Pet Product News - December 2016

on Facebook for the first time, it makes sense to pay to boost posts to the same audience you are serving ads to, said Lynn Swita-nowski of Creative Business Consulting Group in Boston. You’ll want to boost posts that highlight the arrival of new products or pets for sale at your store, or a few older posts that were widely liked or obtained a high level of organic responses.

This is because before you try to sell on Facebook, you should take steps to convey your store’s personality. Communicate what’s special about you and your business, highlighting yourself, your expertise, your activities and that you are in the store much of the time. Add posts about your staff, your causes and your customers.

Remember, customers are motivated to shop at establishments where they feel they know someone, ideally the owner, and Facebook is a great way to help folks get to know you. If you have been doing this with your own friends and fans, they will be receptive to ads and posts that sell. The new audiences that you are paying to reach need “warming up.”

VIDEOS CAN WORK WONDERS

Posting videos to Facebook can
do even more to establish what’s
cool about your store, and videos
have the added benefit of helping
to give your posts a more promi-
nent position. Post videos of stuff
that happens in the store, includ-
ing pets that your customers bring
in. Record and report the number
of likes each earns. Start this win-
ter with dogs coming in wearing
jackets; when spring comes, you
can start all over again without
the jackets. Hold costume con-
tests later in the year. There was a
controversy this year when it was
revealed that Facebook was exag-
gerating its reports of the amount
of time users were spending
viewing videos. However, retail-
ers report that Facebook videos
work for them.

Facebook Live is a new feature that allows you to stream live video from your smart-phone. Check your connection first, and use Wi-Fi if possible. You could use Live to broadcast a brief video of a group of pets at the store at the same time, or a presentation by a vendor. Users who follow you will be notified when you go live with an airing. Capture a larger audience for the most appealing subjects, such as in-store adoptions, by making a series of announcements that you are planning the broadcast. Once you have done this, ask for feedback and make the experience as interactive as possible. With Facebook Live, users can retrieve videos later.

FOCUS ON FACEBOOK
AND INSTAGRAM

There is a dizzying array of platforms and apps a retailer can choose from, but many retailers will find it sufficient to focus on Facebook. If you are going to work with one additional platform, pick the Instagram mobile app, advises Crystal Vilkaitis of Crystal Media in Carlsbad, Calif. Instagram recently created a business profile, which can include basic information about your store. Instagram is popular, and it is owned by Facebook, so you can bet that it’ll become a great tool for small business owners.

BY DAVID LUMMIS

As discussed in the previous installment of this column, now in its second decade, “natural” is still booming as a pet market trend, especially on the pet food side of the aisle.

During 2016, natural-themed
pet food will rack up sales of
more than $8 billion, accounting
for 26 percent of total U.S. retail
pet food sales and growing at
more than double the rate of the
market as a whole. At the same
time, as with human foods, the
term “natural” can be fuzzy,
and as natural brands have
proliferated, the stand-alone
appeal of natural has begun to
diminish. In response, marketers
are constantly seeking to clarify
and differentiate with related
product claims and formulations
aiming to up the natural ante.

As a result, today’s natural pet food market is more segmented than ever before, with manifold variations fueling its vigor. According to Packaged Facts’ November 2015 National Pet Owner Survey, Made in the USA tops the list of natural-

The Many, Evolving Faces of Natural Pet Food

s hut t ersto ck

MARKET OUTLOOK

BY BARRY BERMAN

As Facebook grows ever larger and more business- es use it, pet retailers need to up their game to make social media a more effective business tool, and make both part of a cohesive overall strategy for advertising and communications. Some retailers use email and social media to communicate with existing customers but use traditional media to try to attract new customers to the store. Given that Facebook started by creating networks of people already connected to you, this is an easy pattern to fall into, but it’s not the most effective division of resources.

Ask yourself to what extent
your goal is to maintain aware-
ness of your business to support
everyday traffic and overall sales
objectives against how much
you want to focus on supporting
events and promotions. Many
retailers use social media only to
promote events and sales, but it’s
better if you can do both.

HIGHLY TARGETED ADS

The No. 1 thing retailers should be doing on social media but aren’t is adding paid ads to their current presence on Facebook.

Ads on Facebook can be targeted
at specific audiences beyond your
usual followers. For example, you
can target by town, ZIP code or
distance from your location, and
you also can target by keywords
used. For instance, you can deter-
mine that all users within 15 miles
of your store who mention raw
dog food or grain-free dog food
or dog groomers will see your
ad. If you are having an event at
which 10 percent of the proceeds
are going to a local rescue, you
could target all dog owners with-
in 10 miles—the possible permu-
tations are vast.
It makes sense to advertise on
Facebook both to increase aware-
ness of your business and to pro-
mote events. To help evaluate the
effectiveness of these steps, if you
include an offer on social media,
find a way to measure it against
other means of communicating it,
either with a code or by making
the offer distinct from others.