Closing the Kennel

Hey everyone!

We have completed our analysis of the digital marketing strategies used by some of the top dog food brands in Canada. For a brief summary, check out the video we made below!

Unfortunately, it is now time that we close the Kennel. :(

We truly appreciate you taking the time to read our blog posts and connecting with us through our social media channels! We hope you learned something new about digital marketing and how it can make or break your product!

Campaign Proposal: Nature's Variety

Some 1-On-1 Time

By: Zak Priest

We've spent a bunch of posts comparing Purina and Nature's Variety, and their current digital marketing strategies. Today I want to switch gears and focus on Nature's Variety and what I think they should be doing.

The Problem

Nature's Variety does not have a strong social media presence, period. They have low follower counts, low post interactivity, and extremely inconsistent posting patterns across the big 3 social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube). Nature's Variety is one of the biggest providers of raw dog food and they have passionate community of dog lovers behind them. They just need to harness that community.

The Solution

The Puppy Love Club

The plan is to have customers send us their pet pictures and/or stories. Every day we will feature a "Puppy Love Club Member" on our Facebook page. At the end of the month we will put all the featured club members in a draw for a free bag of food of their choice.

It's a simple idea but I really think it accomplishes what we need to get done:

1. Increase page traffic
2. Incentivize frequent posting
3. Connect more with our community

This strategy can and should launch anytime but I think it will be most effective in February (less days means less entrants).

So what do think? Let us know your thoughts by hitting us up on Twitter @MarketingKennel.

Campaign Proposal: Canidae

A Digital Marketing Campaign to Improve Canidae's Youtube Presence 

Kelsey LeCoure

As determined in a previous post regarding my two brand's YouTube channels, Canidae is strongly lacking in this area. They have been on YouTube for many years and only have 5 videos posted. They also do not show how many subscribers they have but based on the view count and other statistics, they most likely have a low subscriber count as well. 

The Idea

For Canidae's YouTube campaign, I am proposing that they hold a contest asking pet owners to submit short films of their pets - high quality, 2:00-3:00 minutes in length. Once they receive video submissions, they will then re-post the videos on their channel. At the beginning and end of each video, the company's logo and social media information (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Website, etc.) , as well as the name of the person who submitted the video will be shown.
Once the videos have been uploaded for 2 weeks, the video with the highest number of likes will be selected as the winner of one year's supply of Canidae dog or cat food.

Win 1 year's supply of Canidae food (your choice of recipe)!

This campaign will bring much attention to the channel as well as the Brand themselves. People who have never heard of Canidae will visit the website to find out more about their products. It will also encourage people to interact with their social media channels. The YouTube campaign will be shared on ALL social media pages daily. Each day the company can share a different video that has been submitted. Who doesn't love a cute dog or cat on their Facebook timeline?!

Hero Dogs

Content Marketing for IAMs

Mark Faber

Retrieved from www.dailymail.co.uk

IAMs social media presence used to be very strong with a large following and loyal fans, lately they have fallen off the wagon and been posting less often without a strong engagement. I want to explore an idea to return IAMs to the alpha dog position with a new content marketing strategy. I would dedicate the month of June to Hero Dogs. To start the new promotion would be a Tweet sharing the news that all service dogs receive 50% off a bag of dog food by simply tweeting a picture in their service vests with the hashtag #IAMsFeedsHeroes. On Facebook I would share as many articles and news stories about dogs saving or helping others and encourage our followers to share personal stories and any other articles they might come across.

Engaging with our followers in a positive way by highlighting the great deeds that dogs are capable of it will create a feeling of positivity that will be associated with IAMs. By the end of June I would expect Facebook posts to average 250 likes, 100 comments and 75 shares (all organic). Twitter will be our other major outlet for releasing images of service dogs that have been tweeted to us for the discount. My goal is to average 50 retweets and 50 favourites per tweet by the end of June.

Retrieved from www.funcage.com

Kickstarting IAMs social media posts with these positive and heartwarming stories will be the best way to re-engage the once loyal brand following IAMs had without annoying consumers with advertisements. Converting those feel good tweets into a positive association with IAMs will translate into a positive feeling when buying IAMs products, causing an increase in sales. 

