An Altruistic Side to Marketing

So I’m in the market to rehome a dog (I’m sure the online world will be fully informed when I actually adopt!). And so I spent the weekend looking around a dog’s shelter: puppies, older dogs, Terriers, Grey Hounds, Labradors... you name it, they had one. Some had been shaved because of the state their coats were in when they arrived, others had been there for just a week and looked like they had just been lifted out of a comfy sitting room and placed into a metal cage.

The site itself was run down, with broken caravans, feral cats, geese and an overwhelming stench of too many animals in a confined space. There were cats, goats, chickens, foxes, rabbits, and birds, all caged up outside with very limited space. Litter and waste piled high and the odd rat for good measure. And to add to it all, it rained. First impressions – horrific.

I’d found the rehoming centre through their website, which was poor at best but had good descriptions of the animals in their care, and general friendly nature in its content. The site itself reflected the negligence of the online world it had portrayed but had also become a complete assault on the senses.

But, did it make me want to turn around and run back to my car? No. I wanted to help. I wanted to rehome every single poor animal that had been left there. It’s not that the people were mistreating the animals – far from it – the way they handled the dogs was with such love and care, and in many respects, the animals were in better nick than the humans! But this horrendous first impression made me want to step in. It played on every single nerve in my body.

After time to reflect, and make a few decisions (mainly that I can’t adopt everything in my one-bedroom flat), I started thinking - since when has bad marketing become good marketing? Despite the terrible first impressions, I still wanted to invest.

And then I changed my mind. It was by chance, not clever marketing, that I ended up at that particular rehoming centre this weekend. If they had invested in a well-built website, harnessing keywords effectively and targeting the right people, then the traffic directed to the site, both online and offline, would inevitably increase.

Think about Dogs Trust and Battersea Dogs' home. Type ‘dog rehoming’ in Google and both charities appear within the first 5 ads. They also have great websites that allow users to filter the dog they are looking to adopt by age, breed and size. The result? The user is already further down the buying line by the time they get to the selection of dogs that fit their requirements, so they are more likely to adopt. And more adoptions mean more donations. It’s a win-win situation.

So what does this mean for the rehoming centre I was at this weekend? The competition for dog rehoming is high, there’s no doubt about that, and maybe with better first impressions – both online and offline – the animals in their care would have a better chance at finding their forever homes. It just goes to show the power of marketing, and the good it can achieve when utilised properly. Marketing isn’t just about revenue - it seems it can really make a difference.