"Hairy Child" brings a steady stream of business opportunities.
With the improvement of people's economic level and the change of thinking, pets have become an indispensable member and emotional sustenance of many families; At the same time, the number of aging, single and dink people continues to grow, and they especially want warmth and companionship from their pets. Affected by this, the wave of pet economy is rapidly spreading from Europe and the United States, the largest pet consumer market, to the world.
The pet industry involves a wide range of fields, including pet food, medical treatment, training, breeding, supplies, beauty, insurance and other subdivisions. Industry companies pointed out that pet products have many specifications and low degree of standardization, covering the various needs of pets for "living, wearing, traveling and playing", including bedding, climbing frames, clothing, toys, traction travel, cleaning utensils and eating utensils, etc., which have become the main track for many pet businesses.
The pet products category is mature and has a high degree of development, and in recent years, smart products have opened up a new market. This kind of product can provide pet owners with a more convenient and tidy parenting experience, and make the pet's life more hygienic, so the demand is high, for example, in the United States in the past year, the search popularity of "automatic pet feeder" and "self-cleaning cat litter box" has been high.
The businesses that seized this outlet soared. This article will start with Litter Robot and Petkit, the leading brands of smart pet products, and analyze their product advantages, traffic channels and marketing methods, etc., for overseas merchants to learn from.
Litter Robot打造"猫砂盆中的爱马仕"
Pet lovers are increasingly investing in their pets and want to provide them with a higher quality of life. In the United States, the world's largest and most mature pet consumer market, smart pet furniture has always had a stable search volume, among which the automatic cat litter box can replace pet owners to complete the "shovel" work, and the search popularity has increased significantly in the past year, and Litter Robot is the leading brand in this category.
Years ago, Brad Baxter owned two cats, and after witnessing the devastation of the traditional litter box, he was desperate to find a problem with cleaning up the litter for his cats. In 1999, Brad established Litter Robot in the United States and designed the first fully automatic cat litter box, for more than 20 years, Litter Robot is still focusing on the vertical category of cat litter box, and its intelligent cat litter box products have been updated to the fourth generation, becoming the highest-rated and most effective automatic fecal shovel machine on the market, with more than one million users.
Litter Robot pioneered the space capsule-style litter box. After the cat excretes in the litter box, the timer will start the countdown, and after the cat litter is clumped, turn the drum to separate the clumped cat litter from the clean cat litter through the screening process, and then the clumped cat litter will be poured into the garbage drawer below, leaving a clean cat litter bed, and the attached carbon filter will absorb odors.
（图源/Litter Robot）
The strong product force brings a high premium to Litter Robot. Its litter box starts at $499, and the other two products, the Litter-Robot 3 Connect, are priced at $549, and the Litter-Robot 4 is priced at $699, or about 5,000 yuan. One user commented on the product: "It was very easy to install and my cat loved it right away. It doesn't smell at all, and I like that I don't have to clean the litter all the time. ”
Litter Robot's main sales channel is the independent website, and the website ranks 66th in the industry. From January to March 2024, the total number of visits to its website reached 3.975 million, with mobile contributing 76.32% of traffic, and desktop traffic accounting for 23.68%. In terms of breakdown, the average monthly visit to the website is 1.325 million, the number of monthly unique visitors is about 866,000, the average stay time is 2 minutes, the user visits 3.17 pages each time, the bounce rate is 64.46%, and the estimated monthly sales of the website are about 3.03 million US dollars.
In terms of traffic source countries, the top three countries are the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, accounting for 79.95%, 3.44% and 3.26% of visits, respectively. This is attributed to Litter Robot's main target market positioning, but also related to the distribution of the pet market, with the United States and Europe being the world's first and second largest pet consumer markets, respectively.
By traffic channel, organic search, direct traffic, and paid search each contributed nearly one-third of the traffic. The proportion of organic search traffic is relatively high, and brand search accounts for 63%, which proves that its brand influence is strong, user loyalty is high, and more users have a certain preference and trust for the brand, and will actively look for relevant information about the brand, which is also a manifestation of the success of brand marketing, indicating that the marketing activities in the early stage have played a positive role in enhancing brand awareness and attracting users. At the same time, getting a higher ranking in organic search shows that the brand is doing a better job of optimizing in search engines.
