You love running your pet business, but it takes up a lot of your time. You always plan on implementing marketing, but many of us never get around to it. Luckily, many marketing tools have developed mobile applications to give you quick and easy access to your favorite marketing platforms.
We have put together a list of some of our favorite smartphone apps that can help you improve your marketing on the go.
Instagram is my favorite mobile app! Pet parents love seeing photos of their pets. If you aren’t sharing pictures of your furry guests to showcase your facility and/or services consistently, you are missing out. Share photos, videos, and special promotions. Use Instagram to give your followers a behind the scenes look into your business operations, introduce your staff, and show-off the cleanliness of your facility. These are a few great ways to increase trust and peace of mind in current and potential clients. Hashtag research is essential in locating and engaging with local pet parents. Engage with those who use local hashtags and use these hashtags in your Instagram posts to extend your reach.
Tip: Tag pet parents in photos of their pets to encourage commenting. Positive comments from pet parents can be just as good a review. Try Instagram Stories to get even more personal!
Facebook Pages Manager
Easily connect with your audience from your mobile phone with Facebook Pages Manager. With Facebook Pages Manager you can publish posts and schedule future posts, quickly respond to comments and messages, broadcast live videos of your furry guests, and review page insights. Ensure you are instantly notified of new activity on your page. Use push notifications, so you never miss a message or comment from a new prospective client.
Tip: Use Insights to monitor your Facebook posts to determine which post types attract the most engagement. This will help you determine which type of content you should share more often.
Facebook Groups
If you haven’t joined any local groups for local pet owners, it is time to start searching Facebook. Join as many of these Facebook Groups as possible in your area; this is where pet owners go to ask for advice. A very frequent question in many of these groups is around recommendations of local pet care businesses. To ensure your pet business is part of their research process, make sure you are present when these questions are asked so that you can suggest your business to them. Try searching groups for local dog parks or local events.
Tip: Start your own group to support local pet owners in your city. It is important to avoid any sales related posts, but it is a good idea to let your members know that your group is sponsored by your pet business in your header image and group description. With the Facebook Groups app, you have instant access to all posts which makes moderation easier.
Over
This smartphone app turns the average Joe into a professional designer! Over helps you edit photos and add text and images to pictures. For those days when you forgot to take pictures of your pets, you can search Pixabay and Unsplash from within the app to create your posts. Over has all of the canvas dimensions stored as templates.
Tip: Save your logo on your smartphone to quickly brand your social media posts.
Google Analytics
Monitor your marketing on the go with Google Analytics. With quick access to your data, you can quickly determine which of your marketing strategies are working best.
Tip: Google Analytics can seem daunting if you are not familiar with it. Google offers free courses and certification to help you understand and use Google Analytics to help grow your business.
Buffer or Hootsuite
How many times have you been so busy that you forgot to post on your social media channels for weeks or months? Social silence can be detrimental to your pet business as some prospective clients may think you are no longer in business. Use a free social media publishing tool to share and schedule future posts on various social media channels from on application. Social media publishing platforms like Hootsuite and Buffer helps you remain consistent in your social media publishing. You can also publish posts immediately through these tools to your various social media channels as needed.
Tip: Every Sunday evening or Monday schedule all of your posts for the week so you don’t need to worry about posting on social media all week.
What is your favorite smartphone app for marketing? If we missed it, share below in the comments.
Erika Godwin is the President of Barketing Solutions and the Co-Founder and CMO of ProPet Software, an industry-leading kennel management software. Erika has over 8 years of experience with WordPress and graduated from Elmira College in 2009 with a BS, Business Administration- Marketing and Management.
2 Responses
Thank you for this informative post…I am going to download Over. There is so much to do keeping up on Social Media and running a business and blogging and any other actual work that sometimes it is all a bit over-whelming. Your blog is awesome! Thank you 🙂
Over is amazing and I really enjoy the Pro version. I’m so glad to hear you enjoy our blog!! Thanks for reading 🙂