The pet industry grows in value and size every single year. This steady incline often brings new trends and products, making it increasingly harder for pet businesses to stand out. For example, 2024 saw trends in pet supplements and natural pet products rising significantly. Searches for ‘dog probiotics’, in particular, were brought up by 91% over the last 5 years. Moreover, searches for ‘natural pet food’ have been up by 500% in the last 10 years, according to Exploding Topics.
By implementing an effective marketing strategy, you can ensure your brand remains well aligned with emerging industry trends to productively attract and retain customers. In this blog, we’ll discuss your options when it comes to pet marketing and how VerriBerri can help you exceed your targets!
Define your Target Customer
In order to understand what trends are relevant to your pet business, you must understand who your ideal customer is. Moreover, you need to know what they look for in the products and services they buy. Many factors will influence this process of segmentation, for example, the customer’s age, behaviours, finances, location, and much more.
The better you know your audience and their preferences, the more tailored your marketing efforts and branding can be. This is important, as authentic and consistent narratives improve brand image, attract consumers, and often result in enhanced loyalty. Acknowledging the wants and needs of your consumers will allow your company to incorporate aligning trends. It will also allow you to avoid trends that aren’t distinctly relevant, to prevent unnecessary efforts. Refining exactly who the target audience is for your specific brand and its offerings also allows you to find the best places and times to target them, overall supporting effective marketing.
Utilise Social Media
Whoever your target demographic is, your pet business can likely reach them on social media. With a variety of platforms and types of content available, there are many ways to promote your company and engage with your audience.
There is a plethora of information about the usage of social media in the UK, which can be explored further here. One example is a study by Statista, which reports that as of January 2024, there were 56.2 million active social media users in the UK alone. This vast number is evidence of the potential customers that can be reached and converted. However, with so many users and an array of platforms at your disposal, connecting your business to your target audience can be particularly challenging. Your content and strategy must be aligned with the intended viewers in order to be advantageous. Partnering with a marketing agency can be significantly beneficial to maximising your social media use. Our specialist team has successfully assisted many clients in reaching their full potential on an array of platforms and can provide this expertise for your brand too.
Retention with Email Marketing
Once customers are obtained, it’s essential to make efforts to convert them into returning consumers of your pet business. There are various ways to do this and this can differ depending on factors such as the type of product/service you provide.
One way of increasing customer retention is through strategic email marketing. This technique allows you to address your audience personally, with key information that is likely to provoke desired customer action. For example, you can encourage particular sales with promotional content like discount codes.
Emails can also be a reliable way to measure metrics such as your click through rate, open rates, and other performance indicators, while additionally driving website traffic. In order to increase the effectiveness of these emails, it’s integral to have optimal scheduling, text, and visual design. This can be a complex task without knowledge or experience. Fortunately, our team are experts in this area and can support your brand in creating and implementing an effective email campaign.
Search Engine Optimisation
The goal of SEO is to ensure your pet business is being presented to potential customers through relevant searches. Consumers are largely dependent on the convenience of online shopping and many industries rely on E-Commerce to contribute largely to their sales; the pet industry is no exception. This makes it vital for companies to prioritise SEO best practices to increase chances of visibility, traffic and, ultimately, sales.
While SEO is consistently a challenging task, it is becoming progressively more complex with the development of AI overviews on the SERP. Working with a specialist marketing team ensures that your content is always aligned with the frequent changes in SEO guidelines. Our talented team are trained in the intricacies of SEO and how to successfully implement the best practices for optimal results.
Public Relations
While often considered separate to marketing, we hold the belief that PR is crucially linked to effective marketing as it can strengthen efforts by promoting brand and product credibility. Gaining the trust of potential customers is key to business growth and long term consumer relationships. This is especially pertinent for the pet business industry, where products and services are often scrutinised before being purchased. In fact, there has been an influx of online information and reports about safety and quality concerns of different products available for pets, and what should be bought alternatively. For example, an article by the New York Times focussed on this topic, reporting on the benefits of fresh pet food. Consequently, the importance of having PR strategies in place for your company is evident to publicly highlight the advantages of your offerings and brand as a whole.
PR is not just a tool to increase media exposure. It can also be used for crisis management too. All businesses have obstacles and the mitigation of them is integral to sustain a respectable reputation. Overall, the interconnection of PR and effective marketing secures the best results for our clients by building and developing strong branding that drives consumer actions.
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Our company is comprised of an expert team of marketing specialists, providing a turnkey service to help our clients reach their goals. As an award-winning team that works with companies in various sectors, we are able to build a tailored and effective marketing strategy for your specific needs and targets.
Interested in elevating and diversifying your marketing efforts? Get in contact with our team today! Fill in our contact form here or call us to find out more about how we can help on 01376 386 850.