Vitakraft^®

Vitakraft^®, a popular European pet treat company who joined forces with Sunseed Inc. in 2008, is a worldwide leader in producing small batch treats for dogs, cats, small animals and pet birds, as well as other pet products. With a 180-year legacy and an already well established International presence, Vitakraft came to Tiny Bully with plans to break into a highly competitive U.S. market with a new line of dog and cat treats.

The brand needed to retain/leverage its equity while repositioning its U.S. offerings to appeal to U.S. pet consumers and retailers. Vitakraft came to us knowing that a deep knowledge of the pet industry would be critical in identifying the differentiating value that helped them stand out.

To help them make a dent in the U.S. market, Tiny Bully knew we needed to implement a robust digital strategy that not only aligned with the overarching company goals, but also portrayed Vitakraft USA as a thought leader in the pet space for American pet consumers.

PARTNER:
Vitakraft^®

SERVICES PROVIDED:
Branding/Positioning
Messaging
Visual Aesthetic
Campaign Creative
Social Advertising
Landing Page Design
Influencer Management
Monitoring & Metrics

THE IDEA

To help introduce Vitakraft USA to the market and bring its digital brand to life, the team at Tiny Bully undertook an in-depth branding and positioning exercise designed to differentiate the brand from all of the other treat companies out there.

Tiny Bully worked with Vitakraft to build on their legacy positioning by developing a U.S. based brand to break through the noise in the pet nutrition category.

Using pet owner data and competitive analysis, we leveraged the brand’s history to emphasize trust, but built a comprehensive platform focused on their differentiating point of value—the unique taste appeal of their products and the joy it brings pets. This evolved positioning was activated into existing collateral and in the development of a campaign that launched the treats in the U.S.

The STRATEGY

Utilizing Vitakraft’s updated foundational positioning, and with upgrades to Vitakraft’s website user experience and content, as well as several conversion-related improvements intended to drive email signups, Tiny Bully began driving awareness for the brand.

To help drive distribution with retail partners, Tiny Bully worked to build new brand and packaging designs as well as a new brand platform to help pave the way for the development, naming and launching of new products. Additionally, Tiny Bully developed a new landing page – FUR MORE HAPPY – to be a one-stop, informational source for new customers and fans (as well as retailers) who were introduced to the brand via a disruptive ad campaign on Facebook and Instagram.

At the same time, Tiny Bully worked to create more conversion opportunities on the Vitakraft.us website by adding email captures and signups on top pages, plus forms on top performing content and blog posts, as well as tracking user behaviors and testing data fields in each form to further aid in email segmentation.

Lastly, the Tiny Bully content team went to work building a content strategy for social media and the Vitakraft blog designed to introduce the brand as a thought leader in the pet lifestyle space and establish the brand pages as fun places to connect with other pet lovers. Those efforts, coupled with a revamped email content strategy, helped Vitakraft deliver an all-encompassing digital strategy that touched pet lovers where they live, work and play.

The Results

Tiny Bully saw a variety of success across the many different digital initiatives. These included:

Social Media Advertising
Using visually impactful ad creative built in house, we conducted a test and learn phase with the primary goal of awareness via impressions and reach, as well as lea d generation through email subscription and page likes. Website traffic campaigns were also launched, with lookalike audiences from previous campaigns, to drive a higher number of users to the website. The final campaign resulted in:

• CTR of 1.28%, above industry benchmark of ~1%.
• 14,159 LEAD FORMS submitted with a cost per lead of nearly $4 below the industry average
• Nearly 11,000 PAGE LIKES with a cost per like on the lower end of industry benchmarks
• New traffic from 32,000 users to the website at a CPC nearly $0.25 lower than industry average
• 3M+ IMPRESSIONS at a CPM in-line with industry benchmarks

Website
In addition to an upgrade of the Vitakraft website’s user experience and content, as well as several conversion-related improvements intended to drive email signups, Tiny Bully implemented several tracking improvements, such as a Google Analytics integration, that allowed us to monitor our impact over time. These improvements resulted in:

• 2.9X INCREASE in users
• 2.0 INCREASE in page views
• 1.3X INCREASE in time spent on page

Emails / Blogs
Tiny Bully implemented a new email marketing platform for the brand and set a cadence for delivering monthly emails to the Vitakraft subscriber base. Improvements to the existing email strategy included adding sign-up features on the website, implementing an RSS feed to deliver consistent content to subscribers, and designing a Welcome Email to further engage new sign-ups. Additionally, Tiny Bully launched a blog in conjunction with a content strategy designed to deliver insight, entertainment and production information to the fans. The combined content strategy improvements delivered the following results:

• An email list of 11,000+ NEW SUBSCRIBERS
• A CTR nearly 10 PERCENTAGE POINTS HIGHER than industry average from the Subscriber Welcome email

Organic Social Media
Tiny Bully created an organic social media strategy to revitalize the brand’s existing Facebook page and to launch the brand’s presence on Instagram with the primary goal to increasing brand awareness in the US. Efforts specifically focused on growth in US cat and dog markets, with a secondary goal to drive consumer engagement within our target audience. Results included:

• 20% INCREASE in Facebook Page Likes, with new follower percentage doubling vs the prior quarter
• 298% GROWTH in organic Facebook Engagement compared to the previous year
• 2.5% YEARLY AVG. ENGAGEMENT RATE on Facebook — nearly 100x the avg. for pages of the same size
• Sustained audience GROWTH RATE OF 11% over the first four months on Instagram, 22% faster growth than the average for accounts with >1K followers