Purebred Livestock Marketing: Print Media (Part Three of Six)

“Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark. You know what you are doing, but nobody else does.”

– Steuart Henderson Britt

The long-term success of your operation is closely hinged on being able to find and retain buyers for your livestock year after year. Effective advertising is key to making potential customers aware of your operation, and garnering enough of their interest to have them take action – that may be looking into your operation further online, contacting you, coming to see your livestock and hopefully, ultimately making a purchase. With the rise in digital marketing avenues you may think that print materials are a thing of the past. Consider your audience and think again. With the majority of livestock buyers still being of a generation that understands handshakes but not hashtags, having a printed handout to give them will go a long way. There is something to be said about a real, tangible advertisement that can be held in your hands. Social media posts are inexpensive or free but they can be easily passed over. A printed brochure, postcard or sale catalogue captures attention like nothing else – especially when personally addressed to the recipient. In an era where e-mail inboxes are bombarded by an endless stream of promotional and junk e-mails, it is easy for e-blasts to be left unopened or quickly deleted. When cattle producers receive a postcard advertisement or catalogue from another cattle producer via old fashioned snail mail, it is rarely tossed in the waste bin before, at minimum, a quick look and read through is done. If the recipient is interested in your offering, that catalogue may become as well worn as a favourite book – coffee stains, corners folded over on favourite lots, marks and highlights made on important information. That is the value of print material. It is tangible, and in today’s highly technology orientated world, it may even be considered unique and refreshing to add a little ‘old-fashioned’ to your marketing mix.

BUSINESS CARDS

Business cards are your first order of business when developing print materials. No matter what type of livestock (or other business venture) you have, whether you show or not, business cards are a must. They are a very minimal investment but can be used to advertise your business is a variety of ways. The first being the typical exchange of business cards when meeting prospective customers – whether that be at a show or sale, or maybe even a more unconventional place like a store, church, or at your children’s school or sports. You never know when you might have a conversation with someone who may be interested in your stock so keep a stash of business cards on you and in a variety of easy to access places. Some ideas of places to keep some business cards include your wallet, purse, credit card holder on the back of your phone, in your truck console or glove box, your show box, and in your barn. If you are exhibiting cattle at a show or have cattle on display at an event, have a supply of business cards laid out or in a business card holder on a table nearby. Pin your business cards up on the bulletin boards of auction markets, farm supply stores, veterinary clinics, western stores, and any other businesses you feel cattle producers may frequent. Expand your scope outside of your local community, pinning your business cards up in establishments even if they are not in your local area.

BROCHURES

A standard brochure is an 8.5 x 11 inch paper, folded into three sections giving you six panels of space to design, however there are a multitude of other sizes and folding options available. Typically, the front page is utilized as your cover and will contain your logo. The back panel is often used for contact information, and possibly a map to your ranch. Brochures can serve a number of purposes. They can be directly mailed to customers, put out on a table at your stall display at a show, handed out at open houses and field days, or pinned to bulletin boards at local businesses. In most cases your brochure would contain general information about your operation or services. Keep your text concise and use professional, high resolution photos that are sized large enough in the brochure to be effective. Investing in the

help of a graphic designer to put your brochure together will ensure a professional outcome that you would not be able to achieve by printing at home.

POSTCARDS

Postcards are an affordable promotional piece that can be self-mailed if they are a standard 4x6 inch card. While the front side is available for information, only one quarter of the backside can contain design and that must include the return address. The remaining three quarters of the back side must be left blank for the postal mailing label, bar code and stamp. If you will be mailing the card in an envelope or only using them for handouts, then both sides of the card can be utilized for design. Postcards are commonly used for sale/open house/field day reminders, promotion of a featured consignment to a sale, promotion of an AI sire, or an announcement such as a herd dispersal.

SALE CATALOGUES

For producers who host an annual sale, the sale catalogue is a tremendously important piece of their sale preparation. It is a large, time consuming undertaking that includes organizing clipping and picturing of the lots, writing footnotes and a welcoming address, and gathering EPDs, pedigrees, performance and breeding data and other relevant information for the catalogue designer. You will be thankful to have a professional designer handle putting together your sale book. It is advisable to have your catalogue in the hands of your customers two to four weeks ahead of your sale. Book your help and service providers such as professional livestock photographers and catalogue designers early. Discuss your timeline with your catalogue designer. They will give you a deadline for material submission. Clipping, picturing and videoing can take much longer than expected, especially if the weather is not on your side. Make sure you have many hands on deck for picturing and videoing day(s). It greatly speeds up the processes and minimizes everyone’s stress (at least somewhat!). Have a couple ‘cattle-savvy’ helpers for moving the cattle, getting ears, and others getting the cattle ready and moving the cattle in and out of the picture pen so the photographer is never waiting long for the next lot. You may also wish to include supporting photos such as sire, dam, full siblings or progeny of merit in your catalogue.

Online bidding at the Six Mile Female sale at Canadian Western Agribition.

Photo by ShowChampions.