Link Metrics Matchup: Purina vs Nature's Variety

Do It For The Fans

By: Zak Priest

Digital marketing isn't just about what you as a company put out on the web; it's about what people are putting out their about you. We're going to take some time, having a look at what the web thinks about Purina and Nature's Variety

Purina

Not a whole lot going on for Purina in this category. Every mention on twitter is just in passing and not by dedicated pet/pet food accounts and all inbound links to their site are singular news stories, again, not by dedicated pet/pet food sites. Purina does get a lot of mention this way for good reason though; they sponsor/hold a lot of charity and awareness events. I'm going to post a few of these news stories here so you get what I mean.

Canadian Pet Heroes Celebrated for Going Beyond the Call of Duty

Media Advisory - Family Day Funderland - Presented by Purina® Dog Chow®

New research chair aims to reduce pet abandonment

Nature's Variety

This is where Nature's Variety shines. They might not have the best social media presence but people still love their brand and it shows. I'm going to show you some inbound links just like above, but unlike above I'm going to explain to give you a brief description of each link to really drive home that this is the kind of stuff we're looking for as marketers.

Suzanne Dean AKA: @dogtraininglady

Ok, I know this isn't really an inbound link but I had to include this Twitter account. Not only is she the top listed influencer for Nature's Variety but she runs a really great Twitter. If you are a dog lover, definitely consider following her.

Stray Rescue of St. Louis

The title says it all. It's really great to get constant recognition from a community leader like this one.

Martha Stewart

Nature's Variety has had quite a few mentions on Martha Stewart's website. The site is in a blog format and talks about a whole bunch of homemaking topics, from making a bed to making pork.

Conclusion

I knew Nature's Variety was going to have great link metrics but I was really surprised at how awful Purina's were. Winner: Nature's Variety.

Link Metrics Matchup: Petcurean and Canidae Pet Foods

A look into the top influencers and fans of these two pet food brands!

Kelsey LeCoure


In the marketing world, word-of-mouth marketing is very important. People are much more likely to trust another consumer's opinion of a product than the company's advertisements. There is more trust and a better likelihood to buy a product when a good review comes from a consumer than anyone making money off of their review or the company themselves. One way to analyse link metrics data is using the Moz Toolbar. Here are some of the results I found with this tool based on the Petcurean and Canidae Pet food brands.

Fido Friendly - Top inbound link for Petcurean

The top inbound link to Petcurean's website is "Fido Friendly" - a magazine for dog lovers. On their homepage there is a large badge that reads: Petcurean blogger advocate. When you click on the badge, it brings you directly to the Petcurean website. This is fantastic word-of-mouth marketing for Petcurean!

The second inbound link for petcurean is a site called "My Best Friend's Barkery" - a pet store in North Carolina that sells a variety of dog food and treats. On the side of all of their pages is a link to the Petcurean website.

The third most popular inbound link for Petcurean is from "Hautedogs" on their Howl'oween parade page. There was a contest for one person to win one year's supply of dog food from Petcurean. Contest and giveaways are a great way, if used correctly, to gain traffic on your social media pages!

The Missing Manual - Top inbound link for Canidae

Now, moving on to Canidae. The top inbound link for Canidae is from "The Missing Manual". This site includes a list of many different natural and organic companies that provide products for everything from your home, to your office, to makeup, and pet food. There is an abundance of information for anyone interested in living green!

The second inbound link for Canidae is from "Arden Moore Knows Pets". This site is an online magazine that includes a wide variety of useful information for pet owners.

The last inbound link for Canidae is from "Self Serve Pet Spa's Blog". The self serve pet spa is a company that offers pet owners a place to wash their pets themselves (instead of having a certified groomer do the work for them. They run a blog that contains information for pet owners regarding health, safety, food, and more!

Link Metrics Matchup

Internets Opinion of Blue Buffalo and IAMs Website

Mark Faber

Blue Buffalo's Moz Analytics

As you know there are billions of web sites on the internet so how do you know which are reliable sources of information? One helpful tool is called the Moz toolbar, it analyzes the web page you are on and gives a “credit” score. Moz does this by analyzing the number of inbound links, or outside websites that refers readers to your website. If lots of other reputable websites are referring users to your site the domain authority or ‘credit score’ of your page increases.

