In the competitive livestock marketing industry, getting your products in front of the right buyers is key. However, so much work goes into managing a ranch that marketing your livestock and your brand can be a step that’s easy to leave behind.
At EDJE, we’re experienced in working with a wide variety of livestock producers to help them tell their brand’s story in the digital world. There are many effective ways to market your livestock, and the right avenue for someone else may not be the right one for you.
Let’s take a look at how to effectively market your livestock, including four methods that could work for you.
How Are You Selling Your Livestock?
First, it’s important to be where your target audience is in order to build relationships with them and market to them effectively. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach — it can look different depending on who you’re selling to and how you’re doing it.
Ranchers sell their livestock in a variety of ways that could include:
- Live auctions: Selling animals through a live competitive bidding process.
- Private treaty: Negotiating sales directly with a buyer with no auction.
- Direct-to-consumer sales: Selling directly to the end consumers of your livestock.
- Online: Selling livestock through a digital platform.
Keeping the end process in mind will help you visualize your target audience and find the marketing channels that work best for them.
Traditional Livestock Marketing
Traditional forms of livestock marketing are still strong today. These include word of mouth, industry trade shows, and print ads in newspapers, magazines, and trade publications.
These forms of marketing are well-established in the industry and give potential buyers a personalized, tangible connection with you and your brand. However, the reach of these traditional forms of marketing is limited, and some of them can be expensive.
If you’re looking to expand your reach or target younger buyers, it could be helpful to explore some of the other available marketing channels.
Social Media Marketing
Maintaining a social media presence on a platform like Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter (X) is a strong and cost-effective way to help people connect with your brand. Social media also provides the avenue to target paid social media ads to your consumers.
When you’re building your social media presence, you can highlight your personality, give tours of your ranch, showcase livestock, show how you care for animals, and more. Since social media accounts are free, it’s a cost-effective way to market. However, it can also be time-intensive to consistently create posts and engage with your followers to build up your brand. That’s why approaching social media with a strategy that fits your brand is important.
The good news: You don’t have to go viral on TikTok to have an effective social media marketing campaign. With the wide variety of different social media platforms available, you can find the one that works best for your company, targeting where your main demographics are. Platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube are great for videos and visuals, while platforms like Facebook and Twitter work well for sharing updates and photos.
Content Marketing
Sharing your livestock expertise with the world in the form of a blog or video series is a great form of marketing. It helps you establish credibility online and can make your website more visible to search engines.
One of the primary ways livestock owners can take advantage of content marketing is by starting a blog where they share updates from their ranch and explore different topics in their industry. Writing posts focused on key topics that establish authority in your industry can also help improve your website’s ranking in Google search results, making you more visible to people who are searching for businesses like yours.
Videos also provide a more immersive look into your operation, as well as the livestock you have available. Incorporating videos into your website or your social media presence will enhance your marketing appeal.
While content creation also takes time, the process of strategically building blog posts or videos around subjects and keywords that your target audience may be searching for online can bring more people to your website and generate sales. Working with a digital marketing team to put together a regular posting schedule and a strategy for writing blog posts and creating videos ahead of time can streamline the process.
Newsletters & Email Marketing
Send out regular newsletters or information on upcoming sales. If people engage with you already, you want to nurture your prospective customers.
Building up your email list can take time and effort, but sharing important updates with your most loyal customers will help you build relationships and target specific messages to them. For more tips on email marketing, content marketing, and social media marketing, read our guide to digital marketing strategies for farmers and ranchers.
Explore These Livestock Marketing Techniques & More With EDJE
The right marketing channel for another farm or ranch may not be the one that works best for you. Looking to find the right mixture of marketing techniques, or struggling to get started? Reach out to the livestock marketing experts at EDJE today!