What Pet Shop Owners Need to Know to Grow Their Business

Owning pets and treating them as a member of family is now a day very common and due to this there has been a rapid growth in the pet market. It has been found that the pet population in India is growing at a faster rate i.e. averagely 600,000 pets are adopted on yearly basis.

Viewing the above pet adoption statistic, many small and medium enterprises has started investing in pet care. The major boom in pet care has been witnessed with pet owners becoming conscious of healthier pet food. Having tiresome lifestyles on one hand and giving healthy food to pets on other hand has let them opt for packaged pet food. The demand in packaged pet food has driven many brands to manufacture and sell pet food. It has been predicted that by 2019, pet food market in India would be crossing USD270 Million. To be precise, the pet food market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 13.9% amounting to a $434.3 million market by 2020.

In addition to such a huge pet food market, there is a dense market for pet accessories and pet care products like pet shampoo, pet brushes and so on. To address such a high potential industry in this competitive environment, below strategies would help them to enhance their business.

 How pet shop owners can grow their business?

• Get online presence with app & website from where customers can order

The online presence would be giving you an added benefit with a physical store. Viewing the busy schedules of the pet owners in taking care of them in addition to their routine life, an app and website would solve their purpose of buying pet care products with just clicks. Along with ease, apps do have variety of features dedicated to increase pet shop business such as Social Media Sharing and Selling, PUSH Notification, Refer & Earn, Discounts & Coupons, and many more.

• Take advantage of social media platforms

With almost 95% of crowd present on social media, you can’t miss out any of these social platforms. Be it Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest or any other platform, you have to be active on all to engage your target audience. Keep posting regularly on these platforms linking the same to any of your pet product or services. You can use feature like Deep Link to let your social crowd visit your app and website.

Go with:

1. Facebook targeted ads covering pet relevant audience like pet owners, pet product buyers, etc.
2. Facebook boost post sharing tips for pet owners, hosting events for pet owners, etc.
3. Twitter Posts & Retweets on pet lifestyle, new pet product in market, etc.
4. Community building on Linked in of pet owners, Veterinary physicians & others.
5. Instagram story update about routine activities of pet, how to engage them while you are working, etc.
6. Blog commenting
7. Video posting on YouTube explaining your products and its advantage to the pet owners.
8. Pet products and accessories selling via Facebook store

• Offer pet-grooming services at your store space

Start giving pet grooming services relevant to pet hygiene, cleaning, overall appearances, etc. in or near your store. This will drag more pet owners to your store. You can attract them by putting exciting offers on services that will save their effort and time. Also you can use your products while serving them i.e. your pet shampoo, or any other product.

If you are running short of store space, you can have a tie up with any pet salon and fix the appointments with them or can connect pet owners with them.

• Arrange pet training programs

With the busy schedules, it gets quiet touch for the pet owners to teach them some mandatory habitats. To attract such customers, conduct pet training programs where they can subscribe for different training programs such as training a dog to obey basic commands, ways to improve you’re their manners, teaching birds to speak basic words and so on. Give discounts on sessions or attract them by combo learning plans.

Here you can sell your pet learning kit to the pet owners.

• Monthly subscription programs for pet services/food

Do not target for one time sale instead get a lifetime customer. Design and attractive monthly program for pet services in which you can give the basic services say for example pet hair trimming, bathing, or any other mandatory services. Do same for pet food subscription programs i.e. prepare a pet meal plan and sell the required products on monthly basis this would ease the pet owner’s pain of searching and deciding what meal should be given to their pets. Offer discounts the pet owners you meet for first-time.

• Monthly Vet consultation

Arrange health check programs for pets on monthly basis in or near your store space. This would      automatically bring your target customers to you. Merchandising relevant products well and at appropriate position would help you increase your sale once they are in your premises. Give away low-cost pet accessories such as pooper scoopers to all the visitors.

• Give ads on local newspapers magazines

Increase awareness in pet industry by placing advertisement in local newspapers and magazines such as Creature Companion, dogs & more, etc.  Apart from print, list your business on various local listing sites.

Be it a local pet shop business craving to increase pet product sale or a high-profile pet food brand seeking to rule pet market, with all the above promotional activities you can boost your pet shops business to heights and get edge over others in grabbing more customers.