When it comes to pet business marketing, our regular readers will know how important your written content is. We’ve written tons of articles about content marketing for pet businesses and even copywriting for pet businesses, but we’ve not covered visual content much. That doesn’t mean visual content is unimportant though – videos and images are also essential to your pet business marketing, so let’s take a closer look.

What is Visual Content?

Visual content is everywhere in marketing. It’s the videos, photos, graphics, and drawings that go alongside words and social posts, even on adverts. It’s what catches your eye when you’re scrolling, and what helps pet owners recognise your brand from a distance. It can also help explain concepts – at Petlearnia, visual content is used to help explain complex medical topics easily.

Types of visual content for pet businesses marketing

In general, there are three main types of visual content you’ll need for your pet business:

Photographs – photos are still fantastic at showing off products and showing a quick peek behind the scenes
Graphics – graphics are visually appealing and can help your brand shine through
Videos – videos of less than 1 minute are one of the most regularly consumed pieces of content online

Where can I get visual content for my pet business?

Pet businesses have it easier than most – there’s naturally plenty of great visual content that goes with pet businesses. After all, you work with adorable animals every day!

Photographs

The best way to get photographs for pet business marketing is to take them yourself! Get yourself a decent camera, and snap away – a good phone camera will do! Take photos behind-the-scenes, of your favourite pets, of your set-up, of funny moments – this stuff is gold for your marketing! If you need something specific and don’t have it yourself, Unsplash, Pixabay and Canva have free photos available. You can even have a play around with AI image creators, but bear in mind that people can often tell if they’re AI-generated, and you should have a think about whether this fits with your business.

Another option is to hire a professional photographer – this can be a really good option when you’re first starting out and need a lot of photos at once for brochures etc.

Graphics

Undeniably, Canva is one of the best programs out there to make amazing graphics for pet businesses. Whether you are a doggy salon or a cat sitter, Canva has some incredible options for graphic creation, with templates to help you get it looking professional. You can do tons with the free version, but the paid version gives you more images and graphics to play with. If you’re struggling, graphic designers can really help and can often create you a whole bunch of branded content for a fee!

Videos

Again, it’s usually best to take these yourself. Portrait-style, on a phone, is great! As with photos, take videos behind-the-scenes, of your daily life, and of your favourite pets – people really value these insights into your life, so these kind of videos are great for marketing. If you haven’t got the video you need, you can get videos on Canva, but most need paying for. Don’t forget to make sure the videos fit with your pet brand – use of filters and even the way you talk on camera should all feel like part of one cohesive brand.

Staying on-brand

As we’ve said before, it’s essential to stay true to your pet business branding. If you have a light and friendly brand, with bubble writing fonts and generally cheerful tone of voice, don’t take photos in dark rooms with boring backgrounds. Instead, get some good lighting and maybe some wall decals to help you stay on-brand.

On the other hand, if your brand has a serious, trusted image, you don’t want anything too light and airy-fairy – videos of you skipping along walking the dogs might be jarring to your audience. Instead, try videos of you giving advice to camera, or photos of views, or even a video of the dogs all coming when they are called or sitting nicely on command.

Use your new visuals in marketing your pet business

Now it’s time to market your pet business with all your visual content. You can use your new visual content across your social media platforms and in your printed marketing materials. Keep taking new videos and photos – it’s a continual process.

Conclusion

Your pet business marketing strategy should include visual content – it’s eye-catching and can increase trust with your customers. But it does need to be on-brand!

If you enjoyed this article, you might want to read more about pet brand design. Or, if you’re inspired to re-vamp your social media pages, why not read about our writing services for pet businesses?