With the popularity of social media sky rocketing, businesses across the board are racing to maximize their marketing potential. This is definitely the case within the pet industry, as companies are finding unique solutions to common social media hurdles.
You know the drill, you want as many 'friends", "fans", or "followers"as possible - the more the merrier, especially if you're a marketer. Seems simple enough. It's pretty easy for you or me to rack up the Facebook friends, but it's a little more challenging for businesses to follow suit.
In what's become an arms race of fans or followers, companies like HBH Pet Products have started offering consumers incentives to increase their social media popularity. To kick off their Facebook and Twitter pages, along with new dog treats, they announced an online contest where dog owners upload a picture of their dog(s) with HBH treats to win some Wal-Mart gift cards and HBH gift baskets. They even went a step further and gave the first 200 people who follow them on Twitter a free dog training clicker or whistle and various product combos.
Other manufacturers are taking social media a step further and using it in product development. Del Monte Foods did just that. In just six short weeks, they created an online community of 300 dog owners, asked them a few simple questions, and created a totally new dog treat that flew off the shelves. This was so successful because they asked the right questions and listened to the answers. For instance,on response to the question "What does your dog eat for breakfast" a member replied, "She would definitely eat bacon and eggs and she would want ketchup on her eggs. She loves ketchup." Del Monte noticed that a lot of similar answers, so they mad either new treats look just like bacon and eggs. Now you might be thinking, a dog isn't' going to care if a treat looks just like bacon and eggs, and you're right. But a dog doesn't buy the bag, we do. So we have to be sold on the treat. Del Monte recognized this and thus Snausages@Breakfast Bites appeared on the shelf of every pet supply store in America.
The idea of taking what you have and maximizing it's potential is nothing new. People do this with everything from computers to pencils. Social media is just the latest addition to that long list.
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