Using a website redesign and social campaigns to increase brand awareness.
Challenge
Millions of new pet owners entered the pet-calming product market during the pandemic and the opportunity for Vetoquinol to capitalise on these new pet owners was significant. However, the industry is competitive and targets consumers inexperienced in their knowledge of pet-calming products and care. Vetoquinol came to Dog to maximise the opportunity among female pet owners specifically, with the ambition of increasing brand/product awareness and driving sales of their pet calming treatment, Zylkene, via a fully integrated digital campaign.
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Background
Zylkene is a calming supplement that contains a natural ingredient derived from a protein in milk that’s clinically proven calming properties to help relax cats and dogs.
Vetoquinol, owners of the Zylkene brand, is an independent, family-owned company and is one of the world’s top ten veterinary pharmaceutical businesses. Exclusively devoted to improving animal health, they develop, manufacture, and sell innovative veterinary drugs and non-medicinal products worldwide.
What we did
The pandemic saw over 3.4m new pet owners, and with it, demanding experiences for nervous pets (and owners). This presented a perfect opportunity for Zylkene to provide a helping hand to ease stressful situations for pets and provide peace of mind for owners.
Our challenge was to increase brand and product awareness, educate potential consumers about triggering stressors for pets where Zylkene could be helpful, and reassure pet owners that Zylkene was safe, easy to use and would truly benefit the well-being of their pet.
Thousands of searches are made each month relating to pet anxiety, usually made in times of distress, such as ‘How to’ questions on calming a cat or dog. Interestingly, only a small proportion of queries were looking for a product, supplement or medication. This suggests that many pet owners may first need to be educated on the symptoms of anxiety and how to help a pet in different scenarios, before introducing the product. We had the opportunity to support pet owners in moments of need and stand out as the brand supporting pet well-being, providing reassurance in moments that matter.
With this knowledge, we activated a digital marketing campaign across multiple channels that indexed highly with our audiences’ media consumption behaviours, including Facebook & Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Google Search/Display, and YouTube. We complemented this activity with Paid Search and Display advertising.
We worked in partnership with the client to adapt hero creative to produce a suite of assets that we knew would be engaging for our target audiences. By using a soft colour palette, clear and calming language, and both static and video formats, we knew our creative would hook our audiences, driving further exploration through to the website. Our ‘test and learn’ approach selected channels based on their optimum creative flexibility, so we could be as reactive as possible to varying pet behavioural trends, for example, back to work messaging when restrictions were eased and fireworks messaging in October and November.
To accentuate and complement updated product branding, we embarked on a light-touch website re-design and build project to ensure it was easy to navigate and informative for campaign and organic traffic alike. Within this, we also considered the flow consumers would take through the site – helping to educate them about the product along the way – and ultimately, leading them to a smoother purchasing journey.
Results
Our campaign generated the following results:
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11% purchase intent increase YOY.
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29m impressions within the campaign period.
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151,107 site visits.
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87% of sessions on site were new users, an increase of 176% YOY.
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Women aged 25 – 34 responded the most to the campaign.
Our work with Vetoquinol was recognised at this year's Veterinary Marketing Association Awards, with the Zylkene campaign being 'Highly Commended' in the Integrated Digital Campaign category. This category recognises multichannel marketing campaigns that demonstrate a cohesive strategy and effective, impactful activations across digital and social channels.