In today’s world, having a social media presence is essential to the success of your pet-care business. The pet industry is massive. Last year, in 2021, US consumers spent $123.6B on their pets. In the pet-care services sector alone, which includes grooming, pet sitting, boarding, walking and insurance, pet owners spent nearly $10B!
While pet parents are eager to pamper their pets with high-quality pet food, toys, and enrichment services like daycare stays, reaching these customers and getting them to try your business isn’t always as easy as it sounds. However, with more and more people turning their passion for pets into a business idea, reaching new clients and retaining existing ones is more critical than ever.
With this in mind, having a pet-care business social media marketing strategy is crucial to your business’s success. The good news is that even in this competitive landscape, all it takes is one viral pet video to increase your brand’s presence in the community and gain the exposure you need to build your customer base.
In this post, we’ll cover the following important subjects about social media marketing for pet-care businesses:
- The Importance of Social Media Marketing
- Best Social Media Platforms for Pet Businesses
- 5 Pet-Care Business Social Media Marketing Tips
The Importance of Social Media Marketing
At one time or another, all new or smaller pet-care business owners ask themselves the same question: how do I reach new pet-care customers? The answer: pet-care business social media marketing!
Your pet-care business can benefit from social media in so many ways. Social media is often the first place a prospective customer will go to understand your business better and get a sense of how you treat the pets in your care. It’s also a proven method for driving traffic to your website.
Targeted social media ads to pet owners in your area can generate new customer leads and raise brand awareness. You can use this powerful digital tool to promote limited-time offers like buy-one, get-one offers, discount pricing during slow periods, and other time-sensitive offers that might be overlooked if you’re only advertising on your website or in person.
With over 93% of internet users logging into social media daily, nearly all your customers have a social media presence.
Best Social Media Platforms for Pet Businesses
Instagram has over a billion users each month. The app’s largest demographics are:
- 18-24 years old: 30.1%
- 25-34 years old: 31.5%
- 35-44 years old: 16.1%
In other words, Instagram can help you reach a wide variety of pet parents, from young working professionals to more established adults. These days, almost everyone seems to be on Instagram.
High-quality photos and videos are the keys to user engagement on Instagram. You don’t need to be a professional photographer to capture great shots, but using good lighting and editing your photos with a quality photo editing app can quickly turn a casual photo of a pup into an eye-catching image.
As Instagram continues to compete with TikTok, brands are increasingly using the ‘Reels’ feature to set videos to catchy music and use engaging filters when editing their videos. Videos like these are a highly personalized, fun way to show off the look and feel of your pet-care business brand.
Facebook is the dominant social media platform for all age demographics, but the largest user segment is middle-aged and older adults.
Facebook’s platform is all about community building. As a result, posts on Facebook are generally more text-heavy when compared to Instagram’s “snapshot” photos and videos, with limited text. For this reason, small businesses use Facebook to create community fundraisers, join specialized groups like Pet-care Business Owners of the Pacific Northwest, for example, or provide their followers with longer posts and informative updates.
A pet-care business might use Facebook to target pet-focused parent or family groups, so they can stay engaged with their customer-based and continue fostering long-term customer relationships even when the pet parent’s fur baby isn’t in their care.
An easy way to remember the difference between Facebook and Instagram is that Facebook is great for providing information to your audience, and Instagram is perfect for capturing moments.
The LinkedIn community is where you and your small business can connect with other pet-care business owners and entrepreneurs. Because LinkedIn is used for professional networking, having a presence on the platform is a great way to legitimize your standing in the business community, discuss industry trends and connect with other like-minded small business owners.
While LinkedIn supports images and videos, many professionals use the platform to share thoughts on the state of their industries, business forecasts, and other sector-related news. You can also use LinkedIn to learn about industry conferences, share pet-care marketing tips, and learn how other pet-care business owners leverage pet-care software solutions, like Revelation Pets!
Create a personal and business profile to get the most out of using LinkedIn for your pet-care business.
5 Pet-Care Business Social Media Marketing Tips
Share Positive Reviews, Testimonials, and Awards
Customer reviews and photos are a great way to spotlight your supporters (and their adorable pups!) while further legitimizing your business.
Facebook and LinkedIn are the perfect social media platforms for highlighting an employee each month. Doing bite-sized interviews on why an employee likes working at your business, what they love about your customers, who their favorite pets are, or other relevant info will help your community get to know your team members and build trust between clients and your business. It also shows that you value and appreciate your staff.
