PetSmart's 'Dog Day' Leverages Social Marketing

PetSmart took National Dog Day, not one of the nation's most well-known occasions, and made it the center of an imaginative social media marketing plan catering to dog lovers' passion for their pets, reported a recent Direct Marketing News magazine article. PetSmart engaged in social media conversations (more than 780,000 tweets) on the fun Aug. 28 dog recognition day and rewarded user-generated content, such as personal pet photos, with fun giveaways when users tagged @PetSmart with #NationalDogDay. As a result, PetSmart earned a whopping 56% of the #nationaldogday conversation in the Twitter pet space and positioned itself as a trusted partner of pet lovers. It's not the first time PetSmart has used a quirky national day to generate social media buzz; another effort included a dog-oriented promotion for National Lazy Day during the "dog days" of summer. As the DM News article points out, other industries can emulate the PetSmart social media tactics--and have--with promotions centering on National Underwear Day or National Doughnut Day, for example. For the full article, read http://www.dmnews.com/social-media/petsmart-barks-up-the-right-marketing-tree/article/437885/

Lessons From Pet-Care Firm's Content Marketing

We help many pet care and animal welfare clients with direct marketing, and we'll be expanding our knowledge of market needs at the upcoming Animal Care Expo, March 29-April 1 in New Orleans. So we thought it especially timely to highlight a recent Direct Marketing News article about the content marketing success story of PetRelocation, a pet moving and travel service. After trying generic keyword and pay-per-click campaigns, PetRelocation decided to set up a content forum, using tools from Oracle Marketing Cloud, to address pet owner concerns, explains the DM News story. Great for customer relations, but it did a lot more. The marketing team culled popular answers from the forum to post directly on the website, for a boost to organic search results. The increase in online traffic and leads actually allowed the company to eliminate its pay-per-click ad spending. The content forum also gathered valuable testimonials that spurred lead-to-conversion. With the majority of annual revenue tied to online marketing, primarily content marketing, PetRelocation's success story should intrigue pet care marketers and B2C marketers in general. To read about it, go to http://www.dmnews.com/petrelocation-uses-content-marketing-to-drive-sales/article/404010/