The additional benefits of online selling, beyond the broader exposure include a reduction in cost of vendors as well as purchasers. Purchasers can save time by looking online before travelling. Vendors don’t have to muster and truck cattle to saleyards. This can create savings in time, reduction in livestock stress during the ale process as well as eliminating additional costs such as yard and transport fees.
While there are many advantages, online selling doesn’t mean you or your agent can relax too much!
Over time I have heard many people complain their online sales results weren’t what they expected. It’s common to hear, that “the price was too low”, “no one bid” “it’s not worth the hassle – I can sell them through the yards for the same money” etc… Some of these are possibly fair points. However, I don’t think that this is the fault of the process. Rather I think it underlines the difference between selling and marketing.
In my mind selling is a transaction where someone will buy cattle (often as economically as possible) for their budget. Most people look for bargains and will try and get them. And most people are a bit lazy and won’t look too hard! If they see something that sort of fits, they often buy it so they can get onto their next task!
Using an online platform to sell cattle does expose cattle to these people. But you have to remember that your cattle are now competing in a national marketplace. The audience may be bigger, but if they are just looking to buy, they may not look at everything on offer. And potentially your cattle may miss out.
That’s the risk of just selling.
Marketing, on the other hand is, in my mind at least, the process of creating awareness and demand for your cattle. This in turn creates interest and should encourage people to purchase as an informed choice, not just as a lazy “it’ll do” choice but as a purchase of the right option.
Online platforms are perfect to support marketing. These platforms give you the chance to tell potential buyers more about your cattle than just breed, age sex and weight. You can use these as starting points to describe the markets they suit or the roles in a herd they could fill as breeders or trade cattle.