Looking at the Blue Buffalo and IAMs websites using the Moz toolbar there are some interesting things to discover about the brands:

	IAMs	Blue Buffalo
Domain Authority (high=good)	40/100	61/100
Total Links	25	5,475
Spam Score (lower the better)	3/17	2/17

Vancitybuzz.com

The most followed link to IAMs domain comes from a website called SheKnows, a cosmetics blog, and names IAMs as an offender in product testing on animals, which seems logical to me but is apparently a no-go. The next 2 sites linking to IAMs.com are much more positive, one a Quebec newsletter, from newswire.com, names IAMs as the main sponsor in helping 7 million shelter pets find a home. The other from vancitybuzz.com, a website focusing on Vancouver and sharing tips on keeping our furry friends cool during the summer.

Blue Buffalo’s top inbound link unsurprisingly is Google, followed by Wikipedia which names Blue Buffalo in a pet food recall, which is not the kind of attention that a company would like to attract. Fortunately the third link is from Pinterest

which is another social media site that gathers interesting websites, articles and pictures form the internet in one place to be shared. The post that has been redirecting people to Blue Buffalo names them as a top brand for weight control in dogs and their positive role in the End Pet Cancer movement. 

YouTube Challenge: Purina vs Nature's Variety

The Last of the Big 3

By: Zak Priest

We're on to the last big platform of this Purina vs Nature's Variety blogging mini-series, YouTube. Let's jump right in.

Purina

As a consumer, I tend not to like company YouTube channels and Purina's is no different. Their numbers aren't bad, 7,701 subscribers and 7,867,774 views, but their content is. It's all ads, and not the "this is really entertaining and innovative so I don't care if it's an ad" kind of ads, just the plain old run of the mill hard sell stuff that I'm forced to sit through (not by choice) before I can watch Good Mythical Morning. I understand that kind of stuff needs a home, but can't it live among stuff that's a little more engaging? I guess making this basic stuff makes it a little easier to have regular uploads, which is something they are good at (a video every two weeks or so). Out of their last five videos, this was their most successful.

I also wanted to note that comments, likes, and dislikes are disabled on their channel. Maybe it's related to all the negative activity on their Facebook, who knows?

Nature's Variety

In hindsight I probably should have just made a template for these Nature's Variety segments. Relatively low stats due to being a smaller company. Quality content that is posted infrequently, sometimes months apart. Positive customer interaction. To save time let me give you the straight stats.

Subscribers: 498

Total Views: 963,259

Average Upload Frequency: Once every 3 months or so

Most Successful Recent Video: Our Story

Conclusion

It's safe to say that these two brands are more or less the same across the big 3 social media platforms. Even though I'm not a fan of their content, Purina wins the YouTube Challenge. Their channel was overall more successful.

Youtube Challenge: Petcurean vs. Canidae

Comparing the YouTube channels of Petcurean and Canidae Pet Food Brands

Kelsey LeCoure


In my last two posts regarding the Facebook and twitter pages of Canidae and Petcurean, Canidae was the clear winner. This post is going to shake things up a bit for sure.

Canidae's Youtube channel only has 5 uploads over the course of 7 years. Comparatively, Petcurean's channel has over 45 videos from the last 5 years. Already, we can see that Petcurean is better utilizing their YouTube channel than Canidae is.

Many of the videos on Petcurean's channels are regarding your pet's health. There are videos that discuss how to safely change your pet's food, Fibre and it's affect on your pet's health, and much more! These videos are short and engaging to watch (Average approx. 2 minutes each).

Petcurean has 1600 subscribers, 2,129,397 Views, and 5 links to other social networking sites - Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google +, and their website.

Canidae Pet Foods does not list their number of subscribers on their YouTube page. The stats that are listed include: 288,640 views and they have 1 link to their Google+ page.

The most popular videos on each page are as follows:

Canidae's Most popular recent video

This video from Canidae's YouTube channel showcases how their food and provides details about the company. This video has received 174,382 views, 8 likes, 2 dislikes, and 0 comments.

