Horse
owners are turning to the Internet in numbers never seen before
to buy and sell horses. As more and more people flock to the
Internet to sell their horse, the need to seperate yourself
from the competition increases. The performance of your classified
ad is based on many factors. The good news for you as a seller
is that you are in control of most of those factors. Before
you list your horse for sale online, we recommend that you
take the following points into consideration.
-
Write a clean, concise and honest description.
Depending on the the type of ad you sign-up for, you will
have up to 2,000 characters to write a description of your
horse. The description should not be longer than it needs
to be. Convey to the customer the important points about
your horse, making sure to include any competitive achievements
or attributes that make it stand out. It does help to include
your personal feelings towards the horse (if they are positive
of course). When you type your description, do not type
it in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS, this tends to annoy people. Use
proper punctuation and grammar throughout and avoid slang
words, abbreviations and acronyms. Lastly, make sure you
run a spell check against your ad prior to submitting it.
-
Fill out as many fields as you can. When
placing an order you should make sure that you fill out
as much information about your horse as you can. The ordering
process resembles an interview about your horse; what color
is your horse, what breed, what attributes does it have,
etc. The more you tell the customer the fewer questions
he/she will have for you. Since you do not know what the
next person to view your ad is looking for, you want to
make sure that you leave nothing out. If someone is looking
for a kid-safe family horse for sale in Minnesota and you
fail to specify this in your ad (even though your horse
is great with children), the odds are the customer will
never contact you.
- Include
a variety of decent quality photographs. Research
shows ads that include photographs are much more likely
to be viewed by a random visitor than a text-only ad. If
you do purchase a photo ad, we recommend that you upload
multiple photos of your horse. It is a good idea to show
your horse from multiple angles and in different lighting
situations. The photographs that you choose to upload should
be of decent quality and your horse should be the focus
of the photograph. Do not upload a photograph of multiple
horses, this only confuses a potential buyers.
- Include
a bloodline chart. Some visitors will only consider
a horse if they are able to first review it's bloodline
(pedigree). People who are looking to purchase a horse that
they intend to groom for some sort of competition or to
breed will be especially interested in the horses bloodline.
If you do not know the entire pedigree, fill out as much
as you can. Filling out only the dam and sire is better
than leaving everything blank.
- Set
a realistic price. Before you list your horse,
take a moment and decide on a price that is acceptable to
you. It is not necessarily a good idea to list the price
you would like to get, instead list your horse at the price
you believe it to be worth. Listing a price that could be
considered unreasonable will only serve to disqualify your
horse from consideration for most prospective buyers. It
is also a good idea to indicate how much wiggle room is
in your asking price. There is an option to mark your price
as OBO (or best offer), doing this will solicit more inquiries.
- Make
yourself readily available to reply to inquiries.
When listing your horse make sure you specify a phone number
and email address where you can be reached in a timely manner.
It is very important to answer email inquiries and return
phone calls as quickly as possible. The reasons are obvious.
- Self
promote your horse. At Lefty's Stable we will do
everything within our power to generate sales leads for
your horse. That being said, a horse is a serious investment
and for that reason you should take advantage of every advertising
opportunity available. Your classified ad will have it's
own unique URL (web address). As the horse owner, you can
take this URL and promote it in any way you see fit. A common
way to create some additional interest is to post your link
in a discussion forum for example.
- Be
subjective, focus on positives. Focus on the positive
aspects of your horse and make them your selling points.
Be honest about the negative aspects or short comings of
your horse, do not dwell on them. If your horse failed misserably
at every cutting competition that you entered it in, it
is better to omit that fact than to even mention it. Focus
instead on the strong points of your horse or what it has
potential to become. Of course if a buyer asks you outright
about the horses ability to compete or it's performance
in past competitions, you must be honest.
|
