Whether you have a couple of stables at home or a large equestrian centre, if you have livery vacancies, you’ll want to get them filled. The best way to do this is to advertise, but advertising can be complicated. With so many yards available, getting an advert to generate enquiries means putting in a little work to make your yard stand out.
This advice doesn’t just apply to yards advertising on LiveryList; it should be followed wherever you advertise your business. Don’t miss out on potential clients because of simple mistakes or omissions, and don’t be afraid to shout about how wonderful your yard is!
1. Advertise All Year Round – Not Just When You Have Vacancies
Many yards make the mistake of only advertising when they have vacancies, in order to reduce costs or avoid unwanted enquiries. However, the best approach is to advertise year-round.
This means you won’t miss out on enquiries and can build up a waiting list. Many yards use this approach so that when a vacancy does arise, they already have several potential clients on standby. This means they can fill the space almost immediately and even have the option to select the most suitable candidate, rather than simply taking the first person who comes along.
An empty stable costs money, so advertising throughout the year for the cost of a few extra pounds makes good business sense.
If you offer other services alongside livery, such as rider training, facility hire or events, you can continue to advertise these throughout the year, irrespective of whether you have vacancies.
In an increasingly online world, having an internet presence is one of the best ways to promote your business and allow potential clients to find you easily. Whether you have a permanent advert on a site such as LiveryList, a website or social media pages, keeping these updated and active throughout the year is a relatively low-cost way to promote what you offer.
As for dealing with unwanted enquiries when you’re full, it’s far better to send regular ‘sorry, we are currently full’ replies than not to receive the enquiries at all. People may be looking to move yards weeks or even months in advance, so by the time they’re ready to move, you may well have a space available.
2. Have a Permanent Place to Advertise
Whether it’s an advert, a website or social media pages, make sure you have somewhere permanent where people can find information about your yard.
It surprises me how many yards have no online presence at all. The cost of setting up a basic website is relatively low these days, often costing less than £100 a year to set up and maintain.
There are many simple website platforms with basic editing tools that allow you to update your content as necessary, although you’ll still need some basic knowledge to manage them. Alternatively, you could spend a little more on having a professional company design, host and manage a website for you.
Many yards already have social media pages, such as Facebook. These can be used to a yard’s advantage if they are updated regularly with quality content about the yard, its services and current news.
Another option is to have a listing on a website such as LiveryList. These are easy to set up and come with their own dedicated link, which can effectively be used as a website for your yard, as the listing can contain all the necessary information.
There’s no technical skill required and no need to worry about hosting or managing a website. Even better, if you opt for a ‘Featured Listing’, the listing is professionally edited with your brand colours, logos, unlimited photos and wording. This gives you a professional page that reflects your business and can be linked to from social media pages, Facebook adverts or other listings.
3. Regularly Check and Update Your Advertising
It’s important to keep your adverts and website current at all times, or at least schedule a regular reminder to log in and update them.
Advertising on sites such as LiveryList, where you have control over your yard listing, allows you to log in and change or update any details at any time. This could be something as simple as changing a phone number or a complete overhaul of your listing.
Whilst there are many livery yard directory sites offering free listings, these are often unable to be edited and can remain online for many years, even when the details are incorrect. With no way to remove or update these listings, they can cause confusion for people looking for livery, particularly if yards have closed or changed hands.
Make sure you include every package, facility and service you offer in your adverts and on your website, and ensure these are kept up to date.
If you change your services or add facilities, update your adverts and website to reflect this. Remember to include photos of any new facilities or improvements to existing ones.
Keeping your listings up to date helps potential clients get in touch and ensures you are promoting everything you have to offer.
My recommendation is to set aside an hour once a month to log in to your listings and check that everything is current.
4. Check Your Contact Details
One of the most frustrating comments we hear from LiveryList users is that sometimes they don’t receive a reply when they enquire to a yard.
If you’ve moved yards or changed your phone number or email address, don’t forget to update any contact details shown on your listings.