In terms of user composition, Litter Robot's users are mainly female, accounting for 55.11%, and male users are slightly less, accounting for 44.89%. From the perspective of age distribution, its products cover a wide range of consumers, from 18 to 64 years old There are many users in all stages, 25 to 34 years old users are the majority, followed by 35 to 44 years old.
From the perspective of audience positioning, the brand's target users are consumers with certain spending power, quality of life and pet health, and the products are mainly aimed at cat families, especially those who raise expensive breeds of cats, so its products are called "Hermes in the cat litter box".
社媒平台是重要的品牌推广渠道,Litter Robot也对此做了多渠道流量布局,包括 Facebook、TikTok、Pinterest、Bing、Google ads、Google analytics、Google tag manager等,帖子主要围绕猫咪坐在智能猫砂盆内的呆萌表现,或是在猫砂盆旁与主人的互动展开。
FB is Litter Robot's main source of social media traffic, accounting for 75%, and the FB account has accumulated 170,000 followers, posting 2 to 3 posts a day, and the group is active. Its FB advertisements are more shot with cats using cat litter boxes, and the advertising pictures are vivid and interesting. Cats go in and out of the litter box freely, showing their adaptation and love for the smart litter box.
The ad will also highlight the various functions of the smart litter box, such as automatic shoveling, keeping it clean, easy to use, etc., so that the audience can intuitively feel the convenience it brings. Through the cute cat image, it further shortens the distance with consumers, making people feel that the use of this smart cat litter box is the love and care of cats; At the same time, the advertisement conveys the concept of living in harmony with pets, which resonates with cat lovers and stimulates their interest and desire to buy smart cat litter boxes.
On other social media platforms, the Litter Robot Instagram account has 180,000 followers and posts 2 to 3 posts per week; It has nearly 30,000 followers on YouTube, and maintains in-depth cooperation with YouTube KOL allaboutcats, the largest vertical category in the cats category, to increase brand exposure and reach.
The brand is also reaching more potential users through search engine optimization and paid search. In terms of display advertising networks, Litter Robot cooperates with Google Display Network, Pepperjam, Skimlinks and other affiliate platforms, with the latter accounting for 62.32%, 22.72%, and 11.77% of the desktop respectively.
In addition, Litter Robot also works with a number of popular backing sites, such as hello.whisker.com, thesprucepets.com, force.com, exhibitors.ces.tech, canva.com, etc., through which potential users can learn about its smart litter box. This helps to enhance the reputation and status of the product in the industry, so that consumers can form the perception that "this is a trustworthy product".
In addition to the above marketing channels, the Litter Robot website also has more marketing methods.
When you open the brand's website, you will see a pop-up window indicating that customers can save $200, and a banner ad will also indicate a savings of $50 to retain users and facilitate transactions. At the same time, the brand carries out differentiated pricing marketing, including setting different prices for products with different colors or warranty periods, such as white products without a price increase, and other colors need to be increased by $50 to meet the needs and psychology of different consumers, so as to achieve better sales and profits.
Another important method is bundled marketing. For example, the 4th generation smart cat litter box can be bundled with mats, cat litter, carpet trays, etc.; The intelligent automatic pet feeder can provide food for pets regularly and quantitatively, and the real-time monitoring function is convenient for owners to understand the eating status of pets.
In the track of smart pet products, China has also run out of the head brand.
Amazon and independent stations are parallel, and PETKIT polishes overseas business cards
In 2013, when wearable technology was in high demand, the Kwok brothers, who were hardware engineers at the time, began to reflect on how they could bring welfare to animals. Mr. Guo said: "I have had pets, and I have found some pain points in raising pets. For example, if there is no air conditioning in summer, whether to leave pets alone at home makes many pet parents entangled; For example, how to take care of pets when traveling or traveling has also become a problem. ”
Soon after, the PETKIT team was established. "To solve these specific problems, we not only invented the world's first pet house with air conditioning, smart feeders, and smart water dispensers, but also maintained the rhythm of defining a new product and use case every year."
