eNewsletter
January 2016
Welcome To The New Pet Legacy Marketing Newsletter!
The pet memorial marketing experts at Pet Legacy Marketing make it our goal to provide you with the innovative strategies and cutting-edge tools you need to expand your business and increase your revenue. We invite you to read on for just a few of the latest updates from our team - then call us today to learn what we can do to help you reach your goals.
Your Brand Is Based On Compassion
To be successful, you need an identity. Your identity is your brand and it defines who you are and sets you apart from the competition. Your brand could be your unique values, how you demonstrate your love of animals, or a special pet or person that inspires your high-quality pet cremation, memorial, or funeral services. Whatever your brand means to you, communicating that message to the public is how your business becomes recognized.
Your brand is much more than a written objective or goal; it’s built upon the marriage of an idea with tangible and intangible methods of portrayal. Everything from the text in your pet memorial website to the colors and design of your logo need to send the same message and convey the same strong feelings to your audience of pet owners and prospective clients.
A Logo and Website that Tell the Same Story
Color has an undeniable and incredible effect on our perception, whether or not we’re aware. When it comes to branding your pet memorial or cremation business, you want colors that speak positive for you. When promoting a serene, calming facility for final visits with a deceased pet, for example, it would be in poor taste to use fiery reds as the webpage’s background color. However, if your brand is focused on a final journey into the sunset, a subtle orange color wouldn’t seem out of place. The photography utilized on your website and printed materials should also integrate with your brand and promote the feelings you want your clients to experience when considering your business.
Your pet hospice, memorial or cremation logo should instantly convey your brand while being simple, easy to remember and different from local competitors. These visual aspects help build name recognition and act as reminders of the care, comfort and convenience you provide. A recognizable brand establishes your reputation, and gives pet owners comfort and confidence that your business is the right partner for memorializing their beloved pet’s legacy.
Your Pet Memorial/Funeral Brand is Your Promise
In a New York Times article titled The Importance of Branding Your New Business, it was stated that “dollar for dollar, branding is as important and vital as any other early steps.”
The article suggested that when creating your brand identity, you must:
- Know what you stand for
- Commit to promoting and building upon those beliefs
- Maintain that established identity
Although brands evolve and change aspects of their image, businesses hold to their fundamental values – that familiar aspect of their brand that has brought them success.
As something that plays such a vital role in your potential success, branding should be approached seriously and as early on as possible. The skilled and creative team at Pet Legacy Marketing works with you from the ground up. We help you identify your pet afterlife brand so that it captures the true essence of your philosophy and positively conveys the message to your clients. We ensure that your personal pet memorial or cremation brand is incorporated into every product we create for your business - your logo, website, brochure, postcard and newsletter. Our commitment to your pet cremation, hospice, or funeral business and your goals has allowed us to become the pet memorial marketing solutions partner for companies spanning the spectrum of pet afterlife and legacy services.
Why Your Pet Cremation Brand Matters Now More Than Ever
You’ve invested significant time, thought and money into your business. You may have already had a pet cremation or memorial website professionally designed and optimized to appear in local search listings, but you’re still not seeing the results you hoped for. Two additional pet afterlife marketing methods are key in promoting your business: partnering with local veterinarians and employing direct mail campaigns.
Veterinarians Are Your Best Line to Business
If area veterinarians don’t know about your pet memorial, funeral, or cremation business or aren’t convinced yours is better than local competitors, they aren’t going to refer their clients to you. Developing relationships with veterinarians and introducing them to the benefits of your services will substantially increase the likelihood of referrals. Pet parents will likely seek hospice or memorial and crematory/burial services that are recommended by their veterinarian.
“People trust their veterinarians and they are most likely going to use the service that the veterinarian exclusively recommends,” wrote a pet cemetery, cremation, and memorial business owner in a FuneralOne article. “You can spend a lot of money on marketing and different types of advertising to promote your business, but unless you get the blessing of the veterinarian, you may truly be wasting your money.”
Dr. Mark Feltz, owner of Pet Legacy Marketing and a practicing veterinarian for more than 20 years, understands the mindset of veterinarians and has hundreds of veterinary contacts and friends throughout the country. A veterinarian who speaks their language, Dr. Feltz will work with you to promote your business and gain the trust of your most important partners, the local veterinarians.
Cost-Effective Pet Afterlife Direct Mail Campaigns
In a recent study by Marketingland, 53.5% of consumers surveyed identified direct mail – especially large, oversize postcards with promotions or discounts – as the marketing method most likely to attract their business. Though email campaigns can be effective, your message may be lost among other spam or filtered into a junk folder without ever being seen. An attractive, colorful pet cremation/memorial postcard that includes a special promotion, mailed to the 5,000 pet owners in closest proximity to you, is almost guaranteed to bring in new business.
The creative team at Pet Legacy Marketing understands your target audience and has the skills to develop the right message to reach existing and prospective clients. The goal is to help you benefit from our pet memorial and cremation marketing experience and the potential of direct mail. If you are interested in reaching pet owners in your community with a cost-effective pet afterlife marketing campaign that produces measurable results, call Pet Legacy Marketing today!
