Understanding your pet owners is crucial for your business to grow. By determining your ideal customers you’ll be choosing the best focus for all of your marketing efforts, making sure your communications are effective, timely and geographically appropriate.

Who do you want to talk to?

Start by researching your market and creating a profile of your ideal customer. This should include basic demographic information, such as:

• Age
• Gender
• Location
• Income
• Psychographic information such as interests, hobbies, lifestyle and behaviours

Building a basic picture of your target audience’s life will give you insight into the type of person who will potentially buy your services and the reasons why.

How and where are to you going to talk to them?

Once you have profiles for your pet parents you’ll be able to find out where they spend their time; this could be an online forum or a meeting point in the park. This information is invaluable for your marketing plans as you’ll be able to direct communications more effectively to the people you’re targeting. For example, if you know that there’s a Facebook group for local Dandie Dinmont dog owners, you can research specific concerns and address these in your marketing communications towards them.

What do you want to talk to them about?

Thinking about who would pay for your pet services can help you target the right people with the right type of information. What problems do you offer a solution for? Why should pet parents buy your services? They might work full time and require a nanny for their dog, or their unruly puppy might need a trainer. Use this insight to identify potential customers and make them aware that they need your pet business to solve their problem. Google’s keyword tool is an easy way to find out how many people are searching for words related to your business services.

Don’t forget your loyal customers

You can use existing customers to refine your target marketing and to test out new pet products or services. The reasons why your customers come to you are the aspects of your pet business that you should be advertising, as its likely similar pet parents will also be attracted by them. If you’re not sure whether to try a new service, why not launch it in a test phase to judge the response? You can then adjust as necessary to incorporate your clients’ needs.

About the Author: Protectivity Insurance is a leading niche small business insurance provider specialising in pet business in particular dog walking insurance.