Marketing advice needed: PETBOWL

[Petbowl]

Hi

I looking for some advice or ideas to push my website business.

I have been trading for a few months now, and found it very slow but pick up new customers now and again.

I sell healthy pet food, and also offer delivery. I have storage unit but not a high street presence.

I want to ideally shift all my customers online:

I have done a small scale leaflet drop
I have advertised in a local magazine
If I see a dog walker I will approach and leave them with my card
I have a sign written van
I have been to a few dog shows
I have gone to the local market to promote my business
I have just given my site a facelift

I now intend to push it much harder in the next couple of weeks with
email newsletter.
more deals ..eg/ 2 for 1's

I basically am looking for a low cost - but effective way to get make more sales.

Please let me know your thoughts ...or even what may have worked for you.

My site is: ***removed***

Thanks in advance

 

[XanderMarketing]

Hi,

The obvious solution is to start advertising online. Some ideas:

- Try and optimise your site for keywords like 'pet food Cardiff' or words to that affect
- Use Google AdWords - you can target by town or county so you wouldn't waste clicks
- Look for local websites and try and advertise on there
- Advertise on Facebook (in a similar way to AdWords)

In addition you could:
- Look for events, school fetes, fairs etc and hand out leaflets or take a stand
- If you have something unique or a good story try and get PR in local papers

The other thing to look at is your website. Being blunt, it's not great and it could look more professional. It's all very well getting people to your website but you need to make those visitors customers.

Hope this helps.

Alex

 

An effective way to launch a new business is to find a unique selling point then go for as much free publicity as possible. If you're a local business then you could target the local paper or relevant trade publications. Try to come up with a human angle or a human interest story. Why did you set up your business, were you made redundant, have you always dreamed of starting your own business.

Or maybe you know of a customer who once had a really fat cat and thanks to your healthy pet food it has lost lots of weight and can now climb trees again...ideally with before and after pictures of the cat!...whatever really.

Once you have an angle, put together a description of the story (remember to make it interesting), find out who the features editor is for the relevant publication and send the story (also known as press release) to them. Maybe include a nice photo.

Editors are always looking for stories that will interest their readers, so long as it is a story and not just one big advert. The editor doesn't care about your business or your turnover.

If you're lucky you'll get featured and people will visit your website.

 

[Be Known PR]

The PR route could definitely work for you. There are some good publications in South Wales that would work for you.

As TonyR said, the key is going to be developing the story. Healthy pet food itself is a good product to PR but you will need to find different angles in order to achieve a good range of coverage. I liked the fat pet idea.

You may be able to find a journalist that would be willing to test it on their own pet for a while and turn it in to a feature.

Also bear in mind that you do not have to restrict coverage to pet pages because cat and dog owners are reading all sections of magazines and papers. Target the business pages with a focus on your business itself or the news pages with a carefully generate news story.

 

[Deliberator]

Hi

I looking for some advice or ideas to push my website business.

I have been trading for a few months now, and found it very slow but pick up new customers now and again.

I sell healthy pet food, and also offer delivery. I have storage unit but not a high street presence.

I want to ideally shift all my customers online:

I have done a small scale leaflet drop
I have advertised in a local magazine
If I see a dog walker I will approach and leave them with my card
I have a sign written van
I have been to a few dog shows
I have gone to the local market to promote my business
I have just given my site a facelift

I now intend to push it much harder in the next couple of weeks with
email newsletter.
more deals ..eg/ 2 for 1's

I basically am looking for a low cost - but effective way to get make more sales.

Please let me know your thoughts ...or even what may have worked for you.

My site is: ***removed***

Thanks in advance

Contact Guscat http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=136361&highlight=guscat

 

[Be Known PR]

May also be worth looking at local vetinary surgeries and seeing about joint marketing activity.

You could also offer local papers prizes for a competition as this is a great way of securing editorial space for just the cost of a bit of stock.

 

[Lorro2]

Could be that there is simply no demand for healthy pet food. Pet food is pet food to most people and you are up against the supermarkets and sheds. I would expand the range to include a vast range of pet products, link yourself up with various trading partners, hit the big shows such as the agricultural shows that have a huge footfall and then see how it goes.

 

[papverpoppies]

Is that your complete stock range - listed on your site.

If it is, (sorry if not), but if this is the case, then I think you are limited by what you are selling.

You also state (healthy food) many owners might not consider dried food healthly) the market has moved on.

Whilst I agree many people do still feed complete food, these days healthy food is considered more as in the BARF diet, so maybe your advertising is slightly misleading..

I seem to recall you posted along the same lines on here before, and I seem to recall I posted the same answer (almost)!

A new website is not the complete answer, it is the products you carry that will bring in more people.

Have you been round a pet whole salers..the product range is staggering.

I have 12 dogs, 10 cats, and sheep, if that is your product range, I would not be using you, and I do use whole salers.

Hope this helps.

Poppy

 

[Dawg]

Could be that there is simply no demand for healthy pet food. Pet food is pet food to most people ...

Healthy Pet food is the fastest growing sector of the market.

OP, try and align yourself with local walkers, trainers etc to get a good Word of Mouth thing going as well as a PR blitz.

 

[*Lexxy*]

i must admit i was a little surprised at the range on your site when i looked at cat food, with you saying 'healthy' i was expecting something a little different to the james wellbeloved/royal canin that i can buy at pets at home! (in bigger sizes & cheaper too).

 

[papverpoppies]

i must admit i was a little surprised at the range on your site when i looked at cat food, with you saying 'healthy' i was expecting something a little different to the james wellbeloved/royal canin that i can buy at pets at home! (in bigger sizes & cheaper too).

As I have a few cats!! (one of the draw backs of living rurally), I was buying my cat food from a wholesaler.

Then I noticed that Tescos, offered a better quality of food at a far cheaper price, so sad as it is for the wholesaler, who I know cannot compete with the large supermarkets - I changed supplier.

Poppy

 

[papverpoppies]

Breakdown of the pet food market - as to what foods (ie current trends) are presently (2008 data ) the latest trends.

Interesting research for anyone in the pet food industry.

Poppy

 

[emailblaster]

Hi Petbowl

Email marketing is a great way to start the ball rolling, it is probably the most cost effective way to reach good numbers of people. It is worth getting a decent list of 'opt-in' potential subscribers. Half the battle is making sure that you have a great list to mail to.

Also with email marketing you can study the results in great depth - unlike any other method of marketing; you can see useful data such as whole received your newsletter, who opened it and who clicked through to your site.

This is a great way to filter out all of the people that you think may be worth a follow up phone call or a personalised email from yourself; you can pick out all of the people that click through to your site.

We have an online email marketing system: Mail Manager uk, we do currently have a free trail offer that we are advertising in the market place on the forum (www.mailmanageruk.co.uk). Please feel free to use our system on trial and see what you think, its really easy to get to grips with and has all the stats you need on screen.

Hope this helps.

 

[guscat]

Contact Guscat http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=136361&highlight=guscat

Thanks Deliberator, we sure can help the OP as dog food is one of the most popular searches on thewoofbook at present and our 'guide to canine cuisine' is our third most visited page on the site at present meaning people are clearly interested in healthy options for their pooch.