Video Marketing for Pet Stores: Best Practices
We’re continuing the theme of video this week, building on our pet store community’s knowledge base and understanding of how, when, and why to use video marketing for pet stores. Some quick links to get you going if you’re late to the party:
Check out our Freesource post on Wistia right HERE - we go over this awesome free tool that can help you make seamless branded videos with powerful calls to action, clickable links, and more that can improve your pet store’s content, marketing, and promotional capabilities.
Use this link right HERE to learn about how to use video marketing on each social media platform: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc. They all have different users, different vibes, and you should be using them for different desired outcomes when it comes to your pet store’s marketing strategy.
Get all of this great info delivered to your inbox twice a month, along with other information on pet industry news, events by joining our free community for pet store owners below.
Onward, to today’s dose of marketing knowledge, improving the expression of your store in the digital landscape.
Video Marketing for Pet Stores
Best Practices
These will be short, sweet doses of advice pertaining to video marketing for pet stores. The team here at Pet Engine Marketing do our best to practice what we preach here, so you’re getting it straight from the horses’s mouth.
Plan in Advance
Video can be as quick and dirty as a Snapchat/Instagram story happening right here and right now, or it can take several weeks to get a polished, professional video documenting your pet store’s story. If you want unique, professional video content to be a part of your pet store’s marketing strategy (you should), make sure you are planning well in advance in terms of what the content will be, when it’s coming out (relevance), budget allocation, logistics, targeting, and so on. All of these pieces and more take time, and should be properly covered when working with a professional production team - like ours! Want professional video for your pet store? Bark at us.
Simon Sinek’s ideas in action
People Don’t Care What You Do…They Care Why You Do It.
Storytelling sells. Read the book by Simon Sinek (buy locally if you can!) or check out this TedTalk on why your “why” is so critical to running your business. People can buy the products your pet store sells from a million different other places. But they buy from you for entirely other reasons - maybe they like shopping local, maybe they need it right now instead of in two days, maybe they love the experience they get at your store.
Compelling stories stir powerful emotions in the heart of buyers. As pet lovers ourselves, we are probably even more susceptible to influence by emotional, heartfelt stories. Your story is important! It’s unique, special, and deserves to be told. Stories are at the heart of every successful social media video.
You Only Have a Few Seconds
If you’re producing your own content, use your first few seconds wisely. Remember that each platform should be used differently - polished, or funny, or cute, or silly, and so on. Your pet store’s viewers will lose interest in 3-4 seconds - so throwing your logo in or on top of the opening seconds of your video is a good little-known tip to build brand awareness.
Facebook found that consumers were 23% more likely to remember which brand made a given video ad if the brand was featured in the first three seconds and 13% more likely if the brand was featured after four seconds. (Source: Facebook IQ)
Quality Matters
Getting your audience’s attention is one thing, keeping it is another. It’s hard to make high quality content - it can take a lot of effort, time, thought, and attention. Videos can be fun, simple, quick, and easy, but mix in some quality content from time to time - build it with purpose, tell a story, add some flair to round out pet store’s marketing strategy with video.
Pack it In
Picture this: you’re scrolling Facebook and your attention gets snagged on a video of a cute kitten. You pause. You watch on mute for 8 seconds and smile. You mouse-over the video and see that it’s actually a 4 minute video. You keep scrolling.
You’ve been there right? We know we have. Make the most of a 15- or 30-second video. Use a half-day or day of production to get enough shots and content to create eight 15-second videos on top of a two-minute longer video. The sorry truth is that most people just won’t watch it, so best practices dictate that keeping it short and sweet is the way to go.
Subtitle generator on Facebook
Subtitles!
Most videos on these social media platforms start on mute, so best practices definitely require that you add subtitles to your videos. Not only does this help and hook viewers, it can also be a benefit for non-native speakers that shop at your pet store, as well as improve your search ability on platforms like Facebook. The more data you have embedded into that video, the better it’ll be for search functions. Facebook’s embedded subtitle generator is pretty simple to use as well.
Animations are Fun
Animated videos are so incredibly powerful. You really don’t have to look any further than Pixar’s feature-length films as well as their short films. They take complex topics, emotions, and humans and visualize them in relatable, engaging, connective ways. Animated videos can be expensive, but they can be as powerful or more than professional created content (which could absolutely incur costs around the same price) when it comes to video marketing for pet stores.
Don’t Forget To…
Include a reason for your video. Calls-to-action come in all different ways to engage your audience:
Buy now
Read more
Book appointment
Sign up
Subscribe
Contact
Get Directions
Send Message
Call today
Your video can be fun, silly, and goofy, but it’s a good idea to still make it relevant to your pet store. Your audience wants direction, so best practices says to tell them what to do or where to go. Wistia is super helpful for this kind of thing!
Conclusion
We talk to a lot of pet entrepreneurs that, having started implementing more video into their pet store’s marketing strategy, aren’t seeing a lot of engagement or return on their investment (time or money or effort). Using video is a really good idea - using video to market your pet store in the right way on the right platforms is a great idea.
With such huge potential to drive traffic and audience engagement toward your business’s goals, hopefully you’ve found these best practices for pet store video marketing helpful in making tweaks and adjustments to get the results you desire.