Failure to do this means you won’t receive enquiries from people interested in your vacancies, facility hire or services, potentially resulting in lost income.
It’s been shown that only a small percentage of people will try to contact an unresponsive business a second time, so it’s a shame to miss out on potential clients because of such a basic mistake.
If your contact details change, make sure you update your adverts as soon as possible.
5. Use Good Quality Photos
Do you know that people are much more likely to click on an advert if it includes photos? If you have the opportunity to add photos to your advert, why wouldn’t you?
Some adverts limit the number of photos you can upload, so it’s important to prioritise the images that you feel best sell your yard to potential clients.
Just two or three well-taken photos can help convey the yard and its facilities. Although you may be a professional rider offering your services, remember that it’s the yard you’re promoting. Adding one or two photos of yourself riding or competing won’t hurt, but the priority should be photos of the yard and its facilities.
If you don’t have any current photos of the yard, set aside some time to take some. A simple walk around the yard with your phone or camera should be enough to capture suitable images of the facilities on offer.
Make sure the photos are clear and well composed, and think about the order in which you display them. At most, a couple of photos of each area of the yard or each facility should be sufficient.
The more photos you can upload, the better you can convey what the yard has to offer.
Photos are particularly important at times when unnecessary contact should be avoided. Giving potential clients the ability to ‘view’ the yard through photographs, or even take a video tour, is likely to save you both time if they decide it isn’t the right yard for them.
6. Think About Your Listing Title and Wording
There are so many listings for yards with titles such as ‘Livery Available’, ‘Full Livery’ or ‘5* Livery Yard’.
Describe your service, but also include your yard name in the listing title. This makes it unique, helps users find your listing and makes it stand out.
The content of your advert is equally important. The description is your opportunity to convey what you have to offer, both in terms of the yard and its facilities, and as a business.
Include all the things offered by the yard and focus on the positives. Although some details may be included elsewhere in the advert, the description allows you to convey what you offer in a concise way. It’s the perfect opportunity to sell your yard’s services, location, ethos and more to potential clients.
However, it’s also important not to include too much information. Keep the wording short and to the point. There may be specific details that only need to be discussed when someone visits the yard, or in particular circumstances, such as the detailed inclusions of individual livery packages.
If you have a website that potential clients can click through to, where this information is already available, you can leave some details out of the advert. However, it’s important to make sure the information is consistent between your advert and your website.
Important Points to Cover in Your Advert Description
Consider including the following:
- Where are you based? What is the surrounding area like, and is the yard easy to access?
- Who runs the yard, and what experience do they have?
- What makes your yard stand out?
- What livery packages do you offer?
- What sort of liveries do you have (for example, competitive riders or retired horses)?
- What facilities do you offer or include for livery clients?
- Is the hacking good in your area?
- Are you an Approved yard, or do you have qualified staff or instructors on site?
- Do you run shows or events, or offer training at the yard?
- Are you near competition centres or training venues?
- Do you offer facility hire or any services to non-liveries?
- Do you have any specific rules that may put people off (for example, no children, isolation or mares only)?
- How is it best for potential clients to contact you?
7. Think About Creating a Brand
Creating a brand may seem a little over the top for a small livery yard with just a few spaces, but having an identity for your yard can only be a positive thing.
Having a brand, or even just a logo and a brand colour, can make your yard appear more professional and help it stand out from the rest.
This isn’t just beneficial for your adverts and website. Your branding can also be used on yard documentation and even incorporated into staff workwear or competition clothing.
Gone are the days when creating a brand was an expensive exercise. Logos can easily be created for free using websites such as Looka, and having a brand colour can be as simple as changing the colour of your text or other elements to match your logo.
8. Check Your Advert Before Submitting It
You don’t want something trivial, such as poor spelling, to affect people’s perception of your yard. Potential clients may think that if you take little care with your advertising, you might take just as little care with your liveries!
