We all love watching animal videos on social media, but have you ever considered using influencers in your pet industry marketing? Maybe you have, but you didn’t know how to ask an influencer to work with your brand. In this post, I will discuss some ways that influencer marketing can be applied to the pet industry. Hopefully, it will help you get some creative ideas flowing if this is an avenue you decide to pursue in the future.
Finding Relevant Influencers
The first important thing to remember when deciding on an influencer to use is that we need to be sure that they match our brand voice and tone. They should be someone we would be proud to work with, and that also has a passion for pets. They should share content about pet care, products, and lifestyles that create high engagement. If they share our audience and create content related to the pet industry, this is a great sign that they will be able to help us gain more reach and engagement for our brand. It’s essential to go for quality over quantity when deciding on the influencer. This is because even though a micro-influencer may have fewer followers than a celebrity, they may have more engagement from their audience. Converting those engagements to conversions, which will increase our revenue, is one of our main objectives when considering marketing strategies that include influencer marketing. Accounts like @jiffpom or @nala_cat on Instagram are great examples of influencers that pet industry brands may want to work with. For a list of the “Top 100 Pet Influencers in 2024” shared by FeedSpot, click here.
Product Reviews and Sponsored Content
Now that you know how to find and decide on the right influencer for your brand, we can discuss ways to work with them. If the influencer agrees to work with you, one way that you can share your offerings with their audience is to send them your products to try out and review. The influencer can then share everything from the unboxing to their genuine experiences using your products with their followers. This will help build credibility and trust as their followers place great value on the influencer’s recommendations. For example, Nala from @nala_cat now promotes their brand @lovenalaco, which sells “foods, treats, and supplements crafted by @nala_cat.” The brand also uses many other feline influencer accounts to share its products. These posts are labeled as paid partnerships on Instagram.
Social Media Contests and Giveaways
Get creative with the content your influencers will share. You can create social media contests or giveaways to increase engagement and brand visibility. Have your products be that attractive prize that the influencer’s audience can win! This post from @kate_draws_pets shares a contest that she offered where the winner received a 9 x 12 hand-drawn pet portrait in colored pencil. Whether it’s a free photo shoot, a grooming, or a free box of toys and treats, these winners will be excited to share what they won in their favorite influencer’s contest. The benefits of this type of partnership don’t end there. They also include being able to customize the prize itself and the contest duration, rules, and content that will be shared in collaboration with the influencer. Don’t forget to thank your influencer while announcing the winners across your brand’s channels and follow that up by thanking all contest participants on your influencer’s channels!
Monitor and Measure
Remember to use each platform’s tools to monitor and measure the performance of these influencer campaigns. Knowing results and metrics like impressions, clicks, website traffic, and more can help us decide how to optimize future efforts with the specific influencer. For example, we can create copy tests and see whether a Mother’s Day graphic or a post with a picture of the mothers of the brand gets more reach on Facebook, as I did here for my pet care company, Aussie Mom Pet Sitting, LLC. Based on the data, my audience preferred to see the photo of owners with their pets rather than the graphic, even though the message of the posts was still the same. Results may start slow while the influencer begins sharing your brand with their audience, or they may come fast if the influencer has high engagement. In the case of influencer marketing, we monitor performance to ensure that any budget we put into influencer campaigns is directed to the right places. For example, if an influencer is not performing as well as expected, it can be addressed as soon as a negative trend begins, and content can be improved. We can also spend more of the budget partnering with influencers who post more frequently than others or videos rather than photos.
Influencer marketing in the pet industry helps brands build awareness, trust, and engagement by allowing us to tap into the influencer’s reach and credibility with their audience. Don’t forget to start by ensuring the influencer is suitable for your brand and shares the same passion for animals. Then, decide how you want the partnership to work, the types of content to be shared, and whether it will be collaboration or influencer responsibility. A great way to share your brand with your influencer audience is a social media contest or giveaway that helps create engagement with your brand. Lastly, don’t let these efforts and the budget allotted go to waste! Monitor and measure performance so changes can be made to any influencer marketing campaigns as needed.
Did you enjoy this post? Read about Parallax for the pet industry in my last post!”
