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Professional Photographs - Don't Sell Horses Short
Sarah Gjosund

So many people with small to medium sized businesses in the horse industry drastically underestimate the importance that professional photographs have on their marketing material and the image of their company and products.

Marketing Pieces

In order to illustrate how important great images are, I have added a few examples of marketing pieces where the images are essentially the design.

2004 ad for Riverside Ranch stallion Unique in the Dark, Victoria Max Theurer website designed by Hernuss concept by Horse-Gate Nimbus ad design by Susan J Stickle

Try to imagine the advertisements pictured above without the images, pretty boring eh?

Have you ever wanted to produce a piece like those, only to fall woefully short? If you look closely you will find that 9 times out of 10 your photo's are not up to snuff and your marketing piece begins to look like a scrap booking project. We can plainly see by the examples that great photographs make a statement, convey a message, elicit a feeling... they are, in my opinion, the most important factor in producing successful marketing material for the horse industry.

Sale Horses

Clear and correct sales images are so important if you want to maximize the profit on your sales horses. I'm not saying you have to have professional images to sell your horses, although it certainly helps to get them sold faster and with improved profit on the sale.

The sales photos above were taken by Gisela Dykstra of Alberta, Canada and are an excellent example of the type of sales photos brokers and breeders should use in advertising their horses.

A truly outstanding horse doesn't really need advertising at all, he'll sell himself. It's the somewhat less marketable horses where you will find the true benefit of using professional photographs. If you can make a positive impression on a potential buyer, typically they will begin to create assumptions based on the image and those perceptions will slowly become a reality to them. By the time the client steps in the barn for a test ride the horse is already half sold!... now that's a valuable picture!

Stallions

It is particularly important for stallion owners to use professional photographs. The career of many of the worlds most successful stallions have been aided by one special image from his prime and used for decades in promotional material.

Think about it, how many photographs have you seen of Flemmingh? Florestan 1 or Voltaire?

That's right, only one or two and they're good photograph's from each stallions prime, many times (as is the case with Florestan and Flemmingh) you won't see a photograph of them in motion either... this lasting image must inspire the breeders and it has proven to do just that.

Flemmingh, Voltaire and Florestan I

In short, treat your stallion like a movie star, keep him away from the paparazzi and prevent any unflattering photographs or video footage from becoming publicly available and that includes in your own marketing material.

I guess the moral of the story is less is more, keep trying to get a great photograph of your stallion and once you have one that works don't change it!

Conclusion

I hope that we have been able to convince you of the importance of investing in professional photographs for your business. At the very least budget $1,000 per year to have a photographer come and photograph your sales horses and facility or even buying professional photo's at horse shows. I can guarantee it will pay off in the long run.