Globally, the pet industry has grown tremendously over the years. Worth $232 billion in 2021, it shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon. In the U.S alone, the pet industry is worth $99.0 billion, which means most pet-related businesses are in for a treat as they enjoy growth and an optimistic future.
While most big pet brands have already marked their territory in the digital world, how do you compete with them to make a place for your business? In this blog, we share six powerful pet marketing strategies that can help you to claim your spot at the front of the pack so your business can compete and thrive. You can also consider taking the help of marketing tools to outperform your local competitors.
Top 6 pet industry marketing strategies to maximize your efforts
1. Learn more about your target audience and define your USPs
It is clear that the pet industry is growing, but who or what factors are behind it? Pet industry market research shows that millennials have more free time and income to spoil their furry friends. But they are not the only ones to own pets. 67% of American households either have a dog or a cat.
Pets are increasingly being considered family members, which is great news for businesses in the pet industry. This shows that more pet parents are willing to spend money on items their beloved pets need, such as quality food, toys, luxury beds, and services like pet care, insurance, grooming, treatment, and more.
And then there are dog owners who are short on time, so convenience is a major factor for them. So, how can your business take advantage of this? You need to learn more about who your target audience is and define your unique selling points that fulfill their needs.
Once you identify these two things, you can list the points to promote in your marketing initiative for better results than expected. Shooting blind is not the right approach to pet marketing. You must start with actionable insights into learning whom you’re marketing your products and services to.
2. Practice SEO and content marketing to attract more organic traffic
There’s a good reason why we recommend search engine optimization (SEO) in the first place when focussing on your pet industry marketing efforts. Although it takes time to see some progress when you want organic traffic, strategic SEO campaigns can deliver maximized long-term gains.
Most people don’t want to look at page two and beyond of their search results. If your pet business doesn’t rank on page one, you can miss out on a lot of sales.
If you’re new to the concept, SEO can sound vague and mysterious. So how do you get your pet business to rank in the top 10 search results on Google? Here’s how it works.
SEO is the process of making strategic changes on and off your website to improve your ranking on the search engine result pages ( SERPs). Developing an SEO strategy involves competitor analysis, keyword research, enhancing user experience, fixing technical shortcomings, digital, PR, and other factors.
Content marketing is another critical aspect of SEO and pets marketing. You can initiate this process by starting a blog on your business website, perhaps, one of the effective ways to improve organic traffic over the long haul. Though, you can’t just write on any topic related to pets and expect glorious results.
Establishing the right keywords and topics to get good organic traffic must be a part of your content planning strategy. Make sure your content is relevant to your pet business and valuable for your readers to keep coming back for more.
3. Include digital PR to build trust and authority
To build and increase trust and authority for your pet brand, you must include digital PR in your marketing plan. But, what is digital PR?
PR includes writing useful, informative, engaging articles and publishing them on authority websites in the pet industry. These articles link back to your business’s website, establishing trust and authority for your brand. Many pet businesses have seen tremendous growth and results using this strategy.
4. Leverage PPC advertising to reach a hyper-targeted market
Whether you’re a local pet service business, a newbie in the pet food industry, or a pet e-commerce brand, an integrated and well-planned search engine marketing methodology is critical for the growth of your business.
A strategic Google Ads campaign yields immediate returns on investment (ROI), which isn’t something you see with other marketing strategies. You’ll need to learn more about keywords, user intent, and search volume for your target audience to get started. Find out what pet owners are searching for and what terms they are using on search engines. Establish how your products and services match up with those search terms.
Marketing to millennials where they spend most of their time can impact your business promotion strategies. If you’re looking to capitalize on the millennial market, delegate a portion of your budget to PPC advertising that can maximize your ROI by reaching a hyper-targeted market.
5. Incorporate email marketing to retain customers
Customer retention is key to increasing your business revenue, for which you must focus on providing the best customer service. Once you’ve figured out how to attract new leads to your website, don’t forget to encourage them to subscribe to your email list for news and updates.
Email marketing can improve your sales even if the user doesn’t convert into a customer at first. Email marketing allows you to tap into existing customers alongside new customers to sell your pet products or services.
We recommend sending monthly newsletters to everyone on your email list. Subscriptions and loyalty programs are brilliant marketing strategies for increasing upsells in the future.
Focus on adding personalized messages in your emails (welcome messages before purchase and thank you messages post-purchase), which can help you to build a strong and trusting relationship with your customers.
6. Leverage social media and influencer marketing to build brand awareness
People love scrolling through cute images of pets on social media, making it an ideal platform to promote your business.
Different social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Pinterest, and others offer their share of benefits. If you plan to have a presence across multiple social platforms, it is wise to use a professional social media marketing tool that can create, schedule, and publish content automatically.
Automating your social media with a marketing tool not only eases your job but also gives you insights into the performance of your posts. It also helps you run ad campaigns on Facebook, Instagram, and Google so that you can reach more potential clients in your area looking for pet products and services like yours.
Once your social media strategy is in place, consider taking advantage of influencer marketing to grow your reach even further.
Many pet influencers have a huge social media presence with millions of followers. You can collaborate with a few of them to expose your pet business to a large audience for brand awareness.
You can offer influencers free samples or discounts on your products and services as a part of your collaboration.
Besides influencers, you can also partner with pet bloggers and publish articles as guest blogs to reach a massive new audience. Make sure that your guest blog has a link back to your official website to attract pet owners who want to spoil their little fur babies.
Moving forward
A foolproof pet industry marketing strategy doesn’t happen overnight. You need to be consistent and motivated to keep doing everything it takes to stand out in this competitive digital world. Invest your time and money in improving your online visibility which will reward in the way of better sales and popularity.
Having said that, managing your marketing process is not so easy. To take your pet business to the forefront and amp up your revenue, you should consider taking the help of an automated social media marketing tool like Practina that allows you to manage your social media even while you’re on the go.
Sign up for free with Practina to explore this intuitive marketing tool further.
