Use cross-selling to bring new audiences into your fold.

Brands often know who their obvious audiences are. If a brand sells children’s books, marketing to families with kids is a pretty safe bet. Sometimes finding a group adjacent to who a brand would normally seek can reap equal results, bringing in a whole new group of customers and growing their business. 

There’s one demographic just waiting for the opportunity to unleash a world of opportunities – pet owners! 

There are millions of pet owners, myself included. They are a passionate group whose pets are truly a part of the family, and they go above and beyond to provide for them. From new to existing pet owners, the challenges that sometimes arise provide marketers a great opportunity to get in front of this demographic and solve existing or new problems. 

I draw from my own experience and recall when I adopted my dog. I hadn’t had a dog or cat in a few years and decided I was ready to welcome one back into my life. After I’d done some searching, a friend reached out to me about this adorable 7-year-old Chihuahua named Niko who needed to be rehomed, and the rest was history. 

There were the obvious things I knew I needed – dog bowls, leashes, toys, etc. However, nothing prepares you for the unexpected. I quickly noticed that my allergies got worse shortly after bringing my new dog home. To make a long story short, I thankfully was not allergic to Niko but instead was being bothered by the pollen, dirt, and plant debris he brought in after being outside. 

This prompted me to look for and buy a new vacuum cleaner and air purifier and talk to my doctor about allergy medications.  These were all things I would not have thought about needing to get when adopting a new pet but became perfect products for me as a new pet owner. Some of these products’ marketers might already include “pet owners” in their strategy, but there are many other products that are perfect for pet owners that likely are not. This is the perfect situation to take advantage of a cross-selling strategy. 

Cross-selling is a sales and advertising technique used to increase revenue by offering customers related products or services. Many products not directly related to pets are still relevant to pet owners, such as high-efficiency vacuum cleaners for pet hair or air purifiers for pet dander. 

Not every product is as obvious, though. I have a friend who is very invested in his smart home. He has security cameras set up for typical home safety but ends up using the one in the living room to check in on his dog throughout the workday.  

I know I have mentioned dogs quite a bit, but this applies to other pets, too. When I had fish, I struggled with excessive algae growth in the fish tank and discovered blackout curtains could help mitigate this by limiting direct sunlight hitting the tank. These are just a few examples of how pet owners are always looking for new solutions to make the lives of the animals they care about better. And sometimes their own lives, too.

So you’re ready to include pet owners in your next campaign strategy but you’re unsure how? Maybe they’re a primary or secondary audience for you. This is where data-driven marketing comes in. There are multiple ways to implement a data-driven strategy to reach pet owners from using first-party data (data your company owns) to third-party data (owned by a data vendor). 

There are many ways you can reach pet owners, from creating promotions to gather first-party data to using third-party data already available to purchasing third-party data from a data provider.  This will ultimately depend on the stage of the marketing funnel your customers are experiencing.

However, when implementing a new audience to bring in new customers it can often be beneficial to cast a wider net. Incorporating pet owners into your customer portraits can bring in a valuable new demographic.

As the data industry’s #1 provider for campaign performance, Acxiom offers multiple ways to find this audience. We have pre-built segments that allow marketers to reach pet owners where they are in their journey – from a general interest in pets to dog and cat owners, to previous purchases, and in-market audiences.

In addition to these pet-focused audiences, Acxiom offers thousands of other pre-built segments to help marketers create a custom approach. For example, a house cleaning company can use Acxiom data to reach people with kids and pets, and people who are living a busy lifestyle. This helps them find people most likely to need a cleaning service. This is just one of many examples where marketers can get creative and bring pet owners into the fold of their next campaign.