Part 2 of our recent interview with John Cullen of Bulldog Marketing:

Gene Sower Petbizop – Let me ask you this:  People love to have some handy tips they can use. I’m looking for 3-4 tips for getting a pet business off the ground. What would you advise people? So if they do come to you first. If they are lucky or smart enough to find you first, what are the 3 or 4 things you would say to help them get their new business off the ground whatever it is?

John – Number one I would say you have to do some level of marketing research. You really need to understand, is there a need for this product in the market? or is it just another half baked me too product that’s going to get lost on the shelf? Is it really different or at least different enough that a buyer and a consumer can see a difference for why this product should exist. Or is it just another me too flavored product of treats that are bone shaped, because there’s no point in doing that. That’s number one,  and surveymonkey you can get for free, I know I use it myself. The free version is a bit limited but I use it. Put it on your facebook, and on your friends facebook and say take this survey for me. Write a concept statement. Brand X is the brand of whatever and this is why it’s different, this is  the estimated retail price point, would you buy it? These are standard questions that have been around since the 1950s that you have to ask. Is it unique?  What’s the overall rating? What do you like about it?  What don’t you like about it? Obviously, purchase interest and purchase intent? These are some of the most important questions. If you’re not above a 60% on purchase interest, you probably should not move forward.

Gene Sower Petbizop – What sort of sized sample do you think you should strive for to have an accurate assessment of those results?

John – Here’s the thing, if you’re going to try and do it on the cheap, you should at least try to get 100 people. You never know where they’re going to come from if you’re putting it on your twitter account, or on your facebook. If you really want to do it the right way, you go to Zoomerang and it costs $1600 to get the sample, a nationally distributed sample, and you get about 200 completes for around $1600. And that’s actually used by Proctor & Gamble and a lot of the big CPG companies. They really liberated, again, someone like a mom and pop really can go out and do that sort of research the correct way.  You know, it takes some programming and some knowledge, but again someone like me can help write the questionnaire and really frame it all up. But if you just want to do it yourself, and you want to do it inexpensively, $1700 will get you up to 100 respondents and it’s better than nothing. You should never ever ever get into this business without exposing people, even if it’s a written statement of what the product is, don’t go by gut. I’ve been in marketing for 20+ years, and with JW Pet over 10 and I don’t trust my gut so I’m sure some people’s guts are even better than mine but you got to go out and do your homework and really find out if there’s a need for the product. That’s  tip #1.

Tip #2, I would say get professionally designed logos and packaging. The packaging is your silent salesman. It has to really jump off the shelf. It’s not going to sell itself. Don’t go to your cousin’s nephew for $40 and say can you develop a name for me, and a logo, and packaging, and go out and expect it…I have so many strange stories where people have had bags with holes in it, they were three hole punching bags because there was condensation building up inside of the bag. They were selling stuff in brown paper bags with an Avery label…and I’m like, what about spoilage and bugs? There’s a clear misunderstanding on what it is going to take. Now again, if you don’t have a budget try to go and get one. It’s not that expensive. I don’t want to get into specific quotes and stuff like that but view things like that as a lot less expensive than…you know when I was at Heinz as a brand manager, we’d spend about $40,000 per package, and that was on a rework, not even a whole new packaging. Today you can find designers who can do logos and packaging, probably for $1500-$3000 and you’ll have a real fighting chance. If you’re not going to have the wherewithal to spend that kind of money, then maybe this isn’t the business for you.

Gene Sower Petbizop – So I guess tip #2 is don’t skimp on design, branding and packaging. So what else, any others?

John – Let’s see, once you’ve got  all that down, the next big thing is you absolutely need to find the right rep. Cold calling a buyer and sending samples randomly is a really bad way of doing business. You really need to find someone who has the in-relationship at a Petco or a distributer that’s there every week, they go out to lunch, they’re in their kids wedding parties, they’re in their bar mitzvahs, all this kind of stuff because they have the inside track. The problem is, if you’re cold calling, you are competing against that guy who has the relationship. It’s just never going to work, it’s never a good idea. You don’t have to hire them on staff. They only work on commission. You gotta do it. And a lot of them are time wasters. One of the things that I do, is I bring those reps to the table, and I have agreements with those reps so at the end of the day it’s 5%. If they don’t sell anything then you don’t pay anything. It’s cheaper than hiring a professional sales person with a 6 figure salary.

Gene Sower Petbizop – Million dollar question…where do you find these reps? I’m a company trying to start up…Are you saying to hire someone like you who can hook them up with the reps?

John – That’s one way, but you can also go LinkedIn. I have a group on LinkedIn called Pet Product Marketing and Sales and leave a post there. You don’t have to actually go through me.I don’t want to make this all about me and Bulldog. I do have those relationships and I would gladly help anybody, but you can go to LinkedIn and you can join my group.

Gene Sower Petbizop – That’s great advice. So the LinkedIn Group is called Pet Product Marketing and Sales?