Petcurean's most popular recent video

This video from Petcurean's YouTube channel is a short advertisement for their dog food recipes. It is a very heartwarming look at "a boy and his dog". This engages viewers as it is very cute and fun. The video has received 111,521 views, 1 like and 0 dislikes. There are no comments on the video.

Overall, Petcurean definitely wins this round of the YouTube Challenge. They have very informative and engaging videos on their channel, a lot of subscribers, and over 2 million total views! These numbers blow Canidae out of the dog park!

Top Dog Breeds in Canada

The YouTube Challenge

Sharing Videos With the World

Mark Faber

Blue Buffalo's YouTube Channel

YouTube is a platform for sharing interesting and entertaining content in video format. Like Twitter and Facebook, Youtube is a great way for companies share content and get users engaged and developing brand loyalty through humorous or heartfelt videos. Blue Buffalo and IAMs both have YouTube channels for sharing this content with subscribers and the internet in whole. IAMs has 9,093 subscribers with 15.7 million views on their 97 videos, however they have not posted a new video in 7 months! Blue Buffalo has 696 subscribers and 1.4 million views on their 60 videos and posts new videos twice a week on average.

IAM's Top Video 

Blue Buffalo and IAMs past 10 videos have been focused heavily on promotional, often just their commercials reformatted to include more details or be slightly longer. However IAMs had previously (1 year + ago) been posting tips and informative videos if only they had continued that trend, rather than just reposting commercials! Blue Buffalo has very rarely (only twice) deviated from sharing their TV commercials on YouTube, this is very disappointing as Blue Buffalo was so good and active in their different social channels.

IAMs top video out of the past 10 posted is a lengthened TV commercial titled “A Boy and his Dog Duck”, it has 2.4 million views and 285 comments. It tugs on the heartstrings and showcases a boy and his dog growing up together and how IAMs has the different diets needed at all stages of the dog’s life. It really is quite adorable will probably make you smile for a half hour. Blue Buffalo’s top video, “Blue vs Purina Dog Chow” is a minute long commercial comparing the ingredients in puppy food with a pet owner. It has 1,173 views and the comments are disabled which is a poor choice for social media.

The one bright spot for Blue Buffalo’s YouTube channel over IAMs is the use of keywords, links to website and other social sites in the description of each video whereas IAMs has not taken full advantage of these SEO benefits. 

Twitter Showdown: Purina vs Nature's Variety

Round 2

By: Zak Priest

Last time we looked at Facebook and both Purina and Nature's Variety did pretty bad. Maybe they put more time into their Twitter accounts? Let's find out.

Purina

Purina has a pretty alright page, nothing spectacular, but alright. They have 45,000 followers and they post frequently. On average about once a week. Ever so often they will do an event over Twitter and will post many times within that event period. Just like their Facebook page, they don't follow the 50/50 rule and mostly post pet pictures and articles of interest to pet owners. This is their most popular post...

It's not that outstanding but it's pretty in-line with the rest of their content.

Nature's Variety

Nature's Variety reminds me of a college student. They work really hard for a short stretch and then they aren't seen until finals. It's a shame because they have a budding little Twitter community. They only have 5,331 followers but they are all dedicated. They could get more followers but they just don't post. They had a ton of activity in January and then they go silent until May. They don't follow the 50/50 rule but I was pleased to see that majority of their posts are customer interaction about their products. Their most successful post is a great one.

I recommend you watch the video to get the full effect but it's so awesome to see such a high like and retweet count for a page that gets about 5 on average.

Conclusion

Both companies did a lot better than I thought they would after what I witnessed with their Facebook accounts. Both of their top posts are there because of the cute factor (as it should be). I'm giving Purina the win on this one because I found their content more consistent.

Benefits of Owning a Dog

Check out this infographic I made which includes some of the benefits of owning a dog!

