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.

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

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.

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.

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 Dog Eat Dog Food World - An SEO Analysis

Introduction

SEO is important for marketers because it makes sure that customers find us before they find the competition. In this report I will be looking at the dog food industry, specifically Purina and Nature’s Variety. Purina is one of the largest pet food companies on the planet. I expect them to have outstanding SEO, site design, and online presence. Nature’s Variety up until very recently was a private company that mainly specializes in raw dog food. I don’t expect too much from them but I’m prepared to be surprised. Keep a look out for keywords such as “best dog food” and “healthy dog food”. The objective of this report is to compare both sites’ SEO and see who’s is stronger.

Screen Captures of both home pages:

SEO Considerations	Purina	Nature’s Variety
1.    URL:	www.purina.com	www.naturesvariety.com
2.    Page Title	Pushing Pet Nutrition Forward - Purina® Pet Food & Products	Nature’s Variety
3.    Meta Description	Nourishing pet food and pet products. Find the right dog food, cat food, and treats for the pets that enrich your life.	N/A
4.    Meta Keywords and Monthly search volume:	Purina US, purina pet food, purina dog food, purina cat food	N/A
5.    Structural elements:  H1, H2, H3	H1: N/A H2: Dog Product Selector • Dog Breed Selector • Cat Product Selector H3: N/A	H1: N/A H2: N/A H3: N/A
6.    Strong tags	N/A	Wondering if Instinct is right for you? • Wondering if Prairie is right for you? • Give your pet a Nature's Variety Treat today!
7.    Alt Text	Purina • Purina • Tidy Cats<sup>®</sup> • Purina ONE<sup>®</sup> • Purina<sup>®</sup> Pro Plan<sup>®</sup> • Purina<sup>®</sup> Dog Chow<sup>®</sup> • Beyond<sup>®</sup> • Beneful<sup>®</sup> • ALPO<sup>®</sup> • Friskies<sup>®</sup> • Fancy Feast<sup>®</sup> • Beggin′<sup>®</sup> • Click to Chat With an Online Representative	Click to Expand • Click to Expand • Click to Expand
8.    Page Load Time	15.317 seconds	6.887 seconds
9.    Observations Regarding Page layout:	This page’s layout is easy to navigate. Every important link is available without scrolling. This may be a personal preference but I don’t like the amount of content on their landing page (too much). Overall it has a good layout.	Very simple but gets the job done. Everything fits on one page without scrolling.
10. Observations Regarding Visual Content:	Good mix of pictures and words. Every link is easily understandable (you know where you’re going next). Good use of brand colors (red, black, white)	Just the right amount of pictures. Links stand out. Good use of brand colors (green, brown, orange, yellow). These earthy tones symbolize the brand’s commitment to all natural dog food.
11. Call-to-action:	Not impressed with the amount of call-to-actions. Only a couple “share”s and one “Shop our store”	“Try It!”, “Subscribe to our news and promotions”, “Find A Store”, “Find A Vet”, “You can transform your pet’s life with Instinct Raw. Learn more…”
12. Anchored Text: (list 3)	“Dogs”, “Cats”, “Meet Purina”	“Product Choices”, “Learning Center”, “Who We Are”
13. Moz Established Links:  # to Root Domain	1171	610
14. Moz Established Links:  # Total Links	145K	7016
15. Top 3 inbound links.	http://www.adoptapet.com/ http://www.nist.gov/baldrige/qe/index.cfm http://www.pheasantsforever.org/	http://support.bestfriends.org/site/PageServer?pagename=landing_page http://www.strayrescue.org/ http://www.fda.gov/Safety/Recalls/ucm200248.htm
16. Mobile Friendly: Yes/No	Yes	Yes
17. Content is “shareable” (Like, Tweet, Pin, Blog, etc.)	Yes	Yes
18. Social Media: (List all SM icons on the home page.	Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pintrest	Facebook, Twitter, YouTube
19. SERP ranking results when using keywords from this table: (placing or page number)	1st on page 1	N/A

 

Google Trends Insights:

There is a massive spike in search popularity across the entire industry in March of 2007. At that time there was a big dog food recall and many brands were affected. Other than that, search popularity across the board has had a small but consistent increase since 2008 (except Nature’s Variety, the have close to 0 presence). The dog food industry has been more popular than it has ever been (if you exclude the spike in 2007) the last 12 months while Purina flatlined around it’s average.

Latent Semantic Indexing Keywords:

Purina: purina pro plan, purina veterinary diets, purina points reward program

Nature’s Variety: nature’s instinct raw dog food, nature’s variety prairie, best raw dog food

Summary:

Purina’s SEO was pretty strong but the website itself was mediocre, which really surprised me. Purina’s website took top spot when searching their product brands and was on the second page when searching the generic keyword, “dog food” (first page was all retailer like Wal-Mart). I was shocked by lack of call-to-action on Purina’s site. They had many opportunities to use call-to-action, such as their “Dog Breed Selector” tool, but dropped the ball in favor of a boring link. Purina’s website also had a whopping 15+ seconds loading time and had practically no keywords related to dog food on LSIGraph. Nature’s Variety was the complete opposite; great site, awful SEO. Their website was straight forward, easy to use, and modern. Their links were intriguing which shows evidence of a great marketing team. That’s where the positives stop. If you look at my analysis I put “N/A” for 4 extremely important categories. When I looked them up on Google Trends they were almost non-existent. And when generating keywords on LSIGraph all I got were variations of the same two keywords along with names of competitors. Both of these sites could benefit from a dedicated digital marketing team coming in and sprucing up the place.

Conclusion:

If this report is any indication of the industry as a whole then everyone needs to work hard at improving their digital footprint. There were no common keywords used across both sites and SERP ranking was relatively low industry wide. If I have to winner of this analysis it would have to be Purina. They shouldn’t celebrate though, they have a lot of work ahead of them.

APA Citations:

LSIGraph. (May 2016). LSIGraph keyword generator [purina.com]. Retrieved from http://lsigraph.com/

LSIGraph. (May 2016). LSIGraph keyword generator [naturesvariety.com]. Retrieved from http://lsigraph.com/

Nestle. (May 2016). Purina. Retrieved from http://purina.com/

Nature’s Variety. (May 2016). Nature’s Variety. Retrieved from http://naturesvariety.com/

SEOmoz Inc. (May 2016). MozBar. Retrieved from https://moz.com/tools/seo-toolbar