Must Love Blogs for marketing your pet business

If you’re frustrated with your pet business website and you’re thinking, “What can I do to bring in more traffic and sales?” — consider the blog.

In spite of the explosive social networking platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and others, blogs are still extremely helpful for attracting customers via the search engines.

Here’s proof. A client I now work with was unhappy with his search engine rankings for certain important phrases related to his services for pet professionals. Simply put, he was upset that, “My ideal prospects aren’t finding my website.”

So we started blogging tips about his pet-business services, and just after 6 blog posts — voila! The blog appeared on page one, second spot in Google results. Not bad for just 6 posts.

Is this a fluke? No way! I’m getting the same results for THIS blog, and many of the blog experts I follow are enjoying similar results or better.

Consider these 3 reasons why blogging is a fantastic strategy, whether you’re marketing to pet owners or other pet businesses:

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Pet Video of the Year and What It Means to Your Pet Business

As the year 2011 comes to a close, I’d like to cast my vote for the best pet video of the year.

Before I reveal what it is, I’m happy to share some staggering facts with you regarding this video and a few others featuring pets… and then provide some ideas to boost your pet business outlook in 2012.

First, the facts:

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Fascinating Facebook Facts for Pet Retail Marketing

This weekend, I was browsing through some pet retail magazines and came across a new report that might interest you. It’s called Strategies for Effective Facebook Wall Posts for the Retail Industry, and it includes a number of fascinating facts that may well be worth considering for your pet business Facebook page, whether you’re marketing pet products or services.

  • Posting 1-4 times a week produces 71% higher user engagement than 5 or more posts for retail brands: quality trumps frequency
  • Posts containing fewer than 80 characters produce 66% higher engagement than longer posts (wow!)
  • Posts containing questions generate more than double the amount of comments, even if they may get fewer “likes,”
  • Top retail sales keywords that produced more user engagement: “$ off” and “coupon” worked best (55% higher user engagement rates); while the words “sale” and “percent off” (or % off) produced the lowest; even posts about offers less than $10 off produce 17% higher engagement than percent-off posts
  • The 2 most effective types of retail brand posts contain a single photo attachment or use only words. Posts containing only words produce 94% higher engagement than avg.
  • Wednesday is the best day to post, although you obviously shouldn’t post ONLY on Wednesday. 🙂
So — what kinds of topics should you post on your pet business Facebook page?

Original content ideas for marketing to pet owners

Today I was on a conference call with Heather Lloyd Martin, SEO Copywriting pioneer, mentor and friend of mine. She was talking about some of the things that are critical to web success today and I immediately thought of how these tips can be applied to your pet marketing strategies or pet SEO success (of … Read more

How to optimize your pet website photos for visitors and SEO

Last spring, I was driving my dog to doggie day care and came upon this hilarious scene in a neighbor’s driveway. I had to pull over and snap a quick photo from my phone.

Turkey lessons about optimizing your pet website for SEO, visitors
Turkey lessons about optimizing your pet website images

Everyone I’ve shown this to gets a big kick out of it, so I thought I’d share it with you.

What do these turkeys have in common with your pet business or veterinary practice website?

And what lessons can be learned from this photo when it comes to optimizing the images on your site?

I see 2 key take-aways for you.

1. Try to use distinct images for marketing your pet products or services.

This quartet of Tom turkeys are strutting their stuff in full regalia to attract the lone female who happens to be strolling by. Sadly, it’s hard to tell them apart, except the one on the right has some torn tail issues.

So how does the female know which one is her soul mate, or if any of them belong by her side? Hmmm. I wish I knew how that works. All I know is, it leads to an important point.

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More WOW ideas for marketing your local pet business

I was just reading Entrepreneur (October 2011) and came across a fabulous article about Animal General Hospital in Port St. Lucie, FL.

It seems that the owner of this veterinary practice figured out how to engage local-community clients and prospects online, using the practice’s website in combination with free social networking, email and YouTube plus a modest paid-search advertising campaign (Google Adwords and Facebook ads).

The result: instead of spending $27,000 over 18 months for Yellow Pages and getting lame results, his online strategy only cost $3,600 plus staff time, but his business grew with 250 new clients and $75,000 in additional annual revenue. Can you say “WOW”???

Here are 3 ideas your local pet business can take away from this as you plan your fall and winter pet marketing strategies:

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Help local customers find your pet business website

If you’re in charge of marketing a local pet business or veterinary hospital that serves a specific community, I have a question for you.

How often do people say they found you online?

The shocking truth is, sometimes when a locally-based pet business asks me to help optimize their website and boost traffic, I discover that I can’t tell where the business is physically located.

For example, you’d be amazed at how many veterinary practices, dog grooming businesses and doggy day cares don’t list the following basic information on their websites (except maybe on the About Us page, buried at the bottom):

  • The physical address
  • The towns or region they serve
  • Driving directions and a map

If this sounds like you – we can fix this problem immediately! 🙂

Here are 3 quick and simple ways to significantly improve your pet business’s search engine results and drive more people to your door.

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How do your pet business prospects find your site?

Are people looking for your dog bowls… or do they call them dog dishes?

Are pet owners searching for a great pet throw, or do they call it a blanket or car seat cover?

And are pet parents searching for a local veterinary hospital, clinic or practice? Or perhaps it’s an animal hospital or clinic… or veterinarian hospital, clinic, etc.)

When you write your pet business web content to attract the people who seek your products or services, be sure to focus on the key phrases THEY use.

This is critical for two reasons, whether you’re marketing to pet owners, veterinarians or other pet businesses.

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3 tips for an amazing pet business website

I recently watched a video where a Google expert talked about quality content and what really stands out when it comes to GREAT sites. He used the words “amazing” and “wow” to describe web content that is truly powerful.

So what does “amazing” and “wow” mean for pet business websites? Or even veterinary websites? In general, it means offer a great visitor experience on every page; something worth sharing.

Here’s my interpretation of 3 things you can do right now to offer your site visitors an amazing experience they’ll want to share:

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Get seasonal with your pet business marketing

Ah, summer. Hot sunny days. Warm balmy nights. Fun for everyone, including pet business owners and marketers.

Why?

Because pet owners have seasonal needs that you can solve! Summer brings a mix of joyful outdoor activities with their pets… and also some dangers. For example, seasonal allergies, vacation travel and hot outdoor settings can be tricky for pets.

This means it’s an ideal time for you to market your business with a seasonal slant that meets your customers’ needs.

Let’s look at some examples of seasonal pet business marketing ideas.

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