it to your competitors.
Purchase: They’re now making the order, signing the agreement, or paying for the product or service.
Post purchase: Your goal is to reduce churn and keep them as a customer.
How to Build Demand for Your Horse Business
Clarify Your Goals
Get specific about your goals ahead of time so you're making the most strategic decisions. It may be a revenue amount, email list size, ad conversion rate, etc.
After you set your goals, use your typical or industry conversation rates to determine the measurables that need to happen in order for you to make that happen. For example, website traffic, follower count, YouTube subscriber, podcast downloads.
Know Your Buyer Persona
This is Megan’s verbiage for telling you to know your best-fit audience. What problems do they have? What desires or aspirations do they have? What goals do they have related to each stage of the customary journey? How are you best-suited to serve them?
Prioritize Your Website
As you build demand for your horse business, you need to have a place to send them to learn more, get onto your email list, and become your customer. That’s why your website is vital when it comes to marketing.
Megan suggests going through each stage of the buyer’s journey to map out your buyer persona for each stage. Where and how do they research alternatives and options when they’re considering the problem your product or service solves? What are their interests? What does their day-to-day life look like? (Bonus: This exercise will give you plenty of content ideas!)
Automate the Process
You need to have a system in place to nurture the leads that will come in as you’re building demand. Automation can be simple, but if you’re going to build demand for your horse business, it is a non-negotiable. Megan recommends using an email service provider and a customer management system, at the minimum.
Build Awareness Using Social Media
Social media is an opportunity to build your equestrian brand awareness by offering value. Megan suggests looking at your social media as a content gift.
Create for the Customer Journey
When you create content (blog, video, social media, email, etc.) that meets your best-fit audience where they are in the customer journey, you’ll guide them from not knowing about you to becoming your customer. Remember, it often takes multiple touchpoints to get the sale.
Of course, you'll want to listen to the full episode to dig into each of the insights shared and discover how you can apply each one in your horse business!
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Links Mentioned In This Episode
Blog Post on NF+ Reveal from Noëlle Floyd: We're Raising the Bar: Equestrian Masterclass Becomes NF+
6 Steps to Successfully Rebrand Your Equine Business with Chris Stein [Episode 150]
6 Marketing Lessons from My First Equine Affaire [Episode 133]
Take the Reins: 1:1 Marketing Coaching for Equestrian Entrepreneurs
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