Equine Content Marketing: How To Unlock Organic Traffic

Let’s look at how equine content marketing can be the ace up your sleeve to expand your horse business! In this article we will show you how to propel natural visits to all of your channels with targeted social media content, blogging, landing pages and email marketing.

What Is (Equine) Content Marketing?

In short, content is everything you publish online: from your social media posts, everything you post on your website to everything you post on all the other platforms you use (such as YouTube for instance).

Marketing part of the phrase means leveraging that same content to actively promote your equestrian business. In other words, everybody posts online, so why not make it count!

In this article we will focus on how to create content that counts and that organically brings you customers.

After breaking down the phrase, the proper definition would be:

Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and engage a target audience. Its primary goal is to build trust, establish authority, and ultimately drive profitable customer actions (such as purchases).

Content marketing involves various forms of content, including blog articles, videos, social media posts, and more, to provide value to the audience and achieve business objectives.

The Power Of Equine Content Marketing

There are two ways in which you can bring customers to your online channels – paid and organic. BUT, even if you decide to dive into paid advertising, you will first need to create channels that are worth visiting and that communicate clearly what you are doing (and how you are helping your audience).

That means that you will need to create content.

A successful content plan integrates social media, blogging, web landing pages along with email marketing to form an incorporated approach which drives website traffic ultimately increasing customer acquisition rate.

Content that counts: Blog post with organic CTR of 16.3%

Effective Marketing Channels For Equine Businesses

Social Media

The digital world offers a variety of social media platforms for creating marketing campaigns and promoting your equine business.

The bigger social media presence and following you have, the easier you will be able to turn your audience into customers.

First, it is the law of big numbers – the more eyes on your offer, the more people might convert.

Secondly, a big following on social media gives people confidence in you and your products. Just remember yourself and how you feel about a page that has 50K followers vs a page with 400 followers…

Creating content tailored to the passions and emotions of horse people you identified as your target audience, is a great way to engage customers with your equestrian brand.

If you feel like you need ideas about what to post on your social media, or if you are not sure if you are doing it right, we highly recommend reading our blog post Equine Social Media Marketing: What To Post For A High Engagement Rate.

Blogging

Writing high quality, keyword motivated blog posts is the only way that will make your website rank. That being said, there is a big misunderstanding in the horse industry about creating blog articles.

To see how your website ranks in Google you can do a little test:

Open a new tab in the incognito mode and type in a phrase that is relevant to your equestrian business. Did your website come up? On which page of the Google search results did you find your page?

The answer will tell you if your blogging efforts are bearing fruit… or not.

It is just not enough to start writing about a topic you find interesting, and write it in a way like you are writing an essay. In fact, that approach will give you the results you have just had a chance to test.

Blog posts need to be created from keyword research and competitor research.

By finding low competition and high volume phrases (keywords) people are typing in Google, creating an outline through competitor research and then writing a piece rich with different keywords related to the topic is how you will get your blog article, and your website to rank. 

There is very little understanding about blogging in the equine industry, so if your equine business starts doing it right, chances are big, you will also start to rank.

Ahrefs is a software that offers free and paid keyword research tools
Ahrefs is a software that offers free and paid keyword research tools

SEO

Closely linked to blogging is SEO, which stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is a set of practices and strategies aimed at improving the visibility and ranking of a website or web page in search engine results pages such as Google.

Creating content and optimizing page titles, meta descriptions, and keywords are essential to boost your equine business’s visibility on the web. This results in more organic traffic which can lead to potential customers for your equine business.

For more in depth equine SEO information, we recommend reading our blog article titled SEO For Equestrian Services: How To Become More Visible On Google?

With a well-rounded marketing strategy including these tactics you will draw an audience of prospective leads that may eventually become loyal customers for life.

Email marketing

Email marketing is highly effective for several reasons:

Direct Communication: Email provides a direct line of communication between a business and its audience. When someone opens an email, they are engaging with your content on a one-on-one basis, allowing for personalized messaging and a sense of connection.

Targeted Audience: Email marketing allows you to segment your audience based on various factors, such as demographics, behavior, and past interactions. This segmentation enables you to send tailored messages to specific groups, increasing relevance and engagement.

Cost-Effective: Compared to many other marketing channels, email marketing is relatively low-cost. There are minimal expenses associated with sending emails, making it an affordable option for businesses of all sizes.

High ROI: Email marketing consistently delivers a high return on investment (ROI). When executed well, the costs associated with email campaigns are outweighed by the revenue generated from conversions, making it one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies.

Automation: Email marketing platforms offer automation features, allowing you to send automated emails based on triggers or schedules. This enables you to nurture leads, onboard new customers, and re-engage inactive subscribers without continuous manual effort.