All these entry points are highly favored by capital, and financing news has come one after another. In 2014, Xiaopei Company was formally established and obtained angel round financing, the following year received A round of financing, in 2017 it received B round of financing of 80 million yuan, in 2019 it received C round of 100 million yuan financing, in 2020 it received C + round of financing of 100 million yuan, and in 2021 it received D round of 50 million US dollars of financing, which has become a good talk in the industry.
At present, Xiaopei's business segment includes pet intelligent hardware, pet stores, pet hospitals, pet food four major plates, of which smart products include smart water dispensers, smart feeders, smart cat toilets, origin fish tanks, etc., and the sales network covers more than 30 countries around the world. In 2021, its smart litter box debuted on Indiegogo, and it won more than one million dollars in sales, gaining a wave of loyal users overseas.
A few months ago, the person in charge of PETKIT's overseas business said in an interview that PETKIT is already the top 1 in the smart pet industry in China, and in terms of cross-border e-commerce business, in North America, the market share of PETKIT's smart automatic cat toilet may be second only to Litter Robot.
In cross-border business, PETKIT will be both Amazon and independent station channels. In the sub-category list of Amazon's US station, PETKIT's smart feeder and smart cat litter box are among the top, and the number of reviews for a pet water dispenser exceeds 10,000. PETKIT focuses on building a brand image and providing a good user experience.
From January to March this year, the total number of visits to PETKIT's website reached 466,000, of which 79.58% were mobile and 20.42% were desktop. In terms of breakdown, PETKIT has about 155,000 monthly visits, 80,944 monthly unique visitors, an average visit time of 2 minutes and 9 seconds, 3.17 pages per visit, and a bounce rate of 48.20%. It is estimated that the monthly sales will be about 730,000 US dollars.
From the analysis of the source of traffic, the United States ranks first, with a traffic share of 30.21%. As the world's largest pet consumer market, the U.S. has a pet ownership rate of 66%, or about 86.9 million households. In 2022, the size of the U.S. pet market will reach $136.8 billion, and it is expected to reach 206.7 billion yuan in 2027, with a compound annual growth rate of 8.61%.
The countries ranked after the United States were France, Romania and Italy, accounting for 30.21%, 9.73%, 8.85% and 8.71% of the total number of visits, respectively.
This is not surprising. Europe is the world's second-largest pet consumer market, and its purchasing power cannot be underestimated. According to data released by FEDIAF (European Federation of Pet Food Industries), pet consumption in the European market reached 53.6 billion euros in 2022, of which the market size of pet products and services was 24.5 billion euros. Cats and dogs are the most kept pets, the number of pet cats in Europe reached 127.161 million, the number of pet dogs was 104.348 million, the top three countries in Europe with the number of cats are Russia, Germany, France, and the top three countries with dogs are Russia, the United Kingdom, and Germany.
From the perspective of traffic channel sources, organic search accounts for a significant lead, as high as 42.36%, and in terms of brand and non-brand, brand search accounts for 82%. This shows that PETKIT has a strong brand influence and high user loyalty, and a considerable number of users actively find PETKIT through organic search, which shows that the brand has a certain degree of popularity and recognition in the market. At the same time, brands also have higher rankings in organic search, and their marketing effectiveness is also better.
In addition to organic search, PETKIT has the highest direct search traffic of 30.19%, followed by paid search at 14.82%; Social traffic accounted for 9.66%. On desktop, paid search accounts for 9.88% of website traffic, and the search terms are mostly branded.
Like Litter Robot, PETKIT has a larger proportion of users with women at 56.13% and a slightly smaller proportion with men at 43.87%. These users are widely distributed in all age groups, among which users between the ages of 25 and 34 have the leading proportion, with a share of 42.07%.
In terms of social traffic composition, Facebook contributed 49.56% of the traffic, accounting for nearly half; YouTube channel traffic accounted for 22.39%, followed by Instagram and Reddit with 9.68% and 7.80%, respectively.
