Brands in the pet product business know that the online competition is quite intense. However, there is still much room for brands of all sizes to grow in this industry. Being a pet business owner, you can unleash all your efforts and boost sales using digital marketing.
According to a recent study, pet ownership is constantly rising in the country, paving the way for brands to buy pet services and products. Suppose you have been in the pet product business for a while or have entered the competition. In that case, you can thrive in this competitive marketing by knowing how digital marketing can boost sales for your pet product business.
Challenges Faced by Pet Product Businesses
The pet product industry shows good growth opportunities; however, there are also several challenges. One of the biggest challenges faced by businesses that are into pet products is competition from brick-and-mortar stores that sell pet products and provide various pet services.
Another challenge that cannot be ignored in the pet industry is the change in consumer behavior. Pet owners are digitally savvy and love to shop online. This has led to an increase in e-commerce stores that sell pet products. So, it is important to have a good presence to stay ahead of the competitors in your industry.
Also, the Covid-19 pandemic showed an impact on the pet industry. We can also see a change in the spending habits of many pet owners post-pandemic. They are now willing to spend for the well-being of their pets. We also see that more people are now coming forward to adopt pets that were abandoned due to housing or financial issues.
A pet product brand must understand such changes and challenges and change its products or services to cater to the changing needs of its customers.
In this post, learn about proven digital marketing strategies to help your brand reach more pet parents and sell more pet products and services.
Helps Understand Your Target Audience Better and Define the USPs
The pet industry is rapidly growing, and the millennials are fuelling this growth, but they are not the only demographic spending on their pet companions. Most households in the country have a dog, a cat, or a fish tank.
Irrespective of the age group, pets are treated more like family members, and this is indeed great news for brands that sell pet products and services. Brands can find a target audience willing to spend on pet food, pet accessories, toys, pet grooming products, and more.
Another factor pet product businesses should consider is that pet owners are mostly busy and do not have much time to visit a store, especially on weekdays. Companies can consider this major factor and tap into the online pet product market.
Digital marketing can help brands know their target audience and define USPs to meet their needs and wants. The above factors will help you as a brand to understand what to emphasize in your digital marketing campaigns. You can market your product or service effectively to the right audience when you have actionable insights, and this is just one of the things an expert digital marketing team can help you with.
Helps Bring in Traffic Organically with Content Marketing, SEO, and local SEO
If there is one segment you need to focus on to get the best results for your pet product marketing, it is Search Engine Optimization, and there is a good valid reason to do so. Though it takes to see some progress, a well-planned SEO campaign can help drive consistent traffic in the long run.
Many business owners ignore the simplest facts of them all. No user looks beyond the second page of search results, and many do not go beyond the first page. So, if your pet product or service business isn't on page one, you are missing out on most of the sales.
SEO may seem mysterious, especially when new to digital marketing. So, let's explore a few basics here.
Search Engine Optimization is a process where strategic changes are made to your website, both online and offline. This helps improve the page ranking and gain visibility on search results. SEO involves a strategic plan, which again is created based on research related to,
Keywords
- Technical issues on the website
- Competitor analysis
- How efficient the existing digital PR is, and,
- The user experience
Content Marketing
Content marketing is also essential to a well-planned & well-researched Search Engine Optimization campaign. The best place is the blog on your pet product website. You can start adding informative blogs with relevant keywords and see an increase in organic traffic in just a few months.
But you cannot write about anything and everything and expect to witness a rapid increase in organic traffic. Content marketing also requires planning and research, and the content added should include the right topics and keywords to attract the right audience to your website. The blogs should also be relevant and informative and written in the right tone, which brings back the readers for more.
Local SEO
Local SEO helps improve the presence of a pet business in a specific location. For pet product businesses, their brand appears in search results of their geographic location whenever a user searches for pet products or services. Brands can do the same by creating a profile on Google My Business and optimizing it. Positive reviews can also boost visibility, which, when combined with SEO, can bring in more customers.
Helps With Voice Search Optimization
The popularity of voice assistants is increasing daily. Hence, this increases the need to optimize the website of your pet business for voice search. Brands need to know how users use voice search to find pet products or services and focus more on long-tail keywords and conversational language. Adding a few FAQs with informative answers can also drive a lot of traffic and boost the visibility and sales of pet product businesses.
