This was a report my class and I created as part of a social media marketing campaign and assessment. We proposed campaign collaborations with pet-friendly influencers and brands to reach a wider audience and revised store layouts to work with covid restrictions, and introduced the idea of utilizing geo-mapping apps to personalize surveys, questions, and products at each store.
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Introduction-Executive Summary-
How has Petco gained trust from a new target audience, increased social media
engagement / traffic to social media platforms and also increased Petco sales by 10%?
Six months ago Petco set out with new strategic marketing goals in mind. With a desire
to improve brand awareness and reach and increase sales by 10%.This was to be
accomplished by utilizing various social media platforms that had been diligently
monitored for greatest social marketing impact. Petco has the largest engagement and
following on Facebook followed by Instagram & Pinterest. Two ad campaigns were
created to increase engagement and sales by 10% across the selected social media
platforms.This data was collected by optimizing the social media content and monitoring
what the audience reacted to and what particular time of day they were engaging. By
monitoring what our audience was sharing we could develop a content strategy that
addressed our customer concerns. We learned that they prefer a more casual, fun tone
with engagement as opposed to a professional business type. As social media
platforms evolve so must the Petco SEO strategy. Honing in on what the Petco
customers are searching for allows us to create keywords that allow them to easily find
what they need.
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A good brand image online is important as many businesses lose millions of
dollars due to poor customer service. Negative customer comments, reactions and
reviews can be harmful to the brands online presence. “Social media data tells you who
is talking about your brand and whether or not what they’re saying is positive. By
collecting and analyzing user generated content, you can thank happy customers and
address customer complaints. We recognized the engagement on Facebook to be the
most effective, however we also gleamed that Instagram has many untapped
opportunities.
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Instagram has a, “per-follower engagement rate of 4.21 percent. That’s 58 times
higher than Facebook and 120 times higher than Twitter. Instagram is now the second
most popular social network after Facebook with 60 percent of users logging in on a
daily basis. 30 percent of all Internet users have an Instagram account and 90 percent
of all Instagram users are younger than 35.”
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Collection of this information was possible by listening, monitoring and using
analytic tools available on the social media platforms to gain trust from the new target
audience, increase social media engagement / traffic to social media platforms and also
increase Petco sales by 10%.
Some steps involved with the campaign were:
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This assessment report discovered that Petco needed to create a plan for post
COVID-19 19. They have more stock being bought online and reservations for grooming
booked weeks in advance. They need to remove their stock from the store and make a
new space for dog training and grooming that is COVID-19 19 safe for pets and pet
owners. They also needed to re-focus their employee training towards animal
knowledge, training, and grooming so that they can assist in every customer's needs.
We also realized that Pinterest wasn’t getting the attention it needed, it was not coming
up in searches, so we attached our campaign images and short video clips to a small
blog. This blog gave the same information but with more detail and a couple more
helpful images. After instituting the blog and connecting it to the Pinterest page, Petco
got more followers and more people attending the mobile grooming every 1st and 3rd of
the month.
We also produced surveys on all three platforms, as well as geo fenced surveys in the
app, that asked our audience their location and what they wanted to see from their local
Petco post COVID-19 19. San Diego, La Jolla, and most of southern California said they
wanted to see more groomers and more outdoor training classes. While places like
Tijuana and most of Northern Mexico said they wanted accessible places to wash their
dogs or cats. So, Petco will increase the amount of self-wash stations in their stores
based in Mexico and that have set standard prices (not based on weight) and provide
towels, soap, and aprons.
In all, based on our finding, Petco has benefited greatly from switching their targeting
audience to a more diverse, middle to lower class (25K-50K), single women and men,
ages 20-35, with one pet in the household. With our new collaboration campaign, they
have increased their sales and brand awareness by more than the desired 10% in our
original goal statement. They have increased their following on Pinterest by 2,600 and
Instagram by 61,800 followers; and Facebook following increased by 300,000. Their
training courses and grooming services have increased by 15% and continued to grow
for the duration of the campaign run. At the end of the six-month marketing campaign,
Petco has decided to continue their business with HedgeHodge Marketing Firm and we
are currently working on two new campaigns to run this upcoming summer.
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Limitations-
There are limitations to the amount of relative data we can collect. Some limitations
include:
· It takes good analysis on the part of the marketer to establish the links
between ROI and social media.
· Data is fragmented by platforms so there is no one stop shop for all useful
data.
· User privacy protection rights limit the amount of data collection. For
example Facebook can provide an overall breakdown of where fans reside, but
cannot identify which fans and where they live.
· The impact of media content is hard to measure. For example: It’s
challenging to determine how long a particular video has been watched and
whether the viewer has been paying attention the whole time and if they received
the message we were going for without more in depth analytic tools.
