Leveraging Pet Influencer Marketing for Your Pet Store

Influencer marketing has been around for a while, and it’s a proven strategy for promoting your products or services. In this rapidly growing world of pet marketing, it can take time to keep up with algorithm changes, choose the proper channels for promotions, and find new ways of ensuring your growth.

It is where pet influencer marketing comes in.

If you’ve created a pet product or accessory and you’re looking for ways to boost your brand awareness, entice loyal customers, and grow your sales, this is the guide for you.

In this article, we will tell you the ins and outs of pet influencer marketing, how it can help grow your brand, and best practices for finding the right influencers for your company. Without further ado, let’s hop in.

Understanding Pet Influencer Marketing

We’re sure you’ve already heard of influencer marketing, but what happens when you combine it with a delicate product like pet accessories? Well, pet influencer marketing is a form of SMM that involves collaborations with popular pets or pet owners on platforms like TikTok and Instagram.

Usually, the main goals of such campaigns are:

• Increasing brand awareness
• Growing sales
• Generating loyal customers
• Building a community to support your crowdfunding campaign (in rare cases)

Choosing which influencers to work with will be up to you, but one thing is for sure – if you choose them right, your products will get exposure to thousands or millions of people.

If you have a pet store, partnering with a pet influencer(s) will allow you to tap into their audience and build trust toward your brand even before they become your customers.

Keep reading through to learn what more your brand can gain from pet influencer marketing.

How Can Pet Influencer Marketing Help With Brand Growth?

Unless you’re new to the internet, you know that social media is a huge driver of consumer behavior. The people you follow can influence your purchase decisions. As people grow their bond with their furry friends more and more, pet brands become more successful.

So, how can pet influencer marketing help you take advantage of this growing market? Let us tell you how it can become a game-changer for your pet store.

Whether you run a dog influencer program or target other pet owners, you can expect higher brand visibility, impressions from a targeted audience, and even more sales.

Without any more fuss, let’s unleash the power of pet influencer marketing and explore how it can revolutionize your pet store’s growth journey.

Increased Brand Visibility

Brand visibility is one of the most significant benefits of collaborating with pet influencers. While organic growth with social media marketing can take a lot of time and effort, you can use influencers as a “shortcut” to reaching a wider audience.

Since influencers have already established their presence on social media and have a large following that trusts them, you can take advantage of this and work on them through paid or exchange formats.

The most significant factor that ensures that an audience will see your brand as credible is that influencers have a hefty influence on their followers. After all, that’s why they are called influencers.

Pet Brand Advocacy

When pet influencers promote your products, their followers see it as an endorsement from someone they admire and trust. This positive association translates into brand advocacy. Their followers will be more likely to explore and purchase your products.

Trusting a brand online is tough. With the number of scams circling the web, your need to assure your potential customers that you won’t leave them hanging. Ultimately, influencer marketing does the trick.

Targeted Marketing

When you build an influencer campaign for your pet store, you choose influencers with pets. Pet influencers, such as cat owners, dog lovers, or even tiny pet enthusiasts, usually have a niche following.

Having this audience specialization makes it easier for you to target specific customer segments that align with your pet store’s offerings. Ultimately, you’ll ensure your marketing efforts reach the right audience.

Social Media Growth

When you’re new to social media, it is hard to grow your following because of the trust factor.

Collaborating with pet influencers means they will mention your account on their social media channels. Simply put, this drives traffic to your profile and helps you grow your audience.

After this, when others visit your pet store’s page, they see that you’re trusted by a big community, making them more likely to hit that follow button.

Boosted Sales and Conversions

If you need to get a good return on your influencer marketing spending, is it even worth it? Luckily, one of the most significant benefits of influencer collaborations is a boost in your sales.

When potential customers see the pets of their favorite influencers using and enjoying your products, they want to experience it for themselves. Naturally, they click on your profile, visit your website, and hopefully make a purchase.

Improved SEO Ranking

There are over 200 SEO ranking factors, including social signals. Having your pet store mentioned on social media by influencers improves your chances of increasing the SEO rankings of your pet store.

This synergy of benefits helps you promote every aspect of your business, grow your community, sales, and much more.

Now that we’ve covered all the pros of pet influencer marketing, let’s talk about how you can ensure the continued success of your campaigns.

Best Practices for Expanding a Pet Influencer Marketing Campaign

Building pet brand partnerships is easier said than done. However, the beginning is the most challenging part. Once you’ve set up partnerships with specific influencers, they can turn into long-term collaborations with a growing impact.

When you’re exploring pet influencer opportunities, you must consider three main things. Let’s look at these 3 points and set you up on the right path.

Set Clear Objectives

Before you start creating any campaign, you need to get your goals straight. It will be the foundation for anything you do in the future. So, whether you want to get more sales, increase website traffic, or grow your pet store’s social media, you need to figure it all out.

Depending on the objectives you choose for your pet influencer marketing campaign, the format and type of your campaign will change.

For example, if you’re looking to increase sales, the influencer should link to the product page on your website. On the other hand, if you’re looking to boost your brand awareness, you should ask the influencer to talk more about your brand and its mission.

Find the Right Fit

Your choice of influencer will significantly impact the results you see. If their audience doesn’t correspond to your target, you’ll likely see a lower conversion rate. So, always look for pet influencers whose audience aligns with your brand.

