Marketing experiments can be used in many areas of the pet industry, but today, I want to share an example of how we could design one for the pet care industry. My last blog discussed how to create impactful surveys, and now we will explain how we can use those surveys as part of an experiment.
What would a marketing experiment for the pet care industry look like?
From my experience in the pet care industry, I am going to provide an example of an experiment I could run to get valuable data that I can then analyze and use to help me make decisions for my business.
- Purpose of the experiment: I want to know which service is more desirable and will be utilized more by pet owners if the two options are the same price. The first option is’ a 1-hr midday drop-in visit to the client’s home allowing for personalized care’, or the second option would be ‘day care services where client’s pet(s) is/are picked up and taken to a facility for the day to play and socialize with other pets, then dropped back off in the afternoon’.
- Objective: Conduct an online experiment among pet owners ages 21 – 75 to learn about their attitudes towards two different types of services, as measured by the likelihood of using one of the services over the other.
- Run online experiment – This can be done as an online survey link through Qualtrics/Survey Monkey etc. This would be an A/B Test to see which option customers prefer.
- Data Analysis – After administering a survey, it is important to analyze the data and listen to what it tells us about customer preferences in the local area in which I am going to be offering these services. I can then make decisions on which services to add, keep, or remove based on the feedback.
- Share insights – now that I have analyzed the customer feedback, I can talk to other decision-makers in the company. We must decide what action to take. We can decide what is best for our company going forward based on a few options. We could start offering the preferred service if we do not offer it currently; if we do offer it, we could consider raising prices because we know that customers value it as the preferred option of care, or if we only offer the option that was not preferred we can discuss lowering costs of the one we offer since our customers prefer another option but may only be using ours because we don’t offer their ideal option.
Why would this type of experiment be needed?
An experiment like this might be needed because a pet care company needs to consider its clients and their preferences for their pets’ needs. If we don’t listen to their voices and ask them questions about what they want, then the customer experience is not being valued as it should be.
How could the findings help a business owner in the pet industry do their job more successfully?
By finding the trends in the data that show clients’ preferences in one direction or another we can start to interpret what that data means. Knowing whether there is a wide variance or a narrow one in the responses given, we can decide how confident we are in the data and whether we should take action and make decisions based on the data from our experiment. Business owners can better use their time and money on services that their customers prefer, and this would also allow them to allocate their budget and employee scheduling accordingly.
By listening to the data, we, as business owners, can do our jobs more successfully and let our customers know that we value customer experience and appreciate when they share valuable insights like this.
“Allocate your time, effort, and budget efficiently by using marketing experiments to gain valuable insight from your customers and non-customers. By listening to what they have to say, we can design the best business and offer the best products and services for our ideal audience!”
Ashley Lee “Pet Pro gone Marketing Pro”
