Holiday Marketing Tips for Pet Business Owners
- Plan Promotions in Advance: Create holiday deals and loyalty offers ahead of time, then automate campaigns to run during peak season.
- Pre-Schedule Social Content: Maintain visibility on Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms while focusing on in-person care.
- Leverage Customer Reviews: Highlight positive feedback across social media, newsletters, and in-store displays to build trust and attract new clients.
- Use Local Marketing Tools: Platforms like Surefire Local allow pet businesses to automate campaigns, schedule posts, manage reputation, and maintain consistent marketing throughout the holidays.
You’ve decked the halls in your pet business, and you are ready to celebrate the merriest time of the year — but along with the heightened excitement and lively festivities comes an overwhelming season that is filled with increased holiday demand and an influx of last-minute requests. It’s daunting at times, especially when you are trying to provide your four-legged clients with the best possible care while promoting your pet business.
Far too often, pet business owners put their marketing efforts on the back burner while they attempt to tackle the holiday rush. We get it — you don’t have a lot of time for the administrative load when there’s a line out the door — but this is the moment where visibility matters the most. By investing in a small business marketing platform, you can create your strategy, automate tasks, and let your marketing campaigns run, all while you keep the tails wagging throughout this magical, spirited season.
Minimize Your Workload During the Height of the Holidays With Strategic Marketing Tactics
The pet services industry is a customer-facing field, requiring you to be on hand and available to work directly with your clients. Developing this personal rapport with both your human and animal clients means that you have to be physically present and interacting with them on a regular basis, leaving little time for back-end work — especially during the holidays.
Rather than throwing your marketing plan out the window and focusing solely on the task at hand, you can leverage automated marketing tactics that can save you time while generating buzz about your business.
Here are a few options to consider:
Plan Your Holiday Promotions in Advance — And Automate Them
For many people, the holidays are an incredibly expensive time of year. There are gifts to buy, parties to prep, and appointments that have to be made so that they — and their pets — can look great for every moment. As a result, many of your customers are going to be looking for valuable deals and promotions.
Rather than trying to come up with your seasonal deals on-the-fly, brainstorm your prospective holiday promotions in the slower months leading up to this hectic season. These are just a few ideas to get you started:
- Book your pet’s holiday grooming appointment in advance, and receive a free festive bandana so that they look great for every celebration.
- Visit our veterinary clinic during December for your annual check-up, and receive a holiday treat for your pet.
- Have your pet’s picture taken with Santa at our exclusive event for regular customers.
- Book up to two pet spa sessions during November and December, and receive a 20 percent discount on treatment enhancements.
Once you decide on the promotions that you are going to run, develop an automated marketing campaign that will launch during the peak season. While your marketing plan runs in the background, you can focus on caring for your customers in the way that they deserve.
Pre-schedule Social Content
At the end of an exhausting day training pets or giving them their fresh holiday look, you likely won’t have the time or energy for social media. Rather than trying to increase your presence on Facebook or Instagram during these full yet festive days, you should pre-schedule your content ahead of time. Developing your social content in the months leading up to the holidays allows you to create it once and schedule it to run throughout the season, letting you continue to connect with your customers online while you focus primarily on serving them in-person at your storefront.
Leverage the Power of Happy Customers
Online reviews are one of the most powerful digital marketing tools available today, and you need to elevate the words of your happy customers in order to earn the trust of your target audience. As a pet business owner, you can share online reviews in several ways, such as:
- Including testimonials within your online newsletters.
- Promoting recent reviews on social media.
- Displaying reviews in your storefront.
Sharing positive feedback not only builds trust among your target market segment, but it also helps you fill those appointment books up. New customers are far more likely to book directly with you when they see objective feedback about your business on Google, Facebook, and other online review websites.
Create a Seasonal Email Marketing Campaign Ahead of Time
Email marketing is a tried-and-true digital marketing tactic that continues to deliver results for small business owners. By creating a strategic email marketing campaign in the months leading up to your hectic holiday season, you can leverage the power of email and automation. The best email marketing platforms for small businesses, specifically those that specialize in pet care services, can help you generate a targeted campaign that can be sent out to your most loyal brand followers. The right platform allows you to maintain your presence online while generating business during the peak holiday season.
Leverage the Power of Effective Local Marketing Tools for Small Businesses
Choosing the right local marketing tool is the key to successfully navigating the busy holiday season without neglecting your promotional efforts. The Surefire Local Marketing Platform is designed with pet business owners in mind, allowing you to create targeted, automated marketing campaigns that deliver results while saving you time and energy.
Surefire Local offers one of the most effective local marketing platforms for small businesses, allowing you to leverage the power of:
Content Scheduling
Rather than trying to share information about your business and your latest holiday promotions in real-time, you can use our content scheduling tool to prepare your posts in advance. Offering one dashboard to schedule and publish social posts across all channels, our content scheduling tool is simple to use and incredibly convenient, especially for pet business owners navigating the height of the holiday season.
AI-Powered Writing Assistance
You can even eliminate some of the mental load of developing the most creative and engaging social media posts by leveraging the power of our AI writing assistant. This intuitive tool allows you to quickly generate content for your social posts, email marketing campaigns, photo captions, or promotional copy, taking away the guesswork of what will appeal to your pet-loving customers.
Reputation Management
Recognizing the sheer power of reviews, our reputation management tools allow you to generate feedback from your customers that you can continue to use in your marketing campaigns for years to come. Features within this tool include:
- Automated review requests after each job or service is complete.
- Automatic text and email reminders for your clients, allowing them to keep your business top of mind.
- AI-powered writing assistance allows you to create professional replies, review requests, and email marketing content that protects your reputation and builds your brand.
Essentially, this innovative tool allows you to build your reputation in one convenient location, eliminating the stress that comes with strategically developing your presence in the local community.
Efficiency Impact
One of the facets of marketing that small business owners struggle with the most is consistency, and consistency is the key to successful marketing in the digital era. Our efficiency impact tools keep your marketing consistent across all platforms, freeing up your time to take care of the pets that you know and love.
Looking to Get Started? Use These Marketing Ideas for Pet Business Owners
The holidays are closer than you think. Now is the best time to begin generating ideas for your promotions and scheduling your social content in advance. Here are a few marketing ideas that you can use as a pet business owner:
- Create and schedule weekly social posts featuring your holiday promotions that you can share automatically in December.
- Share before and after photos from the previous holiday season, and use customer reviews as your caption for the post.
- Plan a “Thank You” post in advance that can go live after the Christmas holiday or immediately after the New Year, thanking your customers for their continued support and wishing them the best in the coming year.
With the right local marketing tool in place, you can plan it once and let it run while you keep the tails wagging.
Let the Leading Local Marketing Tool Do the Behind-the-Scenes Work For You
As one of the most effective local marketing tools for small businesses — particularly those in the pet services sector — Surefire Local can eliminate the chaos that comes with creating and implementing a marketing plan all while growing your business. From the height of the holiday season through the peak summer months, our small business marketing platform provides an anchor for your business, allowing you to increase your visibility in the local market while organically improving sales.
Schedule your demo today, and see what the Surefire Local Marketing Platform can do for your pet business.