· A high number of fans does not equal success. Companies fool themselves
by measuring their campaigns effectiveness with fan numbers - having fans does
not equate to true brand enhancement or real leads.
· Using social media analytics software is not enough. Organizations have to
consider individuals in the process of analysis and interpretation of collected
data.
While we are able to collect data like how many people visited our website, where they
left, and even which campaigns were the most successful – It does not explain why
users do what they do. For example: One page had a high exit rate, it can be assumed
something is wrong with the page, but what?
· It could be one or more factors involving our call to action.
· Is our page not “mobile-friendly”?
· Did we just have a broken link?
· Were they looking for contact information?
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Although we can predict our audience's perception of our brand, we cannot predict our
audience's use of social media.
Despite the number of active social media users growing over the last year, 35.7% of
people in the UK have admitted to reducing the amount of time they spend on social
media.
This trend is largely due to the feeling that social media is leaving people feeling
overloaded, which 29% of survey respondents said was the case. Other reasons for
cutting back on social media included addition/time-wasting (27.2%), a lack of trust
(26.7%), privacy/data concerns (21.4%), mental health and wellbeing (21.1%) and
digital detox (14.4%).
The fact is we cannot really know for certain if any of these issues were the ultimate
cause of the higher exit rate on our page. Without asking specific questions to users we
cannot know:
· What made other pages popular.
· Which links were wrong or broken.
· And why visitors avoid a certain page.
Specified user data such as who and where they live are made available for us by users
opting into the Petco app survey permissions - but only if they chose to do so.
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Access to social data delivers valuable analytics insights. But businesses must look at
the bigger picture - social data is only one piece of the analytics puzzle. In fact, social
media data offers a limited perspective of customer experience. Businesses that want to
receive well-rounded results Analytics, must perform detailed research that incorporates
multiple data sources into its projects.
Data Analysis-
● Pet Food Market: $91.1B worldwide
● 90.4% of millennials use SM vs 48.2% of Baby Boomers (New target for
campaign)
● Petco SM campaign was successful with the development of relatable content
across selected platforms to achieve growth in both target audience & profit
margins
The data collected during
this campaign reflect
positive results. Items to
consider for future SM
campaign given the
scope of potential global
reach:
Small SM data gathering
campaign for
international sales- UK,
southern Mexico, South
America
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● US 10 year forecast of Pet Market growth: $33B
● Food & Grooming account for 46% of market product
● Petco has great potential to secure 25% market growth
● Petco and competitor Petsmart hold 48% of total revenue earned in 2019
● Other competitors such as Walmart & Amazon encroaching in online space at a
rapid pace
● Petco’s tactical approach to offset competitors growth is to re-evaluate and test
new strategies regularly
Mobile pet grooming & small business
partnerships has shown to be a
profitable venture. The increase of
followers across all online platforms
led to the achievement of the initial
campaign goal. Thus driving the 30%
increase is website traffic from FB, IG
& PT.
The unexpected result of this
campaign shows that there is potential
to grow the target audience beyond
current predictions.
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Success Stories-
Webster's dictionary defines success as a favorable or desired outcome, also the
attainment of wealth, favor, or eminence.
According to the Understanding Critical Success Factors and Indicators in Business
article, “Success Factors are those variables or circumstances necessary to enable a
positive outcome for a business program or strategy”.
Petco’s two campaigns that were run were considered a success because they
obtained the goals we, as marketers, set forth for the company. They had a 10%
increase in in-store sales as well as developed a larger and more diverse audience.
However, this success was not without bumps in the road along the way, and we
learned a great deal about how to communicate with our audience.
For example, as quarantine and elections began to develop, we learned that our
audience was not engaging with content that was too formal. Previous advertising
focused on animal cancer and how to care for and prevent it, but we quickly realized
that our audience was only interacting with content that was fun and insightful. We
started to only post content that would be seen as worth sharing, so funny and
informational images and videos put on the foreground.
As we posted this type of content Petco’s multiple platforms saw an increase of
followers and engagement over the next six months. We also realized that our
geocaching surveys with coupons attached were being filled out much more than those
without a coupon attached. However, surveys with coupons that were only for day of
purchases, received significantly less support.
In all, pushing light hearted content and attaching coupons to our surveys received
much more engagement than not. Petco has decided that these types of approaches
are the way they would like to move forward in the future with their social media
marketing campaigns.
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Conclusions and Recommendations
● Takeaways from the report
Evaluating our previous marketing plan, we discovered that we did not
have an even distribution of traffic throughout our platforms. We then
focused our attention on the smaller channels that we believed could use
some more work and would be beneficial for the brand.