The promotion of PETKIT on social media channels is detailed. Its FB account has accumulated 48,000 followers and posts 2 to 3 times a day, and has 153,000 followers on Instagram, and the frequency of posts is also high, maintaining 2 to 3 posts per day. In addition, there are 8.5k subscribers on YouTube with a video frequency of one per month, Twitter account with 3k followers, and 2.3k followers on TikTok with two posts per month, perhaps due to the relatively low frequency of posting on these platforms due to the small number of followers.
The brand's social media promotion materials focus on cats, and the selected pictures show a variety of cute gestures of kittens, such as coquettishness and playfulness. Among these posting materials, there are scenes of kittens using smart cat litter boxes, showing the intelligence and practicality of the product; There are also many interactions between kittens and their owners, such as the owners celebrating the cat's birthday, etc., and the picture is warm and infectious. PETKIT's Facebook ads also revolve around cute pet pictures, videos, and interesting copy to attract users' attention and increase the click-through rate of the ad.
In terms of Display Network, PETKIT cooperated with Skimlinks and Google Display Network, with desktop contributions of 88.36% and 11.64% respectively.
In addition, PETKIT also works with several popular backlink websites, including urlopener.net, thesprucepets.com, petkit.cn, findniche.com, and app.afterlib.com, in order to promote products to potential users.
From the analysis of the product line, PETKIT's products are much richer than those of Litter Robot. THERE ARE TWO SELF-CLEANING LITTER BOXES AVAILABLE ON THE PETKIT WEBSITE, THE PETKIT PURAMAX IS PRICED AT $469, THE LITTER BOX COMES WITH SPACE FOR MULTIPLE CATS, TRIPLE DEODORIZATION, AND FIVE CLEANING MODES; At the same time, the product has infrared sensors, weight sensors and other safety mechanisms to avoid "stuck cats"; Users can also track the health status of the cat through the APP, such as weight and the number of uses, and the product functions are relatively complete. In addition, the products sold on the website also include pet dryers, pet feeders, etc., which are one-stop solutions to pet needs.
In terms of website marketing, PETKIT uses interest-free installments to lower the purchase threshold, so that more consumers have the ability to buy products; At the same time, bundled sales allow users to add multiple products to the shopping cart with one click, which is fast and convenient, which is conducive to expanding overall sales.
The pet market will reach 550 billion US dollars, and merchants will rush to layout
According to the latest research report from Global Market Insights, the pet market size reached $280 billion in 2022 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of more than 7% from 2023 to 2032. The pet market is expected to reach $550 billion by 2032. With the improvement of the status of pets and the increasing anthropomorphism of pet consumption, the demand for sub-categories in the pet products industry continues to expand, and the market for food tools, clothing and accessories has grown rapidly, attracting more businesses to accelerate their layout.
Nowadays, it is the general trend for domestic enterprises to develop overseas business, but it is not easy to follow the example of excellent brands such as Litter Robot and Petkit, quickly break the ice and become a category leader in the field of going overseas. Merchants must not only have excellent products, but also have insight into overseas market demand and the latest consumption habits, and carry out marketing and sales according to local conditions, which is a huge challenge for merchants who take the domestic market as their home or cross-border merchants who are accustomed to leveraging e-commerce platforms.
With 14 years of experience in cross-border e-commerce, Een has provided marketing and marketing services for many world Internet giants such as Google, Meta, Microsoft Bing, Alibaba, TikTok, Amazon, etc., and has accumulated rich experience and resources in e-commerce going overseas, which can help enterprises go overseas.
Yien originated from the e-commerce overseas marketing BBS Yien community in 2011, and in 2023, it will begin to lay out the brand overseas incubation business - Yien Go to Sea, and the core personnel of the team come from the top cross-border company executives and marketing operation experts. As an elite team with 14 years of experience in e-commerce going overseas, we are able to remove the pain points of unprofessional market analysis, imperfect operation system, and inaccurate brand positioning, from industry analysis, user research to optimization suggestions, and delivery strategy formulation, for domestic enterprises with global e-commerce layout needs, such as consumer brands, technology brands, fashion brands, and industrial brands, tailor-made brand overseas cases and implement them, helping enterprises reduce the cost of trial and error in global layout, and explore digital going overseas lightly; It also provides new opportunities for cross-border platform head merchants with independent station operation and full marketing needs to go overseas, helping them to "sell globally" at low cost.