Pet Memorial Blogs Boost Business
Most of your clients are struggling with some degree of grief upon losing a treasured pet. At this challenging time, it’s vital to equip your pet cremation, funeral, or memorial business to help ease their sadness while establishing yourself as a compassionate partner in honoring their pet’s legacy. One highly effective way to fill this void for your clients is by writing pet memorial blogs.
Your featured pet memorial blog could include stories written about your clients (with their permission, of course) or simply act as a platform for pet parents to share stories, poems, photos, and words of condolence and encouragement. As American theologian Tryon Edwards penned, “Quiet and sincere sympathy is often the most welcome and efficient consolation to the afflicted.” What better way to show your sincere sympathy than through a commemorative blog?
The Power of the Blog
Before the Internet, mourning occurred in solitude or in the company of a few close family members. Now the grieving can share their stories with others in similar situations across the globe, creating a network of support and helping move toward emotional closure.
Not only do pet memorial blogs play an important role in easing pet owners’ burden during a difficult time, they also act as one of the best ways to increase awareness of the value of your services. Those visiting your memorial blog will likely visit your website, and increasing the chances they will call your business and utilize your services. Along with memorial blogs, other blog topics that are sure to win the attention of pet parents include:
- Business & Event Announcements – Your blog can serve as a platform to advertise new or updated services and products your memorial or hospice business offers. Rather than list them on your website, you can discuss why you have decided to offer them and their value. If you participate in local events, hold open houses, or perform special public ceremonies on memorial holidays, you can include announcements that will attract existing and prospective clients.
- Informational Articles & Resources – Many pet owners may not know who to call or where to go if their pet passes away at home, or what their burial, cremation, and memorial options are. By posting informative articles about this process, available resources, and even information on grieving or the cremation/burial process, your business will become a valuable resource for pet owners in your area. You’ll garner business referrals by providing a convenient webpage that provides the information needed to ease your clients’ fears as they cope with loss.
- Uplifting Articles – Uplifting photos, quotes, poems, and stories are also great to share on a blog. One or more of these posts per day won’t take more than a few minutes of your time, but will go a long way in shedding light on an otherwise somber life event.
For little investment, your memorial or hospice business will see a high return by hosting a blog. Our creative team of web developers can integrate your pet memorial or cremation blog into your present website – one of the best methods for increasing your website's Google and search engine rankings!
Pet Owners Are Searching For You On Their Mobile Phones. What Are They Seeing?
By Crystal Weyers
When it comes to end-of-life services, most pet owners won’t be thinking ahead. Unfortunately, the time will come when their pet’s illness has progressed to the point of no return or a tragic accident has occurred. It is then when most pet parents, stricken with grief, will look for ways to preserve their pet’s legacy through your pet memorial, funeral, and cremation services.
Your future clients will be searching for hospice, cremation, memorial, or funerary services for their pets from their mobile devices while visiting their veterinarians, local emergency clinics, or even while by their ailing pet’s side. Although the pet market is booming, it won’t do you any good if your business doesn’t have a professionally designed, easily accessible website that appears at the top of local search listings. Your site must also be optimized to appear ahead of local competitors from mobile searches and be accessible on a mobile device.
Increase Business with a Pet Afterlife Mobile Website
The majority of pet owners now seek out services using their smartphone, tablet, or other mobile device, and popular search engines have taken notice, customizing their results to give preference to pet memorial, funeral, and cremation websites that are mobile-friendly. In short, even if you have a custom website, it’s imperative that it is mobile-friendly.
When viewed on a smaller screen, desktop sites can be hard to navigate and take significantly longer to load. Nearly 75% of consumers will wait only five seconds for a website to load on their cell phones or tablets before moving to another site. Remember: pet owners are under significant stress, and making your website a struggle to access may be the difference between gaining their business or losing a potential customer.
Client Convenience Shows You Care
Pet owners seeking out pet memorial services are likely going through a challenging time, and as such, they’re looking for a business that demonstrates a compassionate understanding of their struggles in everything they do. Provide them with an experience that is built on convenience and empathy, and you’ll be sure to generate the type of good will that generates customer loyalty and positive word of mouth in your community.
The website development team at Pet Legacy Marketing will create an effective and valuable pet memorial or cremation mobile site for your business at a very reasonable price. Stop losing business because you don’t look good on mobile phones. Call today and get started.
Pet Legacy Marketing Services
Pet Legacy Marketing is a full-service marketing company dedicated to the needs of pet hospice, funeral, crematory, and memorial businesses. Our professional graphic designers and writers are here to help take your practice to the next level. If it's time to re-design your website, add a mobile site or develop your brochure, give us a call today!
Read More...
Sincerely yours,
Mark Feltz, DVM and the Staff at Pet Legacy Marketing
(603) 953-0052
Contact Us
Copyright © Pet Legacy Marketing