In this article, we’ll share some tried and tested YouTube advertising tips when doing pet product marketing.
The pet industry in the United States is enormous. As a matter of fact, last year (2022), nearly $58.1 billion was spent on pet food and treats and in the same period, veterinarian care brought in $35.09 billion in revenue as well.
Those figures are projected to grow even bigger this year in light of the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions being fully lifted. They may also be influenced by rising prices.
What marketing strategy should you add to your pet business marketing efforts to get a piece of the fast-growing pet care market?
To take advantage of this golden opportunity for profit, you need to market your pet company in the best ways possible. One amazing pet advertising opportunity is by storytelling through YouTube ads.
In a nutshell, if you want to drive sales for your pet business with YouTube ads, you should not simply list off the benefits of your pet products or services. You should also show (not tell) an awesome—rather, pawsome—brand narrative.
In other posts, we’ve covered online pet marketing and SEO strategies for your pet business. This time, we’ll explain how you can use narrative-driven YouTube ads to drive sales for your pet business.
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How YouTube Ads Storytelling Can Drive Your Pet Company’s Sales
YouTube ads—from in-feed video ads to mid-roll non-skippable in-stream ads—are most likely to stick in people’s minds when they tell a story. They don’t necessarily need to be a long narrative; even a simple story for the purposes of your pet commercial can be quite memorable and effective in pet advertising.
Grab people with a strong hook, like a pet problem that your product or service can solve. For example, say that some pets are allergic to cheap dog food brands, then point out how your lamb meat dry food is hypo-allergenic.
More importantly, do so in story mode or standard TV commercial sort of way, like showing a pet suffering from hives and a pet owner needing to spend lots of money on vet services, before getting a recommendation for your hypoallergenic brand of dog food or treats.
Based on our years of experience as a pet marketing agency, we recommend making a YouTube ad that’s needed, valuable, and personal. This will make your video quite effective as it lists off the benefits of your pet product or service in an educational manner. For instance, you can show how a dog harness doesn’t choke cute pups like a dog collar would, and appeal to your target audience’s emotions accordingly.
Appeal to the emotions of pet owners. Tugging at their heart strings can open up their purse strings.
Know Your Target Market (i.e., Pet Owners and Lovers)
Pet lovers are normally very sensitive and caring people, and they’re often the type of customers who are very driven by their emotions, perhaps even more so than other types of consumers. Something as simple as watching a YouTube cat video can make them do something for their furry friend. Use this knowledge to your marketing advantage.
It pays to know your target audience of pet owners, from their specific age range to the generation they belong to (Millennials and Gen Z are infamous for choosing to get pets instead of starting a family—a human one, that is).
If you know what gets their emotions running, like seeing videos of poor stray kittens on the road or a veterinary clinic lovingly nursing a sickly dog back to perfect health, you’re more likely to earn their business.
It’s helpful to use YouTube advertising services because they’re usually shown in the most popular related videos, like the latest pet or animal meme videos that have gone viral.
You can appeal to the emotions of your target buyers by running mid-roll ads about your doggy treats (or whatever you’re selling) after they watch a documentary about Hachiko, the most loyal dog in the world, and other similarly popular videos of pets.
Make Informative Videos on Your Pet Supplies or Services
Our YouTube marketing agency observed that explainer videos are one of the trends on YouTube that really drives up views. This is probably because a lot of people are curious about certain topics, including pets and pet-related products (such as accessories) and services.
An explainer video clearly explains the topic it’s covering, usually in documentary or slideshow presentation style. It’s like an infographic in video form, and often includes a voiceover.
You can produce an explainer-like YouTube ad for your pet products to better entertain viewers who are looking at what are usually dreaded commercials that they would otherwise prefer to skip. If they really like what they learn from your ad, they are more likely to consider buying your product or using your pet-related service.
Don’t forget to establish a hook for even your “explainer” ad. Try to add a blurb in the first six seconds of your video to compel viewers to watch without skipping the ad. Intriguing hooks like, “Ever wonder how spot-on flea treatments work?” are quite good.
Informative YouTube ads related to pets are less likely to be skipped, especially if they’re targeted at the right type of pet owners who are, for example, curious about how to apply spot-on flea treatment to the back of their dog.
Be Strategic about Targeting Pet Owners and Pet Lovers
Bear in mind that targeting your audience is crucial to maximize the reach and conversion rates of your YouTube ad campaign. With YouTube Ads services, you’ll get an audience targeting prompt.
You can target an audience of pet owner or pet lovers based on:
- Demographics
- Economic status.
- Audience interests.
- Geographic location.
The setup process for YouTube Ads services includes determining which demographic group your target customers belong to. You can also target YouTube ads at prospective buyers based on their user search history.
This marketing strategy allows you to make ad stories tailored to different segments of the pet care market, because it’s not only the youth who love pets. Many older parents or senior citizens also take in pets to deal with the notorious Empty Nest syndrome.
Give Pet Owners What They Want in Your YouTube Ad
As you define your YouTube ad campaign by choosing the right keywords and categories, you should be able to paint a better picture of who your prospective customers are and what they want for their pets, as well as what they might be interested to buy.
YouTube Ad campaigns have some of the most detailed targeting demographics features available, allowing you to remarket and scale your campaign at will depending on your analytics and statistics. You can choose to appeal to certain people, such as “social media enthusiast” or “recently founded a startup”. As your campaign runs its course, you can adjust it to retarget your ads to reach users who’ve already interacted with your company.
You also have the option to exclude certain people from seeing your YouTube ad campaign. This is usually used to avoid irritating any users who could launch complaints to YouTube about “spammy” ads they’re not interested in. If you need help with ad exclusions, you can consult a veteran YouTube Ads agency like Zero Company.
The key to brand storytelling is to know your pet lovers as much as you know yourself as a pet company.
Remember, it’s not “Know your enemies as you know yourself”; rather, it’s “Know your audience as you know your company”. This way, you can easily communicate to pet owners what they can get out of your pet product or service through your YouTube ads.
Last but not least, you may search for specific traits that you know your potential buyers have, like “mobile users”, or searches on specific breeds of dogs like “shih tzu”, “pit bull”, or “poodle”. There’s plenty of power and options in your hands when it comes to using YouTube ads for your pet business.
Does Your Pet Company Need Help With YouTube Ads Services?
Our YouTube advertising agency, Zero Company, will happily assist you in coming up with the right brand storytelling and pet company narrative for your YouTube ads. We have YouTube advertising experts who can serve as your trusted digital media consultants.
Consult our YouTube ad experts for free today to get professional advice in creating and optimizing your YouTube ad campaigns and writing coherent and compelling narratives for them. writing coherent and compelling narratives for them.
