As part of the retail pet store industry, you know just how profitable this particular niche is. However, along with being a very lucrative business opportunity, the pet market also offers a considerably healthy dose of competition.
As such, for business owners with retail pet stores, it’s crucial that they pay close attention to devising and implanting creative and innovative marketing strategies to constantly up their game and boost their retail sales.
After all, it’s all about staying ahead of the competition, isn’t it?
For pet businesses, especially in their startup phase, here are some of the tried and tested, most effective marketing tips which significantly help increase sales and overall retail revenue.
Allow Customers to Touch (and interact with) The Merchandise
Retail stores, especially high-end ones, rarely, if ever, allow customers to actually touch the merchandise at display, freehandedly. Case in point: the salesperson who hovers behind you as you move from aisle to aisle, quickly stepping forward to handle the product themselves and effectively blocking your way.
While it’s necessary for some retail stores – think delicate china or expensive crystal pieces – for pet store this rule doesn’t necessarily apply.
The pet stores which allow customers to not only touch but closely interact with the merchandise AKA the pets themselves often see high retail returns. That’s because humans – especially kids – and animals form a close bond with one another when allowed to freely interact in a comfortable environment.
Don’t just allow any walk-in customer to go around letting pets out of their cages though. You’ll have, on your hand, an unimaginably wrecked store in a matter of minutes. Instead, it’s recommended to create a comfortable play area in a designated corner of your store where interested customers can get acquainted with their future pets under close supervision of a pet expert.
Diversify Your Products
While it’s great to be able to buy pets from a store, it’s not that great to have to search far and wide for appropriate pet care products. Stores that carry associated or alternative merchandise along with their main products perform considerably well in sales as compared to their more specific counterparts.
This is sort of akin to beauty salons selling the beauty products they use for services within their shop. Set a pet paraphernalia section in your store and stock up on pet food, toys, treats, leashes, water bowls and feeders, carriers, and other pet care products such as shampoos, combs, scrubs, detangle, or tick sprays.
Provide Add-on Services
There are dozens of different types of pet business ideas. While specificity is great for success, a little diverse inclusion never hurt anyone, especially not a pet store’s retail sales.
Most pet stores strictly only sell pets but offer little in terms of guidance when it comes to pet care, training, and pet boarding in case an owner has to travel. A great way to boost sales for your retail store is to provide add-on services to your customers which give more value to their overall pet experience.
Now, there are two ways to go about this. The first is that you can either enter into mutually beneficial cross-selling partnerships with similar businesses with you earning a designated portion of the profit per referral, for example, with the local vet office, or kennel service.
The second, more profitable way is to offer various, add-on, in-house services at your store and maximize your overall sales and revenue. For example, you can have a pet grooming facility, obedience training, pet daycare, or dog walking services for all your customers who purchase their pets from your store.
Host Events
Personal interactions do much to boost sales for retail pet stores. You can capitalize on this by hosting social media mediated events at your retail store to invite all your customer base to come and personally meet with the various animals.
These events can be friendly pet competitions, informative pet care and health sessions, service dog introductions, or more. The idea is to advertise these events as much as possible, in person, and through social media channels to invite and entice as many of your clients as possible.
This will not only increase your in store traffic and footfall, it will also significantly boost sales.
You can also collaborate with your local underprivileged or special person’s school, society, hospice or hospital to allow carefully supervised interaction of specially-abled children and adults with domesticated pets for mutually beneficial purposes. Some pet stores have found great success in collaborating with old-age homes to allow their residents to interact with pets from the store.
Create an Online Presence
The world is more digitized than you’d think. People prefer the convenience of shopping online for all their needs instead of making the effort to go in store. The same now applies for pets and pet stores. If you want to expand your retail pet business and boost sales, it’s vital that you invest in setting up a digital version of your pet store. Provide all the services you offer in-house, readily available online, accessible through the click of a button. While offering delivery services is a good idea for alternative merchandise, stipulating that the customer visit the retail store to pick up their pet in order to get correctly introduced to it will help ensure physical foot-fall at the store. This will also help boost sales further.
And there you have them, the top five tried and tested tips to boost sales immediately for your retail pet store. Try and incorporate these in your regular marketing strategies and we guarantee you’ll see a significant boost in sales sooner than you’d think was possible.
