Social Media Marketing for Pet Stores: 31 Tips

According to Forbes magazine, pet owners spent a record $53 billion in 2012. Pets and pet related products are a booming industry.

So, if you have a pet store, or you sell products related to cats, dogs, fish, geckos, birds, hamsters – or any other type of pet or pet product – how can you use social media to better market your products? How can you connect with your customers online? How can you further keep engaging your clients using social media marketing?

Here are 7 platforms and 31 tips to improve your social media marketing for pet stores. (many of these are translatable to other businesses too…)

What you’ll learn from this post:

• 31 tips to market your pet store
• 7 social media platforms to use for marketing your pet products
• Do you have a pet store? Learn how to connect with your customers online

Tweetable Takeaways:

• Use “caption this” images on Facebook to increase engagement
• Use group offers on Twitter to get more retweets
• Run a contest on your pet store blog to drive traffic to your website
• Integrate Instagram with Facebook to get more UGC

Social Media for Pet Stores: Facebook

Facebook provides a great platform for you to connect with many target markets. Most people these days are on Facebook, and many use it as their number one social site. It provides a great platform to connect with families, young people and even seniors.

Here are seven tactics you can use to add to your Facebook content marketing:

“Caption this” images – Images are the most shared, liked and commented on posts on Facebook. Images of cats (and dogs) are the iconic most loved images online. Use this in your social tactics. Use images in ‘Caption this!’ type posts. London Drugs used this on their Facebook Page – in 28 minutes, the update had over 35 comments, and over 30 other interactions.

Questions about People’s Pets – Get your Facebook Fans talking. Ask questions that your customers care about and can relate to. Questions are a great social media tactic in general, as they can begin conversations with your store, and create a community with your consumers.

Here are a few questions you could ask, for example:

• What are 3 things you love most about your cat?
• Did you watch Cesar last night? What was your favourite tip?
• Have you ever had a goldfish? What did you have in its tank?

Embed Short Videos – Share videos with your Facebook Fans. Videos are becoming an increasingly popular method of sharing stuff on Facebook.

You could share how-to videos, or videos about your products. You could post videos about tips for feeding a gecko, for example; or tips for walking your dog.

If you make your own videos, create a Tab on your Page for them. This makes them easy to find and to watch directly on Facebook. Additionally, post your videos in a Facebook update. When you post them, make sure you embed the video (not just the link) – this makes the image the full size and your Fans can watch it without leaving the site.

Post Images of Your Products – from your customers – Deepen your connection with your customers – by giving them a bit of fame, and appreciation. Share their photos (that they let you use) of their pets and your products. This is quite an amazing way to gain real, authentic word-of-mouth type marketing.

Wag.com, for example, uses this tactic by sharing a Fan photo, mentioning her in the post, and linking the basket product to the basket’s landing page of their online store.

Read more:

• Social Strategy for the Dogs. How Social Media is Saving Animal Lives.