Mistakes Pet Franchises Make with Social Media

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Social media seems to be the new hot ticket in business marketing. Many companies are joining social media sites and fighting for a presence as a way to help drive traffic and sales. This can be a successful marketing outlet for a pet franchise when done correctly. There are several mistakes pet franchises can make that hinder this success. Knowing these mistakes can help you to avoid them.

 

Buying Likes or Followers

stop-wasting-moneyThere are many pet franchises out there that think you can simply buy the followers you are looking for and this will give you the results you are looking for. Unfortunately this is not going to help your business at all. Sure you may look better by having more followers but what will this matter for your marketing efforts? Generally the likes you buy are from people in other countries or at minimum you cannot control whether the people are in close proximity to your pet food franchise or even interested. This means you are paying for nothing as the message you put out there will go to unqualified leads on social media.

 

Promoting Products and Services Constantly

Sure the ultimate goal of social media for pet franchises is to let people know about the services and products they offer. However, you are not going to build a fanbase if all you do is market to people. You need to use subtle marketing tactics with social media. This means posting information about dogs, such as blogs, images, and videos. Then sporadically work in the promotions you are running. If you are doing this all the time, your pet store franchise will lose credibility and you will lose followers in droves.

 

Not Taking the Right Approach to Negative Feedback

No matter how amazing pet franchises are at some point there will be negative feedback. While this may seem like the end of the world for the franchise, it is really just an opportunity to show people what your company really stands for. There are a few things you should never do:

 

  • Never delete the negative feedback- it looks like you are hiding something
  • Never ignore- it shows you don’t care
  • Never use inflammatory comments- This is wrong for many reasons

 

The best thing you can do is take a few minutes and come up with a thoughtful response to show you not only care about customer service but about how your customers feel.  This does not have to be super extensive but rather show the customer you have heard them and tell them how you plan to fix the situation, even if it is just getting them on the phone to discuss the situation further.

 

Being Inconsistent

This is a huge issue for many companies out there, including pet franchises. If you want to stay relevant to your customers then you need to be posting on a regular basis. You should have some sort of schedule that addresses the frequency of your posts on all the social media platforms you utilize. When you combine this with a consistent message to your audience you will find you have a greater success with your social media efforts.

If you want to make sure you have the most success with your social media and want to avoid as many mistakes as possible, the best thing pet franchises can do is to go with a professional to handle this for them. This is a person who specializes in social media and knows how to handle the campaign and give you the results you are looking for. Not only will you get better results than handling social media on your own, but you not have to waste the time or effort on this yourself.