Does your pet business provide a written guide for new pet parents? A new pet guide is a great way to help new and prospective customers while building long-term trust.
When someone brings home a new pet, they almost always have questions. It doesn’t matter how prepared the parent is. As a pet settles into a new environment, questions will come up. If there is any area where the new pet parent isn’t ready, the pet will find it!
Whether your business is an animal shelter, veterinary office, pet product supplier, groomer, or pet sitter, you are in a great position to provide a helpful prep guide for new pet parents.
Those new pet parents will be grateful for your help. You will become a trusted resource. Even if they don’t purchase from you right away, they will likely refer you to their friends, simply because you gave them much-needed guidance to make the transition smooth for them and their new pet.
You Can Guide New Pet Parents Step by Step
What kind of content can you provide to help a new pet parent?
First, walk them through the steps they are taking and offer advice at each step. They go to pick up their pet. Now what? How will they get the pet home? What if it’s a long car ride? Are they prepared for that?
Despite being a lifelong cat parent, I was not ready for bringing home my kitten named Chingis. The three-hour car ride seemed like 30 hours.
I had brought a tiny open cardboard box lined with a towel, in which I had transported kittens easily in the past. That box was ineffective for my new little family member. Chingis proved to be a rambunctious, howling, climbing, crawling kitten that seemed to grow as we traveled. Eventually, I chunked the box in the back seat, and Chingis curled up quietly in my lap. Who knew it was that simple?
Your new pet parent guide would have helped me on my journey home with Chingis.
Even seasoned pet parents are still new when bringing home a new pet. Every animal is different. With your expertise, you can create a guide that helps pet parents anticipate and plan for all contingencies.
What happens after the pet arrives home? What equipment does the pet need? How about feeding? Is the home already pet-proofed? Do animals already live there, and how will that introduction work out?
Two years after I brought Chingis home, I adopted a little sister kitten for him named Crickett. I wish I had known to keep her in her carrier while they got used to each other. Instead, I let her out immediately. The next few hours were an exhausting blur of claws, howls, fur, and tears.
Eventually, they became best buddies, inseparable. But those first few hours could have been less traumatizing had I known how to introduce them. There again, I was not a new cat parent, but I was new to introducing a kitten to a full-grown cat.
By the way, the new kitten was never in danger. The grown cat was! My little Crickett was a formidable force, and she let Chingis know that right out of the carrier gate. A very large cat, Chingis was seven times her size. As soon as she had him whipped into shape, all was well.
Topics to Include in Your New Pet Guide
When you have the new pet transportation and home setting mapped out with various contingencies, you can fill in with specifics. Take the pet parent through their first day, first night, first week (explaining why Chingis hid in the closet for several days), initial trip to the vet, and perhaps fast forward to the one-month mark. Maybe add in the first visit to the groomer, where applicable. Guide them with helpful information and what to look for along the way.
Don’t assume new pet parents know even the most basic things. A new animal in the home presents new challenges. Even seasoned pet parents will be glad for the reassurance of a new pet guide, to ensure so they don’t forget something. Your guide will help them feel less overwhelmed. They’re not doing this alone. They’ve got another member of the team — you!
Although you want this to be a helpful new pet guide, don’t hesitate to mention a few selected products or services that will bring greater value for your customers. For example, are you a vet who offers an all-in-one new kitten health program? Your customers would benefit by knowing about that and would probably be relieved to sign up.
The information needed by new pet parents will vary depending on the type of animal or breed. You may consider creating a general new pet guide — many basics will be needed by all new pet parents. Or you might want to create specialty guides based on your customers’ preferences.
Ask Pet Parents How They Prefer to Consume Content
What form can your guide take? You can create a long-form blog post or series of posts, a short e-book, an infographic, a booklet, a downloadable PDF, a video or series of videos, an online course, an email series, or even a guide book on Kindle. Consider any combination of the above because pet parents might like a variety of formats to suit their needs.
You can even ask your customers which formats they would prefer, using a quick survey to find out how they would like to consume this information. While you’re at it, ask them what tidbits they would like you to include in this guide. Ask your seasoned pet parents what their questions or experiences were in bringing home a new pet. They might even give you permission to include their stories that offer insights for new pet parents. Pet parents love to help other pet parents.
Putting Your New Pet Guide Together
How do you put all this information together? Think step-by-step categories with bullet point lists. That’s a simple way to get started. Walk through a new pet parent’s journey, step by step, and use bullet points to highlight what they need to know along the way.
Keep it simple. Just the basics. Categories might include transport, food/water, bedding, pet-proofing the home, other pets, kids, indoor/outdoor, medical/shots, and more — whatever basic information will be most valuable to new pet parents.
If you already have lots of good content on your blog, you may find it easy to link those bullet points to your blog posts that will provide additional information. Some new pet parents may need further insights in certain areas but not others. When you add links to your other content, pet parents can choose which links they need to follow.
Start out with a smaller, very basic guide, just to get going. You can grow from there. As you develop your new pet parent guide over time, you will probably come up with great ideas to grow your blog, web pages, and social media content as well.
At every stage of this process, pet parents will thank you. They’ll know you were there for them at the beginning of their pet’s home life. You will become their trusted resource as their pet grows and encounters future needs.
Janet Eriksson 