John – Right,  on LinkedIn. You’ll see the logo is the Bulldog logo…now I’m not sure how many tips we’re up to, but this one is very important and I get this one a lot, is that if you’re only going to put out one skew product you’re doomed to fail. By that I mean one product, one item, one size, then forget it. Don’t even bother. Unless you have the greatest product since sliced bread, you know like it picks up your dog’s poo and deposits it and throws it out automatically, then it’s  going to fail. Buyers know that and that’s why they don’t wanna see a 1 skew play. So at least think about, what kind of scents can I do? What kind of sizes can I do? Is there any kind of way I can get 6-12 items to present? When I was at Heinz we used to have the “Walmart Rule” which was present 12, they’ll take 6. We would make up skews just to present, because we knew they would divide by 2 for what they would actually put in the store. I think it’s a really important point. You can have 3 or you can have 6 but never just have just 1, it’s a really bad idea. It’s going to be very hard to get placement.

My last point would just be that, we talked about this earlier on, there’s alot of misinformation out there that pet products are selling themselves, and that people will spend any kind  of money, you have to have marketing, it’s going to be up to you as the manufacturer to drive sales to the product. The account doesn’t care, it’s not their job in their minds to drive your product. They are just a conduit between you and the consumer. You need to figure out how to get the consumer in the store.

SEO, the kind of things that you do Gene, digital market, those kinds of things. You don’t have to spend a ton of money. I think there’s a misconception that in order to do advertising you need to spend millions of dollars. No you don’t, but you need to do something.  You can’t just put a product on a shelf and hope that people discover it through osmosis. It’s a very dangerous strategy to have.

One woman in particular that I can use as an example, she just got her item into a distributer, and we were going to work together but we never ended up working together, so I’m like great now you’re at the distributer, do you think they are going to focus on your item? They have 30,000-50,000 other items. You have 1 skew. It’s going to get lost. You have a pipeline order, it will never get placed in the stores. It’s very very very tough without a plan for how you’re going to pull that product through. So you need really good marketing, you need multiple skews, you need to get the right rep, and you need to get professionally designed packaging, names, and all that other stuff. A name, very, very important, and it should always be benefit driven.

Gene Sower Petbizop – That’s great advice. Let’s talk about, doing some sort of advertising. What do  you think are some of the best online type of advertising tactics and why?

John – I think it depends if you’re targeting the trade, which is the early stages depending on where you are, or if you’re trying to build distribution, you can absolutely do some digital advertising, you know Pet Business, Pet Product News, Pet Age…they have some banner programs, and what I think is very effective, some email blast programs  where you can go out an email 1300 or so mom and pop stores with your message, this is specifically through Pet Business. It’s great because it’s just one message, you’re not competing with anybody else, and you can even turn it directly into sales. It’s  one of the best things you can do to get the trade, or the mom and pop set to really know that you exist. I believe it’s about $1000-$1200 and it’s very good value to try and get some awareness built quickly.

One of the key points in one of my videos, is that it really does all start with awareness. People can’t buy that they’ve never heard of. If they don’t know who you are, you’re never going to get sold. Start thinking of awareness; start thinking who you need to get to know your product. For trade, the email blast is very effective. Once you’re trade established, and you’re on some shelves, then you can start looking at the consumer level, and I would go to dogster.com, dogchannel.com, the bowtie family, dog fancy, and put a small digital package with them and it’s not going to cost you a ton of money. They’ll do newsletters and those kinds of things. Dogtime Media offers a plan that does a lot for $5000. I think you need to start with trade, if you have previews and distribution, then I think you should start talking to the consumer, these are a couple of good options. I think they would be a lot like plans you would put together which are digitally based. An average print ad in a dog magazine is probably around $70,000. So for that same $70,000 you might get more impressions from a digital campaign.

Gene Sower Petbizop- Absolutely, and if you’re trying to get consumers too what we’re finding has a lot of appeal is pay per click advertising on Facebook. it’s a lot less expensive than Google pay per click.

John – That’s a really good point. You’re paying for the click, so it’s efficient. What I like to do is put a contest on top of it. You have to be careful with the legal, but say, hey come like us on Facebook and today we’re going to give away a free sample. Whoever likes us today has a chance to win. It’s fairly inexpensive, but consult a lawyer you don’t want to get into trouble legally because contests aren’t legal for all states, you have certain rules. I believe facebook even has certain apps that you can buy into that have the legal all figured out and you can even do something like that. It creates a lot of excitement. You can get a lot of awareness out of it. What I like about overlaying a contest, it has a real what’s in it for me as a consumer, I can win something, there’s a reason why i should go check out this product. It’s not just marketing for marketing’s sake.

Gene Sower Petbizop  – Right, also I know some companies will use a charitable component as a way to create awareness.

