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!

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

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. 

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

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.

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!