How Pet Service Businesses Can Re-Engage Customers
- Stay Active on Social Media: Share tips, videos, FAQs, and client stories to keep pet owners connected.
- Use Email Marketing: Send newsletters, promotions, testimonials, and seasonal updates to encourage repeat bookings.
- Leverage SMS Marketing: Automate reminders, follow-ups, and special offers to maintain consistent communication.
As a pet service business, your skill and service lie in providing a much-needed resource for consumers. Whether you provide pet training, pet spa services, pet grooming, or you’re a veterinarian, you know customers need your service from time to time. But, how do you get them back to you, not just any other company? Learning how to re-engage your customers is a core part of your pet service business marketing strategy.
Reengagement is the process of drawing customers back after they have had some interaction with your company in the past. To do this, you must start with a core level of excellent service – treat them well, provide the best service possible, and be friendly. Yet, this alone is not enough to stand out in a crowded industry. Instead, you need to turn to technology.
The use of email, social media, and texting strategies for pet service business marketing keeps your business an active part of your clients’ lives. Instead of Googling a veterinarian or pet groomer, your customer automatically thinks to call you.
Technology for Getting Repeat Customers for Your Pet Service Business
Most companies collect critical data to help build their customer profiles. That includes customer phone numbers and email addresses. This information is highly valuable to your business, not just to keep records up to date but also to ensure you have a way to continuously connect with your customers. With approval and opt-in, there are several strategies to use to re-engage and bring your customers back to you time and time again. That includes social media, email, and texting.
Social Media for Pet Services
Your pet service business needs to have social media in place across the platforms where your customer exists. That typically includes Facebook, Instagram, and, for licensed professionals, LinkedIn. YouTube can also become a core component of your marketing strategies as you build a following.
Once you establish your profile on these sites, incorporate your branding. Be sure your name, address, and phone number are exactly the same on all of your social media pages as they are on your Google Business Profile and website. This is how the search engines link them. Then, start creating content.
Social media allows you to continue to interact with new customers and old ones. When a customer comes in for service, ask them to follow you and share your page on social media. If you give them great service, they will do so willingly.
For pet service businesses, social media marketing may not be as challenging as you think. Consider what your customers ask you and need from you when they call. Then, answer their questions or provide insight that helps them to see the value in communicating with you. Here are some ideas to help you start posting on social media:
- Discuss the most important thing people need to know about the service you offer that they probably do not know.
- Take a video tour of your facility. Show your audience what happens when they use your services behind the scenes.
- Provide informative content. For example, a vet may wish to talk about flea control heading into the fall months. A pet grooming company may wish to share insight into proper grooming techniques for shedding. A trainer can share ideas about dealing with pets during the holidays.
- Provide content that discusses a specific service you offer, its value, and what benefits it offers.
- Communicate the differentiating factor that makes your business different from the others.
- Answer frequently asked questions about your pet service business in posts.
- Take a poll of your audience. Ask your customers what they need and want to know.
Once you create content for your social media sites and start posting it consistently, you will then be able to reach your audience more readily. Engage with the questions and comments they post. You can automate the process, so you’re not constantly focused on your social media accounts, but still creating those personalized experiences.
Email Marketing for Pet Services
Bringing back your customers means reminding them that you are there and available to them at all times. The problem is, consumers are constantly inundated with ads, and they often don’t create lasting relationships with a single provider because they are so rushed from one task to another. Email marketing for a pet service company can help you here.
You are likely already connecting the email addresses of your customers during their intake process. Now, consider a few ways to use it to capture their ongoing business.
- Send monthly newsletters to your clients to update them on the type of care and services you recommend for this time of the year. Pet spas could send seasonal insights, while pet trainers can send emails loaded with a video that demonstrates how to teach a pet something.
- Send promotional emails to update on the services you offer as they change or prices alter. For example, if you are a veterinarian who is now offering microchipping services, send out an update to include that information.
- Build a newsletter that informs about the service and practice. That might include providing insights into what’s happening at the company.
- Run a contest or promotion. Link in your social media marketing by encouraging your customers to participate in your activities – drawing your email customers to your social media posts.
- Share a customer testimonial. Use videos and quotes from a customer that demonstrate what you did for your customer.
By embracing email marketing for pet service businesses, you create a strategy that allows you to build a strong connection on an ongoing basis. Every time your email lands in their box, they have an opportunity to schedule an appointment, connect with your social media page, or leave a review on your Google Business Profile – as long as you build effective emails that pack in this information.
Sounds like a lot? It can be, but there are tools that allow you to create highly effective email marketing messages without much time or hard work in the process.
Text Message Marketing for Pet Services
The next component of your marketing outreach to reconnect and build relationships with your customers is the use of text messages. When your customers signed up for services, they may have had an opportunity to check a box to allow you to send them messages. Make sure they opt in to this service.
Then, you can send text messages to them as often as you desire, within reason. Unlike any other type of marketing, text messages go right to your customers’ hands and demand their attention. However, overdoing it can drive them away and create a poor experience. Instead, consider the following ways to use text message marketing for your pet service business:
- Send a follow-up text message after a service appointment. When doing so, be sure to include a link to your Google Business Profile and ask for a quick review of the service they received.
- Send a text message a few days after the service to check in with them.
- Before your customer leaves your business, have them set up their next appointment. You can then automate reminders for it, leading up to the appointment. This minimizes the risks of abandoned timeslots.
- If you have a sudden available timeslot, send out an opportunity text message. Keep it to the point and targeted to just those customers who are most likely to need those services.
- Send special offers and promotion updates when you run them. Make it effortless for your customer to sign up for that service with a click of a link.
Text marketing for pet service businesses can create highly effective communication methods with your clients. As time passes, your customers will see that message and remember to connect with you and schedule an appointment.
How to Automate Your Reengagement Strategies for Marketing Your Pet Business
As a veterinarian, pet spa owner, pet groomer, or pet trainer, you are constantly working on your business directly. However, marketing keeps new customers coming in and old ones coming back. That’s why it is such a critical component to building a strong and successful business.
Automation makes it possible for you to create text, email, and social media engagement without having to spend tons of your time doing so. When you create a clear foundation with automation tools, they go to work to market your business on a consistent basis without annoying your customers, but always keeping your business at the forefront of their minds.
How Surefire Local Can Help You
Explore the ways in which Surefire Local helps companies like your own to achieve the ongoing success they need. With our automation tools, you can create an authentic relationship with your clients and encourage them to come back to you time and time again. Sign up for a Surefire Local demo now to see how marketing your pet service business could work to bring your customers back to you.