Alle Beiträge von Ruth Williams

Promotional Tips for Equestrian Businesses

The equestrian world is both close-knit and vast. If your business is involved in this industry then your customer pool is big. All horse owners have common requirements regardless of whether they are involved in dressage, showing or horse racing which are veterinary services, horse feeds and horse care equipment. To sell your products or services to this sector you need to know how to implement effective marketing strategies.

But if you’re new to the market, or a marketing novice, how exactly to do you sell to fellow equestrian enthusiasts? What works, and more importantly what doesn’t work when it comes to sealing the deal? This article features some of the most effective methods of marketing to horse owners and those involved in the horse world:

Having an Equine Business Website

Business websites have long replaced listings in the Yellow Pages. You need to have an online presence in order to be seen by our technology reliant world. However, you still need to have an eye-catching and instantly appealing pitch. Much like traditional listings, you need to persuade your potential clients that you are better than your competitors. Once your website has been designed you can allocate different pages to different areas of your business, whilst using the main homepage as you introduction and summary of your business.

A experienced web design company which understands the equine world will be able to save you time and money by implementing effective designs straight off. They will know which aspects of your business you should highlight on your website and how to make the overall design appealing to your target market. All with the aid of specialist design.

Outdoor Events and Shows

For the equine industry, trade stands are a great way through which to promote your products and services. If you have a stand at horse trials or country shows you will be faced by your target audience so you need to know how to draw them in to learn more about your business.

You can do this by making the most of exhibition stands and showcasing your products and services in their best light. You can use custom graphics which represent your brand, lighting to show off your products and if necessary audio to give your stand some atmosphere.

At The Races

You don’t need to be directly involved in the world of horse racing to make the most of a day at the races. You can capitalise on being in front of your target audience providing you get your marketing and stand appearance right.

If your stand has a good foot fall then you could receive more stands visitors in a few days than you might have had vistors to your website over a few months. The beauty of a day at the races, or tradeshows for that matter, is that you can speak to customers directly. This means that you’ll be able to answer any queries they may have right away.

If you know your business well enough, selling to the equine world can be straight forward. You simply need to know your market. You should take the time to work out who it is your business is trying to appeal to. Once you have identified this, take on board the tips outlined here and see your business go from strength to strength.

To find out more about powerful equestrian advertising and marketing strategies, check out Bird and Co Equine’s website at www.birdandcoequine.co.uk

5 Marketing and Advertising Tips to Guarantee trade show Success

Exhibitions and trade shows can be highly effective for all different sized businesses in getting their products and services noticed. If a show goes well for you it can really boost your sales and your brand awareness. Here we explore five of the best marketing secrets that can guarantee you trade show success:

Plan Ahead

While it may seem obvious, some businesses neglect to set in place a clear planning strategy. Your plan should include staffing of the stand, your budget and the theme of your display.

If your budget allows, a custom built exhibition stand is a great way to attract crowds at any trade show. Planning the design of your exhibition stand is essential as this will dictate how your exhibition pans out. Your stand will need to be built so allow enough time for the exhibition stands contractors to do their job.

Inform Existing Customers of Your trade show Appearance

Don’t ignore existing customers as they are likely to be attending the trade show as well. Ask for advice on what customers would like to see at the event and encourage them to spread the word. Customer testimonials instill confidence into those looking to use your services.

Make Sure you Integrate Your Marketing

Make sure you use direct mail and social media marketing to draw attention to your upcoming exhibition. It is easy to keep in touch with existing customers with the numerous forms of media available. Create a conversation about the event, encouraging visitors and attendees to share experiences. Direct mail can be useful for getting people’s attention and asking them to checkout your YouTube channel or Facebook page to uncover a sneak preview of what’s to come at the show.

See What Your Competition are Doing

Do your research on the competition you’ll face at the trade show. Pinpoint their strengths and weaknesses. Concentrate on promoting your unique selling point (USP) and just why people should use your products and services over others.

Ensure your exhibition stand has impact. Creative exhibition stands, giveaways and product demonstrations are a great way of encouraging visitors to your stand. Your main priority is to get a good return on investment (roi).

Follow Up

After your exhibition, review your success. By collecting visitor’s details on the day you can then send them sales literature after the show and ask for feedback. This will help when planning your next exhibition. If you know what you’re doing well – and not so well – you can improve your trade show success every time.

Planning your next tradeshow? RB Design & Display specialise in portable, custom built and modular exhibition stands. Contact them now to see what they can do for you.