Petco has benefited greatly from switching their targeting audience to a
more diverse, middle to lower class (25K-50K), single women and men,
ages 20-35, with one pet in the household. With our new collaboration
campaign they have increased their sales and brand awareness by more
than the desired 10% in our original goal statement. They have increased
their following on Pinterest by 2,600 and Instagram by 61,800 followers;
and Facebook following increased by 300,000. Their training courses and
grooming services have increased by 15% and continued to grow for the
duration of the campaign run.
There is still much room for brand expansion in a plethora of different
areas. However, as we continue to focus on more niche subjects, the
bigger the brand will become.
Correct data analysis and interpretation guided our marketing efforts to create engaging
content with our target audience.
● Explanation of 5Cs ratings
○ Coordinates
We were able to achieve an increase of
in-store sales by reaching a new target
audience through multiple social media
platforms. We had a goal of a 10% increase
with-in 6 months and we were able to
exceed this goal with the use of social
media advertising.
Our goal was to increase brand
awareness, build a social community, and
reach new audiences.
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○ Channels
We were successful in our
campaign goals across our 3
platforms. Content reach on
facebook and instagram is
excellent. But Pinterest
needed extra push to reach
more audience - this was
achieved through attaching a
relevant blog with our pinterest
page. This analytic tool on
Social Pilot shows that we are
having high organic like rates
when we release our new
content on facebook.
We ran multiple campaigns, with similar goals of getting their revenue up by 10% as
well as obtaining a new target audience. By focusing niches on each respective
platform, the results exceeded expectations with the utilizations of hashtags, keywords,
content, etc.
○ Content
By using the various analytic tools available and monitoring we are able to see how our
core audiences engage. For example the #Stoptheshock movement saw over 55,000 in
engagement on Facebook
We know what the Petco audience likes and that is engaging visual content. By
providing interesting images and entertaining videos we increase the brand awareness
and reach.
With a consistent focus on
pet health and wellness the
images across the various
social media platforms
highlight pets and their pet
families.Crafting thoughtful
designs we are able to
create an easily recognizable
brand.
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Knowing our target audience and the Petco buyer personas we are able to hone in on
the design aspects of our branding.In-house-created content requires more time to
create,but can be very effective in establishing brand awareness. Sharing
user-generated content allows Petco to build rapport with their customers and potential
new customers. Curated content will add in
Petco set out to
increase their social media engagement / traffic to their social media platforms and
increase the Petco sales by 10%. They also wanted to raise brand awareness, tweak
the brand image, and gain trust from a new target audience.This was accomplished by
focusing their efforts on:Facebook,Instagram and Pinterest.Promoting their grooming
services,dog training and helpful tips. Veterinarians are considered trusted sources for
pet information.Petco gained trust from their new target audience by highlighting their
veterinarian services and free helpful tips on their social media platforms.
○ Connections
Driving Traffic: Attract returning clients and gain new customers across every online
channel directing them to Petco online store. Capitalize on SM efforts to penetrate and
become trendsetters in the pet care & grooming space. Data shows that more than 65%
of pet owners use SM 2X per week to post about their pets. The Petco strategy focused
on that target audience based on their SM usage for remarketing and developing
buyer-persona funnels. The “Influencer” marketing strategy provided a leveraging
aspect which connected with organic growth, developed relationships with the
community, and increased the target audience. Adhering to and understanding the
challenges faced by consumers with the impact of COVID, Petco’s efforts resonated
with local businesses, pet rescue organizations, and community leaders. Partnerships
with Grounds & Hounds, mobile pet grooming services, and other small businesses
permitted for growth in the pet care and grooming segment.
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○ Corrections
Although Petco reins as one of the leaders in
the pet store industry and is gaining a
reasonable market share, the competition
and threats are growing and evolving in a
likewise manner. Periodic reviews &
adjustments will be vital to the success of
Petco’s SM strategy.
While competitors such as Amazon,
Walmart, and Chewy all have a competitive
advantage in online sales compared to
Petco; Petco’s ability to provide that in-store
experience gives them the advantage of
consumer interaction in real-time.
● Include takeaways from the data
○ Due to the limitations of data analytic tools, we must implement more user
experience surveys and questions in store, online, and in-app to acquire
more specified data. We could ask questions to our users such as: have
they stopped using social media as frequently for any reason and for what
reason? What is your opinion of our brand? How can we make your
experience better?
○ Understanding the role people, process, and technology plays into data
analytics is important to make high value data driven decisions.
● Explain how to replicate the results, improve strategy and correct tactical errors
○ Accelerate the process of acquiring information
○ Spending more time and resources turning that information into practical
knowledge
○ Leveraging technology in conjunction with sound process and data
analytics
○ Accept and embrace new emerging technology to assist in data analytics