I was tasked with designing a website and developing a marketing strategy for a new local business here in Fargo: 2nd chance animal shelter a non-profit animal shelter. You can find it here: https://2ndchanceshelter.square.site/
2nd chance animal shelter delivers value to the customer in three main areas. Ethics, Assurance, Full circle community.
First is the ethics, 2nd chance animal shelter is a Non-profit. This means that our mission is to ensure what is best for the animals and what is best for the customer. The non-profit aspects guarantee’s that the motives behind our actions come from a place of love and good intentions. To keep prices low, we rely on donations from outside parties and the cost associated with the animals comes from the required veterinarian cost to make sure the animals are healthy, spayed/ neutered and are ready to go home to a loving family. Not to mention that our animals are ethically sourced and not from a puppy mill or other questionably ethic sources of breeding.
Assurance comes in with our promise to match up and find the animals a loving home and that the customer is receiving an animal that fits their needs. We conduct screenings before you can get your pet to make sure that not only is the pet going to a good home, but if the pet is best suited for you. This means sitting down with the customers and making sure they understand what the animal needs in regards of care, how they interact with others such as other pets or children and if they are suited for your lifestyle (active, sedentary etc.). This promises that after getting the animal, they are likely to stay they in that home (good for the pet) and that the customer will be the most satisfied (good for the consumer). The animals also come with veterinary checkups and are all up to date of shots, medicines, illnesses etc.
Full circle community means that participating in our organization does so much more than elsewhere. Our Non-profit is interwoven within the community and as such when that when a customer chooses to adopt an animal, they are not only supporting the shelter but the veterinary clinics, the students working in our organization, the local vendors that rely on our business and the community as a whole by helping keep the stray population down. All of our resources are locally purchased, and the implications are truly immeasurable, and the lives touched by our organization reaches far. One simply cannot compare the impact of a dollar spent in our organization to other sources of animal vendors. By participating, consumers themselves give back to the community.
How we differ from our competition: The local animal stores, Petco and PetSmart receive their animals through local animal shelters. Going through us cuts out the middleman and supports the community. Other sources of obtaining animals do not come with the ethical, health quality, and community assurance previously stated in the value proposition. People who tend to go through these options typically do so for reasons like pure breads and are part of a different segment.
Breaking down the target market
I broke down the potential consumers into two categories:
To get a better understanding I crafted two separate personas to play off of.
Persona 1:
Sarah is a Gen Z, 21-year-old college girl, often stays in and is interested in a companion to have with her at home to be a little less lonely. Something she can give her attention too that is not too demanding. She works part time making a bit more then minimum wage and is full time at school, yet still has gaps of free time. She takes out loans for school, so the money she makes covers rent, and she has a good amount left over as discretionary income. She decides she wants to get a cat; she does not want a cat as it’s more responsibility then that she is looking for so she decides to look into adopting. Being Gen Z she sees responsibility in her actions and wants to make the right choice by adopting humanly. She has a comfortable amount saved up and has regular income.
Persona 2:
Mike is a Millennial 26-year-old male. He graduated with a business degree, proposed to his girlfriend after college and they moved in together. Mike works full time 9-5 and so does his wife. They have found a lot more free time without the stress of school and have invested more time in doing recreational activities like outdoor walks. Not yet willing to commit to having children they decide to test the waters with a dog. Something that will test their relationship, join them outside and give the feeling of a family. They have no problems with bills and are saving their money for a house deposit. All that aside the couple values spending money on activities and experiences, they have no problem cover the cost that come with a dog. They feel it’s more right to adopt from a shelter and decide to wait till a young enough dog enters the shelter.
Designing the website from scratch
This is the landing page of our website. The Landing Page is a Conversion-Centered Design. The CALLTO ACTION on the page is for them to reach out and schedule an appointment. There is a prominent “Schedule an Appointment” button at the top as well as above the fold. There is a photo displaying two cute pets, small dialog about choosing to adopt and then an obvious button that leads to the contact form page. This is because they can’t simply buy a dog or cat it has to be done in store; this means our conversions is centered around getting calls. If the consumer decides to scroll down it will lead them to testimonials. These would be displayed to aim at our two identified target markets, the college girl and new family. The goal of this is to reassure them that this decision is right for them by hearing their peers say it. At the top has our Logo in which if you press it, it leads back to the home page, a home button, about us, blog, and the call to action. This top bar will follow them when they scroll down.
Here is the landing page if someone clicked on our ad. Based on the demographics, we came up with we would use that to target consumers who have been interested in adopting. Using the persons cookies, we could target them to land on either dogs or cats. Being the type of business we are, it would be hard to more specific with the landing page as I don’t see a way we could match them with a specific animal as they fluctuate. I believe it is more beneficial for our consumers to browse the diverse selection of animals we have. In a typical marketing sense this is not right to make your customers do work to find a product they want however this is a kind of purchase that requires thought for them to decide to pull the trigger. That is why the catalog is our designated landing page. Consumers making this type of purchase does not want to be told what to get, rather they make their own connections browsing.
Planning SEO
On the next page is attached my SEO Keyword search. I tried to go through google Ad planner but it insisted I start a campaign and wanted my credit card. I used word tracker to find my results and now I’ll talk a little bit about them. Being a local shop, I would want to focus my words to draw in local customers. Not just Fargo but the surrounding areas since ND is pretty vast and sparce, I feel they have less options. If I were going to make an ad, through google Ads I would select the option to have my ads displayed in a 40 Mile Radius. I have no interest in advertising to other states (minus Minnesota) because for the cost, it would not be justified. On the list I also included PetSmart and Petco. This is to attempt to penetrate there market shares. As mentioned earlier they get their animals from shelters anyways, we still want them to go through us. Depending on the cost for the long tail searches for “Fargo Adoption PetSmart/Petco” I think it would be worth it for people to see our company before theirs on the SERP.
Potential Social Media Strategy
A really good way of getting exposure is by posting sharable content. To me, as long as it still falls under the general area it should be fine. I demonstrated this in the third and fourth pictures. The post themselves are not formatted perfectly but are meant to be stand ins. External sources like videos and links are good ways to get our brand out there from other people without them even knowing they’re working with us! On the external side. Posting articles that are relevant to animals are really easy sharable media with your name on it. Everyone loves funny videos and that too works. Ideally, we can share our own blog articles, and this would work as a win all around. Updating the site, getting external links, and views from this page will help a lot with our SEO and hopefully get us a high SERP. We will have volunteers and encourage them to post their videos and picture of our pets on the separate volunteer page we will set up and maybe have a “post of the week content” This engages our volunteers and encourages them to post as well as, if they get post of the week they will be a lot more inclined to share it and talk about it. This personal engagement is a powerful tool to spreading the brand and raising awareness. If we can stand out as a fun shelter, people will want to come to our store and adopt. The next part of our social engagement will focus on bringing in people. Posting on Facebook jobs as a volunteer position give us free exposure on the Facebook job listing page. Posting events will bring our engagement to real life. For those going, they would want to bring on others and simply sharing is like free advertising and exposure. If we regularly hold events in the community, our brand will be tied to a positive message. The main goal of our social media is to make our content work for us! I chose Facebook because it is the easiest to share and has a lot more tools to utilize compared to say, twitter.
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