Measurable Results: Email marketing provides valuable data and analytics. You can track open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, and more. This data helps you understand what works and what doesn’t, allowing for continuous improvement.

Personalization: Personalized emails that address the recipient by name and offer tailored content are more likely to resonate with recipients. Email marketing tools make it easy to customize messages based on subscriber data.

Build Relationships: Email marketing is an effective tool for building and nurturing customer relationships. Consistent, valuable communication can foster trust and loyalty over time.

Flexible Content: You can use email marketing to share a wide range of content, including blog posts, newsletters, product updates, promotions, and educational materials. This versatility allows you to adapt your messages to different goals and audience segments.

Permission-Based: Email marketing relies on recipients who have opted in to receive messages. This means your audience is typically more engaged and interested in what you have to offer.

But, before you can tap into this powerful content strategy, you need to have a lead generation strategy well developed, otherwise, you will have no one to send your email campaigns to.

The most popular ways are creating pop-up and opt-in forms on your website to capture leads.

ConvertBox is one of the best tools to create popup and inline forms and capture leads

Landing Pages / Sales Pages

The terms landing pages and sales pages are often used interchangeably, but there is a difference between them.

  1. Purpose:
    • Landing Page: The primary purpose of a landing page is to capture a visitor’s attention and encourage them to take a specific action, such as signing up for a newsletter, downloading an ebook, or registering for a webinar. Landing pages are used to initiate the first step of a conversion process, typically in the early stages of the sales funnel.
    • Sales Page: A sales page, on the other hand, is specifically designed to persuade visitors to make a purchase. It provides detailed information about a product or service, addresses objections, and uses persuasive elements to convince the visitor to buy.
  2. Content:
    • Landing Page: Landing pages have concise and focused content, often highlighting the benefits of taking the desired action. They may contain minimal information beyond what’s necessary to encourage the action.
    • Sales Page: Sales pages are typically longer and more detailed. They provide in-depth information about the product or service, including features, pricing, testimonials, and frequently asked questions. Sales pages aim to address potential objections and provide all the information needed for a purchasing decision.

Landing page is any page that you are sending your potential and current customers to, while a sales page is a page where you are trying to sell them something. So, in essence, every sales page is a landing page, but not every landing page is a sales page.

For the sake of this article, we will keep it simple – every physical product, digital product, or service that you offer needs to have a sales page; a page where you will present your product/service and convince your potential and current customers to purchase.

One way of looking at the sales pages is to compare them with a shop window – the more appealing the window, the more likely people will go into the shop.

Understanding Your Audience

Content marketing success requires an understanding of your target audience. By that we mean that you need to know who you are talking to. 

Creating an ideal client avatar is crucial for tailoring the right message because if you’re selling to everyone, you’re selling to no one.

By researching and evaluating their characteristics, tastes, desires and behaviors, you will be able to tailor content or promotional techniques that really speak to them. 

Measuring Content Marketing Success

The performance of your content marketing efforts is essential for continual growth and development. Utilizing analytics solutions allow you to determine the success rate of promotional activities, so that decisions can be based on collected data points in order to optimize operations.

By keeping an eye out for metrics such as website visits, engagement levels, conversions etc., it’s possible to assess how effective a given campaign has been and pinpoint areas where improvements could be made.

There are numerous analytics tools you can use to help you gain insights into your marketing efforts, and in the next section we will cover some of them.

Analytics Tools

Depending on the platform you are using, there are different analytics tools at your disposal that can help you better understand your results.

Social media: Every social media platform has its own analytics tool that is available free of charge. You can get insights into post engagement, your audience, page growth etc. and see what efforts are bringing in results.

Email marketing: If you are using email marketing, you are either using an email marketing platform that comes as a part of your website (like Wix or Squarespace), or you are using a third party email software (like Mailchim, Mailerlite, ConvertKit etc.).

Either way, you have access to analytics that show open and click rate of your emails. By analyzing those data, you can test and optimize your subject lines and email copy for maximum results.

Website: connecting your website with Google Analytics (which is free) can give you a lot of different insights, sky’s the limit…You can also open (free) Google Search Console account and start monitoring your website traffic – which search queries is your website showing up for, which pages are doing the best, what is the CTR and so much more.You can also plan your blog strategy around Google Search Console insights.

Google Search Console – a free tool with a lot of insights

Summary

In conclusion, equine content marketing can be a powerful tool for growing your horse business and connecting with your target audience.

By crafting engaging content, optimizing your website, leveraging effective marketing channels, and measuring your success, you can unlock the full potential of content marketing for your equine business.

Embrace the power of storytelling, utilize diverse content formats, and stay committed to understanding your audience – and watch your equine business flourish!