Here’s the good news: more than half of cattle ranchers will travel more than 100 miles to purchase new bulls or heifers.

That’s thousands of customers you couldn’t possibly reach with just cold calls or a few posts on Facebook. To reach those customers, you need more of a plan and a website can help you with that.

We’ve laid down a few of the benefits the livestock industry has when advertising online. Now we are going to show you how to make some of those digital advertising efforts a little easier: having a website and using it to your advantage.

Why Should My Ranch Have a Website?

The simplest, low-level reason to have a website for your farm or ranch comes down to having one place for your customers to go to shop your livestock inventory and learn how to contact you. But there’s more to it. Having a website can make it far easier to create and execute many different marketing efforts.

Having a website — like a free website built with WordPress (which is what we use and usually recommend for clients here at 9 Clouds) — can expand what types of marketing you’ll be able to do and make setting things up much easier for you or your team.

3 Myths About Taking the Family Farm or Ranch Online

Online Livestock Ads

A website allows you to more easily advertise on Facebook and search engines like Google and Bing.

Having a website allows you to target customers who have already visited your site with retargeting campaigns. Retargeting ads are one of our top targeting tips for livestock Facebook ads. These campaigns ensure that customers who have already shown interest or visited your site will see your ads while scrolling through Facebook or searching online.

Aside from retargeting ads, though, having your inventory catalog updated and clearly organized on your site will also allow you to connect that catalog to Facebook, which will easily show what you have available and your price to audiences online.

Here’s an example of a Facebook ad made to drive traffic to a site: this client reached almost 100,000 potential customers and was able to spend just $0.06 per click. This is all possible with a clean website for customers to visit after seeing these ads.

Want to run ads on Google and Bing? You need a website for that.

Show your ads directly to those who search specific keywords you choose to target or those who are searching for your services in the area. Or show ads to people in the market for your services or who are interested in certain topics.

Bottom line — if you want to advertise your cattle online, you need a website.

Analytics to Track Your Efforts

With a website comes website traffic, but how do we know what that traffic is looking at or how long they’re staying on the site? That’s where website analytics would come in to help you get to know your customers better.

Google analytics is a great free resource that can tell you what pages your customers are visiting, how long they visit the site for, and even how that traffic got to your site — like from a Facebook ad or Google ad, or even if they came to your site from a Google search (and what words they searched to find your site). You can even set up individual goals on Google Analytics that you can track, such as a specific page view or if someone clicks to call you from the site.

All of this information can help you better determine what your customers are interested in, how effective certain ad campaigns were, or if there are pages on your site where people spend less time. (That’s a chance to optimize your site.)

Emailing Your Customers

Email? For livestock?

Yes, when you consider that agricultural and food services have some of the highest click-through rates of any industry. Email marketing is also extremely cost effective, especially when you have a website.

There are now quite a few free or low-cost resources to use to email your customers or potential customers, and something as simple as a form or page on your site asking for emails can help you reach directly into the inboxes of your customers.

Email allows you to offer exclusive access to deals, share information on your business, and promote upcoming sales or events where they can find your livestock.

Not sure where to start with email marketing? Our team can help.

Four Steps to Selling Cattle Online

Don’t Have a Website? Let Us Help.

“But 9 Clouds, I don’t have a website to start all of this with. Where should I start?”

Our team recommends to start with a simple site, which can be set up quickly with WordPress. You can always contact our team to help with any part of the process. We’re here to help!

Once you set up your site, you want to make sure to showcase the right information for livestock customers. Make sure everything is readable, there’s a clear navigation bar, and that your site looks good for mobile users as well (since more than 60% of all website visitors do so on mobile devices).

We have a few tips on what not to do with a new site as well to ensure your customers have an easy experience on your site.

Livestock Sale Marketing Package

9 Clouds Can Help With It All

Whether you need to start a site for your business or are just looking for ways to see better results from the website you have, our team can help with every step of the process.

See what you can do with digital marketing in the livestock industry, or start with one of our Marketing 101 packages to make the most of your marketing dollars.

Capture Your Livestock Market With 9 Clouds »