Beginning around the 1960s as “modern” marketing (at that time, it was more like solely advertising), the 4 P’s of marketing stood for product, place, price, and promotion. Without a doubt, these are still important when it comes to pet store marketing and selling more items to your customers from a retail standpoint.

But the landscape has shifted, and as pet store marketers in today’s globalized digital age we have to think bigger and stretch past principles and guidelines into a framework that still fits today.

That brings us to our 5 P’s of Pet Store Marketing. A little bit of old school, traditional influence on a new playground - if you’ve been here for a while then you already know that’s what Pet Engine Marketing is about. If you haven’t been around for long, give us a shot at a monthly email to provide you the best resources every month so that we can continue to help you with your pet store’s marketing.

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The 5 P’s of Pet Store Marketing

We’ll sum this up for you really quickly if you don’t want to read this entire Insider piece, but we challenge you to take 3-5 minutes out of your day to take a nugget from this piece and apply it to your pet store marketing strategy.

Personalization - How do you stand out when your audience is inundanted with marketing messages 24/7? By knowing them and personalizing your content appropriately. To take this one step further, it’s important that your voice as pet store owner be personable, engaging, and not out-of-touch with your current market and potential market.
Planning - This is one of the toughest pieces for pet store owners to tackle as they are constantly wearing several business hats that don’t allow them to focus 100% on a major component like marketing. Having a weekly, monthly, and yearly plan to follow takes some pressure off.
Professionalism - The opposite of a professional brand and voice online can be disastrous for your pet store’s reputation in more ways than one.
Performance - Measurement is what sets successful marketing apart from unsuccessful marketing. Understanding the key metrics that are critical to not only your plan but your business is a key function for your marketing team.
Pets - This is what connects you and your customers in the first place! A bottomless well of potential marketing content and ideas exist here to be tapped into.

Personalization

It’s not the first time we’ve written about personalization when it comes to pet store marketing - check out our Blog area! The issue with many pet store owners is they don’t know how to go about it in a timely manner. Today’s pet parents are being bombarded with thousands of marketing messages every single day. Because a majority of these aren’t relevant, our customer’s brains have become more adept at tuning them out. It has become even more difficult for brands to stand out.

Personalization is the best way to make yourself heard. Personalization based on consumer behavior (purchasing history, pricing preferences, etc) has a significantly higher chance of bringing you the ROI you crave.

According to a study by McKinsey, personalization can reduce customer acquisition costs by up to 50%, increasing revenue by 15%, and improving marketing spend efficiency by up to 30% (Source: McKinsey).

Last and not least, if your pet store employs a digital voice or position that is impersonal or out-of-touch to their current or potential markets, then you can expect to see a decline in the previously mentioned metrics.

Planning

Platforms like social media allow you to reach a vast audience that compounds over time if you have a plan! Having a strategic content plan with yearly goals, pet store events, timelines, and a comprehensive approach from your entire team can make a significant impact on your pet store’s marketing results.

Here are a few baby steps to get the planning side of your brain in gear:

Schedule out your content. This will take up cumulatively less time than worrying about and posting a piece of content every day. Instead, check out some of our Freesources to see how you can schedule content, save yourself time, and still follow your pet store marketing plan.
Spend a few hours at the beginning of each quarter going over the numbers, goals, wins, growth opportunities, events, and other focus areas. Bring in key members of your team that can help you and delegate bite-sized chunks to support the plan.

professionalism

Based on the previous two P’s of Pet Store Marketing, hopefully, it has become clear that taking a professional approach to this is not only a good idea but the right idea if you want to see your pet store continue to grow.

At Pet Engine Marketing, we help pet store owners by managing their marketing entirely. We help with pet store SEO, pet store websites, pet store social media, and more. If your pet store marketing needs help, give us a call so we can take these 5 P’s of Pet Store Marketing off your hands.

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Pet store marketing requires a professional, comprehensive, multi-channel approach. Your plan should include pet store SEO, social media, email marketing, events, a dynamite website, in-store support, and a team to help you through it. Check out our services to see how Pet Engine Marketing can support your pet store this year.

From a literal standpoint, your pet store’s voice online should be professional, too. Not petty, not unapproachable, not impersonal. Handle issues like negative reviews with an air of professionalism.

Performance

Performance: a game of acronyms. ROI, KPIs, CLV, CRR, CPF… There’s a lot. But what it comes down to is if you aren’t measuring a metric, then chances are it won’t improve. Even if it does, you’re not going to know how or why so you won’t know what you’re doing or not doing to influence that metric.

Tracking and measurement are our bread and butter at Pet Engine Marketing. We obsess over it. Here are some of the KPIs (Key performance indicators) that we track night and day:

Return on Investment
Customer Lifetime Value
Customer Purchase Frequency
Average Ticket Price
Open Rates
Organic Traffic
Reach & Page Growth

If you aren’t tracking some or all of these items, then your marketing plan is failing to account for how and where you want your pet store to grow. Marketing is the single biggest influence on your growth - do it right.

Pets

Did we sneak this in here because it starts with P and so do the other P’s of Pet Store Marketing? Maybe.

Does it still apply and is it still worth mentioning? We think so.

An overarching theme here is that your audience is primarily pet lovers of all kinds. Use this to your advantage, at all times. In your written content, your social content, your website content, your pet store SEO content, your email content. People that like pets tend to like cute stuff - let that influence your decision-making. Your content has to be relevant!

Use your customer’s pets to bring in more customers. There are a million ways to utilize your customers… explore our idea bank with a Pet Engine Marketing representative today.

The 5 P’s of Pet Store Marketing
Conclusion

Thanks for reading our 5 P’s of Pet Store Marketing: Personalization, Planning, Professionalism, Performance, and Pets. If you have any major takeaways from this Insider post, let us know below or reach out to us on our social platforms. We’re always open to feedback! Stay tuned for more.