5 more ways to use social media in pet marketing

By Jen Phillips April for PetCopywriter.com

Social media offers a perfect opportunity for pet marketers. With a well thought out campaign, you can reach thousands of potential customers and develop loyal brand advocates.

After all, social media is where your customers are. There’s nothing pet lovers enjoy more than conversing with other pet lovers and sharing pictures of their fur kids on social media.

Don’t believe me? The American Kennel Club has 111 thousand followers on Twitter. The hashtag #dogsofinstagram has over 2 dozen posts in three days. The industry conference Blogpaws spent weeks gearing up for the big event with Twitter parties and dozens of posts across Facebook, Instagram, etc.

Chances are, you are at least using Facebook to engage with your customers.

Yet, the dilemma a lot of pet marketers face is they don’t know how to harness the power of social media. With that in mind, here’s how your pet business or veterinary practice can develop a sales funnel via social media and track your results.

Social Media for Pet Marketing

1. Develop brand advocates.

Social media is a natural fit for pet marketers. Pictures of pets can be cute, goofy or serious. They can be using your product …or not. People can submit their pet photos to enter contests. They’re more apt to share and “like” pet photos than other pieces of content.

The trick is to make sure you’re sharing a mix of content to entertain and occasionally educate your prospects AND, you’re connecting with other users. A two way conversation builds relationships.

2. Assign key metrics.

Successful social media plans start with establishing goals and benchmarks for success. These can be running a Facebook campaign to build your email list, holding a contest or driving more traffic to your website.

Of course, at first you need to build an audience. So, that may be your first goal. Then, once you have 500 or 1000 followers, you can switch focus and start building your email list.

Your metrics will vary depending on your goals so track them. You can use Google’s Custom URL Builder to track specific posts and ads so you can see how your prospects move through your website.

3. Harvest email addresses.

Email is still king when it comes to closing sales. Use an app like Shortstack that allows you to capture email addresses. Then, you can email your prospects offers and other information.

4. Run Facebook Ads.

Never has it been more possible to connect with so many of your “perfect” customers. With Facebook ads, you can target people who’ve liked specific Pages, such as “Bark” Magazine, for example. You can target specific ages, incomes and geographic areas too.

Develop a goal (get more “likes” to increase engagement, build that email list, etc.) create the ads and track them. Ads get stale so you’ll need fresh ones at least once a week.

5. Social is the new SEO.

Search engines want to know that people think your site is important. If you have thousands talking about you, you’ll get natural links. Those links tell Google that people think you’re good so Google will think you’re good.

Plan to succeed at social. If you’re just getting started and you feel overwhelmed, you may need to pull back and review your social media strategy. Like any other piece of marketing, social requires thought, preparation and planning to maximize success. If you don’t have a strategy that integrates with your other marketing efforts, talk with us.

Jen Phillips April is a skilled marketing writer in the PetCopywriter.com network. We specialize in content-marketing solutions for the pet and veterinary industries. Contact us for assistance with your marketing communications needs.