Helps Increase Authority and Trust
Digital PR is also an effective way to increase your pet product's brand authority and trust. When you use digital PR for marketing your pet product business, you publish informative and compelling articles on other blogs and websites with high authority in the same industry. These articles link to your website, increasing the brand's trust and authority for search engines and blogs. This strategy can scale a pet product business to new heights when used right. Brands need to ensure that the articles shared are useful to readers and avoid overpromotion of the brand.
Helps Reach Target Audience Using PPC Advertising
A well-thought-out digital marketing strategy can also help grow your pet product business online. If you are looking for an immediate result on the investment made, a digital marketing firm can help you with the same via a Google Ad Campaign. Google ad campaigns can bring immediate ROI when planned well, which is hard to find in other marketing strategies.
Before you start with the ad campaign, brands into pet products should understand the use of the right keywords, the user's search intent, and the terms they use to search for pet-related information on search engines, then, brands need to think about how the pet products they are offering can match up to the search intent and terms.
If you plan to market your pet products to millennials, you need to spend on platforms where they often spend their time, mostly on social media. This market can be targeted using PPC advertising on Facebook and Instagram, which are social media platforms with huge audiences. Pet product brands that want to focus on the millennial market to boost the sales of their pet products need to delegate a part of their marketing budget towards PPC Advertising.
Helps You Retain Your Customers Via Email Marketing
Brands that want to increase their revenue should not just focus on gaining new customers. They also should retain their existing customers. Once you have a new customer or a visitor on your website, you can encourage them to subscribe to your newsletter.
Email marketing may not drive sales immediately, but brands can increase sales by educating customers/visitors about pet products and services. A visitor can be converted into a loyal customer by using email marketing. Brands can include tips or share coupon codes via emails, which will boost sales with every email. Brands can build a long-lasting relationship with their customers by sending welcome, post-purchase, and even personalized messages, adding value to the brand and the customers' journey.
Helps Improve Brand Awareness Through Influencer Marketing and Social Media
Everyone loves to see videos and pictures of pets. Cat and dog videos are the most watched on social media platforms. So, pet product business brands can build brand awareness via platforms like Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook. Brands can easily manage the accounts on all platforms using social media tools and view all the stats on one dashboard.
The right social media marketing strategy can be combined with influencer marketing to increase the reach of your pet products. A few studies have also shown that pet influencer marketing is one of the best strategies to boost brand awareness and sales. You can choose influencers with good followers and engagement. This is one way to reach the target audience easily. Many pet product brands also offer free samples or discounts on the first purchase when they use an influencer code.
Another platform that can bring in good sales is pet blogs. You can choose pet blogs with good organic traffic and collaborate with them for a guest post. The guest post should include at least one follow link to your brand's website. This way, you promote your pet product brand and improve the website's link authority.
How do you find a reputed and reliable marketing agency for a pet product business?
Brands must invest time before they hire a digital marketing agency for their pet product business. Listed below are a few tips that can help you find one.
- Find One Based on Your Goals – You need first to understand what you wish to achieve with the assistance of a digital marketing agency. When you are clear about your goal, it acts as a guide to searching for the best pet product business agency.
- Assess – Always look for digital marketing agencies with a good track record and have previously worked in the pet product sector. Before you shortlist any agency, check their portfolio, reviews, and case studies. Also, check their content creation, social media marketing, branding, SEO and influencer marketing expertise. It would help if you also had an agency that is creative and has a good understanding of the trends in the pet market.
- Budget- Agencies have different packages, and this depends on the services they provide. Also, different agencies have different packages. So, picking one that can provide quality service within your budget is important.
- Communication – A reputed digital marketing agency understands how important timely communication with the client is. You can schedule a few calls and meetings to understand how the team communicates and how knowledgeable they are in the pet market.
- Trust & Transparency – The relationship between a client and an agency is based on mutual trust and being transparent. So, pick a digital marketing agency in Gurgaon that is reliable, transparent, and you are comfortable with. The agency needs to be confident in representing your brand.
- Request & Compare Proposals – Once you have shortlisted agencies based on the above factors, ask for a proposal and compare their timelines, strategies, budget and outcomes.
Final Thoughts
Digital marketing does not make miracles happen overnight but helps organically bring consistent traffic and sales over time. This is required if you want to stay ahead of your competition in the online marketing space.
When brands into pet products and services invest their money and time, it improves their brand's visibility and authority, boosting sales. Learning all the tips we mentioned here would certainly take time; hence, hiring a reputed, reliable, and experienced digital marketing agency to handle the same for you is wise. Make smart decisions today, and get rewarded with amazing sales!