Using Direct Mail to Deliver Targeted Traffic to Your Company Website

There are many options to promote your website, such as email, radio, TV and billboards. One commonly overlooked method is direct mail. This may not be the cheap marketing strategy, however, it works. It adds to the credibility of your website while preventing problems like click fraud and unsolicited email complaints.

With the use of printed envelopes, you can control exactly how your mail shot is presented. Unlike emails, it won’t look different depending upon the recipient’s computer or email software. You can either outsource the skills and equipment required to create a mail shot or do it yourself depending on your setup. You could use a print management company who will create and post your mail shot. This would mean all you would have to do is design the content.

Your direct mail campaign should be well thought out and optimised in order for it to achieve optimum success. The key is to entice recipient’s to open your mailing when it lands on their doorstep. This is where printed envelopes comes in. Just informing people of your web address will only result in a few curious people to your website. People respond to targeted offers that call for specific actions. This call to action will work best if recipients are sent to a specific landing page which contains the information which they were initially interested in. If you have a specific offer or new product that you are promoting then send them to this. In this way you can track the effectiveness of the direct mail campaign.

It is advisable to create a short website URL which directs people to the relevant page and is easy to type into the address bar quickly. It is a good idea to wait until the search engines have indexed the short URL if it has been newly created. This will ensure that even those people who type the URL into the search engine will still end up on your website. Making your mailings personal to the recipient can also improve response rates. The very least you should include on there is the recipient’s name and address.

Promoting an offer is a good idea as it allows you to set a specific deadline. If potential customers have only a week to take advantage of a special price, it makes them less likely to set aside the advertisement and forget about it. Just don’t neglect to fully consider the amount of time it will take to print the ad and send it to the destination. People may not check their mail straight away, particularly if they have a post office box.

This type of promotion has already been used to successfully drive traffic to many different websites, so there is no reason why it shouldn’t work for you. The first step is to devise a rough draft of your advertisement, taking into account the paper it will be printed on and the printed envelopes you will need to have designed. It may be that a letter would work best, but there are other options available so do some research. Next, you can set up printing and delivery.

Go for printed envelopes to increase the success of your direct mail marketing campaign.

Features of E-mail Marketing to Your Organization

In terms of boosting your product sales & advertising ROI (Return on Investment), practically nothing compares to the simplicity of an direct, well-presented email marketing campaign. Making sure your company stays front and center in the view of your clients, is one of the instantaneous advantages of a properly developed e-mail strategy. There are web design organizations around who are experts in not only developing that email campaign, but furthermore with making sure the message it delivers is well accepted and leads to more business. Today’s unpredictable customers have far too many choices. Staying one step ahead of your rivals isn’t just beneficial to business, it’s extremely important to success.

Email Strategies Increase Customer Retention

You have probably heard that it’s four or five times more costly to find new customers than it is to sell to existing ones. Most certainly, those estimates are correct. Restoring customer retention, whilst making certain your company has got the right of last refusal, is often a key component of business success. Email promotions help achieve this through incentivizing customers with well placed adverts developed to illicit a buying reaction.

Email Marketing Is Inexpensive

Conventional marketing approaches, such as print, newspaper advertisements, catalogues or brochures, need a considerable financial outlay. When they’re finished, they’re far more costly to alter. Email promotions are live, constantly changing and those alterations are really simple to carry out, and cheap. Dissatisfied with the effects? Then modify them. It’s that easy. Try that with standard marketing approaches!

Email Marketing is ideal for Up-Selling & Cross-Selling Initiatives

E-mail advertisements are essentially suited for those cases where you want to up-sell or cross-sell on new products and services. Considering utilizing pricing discounts to your best customers so that you can incentivize them to buy? Email can make that happen. Up-selling & cross-selling are methods utilized by the biggest and brightest organizations.

Email Campaigns Produce High Conversions

It’s one thing to find prospective customers, yet it is another thing entirely to persuade them to make that very first purchase. Using the right email campaign your sales & advertising strategies can be woven into one, all inclusive email advertisement. It will not only help with customer retention, but it will reduce your company’s costs regarding sourcing and converting potential customers.

Companies benefit from email simply because of its capability to be adjustable to today’s continually changing business environment. In addition, the appropriate email campaign can accompany all other advertising initiatives whilst ensuring your business is at the front of the line.

Bird and Co are a creative agency providing web design in Birmingham- creating innovative designs in a variety of digital and print formats. Visit www.birdandcocreative.co.uk for further information.