Online pet food sales continue to grow worldwide, especially in China where nearly 48 percent of the nation’s US$1.5 billion in pet food sales occur online, according to GfK. One Shanghai-based company, Navarch Pet Products, has grown its e-commerce sales to 78 percent of total sales since 2011. Jin Huang, international business director for Navarch Petcare, will share some of her company’s keys to online pet food sales success during her presentation at Petfood Forum Asia 2018 on March 28 in Bangkok, Thailand.
Huang told Petfood Industry about some particularly successful techniques used by Navarch to build their e-commerce presence.
“We use online promotional tools like CPM [cost per thousand], CPC [cost per click], CPS [cost per sale] to promote our products and brands,” she said. “It takes close and precise monitoring of market data response to fully utilize those tools efficiently.”
Along with those marketing tools, Navarch also maintains a strong social media presence.
”Social media is a dynamic tool used in serving our online pet food consumer community,” said Huang. “It plays an important role in Navarch’s social network service (SNS) strategy. Our SNS group specialist utilizes different social media to interact with online customers on a regular, frequent, friendly and instantaneous basis. Retrospectively, customers use different social media to engage in various online/offline activities and to review our services.”
Marketing tools and social media can work in many pet food markets, not just China. However, there are some differences between the US and Chinese pet food markets.
“Merchants use frequent promotional campaign and tactics to attract customers, compared to the subscription services in the US to attract and retain members,” she said.
In China, Tmall and Taobao are the two largest online marketplaces for pet food e-commerce, she said. The majority of consumers purchase economy and mid-range products.
More about Navarch Pet Products
Navarch’s flagship store on Tmall.com has been the top-selling one for pet food since 2014. In 2012, the company even helped establish standards for promoting and selling pet food on Alibaba, the Chinese online giant, and became the top pet food brand sold online in three months.
In 2016, during a big annual promotion with Tmall.com on “Double 11 Day” – China’s version of Cyber Monday – Navarch recorded sales of 10 million CNY (US$1.5 million) in just 49 minutes, reported Petfood Industry. This was tracked in real time on the back-end software from Alibaba that the company uses; every Navarch associate has access to the software to view not only real-time sales but also detailed demographics on who’s buying its pet foods.
In addition, Navarch’s ecommerce business includes its own brand consisting mainly of breed-specific dog foods; about 20 young associates serving as online community service staff, each specializing in an e-commerce platform and product line; and a bank of mobile phones, each holding 5,000 customers/community members and programmed to automatically send promotions to all those customers at once.
Petfood Forum Asia 2018
Hear more from Huang about how to increase online pet food sales at Petfood Forum Asia 2018, during her presentation, “Building a social community to support pet food ecommerce.” Petfood Forum Asia is a conference for the Southeast Asia pet food and pet treat industry featuring industry experts presenting the latest research and information on the pet food market, pet nutrition, pet food palatability, processing, new product development and more. Attendees are provided the ability socialize and network with industry peers from throughout Southeast Asia and to meet those hard to reach prospects, have project update meetings on site with customers and meet new leads through networking events.
Topics presented at Petfood Forum Asia 2018 will include process solutions for current pet food trends, creating value with alternative protein sourcing and much more.