Now we’ve talked about some of the online tactics, what would say are some of the most cost effective offline advertising tactics that you would recommend? Print advertising can get really expensive really fast. I don’t know how effective it is, maybe you can tell me differently. What is the most effective, not necessarily free, but the most bang for your buck?

John – I think, again, I don’t discount print. There’s a couple of books out there that are really good, they are  Dog Fancy and Caesar’s Way, and they’re not cheap. You don’t have to do a full page ad, do a half page, or even a third page for maybe around $3-4000, and that’s a lot of money but the reach is pretty decent. Both of those magazines have about a 200,000 circulation and it is a very highly qualified reader, obviously has a dog, so your waste is really minimized when you start going into those books. Again, 200,000 it’s not a huge number in terms of the reach, but it’s highly qualified. Back in the day, we did People magazine for Pounce, and I never understood that buy. An ad in People magazine back then was about 100 grand for a full page ad; one shot deal. I never understood it. That’s a very broad reach and  People magazine does index fairly well against pet owners…but when you’re first starting out those are the kind of tactics you’re not going to be doing. If you partner with one of those magazines, work with them to get some of your online as well. Get a package so you can get some online as part of the print buy. In this economy you can get a lot for a little. They want new advertisers and you’ll typically get a new advertiser discount. They’ll even give you a banner on the site, or a news letter sponsorship. Don’t be afraid to ask for these extras, because right now people are hurting for business.

Gene Sower Petbizop- In the limited time we have left, I wanted to get you to tell us about this new facebook group you’ve created for pet product distributors.

John – It’s really more for pet product manufacturers. It’s sort of an extension of the LinkedIn group. I felt like maybe I could reach more people on Facebook. What I’m trying to do is make it a group that’s based on people who are manufacturing and selling physical products for pets. I wanted to make it a community where we could meet and talk about the best practices for marketing, but that’s really my specialty vs. what some other people might do in the industry. It’s for someone who has to go from physical production to a third party distributor, out to a store, and ultimately to a consumer. The basic premise of bulldog marketing and sales is physical goods, and that’s why I develop a community based on those kinds of people, manufactures. Right now the LinkedIn group has 411 members, which I think you’re one of them Gene, which is good. I grew that group from 0 members to 411 in about an 8 month period and I’d like to try to do that on Facebook because I think I might get more people there who were maybe timid about LinkedIn because it is more business oriented. I’d like to try to reach out and get a couple of thousand people to engage with me.I put free marketing tips on there, my videos are on there, and some of my blog tips. I’ve been blogging since around March 2010 and I’ve got a lot of free information on my blog that’s never really gone out to lots of people, so I am looking for ways to give away free information that people can use to get started without spending a lot of money.

Gene Sower Petbizop - Have you like us at Pet Business Opportunity on Facebook? You should because here’s a tip for you and for our listeners, that’s very interesting and people don’t often think of it, is that and I do that all the time, I make this part of my rounds, is you do a blog post, you link to it from your facebook page, or from LinkedIn…but here’s the thing, if you like other pet related facebook pages like mine, or Pet Product News, or whatever, there’s hundreds of them. Once you like their page, you can go and post your stuff on their page. What I do is post it on my page, then I make the rounds and post the same thing on 10-12-15 other related sites. You’re getting out in front of those audiences, and that’s a very cool thing. I find even with video, we do a lot of videos in addition to podcasts, and we take that youtube video and you don’t have to even embed it, just take that link and just paste it into all the different facebook pages that you’ve already liked because once you’ve liked them you have the permission to go and post content.

John – The only caveat to that is I’d be a little careful. With you it’s a little bit different Gene, because you’re really providing a service, and that is a great service to things people are looking to do great things in Pets. The only thing I would say to the listeners is be very careful about the commercial nature of that. You don’t necessarily want to be spamming other people’s site with buy my stuff it’s on sale today.

Gene Sower Petbizop  -  That’s the finer points John, and I mean exactly, yes. You don’t want to abuse that. You have to treat it with kid gloves. We could have a whole other podcast about how to use social media effectively because that’s really that conversation. But in terms of pure capabilities, I want people to be aware of that and again tread lightly don’t abuse it. That’s where our whole aim is to always be informative, and really educational in tone.

John – Well exactly, you have real content you’re providing, which is great .  And yet, you’re right, we could  do a whole podcast on social media. We didn’t  touch on it too much in this particular podcast because you gotta get the basics down first. Do I have a great product? A great name? With a great package?  Social media absolutely should be an extension of everything that you do online. It’s probably not as easy as a lot of people think Gene  to get social media off the ground. it does take a lot: having a blog…that’s a whole other podcast, why a blog should absolutely be a part of your website  because of the links that it builds.  SEO could be a whole other podcast…

Gene Sower Petbizop – We have to have you back in the new year cause we’re going to be continuing the podcast series and maybe break it down into some other categories. We’re also looking to do some webinars.

John – If we can get some feedback from your audience about what kinds of things they want to learn about we could address that in some upcoming issues.

Read part 1 of the interview HERE