Why advertise?

Recently the Pet Guide directory website underwent a complete overhaul and redesign. It now has vastly increased advertiser and user features; greater search engine optimisation and a strong community feel so that visitors are compelled to stay on the site for even longer.

Here are NINE GOOD REASONS why having a paid listing on the Pet Guide directory website is the smartest advertising spend you’ll make this year.

1.Your customers are already using Pet Guide!
Over the course of an average month, the Pet Guide website receives traffic from a staggering 2630 DIFFERENT pet-related search terms from all the search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing! What’s more, Pet Guide enjoys prominent placement in the search engine results, so if you have a pet-related business or service there’s a very high chance your potential customers are already visiting PetGuide.co.nz to find businesses like yours.

2.Integration with the most popular social networking sites
Everyone’s talking about the power of social networking through sites like Facebook and Twitter and you may already have personal and business pages on these sites. The all-new Pet Guide places your Facebook and Twitter links prominently in your listing alongside your regular contact details such as phone, email and website links.
This means Pet Guide users can:

a. Become fans and followers of your social network pages at the click of a button.
b. “Like” or Tweet your listing so that it is shared with their social network, giving you even wider market exposure than you would normally enjoy. This occurs even if you don’t have your business set up on Facebook or Twitter and it gives your business, product or service highly valuable “social proof”.
c. In general, people are more likely to purchase or use a product or service on the recommendation of a friend. With the emotional attachment involved in the people/pet relationship, a recommendation will highly influence a decision. For instance, someone needing to use boarding facilities such as a kennel or cattery is going to look for social proof in the way of reviews and recommendations from their community.

3.Reviews
Along with social networking integration a review system has been added to each Pet Guide listing and users are encouraged to review services and products they have used. Businesses with paid listings are able to receive and respond to reviews. Even a simple “thank you” for a review adds a most important social interaction between your business and your client.

As the Pet Guide platform is independent of your business, reviews and ratings are more likely to be considered unbiased and, therefore, liable to be given greater validity by consumers.

More importantly, a review of your business on Pet Guide becomes a permanent word-of-mouth recommendation, one that has an infinite lifespan and a wide reach, rather than the temporary effect of a conversation between friends.

4. A vanity URL
You will get your own separate listing page with a unique URL. For example, if your business is ABC Dog Grooming, your URL can be www.PetGuide.co.nz/ABCDogGrooming ... but you have to be in first. If there is another business with the same name as yours the first paid listing gets the preferred name.

If you don’t have your own website you can use this unique URL in your advertising, brochures, company literature, etc, just as if it were your own website.

5. Highly-qualified customer
If you have a company website, a paid listing gives you a link to your website from your Pet Guide listing. Visitors who follow that link are already looking for the specific services you offer and arrive at your website as highly qualified potential customers.

6. Top priority and prominence in listings and search
Paid listings are given top priority in category and regional searches. Your business receives greater and more frequent exposure. Images and “teaser text” on search results pages ensure a higher click-through rate to your full listing page from site visitors.

7. You are in control
Enjoy complete control over your account and listing details. You can easily make changes and updates as often and whenever you wish by simply filling in the boxes. The result is a well-designed listing with an attractive photo gallery, Google maps, video, social network integration and reviews. And just as important is that behind the scenes all “best practice” measures have been taken when building the Pet Guide site so that it is search engine-friendly and quick-loading.

8.Every paid listing helps the animals
A portion of revenue from all paid listings goes into a fund used to help animal charities. All registered Pet Guide users accumulate points when they post a review; add a new business, product or service; or upgrade to a paid listing.

When Pet Guide users create an account they choose the animal charity to benefit from their points which are then converted to dollars and donated to the charities based on the percentage of points earned. You can learn more about how this works on the website.

9.More promotional opportunities
Paid listings will be promoted to Pet Guide’s Facebook and Twitter pages; they have the opportunity to be featured on the Pet Guide blog and regular newsletters. Businesses with paid listings will be able to promote products, services and special offers to the Pet Guide community.