Benefits of Owning a Dog

Twitter Showdown: Petcurean vs. Canidae Pet Foods

A look at the twitter pages of both Petcurean and Canidae pet food brands

Kelsey LeCoure

Petcurean and Canidae both have twitter accounts. Petcurean currently has 6,444 followers while Canidae has 13,500 followers. This means that Petcurean has Less than half of the follows that Canidae has received. Upon scrolling through their pages, I notice that Canidae posts a lot of original content whereas Petcurean posts some original content but mostly re-tweets content from other pages. Both brands do not seem to follow the 50/50 rule on Twitter. Some of the keyword sentences used by Canidae are Pet Nutrition, Free Treats, and Giveaway.

Petcurean's most popular recent tweet

The most recent and successful tweet from Petcurean is the one shown above. It received 2 retweets, 3 likes, and 11 comments. This was most likely due to the fact that for every comment received, the company agreed to donate 1lb. of food to the NOAH animal shelter. They ran the exact same post on their Facebook page as well.

Canidae's most popular recent tweet

Canidae’s most recent successful post received a total of 177 retweets, 63 likes, and 23 comments. This post was for a contest that was giving away free treats to people who retweeted the post AND followed their account. This is a great way to gain new followers and increase engagement on your twitter content. They run this contest every Friday!

Overall, Canidae is the winner of the Twitter Showdown. They have weekly contests that receive a large amount of engagement, their posts are more frequent, and they post mostly original content.

Twitter Showdown

Communicating with Consumers

Mark Faber

Twitter is the World’s second largest Social Media platform and if you have not heard of it or don’t have an account, sign up now and then read the rest of this blog. Twitter is a great platform for instant communication, from technical support to questions about products or just putting news out into the digital world. All companies should have Twitter and monitor it regularly to find out what consumers are saying about their brand or products. Today we are going to look at IAMs (@IAMS, active since 2009) and Blue Buffalo’s (@bluebuffalo, active since 2012) Twitter accounts.

Quick Facts

	Blue Buffalo	IAMs
Followers	10,600	18,000
Number of Tweets	4,310	15,100
Average # of Retweets and Favourites	5 Retweets and 6 Favourites	1 and 1
Post Frequency	3 times a day	Once every 8 days

IAMs Tweet for #CatHerdersDay

These numbers are just a quick glance into their Twitter accounts, the past 25 posts to be precise. Both brands follow the 50/50 rule (one content post for one promotional post) which is good, consumers don’t want to have their Twitter feeds being spammed with advertisements or they will unfollow you. IAMs makes good use of their tagline in their tweets, using the #IAMsDifference in almost all their tweets. Unfortunately Blue does not take full advantage of the hashtag for keywords, except for #EndPetCancer. May is Pet Cancer month and Blue Buffalo is doing an excellent job with content that is helpful and relatable to pet owners.

Tweet for #EndPetCancer

IAMs is missing the whole point of Twitter by only posting every 8 days, taking the instant and quick updates completely out of the picture. Blue Buffalo takes full advantage by posting and retweeting multiple times a day. Top tweets from IAMs (3 retweets and 9 favourites) and Blue Buffalo (9 retweets and 52 favourites) were not promotional, but sharing fun pictures. This is exactly what people are hoping to see on Twitter; short and informative tweets with engaging visuals. So remember Twitter is designed for instant communication, sharing news and up to the minute information, not just a free form of advertisement.

Facebook Faceoff: Purina vs Nature's Variety

A Battle on the Grandest Stage

By: Zak Priest

Over my next few blog posts we're going to be taking an in-depth look at the effectiveness of the digital marketing done by Purina and Nature's Variety across their many platforms. Today we start with Facebook.

Facebook is the biggest social media platform in the world and if you want to make it in this world of digital marketing it's the most important place to start. So where do Purina and Nature's Variety stand on the grandest stage? Let's dive in and see.

Purina

Purina's page looks really good at first. They post around once a week and every post is the perfect length and has a great picture. Things started to go sour when I noticed that they barely follow the 50/50 rule, like at all. Out of the last 25 posts only 4 of them are about their own community. Purina mainly posts how-to's and time wasters. More interesting though, is their follower interaction. First off I want to point out that each post only has about 70-100 likes and 5-10 comments. For a page with 483,387 followers that is extremely low. When I looked in to what people were commenting I was surprised to find majority of them were complaints. I will say that whoever is operating the page is doing a great job handling these comments but, here take a look...

