Let your retailers do your talking

Product research online

Today’s pet care consumers are sophisticated and thorough. When it comes to purchasing decisions for their four-legged family members, they do their research. This is now easier than ever, so many pet consumers make their choices before they even enter a shop.

Online reviews and social media groups have made in-the-moment purchasing decisions almost a thing of the past. Pet owners may not be cynical about marketing, but they can often tell when they are being marketed to. Or at. And why trust an ad when you can get real opinions from real people?

Human connection

But who are those ‘real people’? They are the people patrolling the aisles and cash registers of local brick-and-mortars. And those boots-on-the-ground retailers have more influence than you would think in today’s increasingly online world: a 2017 Mindtree study in the US showed that 84% of consumers ranked a salesperson’s information as ‘very helpful’ in making a purchasing decision.

As more and more people treat their pets like humans, that human connection should make all the difference. A retail employee is often the last person a pet consumer talks to before making an actual purchase. If you can make that retailer an advocate for your brand, then your brand or product name might be the last thing the consumer hears before heading home with your product. So despite all the time they spend online, human advocacy matters, especially at the point of purchase.

Capturing retailers’ hearts and minds

How do you make a salesperson approach a customer who has been staring at the stacks of pet food bags for a while and say, “I feed my dog (YOUR BRAND) and he loves it!” How do you turn the retailer into a brand advocate?

The first answer will be familiar: Know your audience. You have to know who these retail employees are in order to connect with them. Fortunately, many of them will overlap with your end-user audience – most people working in pet retail will be interested in pets themselves. So if you know your end-users, you will already understand your potential retail advocates.

How to win them over – Bribe them

Just kidding (sort of). Free samples for retail employees are a sure-fire way to win them over. If you truly believe that your robotic nail grinder is the best way to trim a pet’s nails, why not offer a few for salespeople to try out? They will then remember that you provided them with the sample, and that may well come to mind the next time a customer scans the pet grooming aisle. You want potential advocates to have happy emotional associations with your brand.

Appeal to what they value

You also win retailers over just by being what they want you to be. Let us say that you know that the typical salesperson is a millennial or younger. How do you connect with that person? Well, we know that many of them care about certain issues, and want brands to make a difference. So you can win them over by not only being socially responsible but also including them in your efforts. For instance, if you have recyclable packaging, build a story around why, and make the retailer believe that recommending your product over others helps save the world. Make the retailer the hero of your story.

Engage them

Find your audiences online. Seek out their groups and interact with them. At the very least, you will better understand the mindset of those who can single- handedly make a sale for you. Best-case scenario is that you have honest conversations about topics they care about. And best-best-case scenario is that the topic is your brand.

Reasons to believe

In the end, the key to winning anyone over is to give them reasons to believe. So if you can give a salesperson a true reason to believe in your product, they will do your marketing for you.