New Zealand is in a nationwide lockdown, and for businesses who are not able to open their doors, an online presence is no longer a luxury but the means of survival. During this uncertainty, equine businesses need to look for alternative avenues to make an income, and this may mean altering your current business model or marketing tactics. If you can no longer operate your business locally, it may be worth considering selling online.
Do you have a website?
The only thing that we can be sure of going forward is that the internet will be one of the only forms of outside communication available to us. Think of all your bored customers sitting inside with nothing to do but search the internet. Therefore, it’s now more important than ever that your business has a digital presence, most importantly, a website. If your physical location has closed, selling essential items online should at least help you stay afloat.
Think of your website as your hub in the absence of a physical location. Your website is the place that people will go to first. They may never have heard of you, may have heard about you from a friend, or maybe they are a regular in-store customer. With a website, you can continue trading.
If you already have a website, does it allow for online orders? Adding an e-commerce store to your website could encourage sales.
Shipping options for essential items
As New Zealand is in stage 4 lockdown, only essential items can be shipped. However, this does include several equine products. For example, anything that can be classed as crucial to your horse’s health is acceptable for freight. Examples include:
- rugs
- veterinary products
- feed and supplements
- farrier tools
- rider winter wear
Non-essential items and services
What if you don’t stock essential items, or if your equine business is a service?
Have a sale: Even if you can’t ship your products, you can still sell them! Consider running a sale on your website and send out the items when lockdown has lifted. You could have a storewide sale or discount a specific product per week. Don’t forget to advertise your sale on social media. NZ Horse & Pony‘s weekly e-publication is another great option to get to a dedicated equestrian audience.
Gift vouchers: If you need some quick revenue into your equine business, set up gift voucher purchasing on your website. These are great if you run an equine service like riding lessons or need cash flow to your store. Consider running a promotion on them, so your customers feel like they are getting a great deal.
Keep busy
If you cannot trade at all or have reduced staffing hours here are some ways to keep busy:
Update your website: Read through all the text on your website. Check for any information that might need updating or content that you could add.
Write blogs: We always recommend to our clients to write blogs for their websites. Blogs are a fantastic way to certify yourself as an expert in your field. They help educate your audience and usually answer questions that your customers have. Plus they are great for your SEO! This stands for search engine optimisation, which is the process of optimising your website to get organic, or un-paid, traffic from the search engine results page.
Social media: It’s a great time to get on top of your social media scheduling. Sit down and plan some engaging content for the next few months and schedule them in so that you don’t have to think about posting.
Automated emails: Make your life easier when regular life does return. Marketing automation enables technology to take over those repetitive tasks like replying to emails and order confirmations. Set up your automated emails now while things are quiet and you have extra time on your hands.
Advice: Offer advice or run sessions online to help keep engagement up on your social media.
At Show Pony Graphics, we believe that we can help support all our equine clients and equestrian businesses through these uncertain times. We believe that most companies can be adapted to perform digitally and improving your online presence may just be the lifeline your business needs to get through to the other side of this crisis. We can quickly set up an online store for you so that you can continue trading essential items without the physical location.