Authenticity is vital in influencer marketing, and collaborating with influencers who genuinely love your products will give better results. Your campaign should focus on storytelling to make it feel less like marketing. The path to success here will involve the professionalism of the influencers you choose.

We will talk about how to choose the right pet influencer for your campaigns later in this article, but for now, let’s talk about the core of your campaign success – engaging content.

Engaging Content

Last but not least, the most essential thing in pet influencer marketing (and any marketing campaign, for that matter) is the quality of the content. If you find the right influencers and give them the proper guidance, you’ll have content that will be engaging and bring the best possible results.

Whether you’ll be giving them a script or leaving the creative side to the influencer, you need to show off your products in an appealing way. Combining high-quality visuals and compelling storytelling will put you on the right track.

Prioritize long-term partnerships

Don’t think of pet influencer marketing as a one-off deal. Instead, looking for partnerships that will last longer would be best.

Why?

Because hearing your favorite influencer talk about a product once might not convince you to purchase, but seeing them be a loyal customer of your brand will do the trick.

Another factor you should always consider is consistency. When you regularly collaborate with specific influencers, you strengthen your brand presence in the eyes of their followers.

Pro tip: Consider collaborating with influencers with overlapping audiences, and you’ll notice how the trust factor experiences exponential growth.

Track and Learn From Insights.

Setting up collaborations with influencers, creating the content, and putting it out is only one side of the puzzle. The other side is tracking data and learning from social media insights.

Here are a couple of metrics you should keep in mind:

• Engagement rate
• CTR (click-through rate)
• Conversion rate
• Website Traffic
• Profile visits
• Average order value

Tracking these metrics can give you all the info you’ll need to improve each of your subsequent campaigns better and better. You’ll see what works and what doesn’t.

If tons of people are visiting your website, but you may need help to convert, then you may have to redesign your website to be more friendly to users. These are only examples of the types of learnings you can reap from data.

Now that you know how to build and grow “pawesome” influencer marketing campaigns, let’s talk about how you should pick and choose the right pet influencers.

Choosing the Right Pet Influencers

When you’re exploring social media platforms and trying to find the perfect ‘partners’ for your pet influencer marketing campaigns, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. There are so many options. Should you choose someone with a more significant following or an engaged audience?

If you’re one of the pet brands looking for influencers right now, remember that it’s all about compatibility, shared interests, and a genuine connection.

It’s easier said than done, of course, so let’s go on a walk where we’ll teach you how to do it all.

Know Your Pack

Before you start picking out the members of your pet influencer marketing pack, take a beat to understand your audience and brand. Understand your values and unique quirks. Only after that, you’ll be able to find the perfect match for promoting your brand and products.

Remember to seek out influencers who complement your pet store’s identity. Whether about eco-conscious products or emphasizing pet health and wellness, when you find influencers who align with your values, you’ll know you’ve found a long-lasting partner.

After you hash out everything concerning targeting and values, it’ll be time to take a look at the numbers.

Sniff Out Engagement

In the world of social media, surface-level numbers aren’t everything. If you’re only looking at the follower count of influencers, you won’t get too far. In other words, the follower count is like a fluffy tail, wagging with excitement, but it’s super important to look further and prioritize engagement rates.

This is where micro-influencers come in. They don’t have a substantial following, but the next that they do have is highly engaged and active.

To determine an influencer’s engagement rate, compare their follower rate to the number of likes and comments they generate. Always go for a ratio that is at least higher than 10%.

An influencer who genuinely connects with their audience will achieve higher interaction rates, which means their loyal pack will hear your message loud and clear.

Unleash Authenticity

Let’s be honest; people prefer to avoid feeling like they are the target of a sales campaign. So, you’ll need to find an influencer who is truly authentic. It’s almost like you’re looking for a friend who truly loves dogs and not someone who’s just in it for the treats.

A combination of long-term partnerships and passionate influencers who usually share their pet stories will go a long way.

When they shine their love for animals, their audience will feel it and enthusiastically embrace your brand.

After you find an authentic influencer with the same values as your brand and reasonable engagement rates, it’ll be time to find the last missing piece – testing it out.

Test and Diversify

If it’s your first time running a pet influencer campaign, you’ll want to experiment with different types of influencers to find the perfect fit. Try out a couple of influencers who have different niches and engagement rates. Experiment with dog owners vs. cat owners and not only.

Embracing diversity in your influencer pack will ensure you can reach a wider audience and extend your brand’s reach across different pet-loving communities.

Choosing the right pet influencers is like discovering the best friends your pet store could ever have. When you find the ‘perfect’ influencers who share your passion for pets and genuinely connect with their audience, you’ll create a howling success for your brand.

Closure

There you have it, folks – the ultimate guide to pet influencer marketing. When you work with influencers, you stand to gain brand awareness, sales, and more. It resonates with your ideal customers, and you’ll get the best possible results.

Before you get started, you’ll need to set the right goals and create the most engaging content possible.

Choosing the right influencer also plays a massive role in the success of your campaigns. Make sure you choose an influencer whose audience matches your target, is highly engaged, and truly listens to the influencers they follow.

Embrace the world of pet influencers, and watch your pet store thrive in the digital age. We wish you the best of luck in your pet influencer marketing efforts.