Is Your Online Marketing a Dog’s Dinner?

Discover how you can target local pet owners online by reading my top 10 marketing tips for boarding kennels & catteries below.

• Invest in a virtual tour for your website

People are very close to their pets and if they’re able to see your premises online they’re much more likely to contact you.

A virtual tour is a great way to show off the facilities at your kennels or cattery and give pet owners peace of mind.

• Use email marketing to gain repeat business

When a customer books their cat or dog in with you, make sure you get their email address and mobile number as well as their permission to use these for marketing.

You can then use these details to send out offers when holiday periods are approaching such as the school Easter & Summer breaks when people often need to leave their pets behind.

• Use text messaging/emails to update owners

People can get very anxious about their pets when they’ve left them behind while they go on holiday. Go that extra mile for your customers by sending them quick updates by email or text message on how their pet is doing. You may even want to send them a photo to reassure them that their pet is happy in your care.

• Offer pet care tips and advice on your website

Writing articles on pet care and uploading them to your website will have two main benefits; firstly it will show potential customers you’re an expert in your field and secondly, regular and unique content is good for your search engine rankings.

• Speak to local vets about advertising on their websites

As well as promoting your own website you may want to advertise on other pet related sites. Having an advert on a local vet’s website for example could raise your profile locally and bring you more business.

• Use video marketing

Shooting a short video showing a day in the life of your kennels or cattery will help attract visitors to your website. You can post your video to YouTube as well as embedding it into your own website to show potential clients the level of care their pets will receive.

• Use Google Analytics to monitor your website’s performance

Google Analytics is free software that allows you to monitor many different aspects of your website. For example you can see how many unique visitors you’ve had in any given time period, how long these visitors spent on your site and how they arrived at your site.

All this information can be used to pinpoint where your marketing efforts are working and where they can be improved.

• Write your website text with your customers in mind

A common mistake people make when writing their website content is to focus on their business rather than the customer.

Think about what a pet owner’s concerns might be and what they’re looking for from a kennels or cattery and then write your content from this perspective.

• Become a guest blogger

One way to make your website more visible to more people is to write guest blog posts. You could contact pet shops, vets, dog grooming salons etc with web sites and ask if you can write a post on their blog about your business.

This should encourage more visitors to your site and the company whose blog you’ve written for will be giving their clients something relevant and interesting to read.

• Get incoming links to your website

Following on from tip #9 guest blogging is just one way you can get incoming links to your website. By writing regular, relevant and unique content you will attract incoming links to your site naturally.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 7th, 2011 at 11:23 am and is filed under Industry Specific Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.