Once your lots are finalized, begin on footnotes. Footnotes can be written in sentence or point form or, for sales with a very large number of lots, you may choose to forgo footnotes on some or all lots. Good footnotes highlight an animal’s most interesting and marketable traits – be those phenotype, notable pedigree, or EPD and performance information that is exemplary. Be sure to include breeding information on females, such as AI or exposure dates and service sire, as well as if they are determined safe in calf. For minimal cost, breed associations can provide you or your catalogue designer with an Excel spreadsheet download of the three generation pedigree, performance and current EPD information on each of your lots that can then be uploaded into your catalogue format, saving hours of manual work and possible errors. Once the catalogue design process is underway, avoid adding or removing lots unless absolutely necessary. This will likely incur you extra fees as changes such as this are time consuming and affect the entire layout of the catalogue.

Discuss your wishes for your catalogue layout with your designer. Economically speaking, put as many lots on one page as you can while maintaining readability. Usually no more than four lots with photos can be put on one page. Featured lots may be displayed on their own page if you have budget and room within the catalogue. Your cover will have your sale or operation name, date, time and location. It is ideal to also include this information on the back of your catalogue so it can be easily found regardless of which direction your catalogue is laying. Some operations include a map to the sale on the back of the catalogue, while others have this on one of the first inside pages. The first pages of catalogues may contain a welcome letter from the operation owners, schedule of events, contact information and sale day phone numbers, livestock insurance provider, and staff such as the auctioneer, ring service, and sales management and/ or consultants. If online viewing and bidding will be available, make that known in your catalogue. You may wish to explain EPDs or other data, make note of herd health and semen testing specifics and boarding and delivery terms, and it is standard to state that announcements on sale day will take precedence over what is printed in the catalogue. Include local hotels and travel information if you feel it is pertinent to your buyers. Most breed associations have a standard set of sale terms and conditions that can be referenced in your catalogue or full terms and conditions can be printed. It can be helpful to look through catalogues of other operations you admire to spark ideas for your own catalogue. Keep in mind that catalogues are printed in four page increments. Your designer will work closely with you and may ask for family pictures or photos from around your operation, a thank you page for past buyers, or other fillers should there be extra pages that need content. The value of utilizing a professional to develop your catalogue, especially one who is well versed in the purebred livestock business, cannot be understated.

Your catalogue designer will provide you with a proof of your catalogue. Be sure to look every detail over closely and have multiple other people look it over as well. Report your changes to your designer. Catalogues may take multiple proofs to get right. Considering the importance of this document and the expense of printing and mailing, you want to make sure you look it over with a fine tooth comb. Once the final approval is made, the catalogue can be uploaded to an online platform by your designer. You can then post the catalogue to your website, send an e-blast announcing the catalogue availability online, and share the link via social media. Your designer will likely have a preferred printer, or you may wish to shop around for quotes. When comparing printing companies make sure you are comparing apples to apples. Ask for quotes on the same quantity, page size, number of pages, paper weight and style, binding (saddle stitch, coil, etc.), colour of ink (full colour – which is typical, black and white or colour covers with black and white inside pages), pick up or delivery and ask the turnaround time. You may wish to get quotes on a few different quantities as the price per unit typically goes down as the quantity increases. It is better to have more catalogues on hand than to run out and printing a small number of extras at a later date will be expensive so ensure you order a quantity that covers your entire mailing list, presume no one will bring their catalogue to sale day, and get some extras for additional catalogue requests, taking to shows/events, etc. It is ideal to book in with your printer ahead of time – your catalogue designer may well take care of this, discuss printing with him/her when you begin working together.

Maintaining a catalogue mailing list is essential. All past buyers should be on your mailing list unless there is a reason, such as them getting out of the cattle business, that would warrant removing them. Whenever you have a positive interaction with a potential customer, ask them if they would like to be added to your catalogue mailing list. Contact your breed association for a mailing list. Your Association may be able to provide you with separate lists for current breeder members and commercial buyers. Some Associations may be able to sort the commercial list by the last year a bull was purchased by the buyer so you can narrow down your list to perhaps only buyers who have purchased a bull of that breed in the past three years. If these lists are provided to you in a spreadsheet you will be able to sort them any way you please, such as by province, and eliminate those you do not desire to include on your mailing list. You can also find duplicate names and decide if you should eliminate them. It will take some effort to build and maintain a complete and organized mailing list, but it is well worth it. Most professional catalogue designers and sales management companies have a Canada Post postal indicia which eliminates the need for placing a stamp on the back of each catalogue. Canada Post delivery can vary from a day to over a week to some parts of rural Canada. Once your catalogue is in the mail you can breath at least a small sigh of relief and appreciate all of the hard work that has culminated in the pages of this document.

From relatively inexpensive direct mail pieces to the large investment of time and money that goes into the production of a sale catalogue, print material will always have its place in thepromotion of purebred livestock. In part 4 ofour six-part series we will discuss the multitudeof advertising methods and options, as well as how to build a better print advertisement to stand out from the rest.