Marketing Online

What is Marketing?

Today marketplaces are highly complex business environments that have evolved from the traditional outdoor market where vendors and customers from all over gather to buy, sell or trade. The benefit for customers is that they can find the widest selections and best prices all in one convenient place. For vendors, the marketplace offers the largest concentration of potential customers.

So whether you're selling produce at the local farmer's market, or selling your alpacas on Openherd.com, the same basic principles of the marketplace apply:

• 1. Opportunity: A busy marketplace is an incredible opportunity to sell!
• 2. Exposure: If you want to get noticed you have to STAND OUT.
• 3. Presentation: Customers have to "see" that your product is better.
• 4. Sales: The reward for doing the above well and "asking for the sale."

Therefore, marketing encompasses all the activities from beginning to end in getting noticed and putting what you have to offer in front of potential customers.

Opportunity

Unlike traditional retail websites where the product suppliers are separate entities from the customers, in the alpaca industry sellers are also buyers and buyers, sellers. So the busy-ness of the marketplace is closely tied to the number of members. Openherd.com is now the largest alpaca marketplace with over 2500 farms represented, and along with the most highly respected and effective online auctions, exclusive industry resources, such as Alpaca Show Results and Peruvian Import Records, Openherd represents the best opportunity for maximum exposure.

Exposure

In any busy marketplace there are plenty of customers but there is also a lot of competition for those customers. The way to make things work in your favor is to stand out from your competition and expose yourself to more potential customers. This is most effectively done by advertising. A simple Logo Ad on Openherd will increase visitors by an average of 200%! Reserve advertising >

Another way to increase your exposure and keep visitors on your pages is to have a variety of things to draw them in and engage them - products, services, special offers, blog updates, and lots of information about your farm, alpacas, and other topics. That's why Openherd gives every member the ability to easily blog about their farm, add as many additional web pages as they want, and upload articles. In addition to these being a way to engage visitors, it also provides search engines with more relevant content from your farm to be indexed and found in search results. Add a blog, page, or article >

Presentation

As you can see from the Sales Funnel diagram above, once you have drawn visitors to your farm, you have to show them the most appealing presentation of what you have to offer, giving them less reason to go elsewhere. A very important piece of the puzzle at this stage is having your own farm website.

Question: If you had the opportunity of doing a sales presentation to a potential customer in a public place with many other breeders present or have them come and visit your farm, which would you choose? If they visit your farm then you can fully engage them in your farm and alpacas and they'll be less likely to go elsewhere. It is the same with having your own dedicated website with your own web address (i.e. www.yourfarm.com) - your farm is more likely to be found in search engine results and potential customers will be branded with your identity and engaged in your farm and offerings, making them less likely to browse away to a competitor.

Openherd now offers complete farm websites included with any of our paid membership plans. There are no design costs, your site is instantly up and running with an included online storefront, and is completely synchronized with your Openherd account so you only have to update in one place! Learn more >

Exposure, Presentation, and Sales - All In One!

Openherd online auctions are a complete advertising, lead generation, and sales system that works! They inlcude on-site and email advertising, a very engaging and appealing auction presentation, and the opportunity to buy your alpaca right on Openherd.com, incorporating all three steps of the Sales Funnel in one package! Learn more >

Add your farm logo link below

If you add a link to Openherd on your website, we'll add yours below! This is not just exposure on Openherd but will help search engine ranking for your farm website by having a link into your site from Openherd. Just follow the instructions below...