Use Instagram to create snapshot client testimonials and a fun photo of a client’s pup to show how much your customers love bringing their fur baby to you. To jumpstart a pet-care client testimonial program, offer an incentive like a free grooming session for a review or testimonial.
If you win an award or receive a shout-out in a local newspaper, competition, or community event, be sure to let your social media community know about that too!
Engage with Your Followers
Don’t just treat your social media profiles as a virtual pinboard to post content and then abandon until your next post. Instead, build momentum for your social media presence by responding to followers’ comments and questions.
Liking comments, using fun emojis, and responding to all of the comments your community leaves will help your brand build momentum and engage your online community. If you can, try to respond to comments or questions within 24 hours.
If one of your customers tags your business in a post, don’t forget to react to and share these posts. When a customer tags your business, your company is visible to an entirely new audience, which could lead to new clients.
Create a Social Media Calendar
If you’re already a Revelation Pets customer, you know how important it is to keep your pet-care business operations organized. A social media calendar will help you keep your online content organized like other parts of your business.
As with any marketing campaign, your social media marketing strategy will greatly benefit from creating a dedicated plan that tracks when, how, and for what specific purpose you’ll be creating social media content.
Ensure you ascertain your goals, budget, target audience, major social media platforms to leverage, and other important logistics.
Plan out hashtags, and use the same relevant hashtags for your posts. Consider tags like #puppies, #cutedogs, #dogsofinstagram, but also themed hashtags like #tongueouttuesday, and local hashtags such as #detroitpets #boulderdogs.
Build your pet-care business social media strategy and content calendars around recognized holidays like the 4th of July, Thanksgiving and Christmas, but also around more niche celebrated days like “National Dog Day,” “National Rescue Dog Day,” “National Cat Day,” etc.
Pet-care business social media content ideas could include behind-the-scenes photos at your pet-care business or employees interacting with pets. Don’t forget about the content you create with the Revelation Pets’ pet update and report card feature!
Aim to post on Instagram every other day or use Instagram’s “story” feature to share quick video updates on a day in doggie daycare, for example.
Try posting on Facebook twice a week and on LinkedIn once a week.
Invest in Social Media Ad Space
Suppose your pet-care business has the budget to invest in Facebook, Instagram, or even Google Ads. In that case, this can be an incredibly effective marketing technique to reach a vast, new audience.
Instagram and Facebook allow businesses to create targeted ads that can help you reach new customers in your local area. Social media ad space can be a great investment if you want to target dog owners between 25-45 years of age within a ten-mile radius of your business.
Go for the “Cute” Factor
If you keep throwing different content at the wall and nothing seems to stick, don’t be afraid to risk and leverage the adorable faces of your pups, kittens, and other furry clientele to catch the attention of listless social media scrollers and plug your services.
Invest in a few pet accessories like doggie bow ties, branded bandanas, party hats or superhero capes. If you’re hosting a dog birthday party, snap pictures of the pups enjoying their birthday “cake.” The internet loves pictures of pets enjoying their best life!
Social media is here to stay, which is why your pet-care business needs to have a strong social media marketing strategy. When someone clicks on one of your Instagram photos or reads your Facebook post, they aren’t just clicking on a cute photo. They’re creating a narrative about what your business is all about.
While positive reviews are crucial to attracting new customers, they only do so much to convey the look and feel of your business. Photos and videos can do so much more to express your pet-care brand, show how you interact with the pets in your care, and give potential customers an idea of what your existing customers think of your business.
Marketing your pet-care services to an online audience will help you reach customers previously out of reach and strengthen your brand in your local community and beyond. When you pair a strong social media marketing strategy with easy-to-use pet-care management software like Revelation Pets, your growth will exceed your expectations.
Additional Resources
Want to learn more important pet-care business best practices? Explore these helpful resources:
- 7 Dog Boarding Website Tips to Boost Your Business. Strengthen your dog boarding business’s online presence and drive customers to your website with these helpful dog boarding website tips.
- How to Market Your Pet-care Business: 7 Effective Tips. Reach pet owners, build your online presence, and improve your pet-care business marketing plan with these seven tips.
- Dog Daycare Business Plan: The Ultimate Guide. Creating a business plan for your dog daycare is essential to launching your new pet-care business. Follow this pet-care business plan template to turn your passion for animals into a successful business venture.
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