Your customers have friends, right? Why not let your customers do some of the heavy lifting of your marketing for you. How can you get your customers to market for you? By selling branded pet merch.
If you're not convinced that your business needs to get involved in the pet space, here are some pet parent facts:
1. Close to 50% of all households have a pet.
2. One in ten pets has his or her own social media profile. If you're looking to work with pet influencers, hop on social media and do a search for one.
3. Social media users post, on average, about six times a week about their pets. Can you imagine if that pet parent was showing off one of your branded pet merch items to his or her followers?
Pet parents are a tight-knit group. They love their breeds -- whether purebred or rescue; they love the species they share their lives with. They are loyal to the brands with whom they work and they truly want others to see their pets!
How To Get Your Customers To Market For You
As a brand that is competing with multiple other brands in the space in which you operate, you need to find a way to set your business apart. If your business is pet-friendly if you support pet-centric events and/or rescues you need to be offering pet merch to those pet parents who use your products and services and who visit your site.
When you engage your target audience through the love of their dog or cat you're creating an emotional connection with them and that will forge strong customer loyalty. A pet parent is more likely to be loyal to a brand that is pet-friendly -- it's a fact.
Some pet parent stats you may not have been aware of when it comes to the ages of pet parents:
1. Eighteen percent are Millennials (1980-1995)
2. Twenty-eight percent are Generation X (1965-1979)
3. Forty-seven percent are Baby Boomers (1946 - 1964)
4. Seven percent is the Silent Generation (1927-1945)
Knowing where your target or ideal client lies on the age demographic will help you better target their pet buying habits.
Wouldn't your brand and its logo lend itself to being featured on pet merch? You can sell the branded pet merch, give it away at fundraising events, let dogs play with it when their pet parents are on your site, add it to raffle baskets or even hand pet merch out at the dog park to raise awareness of you and your business. If your business processes a lot of online orders, put a branded dog product in the package to let the customer know you are pet friendly.
There are many ways in which you can use branded pet merch to market your business to pet parents. In fact, the ways are almost endless!
When a dog is playing with, wearing or using your branded pet merch it is word-of-mouth advertising at its best.
How will your business use pet merchandise as part of your marketing strategy? We'd love to know and we'd love to see photos!