Dogs, Do-Gooding, and Social Media

Facebook has become a promotional venue for many pet industry marketers, letting them keep connected with current customers as well as recruit new customers. In the pet food market, Facebook can really help put a “face” on animal welfare efforts, letting companies post images and videos of the animals helped by their causes.  The ability to personalize content to suit specific needs, and almost instantly reach thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands, of consumers, makes social media perfect for launching animal welfare campaigns. Marketers can also develop Facebook-specific applications for contests and promotions related to their causes.

PetSmart Charities took full advantage of the benefits of social media when it launched its “Share a Pic, Save a Pet” application via Facebook, in a bid to drive awareness and animal adoptions. The app lets Facebook members use their Facebook profiles to post alerts about adoptable pets in their communities. Users can enter their zip code and select up to 10 adoptable pets to highlight from Adopt-a-Pet.com’s nationwide shelter database. Highlighted pets appear in friends’ newsfeeds and on the user’s Facebook timeline. The selected pets also link to the local animal-welfare organizations where the pets are available for adoption. The app has save nearly 5,000 pets as of 2013.

The Nutro Company uses Facebook to promote its Room to Run Dog Park Appreciation Project. Nutro plans to award 30 grants to help fund dog park enhancements nationwide. Videos from previous years’ successes, a photo gallery and a link to the application make it easy for those seeking dog park grants to check out the project and apply, and also show Nutro customers how the company is working towards making these improvements.

 

For more information on Packaged Facts's recent reports on the U.S. pet market and pet food industry, see http://www.packagedfacts.com/Pet-Outlook-7372395/ and http://www.packagedfacts.com/Pet-Food-Edition-7372391/