To put it simply, there are a number of reasons. Both internal and external elements stand in your way; from a lack of clear messaging, to cluttered design, to imposter syndrome, and fear of marketing. Your desire to focus solely on the horse-first side of the service you provide might be causing you to neglect the business and marketing elements - ultimately causing both to suffer.

Think of your website as a city: There’s a dragon outside the city walls. The closer you look, there is actually a fleet of dragons. The world you’ve built is no longer safe. What should you do?
a) Escape and find a safer place
b) Defend and strengthen the city walls
c) Attack: Take on the dragons before they get any stronger
Each option has risks and rewards. Let’s talk about it.

What is your city? Think of your city as the website you’ve built - designed within its city walls to showcase your ethical horse-first business. What are the dragons? That gets a little trickier. Let’s start to identify them.

Your first dragon is your competition. What do we mean by that? Well, if we're in LA and we want to find a new training barn, a Google search will yield probably 20 results.... out of which 19 websites suck. We leave those websites not at all more educated about which one we should pick. Another way to look at it is, if you live on a back country lane and you put out a sign advertising that you train horses ethically, the expectation is that that sign will drive you business. Now imagine that 500,000 other people live on that lane and they all had the same idea. The street is so oversaturated with signs that yours is not standing out and bringing you business. So how do you get your website to stand out in a saturated market? Rather than opting for more bells and whistles, lean into clarity and accuracy.

Attacking in tandem with your competition dragon is your fear of standing out dragon. What is the consequence of standing out? Although we need to stand out in order to set ourselves apart from the competition, we are afraid that this will lead to us being noticed and criticized. We worry that people will see us as woo-woo or less-than. Rather, if you are an ethical horse-first professional, let yourself stand out as such. Lean into what you are marketing and don't be afraid of it. The other reason we fear standing out is tied to our fear of success. If and when we do stand out, we know that it’s time to level-up and fully be ourselves. The decision to step into what we believe in is daunting - but vital. In defeating our competition and fear of standing out & success dragons, we have slain both an external and an internal attacker. So far so good!

The next dragon at our walls is a lack of clear messaging. What’s more is there are different iterations of this dragon. Sometimes it comes in the form of a DIY approach. You’ve convinced yourself that you can’t have a high quality website on a small budget. You assume you need to go to expensive, ritzy designers and are then afraid to even look. Sometimes this dragon comes in the form of being overly obsessed with aesthetics. You focus what little resources you have in your budget toward the looks of your site rather than the message on your site. The good news? Shifting your focus and updating the words on your website to send a clear message is FREE.

Loping around the corner comes our next dragon, the fear of marketing itself. You convince yourself that if your website looks TOO good or too professionally done, prospective clients will feel that you are trying too hard to sell them and find you unapproachable. Alternatively, they might see this professional result and extrapolate that you are out of reach or too good to be hired. Another head of this dragon is the fear of spending money. You don’t believe that your website is worth spending money on - either caused by a lack of belief in yourself or a lack of belief in the efficacy of websites overall. Your internal fear of marketing may also manifest as a belief that you are TOO good to sell yourself and/or above the average market - causing you to miss out on those potential clients.

So, what do we do? Let’s first acknowledge: How did we let it get this bad? There are a few common reasons. Maybe you’re too busy working in the barn to have the time to learn about marketing. Maybe you don’t find it as important as the work you do with horses. Maybe you assume that if you do really good work there will be no need to market yourself at all. (Let’s go ahead and call this the Field of Dreams delusion… “If you build it, they will come.”) No matter the cause, what you end up with as a result is a lack of understanding what a website can really do to sell your business and a lack of the drive to educate yourself about it.

Perhaps your biggest dragon is a fear of the website itself. For lack of time, lack of knowledge, fear of too much exposure, fear of criticism, fear of alienating your average client, or the ever-insidious imposter syndrome - what you end up with is a dearth of knowledge on how to create a site that converts people from casual visitors to potential clients who are excited to reach out to you and engage.

This brings us back to our original question: What should you do? Many clients think that the answer is to flood their websites with MORE information and MORE accolades of their resume and accomplishments. However, this actually results in information overload. As it turns out, sometimes less really is more. Adding more and more information to your website in an effort to convert your ideal client actually becomes a turn off to their potential business. It's our job to stop flooding our audiences with noise, and start talking about their problems. Only then do we earn their attention! When we dig into our customers problems, they know that we understand them. Making the narrative about them allows us to position ourselves as the guide further down the road. To put it simply: When you talk more about the customer and less about your brand, you’ll always win.

Similarly, you do NOT need to get more competition ribbons under your belt in order to get more clients. Although it can be tempting to rely on your accolades and experiences to get you sponsors and clients, this assumption is misleading and ultimately EXPENSIVE. Cluttering your website with ribbons and resume information relies on the assumption that your clients will think "clearly they must be able to help me with my goals and needs," rather than addressing those needs and confirming it upfront. The cost of building up a bio like this is high and often the reward is low. You could spend a fraction of this on good marketing to make yourself instantly profitable and help horses NOW. So: Attack via information overload is out.

It's also tempting to think that you don't need automated business systems because you're getting referrals. The real problem with referrals is... they're inconsistent. Word of mouth surrounding your accolades and experience will get you a handful of clients. But then, you're putting all of your faith in those clients to spread the word about your services. Automated business systems - like a website that sells! - allow you to be generating new clients and expanding your horse business 24/7. So: Escape via abandoning your website is out as well.

We Defend. How can we strengthen our walls and defend the old city while making sure these walls protect without restricting? Your website is supposed to convert traffic into clients. If it's not, it's doing you a huge disservice. Your website CAN & should convert clients 24/7. This can be done in a few ways. Much like you have to earn the trust of your horse through time and continued bonding experiences, the same can be said for your relationships with potential clients. Your readers and potential clients - like your horses - are SMART. They can sense the difference between authentic outreach and superficial connection. Identify your clients pain points and immediately set yourself up as a guide to lead them on the trail to the solution. Employ automated business systems to create predictability within your business.When you put tried and tested systems & tools into action on your website, you'll have the ability to dedicate the necessary time to your horses without financial or time-related worries. By strengthening your marketing and refining your website, you are proactively taking steps against the dragons - both internal dragons and external.

Thus, your dragons are SLAIN. The city is safe and the hero (that’s YOU) lives happily ever after. At HorseBizAutomated, we’ve got you. Our systems-based marketing & management approach gets consistent, profitable results for horse business owners. Implementing automated systems takes the burden off of you to conduct every element of your business and gives you your freedom back - in both your time and your finances.

Horse pros: we're here to tell you that there is another way to run your business. You don't need to choose fear and burnout in order to generate leads (and ultimately income). As horse professionals and business women ourselves, we get it. HorseBizAutomated allows us to combine our loves for the horse riding and training communities with our varied knowledge of business and marketing. We want the same for you! As a team, we work WITH you to implement our expertise in project management and digital marketing to your benefit as a heart-led horse-first business. To transform your website into a lead generation machine, check out our Free Extreme Website Makeover Guide now.