I wish I was joking but that is also one of their top posts. It was an article about if your dog gets enough fiber and this is the kind of backlash they get. Anyway, let's move on...

Nature's Variety

Honestly, I don't have much to say about Nature's Variety because there's not much there. I understand that they are a smaller company with a smaller following than Purina (48,017 followers) but I was blown away with how infrequently they post. This year so far they have only posted four times. Their follower interaction is low as well. This is their most successful post...

It only had 15 likes, 3 shares, and 4 comments.

Conclusion

Straight up? Both companies have a lot of work to do. Both of their successful posts are only successful because of outside circumstances and they aren't even that successful. Nature's Variety wins this one only because they didn't have an angry mob at their door.

Facebook Faceoff: Petcurean vs. Canidae Pet Foods

Comparing Petcurean and Canidae’s Facebook pages.

Kelsey LeCoure

Taking a look at Petcurean and Canidae’s Facebook pages, there are a few things that indicate whether or not they are using them to their fullest capability. Petcurean has approx. 79,100 likes on their Facebook page which is 100,000 less than Canidae, who is sitting at 179,100 likes! Both pages typically respond to messages within one hour. Petcurean posts 1-3 times per week on average. Whereas Canidae posts multiple times per day. Each brands posts a variety of promotional content, coupons, videos related to the industry, tips for pet owners, and other interesting how-tos. Petcurean does not follow the 50/50 rule. The majority of their posts are related to their business. Canidae more closely follows the 50/50 rule. They have been posting many tips, how-to, and other interesting reads for pet owners. They have also been posting interesting facts about their products, factory, and other business related content. Limited Ingredient Diet, Grain-free food, and Free Treat Friday are all keywords used in Canidae’s Facebook posts.

Canidae's Most Popular Post

This is Canidae’s most popular recent post. It experienced 1,700 Likes, 61 Shares, and 42 comments! I think that this post was so successful because it gives insight into the lives of their own dogs in a fun and interesting way. The pictures also attracts viewers because, well, who doesn’t love a dog wearing clothes?!

Petcurean's most popular post

Petcurean’s most popular post recently came in at 1,900 Likes, 366 shares, and 1022 comments! The reason for these numbers is due to the caption saying that they will donate 1 lb. of food to a shelter for each comment received on that particular post. This encourages followers to engage with their content.

After considering all of the above statistics, I believe that Canidae is using their facebook page in a much more beneficial way than Petcurean. They post more frequently, their content more closely follows the 50/50 rule and they have a greater amount of engagement on their posts on average.

A Facebook Faceoff

Comparing Iams and Blue Buffalos Social Engagement

Mark Faber

Taking a look at IAMs and Blue Buffalo's Facebook pages there are a couple quick facts we can find to compare these two brands and the level of engagement they provide on the worlds #1 social media. IAMs has 726, 573 likes, with Blue Buffalo only at a quarter the number at 176,225 likes. IAMs typically responds to messages within a few hours and Blue only takes 1 hour. 

For Past 25 Posts

IAMs Top Post

Digging a little deeper into the two Facebook pages by comparing the past 25 posts by each company we can make some more informed conclusions. IAMs posts every 5 days on average, and Blue Buffalo posts once a day (If you’re keeping score its IAMs:1 Blue:2). 
Average number of Likes, Comments, and Shares per post for Blue Buffalo : 191, 104, and 31(respectively). IAMs appears to win on the surface with 1180, 27 and 165. However 65% of their likes have come from 1 post with 19,098 likes, 270 comments and 2,251 shares during the Christmas season (I also think this was a boosted or paid post). Blue Buffalo's top post (1,230 likes, 1,125 comments and 105 shares) was a contest to win a meat rolls for your dogs. Blue Buffalo's post did well because it offered fans a chance to win if they engaged with the post, and IAMS did well because it was posted during an optimal time. 
Overall Blue Buffalo is doing a better job with interacting on Facebook, with a higher engagement percentage (#of likes/post compared to # of followers) although it does appear that IAMs is making a push to post more often and more engaging comment. Hopefully they will both keep posting regularly to keep consumers engaged and knowledgeable about the companies!