Advertising a pet shop - how to promote it online?

Planning to set up a pet shop? Advertising can be the key to success! In this article, you will discover how to effectively promote your business to stand out in a crowded market. Learn about the biggest challenges of pet shop advertising and how to increase your chances of success!

Pet shop advertising - the biggest challenges

Opening a pet shop can be considered one of the best business investments. However, there is a long way from its launch to success. There are thousands of pet shops and online platforms in the pet retail market. In an industry full of competition, it is extremely difficult to stand out or at least make a name for yourself. What can you do to increase your chances of success? First and foremost, do not forget about the image of your business.

People who are looking for treats and toys for their pets will appreciate campaigns to help animals that have no home. This gives you the space to combine a worthy cause with the promotion of your shop. It is a good idea to organise a collection of products for dogs, cats and other creatures in shelters. Even better is to donate a percentage of your range to organisations that care for stray animals.

It is a good idea to publicise the course and results of the action on the Internet. It is best to include information about the action on the shop's home page. The information banner can be enriched with a link leading to a bookmark with a description of the actions for animals. It is likely that not all Internet users will click on it. For this reason, it is also useful to have a separate tab on the website to which the link hidden in the banner leads. News of the start and continuation of a collection or donation of items to a shelter should also be posted on the company's Facebook, Instagram and other social media profiles.

How to advertise a pet shop on search engines?

The other actions that need to be taken to promote a pet shop are no different from those carried out by representatives of other industries. The cornerstone of online marketing is website positioning. This is because increasing sales requires reaching an audience that rarely even checks the second page of a Google search. Paid advertising campaigns must also be remembered.

Technical and SEO performance of the website

Designed for Google's search engine, the rules for website promotion require site owners to take care of, among other things, loading speed. This aspect is also crucial for users, who are not willing to wait for a website to launch. They are more likely to leave the site and move on to another one belonging to a competitor.

Although it may seem obvious, one cannot forget to prepare two versions of the pet shop website. Currently, the more important one is the mobile one. It is on smartphones and, to a lesser extent, tablets that internet users search for the goods they are interested in and then make transactions. The computer version of the website is also less important, but still important. This should be developed separately.

A fast-loading site is likely to rank higher in search results, but this is not enough. Wherever possible, keywords need to be inserted in the content. According to SEO principles, search phrases used by internet users should be included in product and category descriptions, among other things. You can find out how to do this from your top-positioned competitors. In addition, it is worth purchasing a licence for one of the keyword selection programmes.

Pet shop advertisements on websites

Proper preparation of the website gives results, but only after a long time. Sometimes you have to wait up to six months, and sometimes longer. An earlier increase in sales must therefore be supported by promotional campaigns. The best way to advertise your pet shop is on pet care advice websites. On such blogs, banners work well. Clicking on them takes the web user to the pet shop's website. A distinction is made between advertising formats such as:

• a banner permanently placed at the top of the page, sometimes expanding when pointed at with the mouse cursor;
• a floating variant, i.e. one that follows the internet user scrolling down the site;
• a skyscraper, i.e. a long rectangle located to the right or left of the screen;
• a mid-text box (rectangle) positioned between consecutive parts of the content;
• button, i.e. a small button - generally with a CTA (call to action), e.g. Click, Check, See here.

Marketing in the Google ad network

You can also use the search engine itself to promote your pet shop. In addition to this, Google offers the possibility of placing an ad in the Maps app. You can choose from formats such as:

• sponsored links appearing above the organic search results;
• boxes with product images, also displayed at the very top, above the links to the pages;
• static graphics on which you can place your shop's logo, for example;
• contact details such as email address and telephone number for customers, in the second case only shown on devices that allow calls to be made (so on smartphones and some tablets, but not on computers);
• video - a type of advertising useful for shops that run a YouTube channel;
• large squares of distinctive signage for the location of stationary shops and other retail and service outlets.

Pet shop advertising on social media

The millions of people who use social media on a daily basis represent a huge group of potential customers. Harnessing this potential is facilitated by the corporations that manage these portals, including Meta and Google. The former company allows ads to be placed on Facebook and Instagram, among others, for a fee. Among them are:

• graphics and photos;
• autoplaying video;
• carousels for up to ten images or films;
• instant materials - full-screen adverts displayed on touch (format available for mobile devices only);
• collections, a combination of carousel and zip fabric.

Google, the owner of YouTube, puts advertisers at its disposal:

• short video adverts that the viewer can close after 5 seconds of playback;
• promotional material in the form of non-skippable films lasting 6 seconds;
• films that cannot be switched off, but last 15 or 20 seconds (on TV sets even half a minute).

Remarketing - an effective way to remind customers

Promotional material displayed in the search engine, on websites and on social media is effective, as evidenced by the unwavering interest of advertisers. Once a customer has been won, however, it must be retained. Among other things, e-mail and display advertising are used to present their offer again.

Remarketing of this kind primarily involves encouraging people to leave their email address. This is why it is a good idea to encourage customers to create a profile on the shop's website. The message encouraging them to do so should describe the benefits they will gain by registering for an account. These could be discounts on future purchases, the chance to win goods that are not available to other consumers, prizes in kind or money, and so on. Once the customer has left his or her e-mail address, the only thing left to do is to send messages with promotional offers.

Remarketing also includes practices such as requests for ratings of purchased items and reminders to leave a basket. Customer reviews lend credibility to the product's merits in the eyes of other shoppers. Messages about an unfinished transaction offer the chance that, upon reflection, an internet user will return and purchase an item they had previously abandoned for some reason.

The impact of UX design on sales conversion in an online shop

Unfinished purchases are a good reason to think about why the customer changed his mind. If the reason was the price, he would most likely not have started the transaction at all. A difficulty finding the product in the internal search engine or category tree would lead to the same situation.

So what could have led to shopping cart abandonment? One reason may be the already mentioned poor technical optimisation of the website. Slow-loading sub-pages can effectively discourage people from going through the subsequent purchasing steps.

Internet users are also tempted to abort their order by the tedious payment process and the lack of all available options for transferring money for the purchase. This can be changed with our InPost Pay service. Integrated with the InPost Mobile app, this form of payment allows you to go from selecting goods to paying for them in the shortest possible time. People who, for some reason, do not want to leave their e-mail address but would like to buy a product quickly without registering a shop account will also be pleased with this solution.

Advertise your pet shop with InPost - use our advertising potential!

How do you advertise your online shop in a different way? A great method is our next service. To promote your pet shop (as well as any other), we suggest you use the potential of the Parcelcomat®. The machines are located in well frequented areas and are hard to miss. We propose wrapping a selected number of them out of more than 20,000 parcel machines.

Paczkomat® InPost is also a space for displaying advertising. A pet shop's offer can appear on the screens of our machines. They will also prove useful as samplers, i.e. devices for sending advertising materials to customers. In addition to the machines, we propose using the InPost homepage as a space for promotion. On it, we can place static advertising banners of the online shop.

Our offer is aimed at both small and large business owners. Thanks to its diversity, every pet shop owner will find a promotion model that is right for them.

It is worthwhile to see for yourself and your company the results that using these proposals will bring. There is no need to wait. We encourage you to contact us today via the application form available on our website.