COVID Impact on Pet Stores and How Marketing Can Help

At the time of writing, we have been dealing with COVID-19 for about six months. Let’s face the reality: we are not out of the woods just yet. The COVID-19 pandemic has been, for many pet retailers, the single biggest challenge in the history of their business. Whether you’ve been in business for one year or thirty years, the impact has been widespread and damaging to retailers everywhere. Growth estimates, goals, events, schedules, and more have required readjustment.

But, we’re in it, and we can’t wait for it to end. As business owners, the need for agility and the ability to pivot has never been more necessary. Every day brings with it a new challenge, and with many of those challenges centered around revenue, effective and efficient marketing remains the primary antidote for sales sickness for independent local pet retailers.

COVID Impact on Pet Stores
and How Marketing Can Help

Across the country, pet store owners everywhere are dealing with similar issues. Let’s see how adjusting your pet store marketing strategy, or implementing new tactics and messaging, can help mitigate some of these common problems.

Revenue

Revenue is the elephant in the room and, in general, the single most important factor that influences a business owner to feel secure or panicky about the future. Many pet retailers have not only seen a slow down in sales, but an increase in business costs and future expenses: loans, marketing materials, additional training, additional services or platforms, and so on.

If sales are what keep your business alive at the bottom of the funnel, marketing provides the necessary input at the top of the funnel.  The worst thing your pet store can do right now is freezing your marketing efforts – that paralysis will dry up revenue even faster.

Instead, find creative ways to effectively use your budget and stay in front of your current and potential customers. Don’t be afraid to try new things and experiment, especially when it comes to promotions and using pet store social media to connect with your customers.

Take Action: Come up with 5 out-of-the-box marketing tactics or campaign ideas to stay in front of your current and potential customers. Choose one or two and start working on assets and execution, TODAY! 

Shelving Shortages

What can marketing do when your distributors and manufacturers can’t come up with the goods on time?

There are a handful of options available to pet retailers that allow you to “dropship” your products. In other words, if you sell the product online, they will ship it directly to your customer's doorstep, and you never have to worry about touching the item or the item being out of stock in your store. The option for setting up a BOPIS (buy online pick-up in-store) e-Commerce model is available as well.

Dropshipping is an effective business model, but many retailers are concerned that it turns them into the Ch*wy’s and Am*zon’s of the world. While there is a certain validity to that argument, the reality is that retailers need to compete in the “convenience” space with those big players right now. The costs of starting a dropshipping service are usually low and revenue can be generated passively, so the upside is significant.

Can you count on your customers to continue to shop locally, shop with you, and shop conveniently when they have the option to? If the answer is yes, then you need to give them the option to do that. Your marketing tactics and messaging will be necessary to let your customers know about the new convenient options are available for them to continue to shop at their favorite local pet store!

Take Action: Research the costs of adding an e-Commerce or dropshipping service to your business. Ask yourself how much time, effort, and money it will cost to start. Then ask yourself if the potential upside is worth it. 

The Uncertain Future

Uncertainty and anxiety are pervasive feelings for millions of Americans right now. These emotions continue to have a major impact on bills, scheduling, improvements, goals, projects, and every other piece of the business, big or small.

When you feel like things are drifting out of control, what helps you to regain authority over the situation? We all have our ways of dealing with stress, and I certainly encourage you to take advantage of those – but what about for your business?

The answer is planning. Start planning again. For many pet retailers, COVID-19 has ruined some well-laid plans for pet store events, growth, and pet store marketing campaigns that were made in Q1 or even before. You can’t do anything about the past, so it’s time to adapt to the present and begin to plan again for the future.

If you have not taken a close look at your finances, your routine, your budget, your emergency fund, and your goals for the summer of 2020, now is the time to do that. Cementing yourself with the current reality will help you and your business feel a sense of security as if things are going according to the new plan.

Take Action: Tackle your uncertainty by planning for the reality we find ourselves in. How can you hit your financial goals given the current state and the future outlook? Your marketing will influence those roadmaps significantly.

Profitability

We know that pet stores can’t stay afloat on dog food sales alone, so how can you entice your customers to reinvest in boredom busters, indoor engagement activities, and ways for pets to entertain themselves physically and mentally?

How much of your marketing content is currently focused on how people and pets are adapting to stay-at-home requirements? Have you written a pet store SEO blog post on several indoor activities for cats and dogs? Have you posted videos of toys, enrichment activities, and other products to help ease the boredom some pets might be feeling? Have you talked to customers about how they can ease separation anxiety as they return to work or begin spending more time outside the house?

These are topics and ideas that are relevant, engaging, and timely for pet stores and their customers. Being able to hit these ideas with products that fit the need perfectly is the best way to use marketing to increase sales. Create the demand, then supply the product.

Take Action: How can you or your products best tackle a “need” for your customer right now? Answering that question will give you a topic to focus your short-term marketing (pet store social media) on and the messaging needed for it to successfully make sense to your customers.

Distancing and Events

Thinking that you “can’t” do an event due to COVID-19 is an easy escape from working around the issues at hand.

That’s a bit of a generalization, but the idea is to try to adapt rather than scrap the entire idea. If you relied on various pet store events every week or month to bring extra feet in the door, in some cases they can be adjusted to fit various social distancing standards. Others might need to be entirely rethought, redesigned, and redone.

For instance, you might not be able to go all out on one huge event that brings in 200 customers, but if you expend the same amount of effort and budget on eight events that bring in 25 customers each, the result is the same. Can you utilize a way to schedule customer visits on a daily/hourly basis to help ensure that you aren’t overrun or unsafe?

If your store has the capability, is there any way to host some or all events partially or fully outdoors? If you can ensure that public health and safety are of paramount importance to your customers (via your marketing efforts and messaging), they will feel that they can enjoy their outing and make their pets happy while maintaining the standards that you set. I don’t know about you, but I feel like I have seen more people outdoors as spring has sprung than any previous year. People are cooped up and want to get out safely – what better things do they have to do?

Take Action: Review your planned events for the year and see which ones can be adapted to fit your needs. Pick one that can be up and running in conjunction with the new business requirements in your area and run with it for the latter half of the year.

COVID Impact on Pet Stores
and How Marketing Can Help
Conclusion

Yes, pet store owners are in the midst of the biggest challenge their stores have ever faced. Entrepreneurs are also strong, capable, resilient, opportunistic, hard-working, and passionate. Don’t let the pandemic dim all of those qualities that have allowed you to build your pet store into what it’s become today, and instead use them to adapt to the current situation at hand. Take stock of the biggest issues you’ve got, start planning and marketing ways to mitigate them, and push the needle back in the direction you want it to go.