3 Things My New Puppy Taught Me About Marketing

By Rachel Degginger, Marketing Consultant at Heinz Marketing

Just a few days back, my mom and I went on the journey of a lifetime, to pick up my new golden retriever puppy. Milo, as we named him beforehand, slept most of the car ride home, and seemingly had all the energy in the world as soon as we returned. Prior to picking him up, I had to do a ton of research, more than I ever thought possible about every aspect of owning a puppy. Throughout my research, somehow I ended up realizing quite a bit more about pet-marketing than I thought I would. Here are three key marketing takeaways I learned from my new puppy experience.

1.Content and web syndication is key

When scouring the internet for information, I must have had hundreds of different ads pop-up. Everything from pet insurance, to the type of food I should feed Milo. What especially caught my eye was how many of the same ads I saw over and over again. Reminders across platforms seemed to pop-up nearly incessantly, but it also seemed to catch my eye. One advertisement really stuck out with different dogs BarkBox posts on Instagram. This led me to wanting to know more about the products. I began to associate toys to those ads, which led me to subscribe. Providing the right content, at the right time, in the right form makes a huge difference.

2.Without re-targeting, I would have gotten nowhere

When it came to pet insurance, I found it especially difficult. There were so many opinions, options, and everything seemed to have some sort of bad review. I jumped from page-to-page over and over again. By companies utilizing their re-targeting capabilities, they seemed to have found me everywhere I went. Ads consistently populated as I went from each review site and message board to another. One in particular caught my eye, I had an opportunity to go for one I wasn’t considering at the time. If they wouldn’t have been tracking my behavior, I’m not sure I would have been able decide as quickly as I did.

3. Delivering the right messaging at the right time

As marketers, we always talk about being able to deliver the right messaging at the right time. I think about this statement a lot when I’m working on a project, but I feel like I haven’t really experienced a lot of it until this exercise. When searching for dog food, I probably went through every website, recommendation and review possible – it took hours to decide. But when it came down to it, as I was searching, something came up that hit very close to home. An advertisement about not just feeding your puppy – but feeding your best friend really resonated with me as I was scrolling. Up until that point, I felt as if a majority of the messaging was really generic and passive, but this company clearly knew their audience and goals.

Interesting lessons and reminders!  What have you learned from your recent web searching?