If possible, check an advert, or anything else you post online, before it is published.
There is nothing worse than submitting an advert only to spot a glaring error afterwards, particularly if it’s an advert you cannot edit once submitted.
Sometimes it’s just a slip of the finger that turns ‘equestrian’ into ‘equestrain’, but it’s important to check an advert word for word before it goes into the public domain.
Previewing your advert is important, not just so you can check the wording and details, but also to check how the finished advert looks.
A photo may look great when you upload it, but it might not come across so well in the published advert. For example, the file may be too small or may not have uploaded properly.
It’s also important to check any links you’ve submitted to ensure they work correctly.
9. Let Potential Clients See More
Many listing sites allow you to include links to your website or social media pages, but these are only useful if they work!
Make sure these links are active and go to the right place. It’s quick and easy to check them before adding them to an advert, and remember to keep them updated.
For example, if you change the username of your Facebook page, the previous link will no longer work and will take users to an error page.
The same applies to website links, so it’s important to check your website regularly for any issues.
One click on a faulty link to your website or social media page could mean that a potential client doesn’t bother looking any further for the information they were seeking.
10. Let Others Sell Your Yard for You
It’s all very well selling your yard through a well-laid-out, informative advert or website, but client reviews come ‘from the horse’s mouth’, as it were!
What better way to fill your vacancies than by letting your current or past clients help you?
If you can get reviews for your yard added to your listing or social media pages, this will give potential clients an idea of what it’s like to be part of your yard family.
On LiveryList, for example, we have thousands of yard reviews submitted by past and present liveries at our listed yards. Every time a new review is added, it gives the yard in question a little more promotion, with no extra effort from the yard owner.
11. If You Have Vacancies, Let Everyone Know
Advertising year-round is a great plan, but when you have existing vacancies, you need to shout about them!
You can share adverts on local Facebook groups, update your own website or share posts on your social media pages. Even if you’re simply putting up a card in a local tack shop, you still need to make your advert stand out.
It’s important to get as much exposure as possible, so contact the sites where you advertise your yard and see if they can give you some extra promotion when you have spaces available.
For example, at LiveryList we follow all of our yards with ‘Featured Listings’ on our social media channels, so we can share posts about available vacancies. Other yard owners can simply send us a message and ask us to post about their vacancies.
These posts are then seen and shared by our followers, helping yards generate enquiries.
The best way to get your spaces filled is to get your adverts in front of people!
12. Respond to Enquiries Promptly
Whether you have vacancies or not, it’s important to respond to enquiries in good time.
It would be a shame to miss out on filling a space simply because you were too slow to reply.
Even if you’re full, a polite and courteous message can make a real difference, and you may well find that horse owners return with another enquiry at a later date.
Advertise Your Yard on LiveryList
If you have livery vacancies to advertise, there is no better place to advertise than LiveryList.
It’s an established and proven platform for yard owners to advertise their vacancies and services. You can advertise your yard from just £12 a year, and the design of our listings makes them effective and easy to maintain.
We also have a large social media following, as well as links to many professional equestrian associations and businesses, making LiveryList a well-respected and widely shared platform for yard owners.
With LiveryList You Can:
- Log in 24/7 to update your listing.
- Upload an unlimited number of photos, with no cap on the length of your description.
- Include detailed information about the packages, services and facilities you offer.
- Provide links to your own website and social media pages.
- Take out a ‘Featured Listing’ that will be professionally edited.
- Incorporate your logo and brand colours.
- Receive enquiries directly to your own inbox, making it quick and easy to respond.
- Advertise all year round.
- Show users when you are full or have a waiting list.
- Have reviews submitted to your listing.
If you’re a yard owner looking for support with managing any aspect of your yard, LiveryList also runs the Livery Yard Owners UK – Discussions and Advice Facebook group.
This is a closed group, especially for verified owners across the UK. It’s a friendly and welcoming space where yard owners can discuss and share advice, as well as network with other yard owners in their area.