We are starting a new series titled, “Online Marketing Success Stories.” In this series we will feature companies who created a successful online marketing strategy that helped them expand their market reach. If you would like to be included in this series, please drop an email to MarketingSuccess@invesp.com.

Our story this week comes from K9Cuisine, a premium dog food provider.

Background

The business model for K9Cuisine was borne from my own frustration and dissatisfaction with attempting to source quality, natural, healthy food for my own pet. Our family dog, Daisy, was suffering with allergies and digestive problems. After extensive research, I found that like many other dogs, her ailments were related to the grains and fillers in her food. Unfortunately for us the closest store was 75+ miles away and could not maintain a consistent supply. 

We turned to the internet, but were quickly dismayed. 

The internet sources we tried had slow service, poor communication, charged outrageous shipping fees, if our dog did not like the food we were stuck no refund. We found many of them never warehouse the foods they sell and cannot control delivery schedules. We felt we were paying a premium for the product and delivery and were receiving very poor service.

In May 2007 I launched K9Cuisine.com.  For our first year we averaged 50% growth each month – adding hundreds of products and expanding our warehouse from 1,000 sq ft to 26,000 sq ft. We have grown from zero customers to over 7000 customers today. Much of our company’s growth has come as a result of our service driven commitment to our customers.  The statistics we celebrate most are the large percentage of repeat customers we service every day.

Competitive Landscape

There are literally thousands possibly millions of suppliers of pet products on the web today. It is generally a very crowded space that is fragmented and very price sensitive.

Anyone can set up a fancy website. It is the business behind the web site that sets us apart and makes us different. K9Cuisine is clearly a service organization that happens to sell pet products.

We do not compromise quality or service. We warehouse all the products we sell. As a result we are able to ship 95% of all orders the same day. We providing free shipping on orders over $50 and actual shipping cost on all other orders. We offer a 100% money back guarantee. If for any reason a customer is not satisfied we either replace the product or refund the purchase price. Our web based inventory system is able to communicate stock availability directly to the customer prior to placing order. We ship all orders via Fed Ex & UPS to ensure rapid delivery. BTW we also answer the phone.

The Marketing Challenge

The key to effectively marketing our business hinges on our ability to bridge the divide between the impersonal and the personal.

The internet can be very impersonal. Our challenge is to make it a personal experience for our customers. This means connecting and communicating with customers on many levels to create relationships with our customers. If we do our job correctly, doing business with K9 Cuisine is personal experience.

To do this we identify and communicate with our base.  This process includes finding the most effective means for communicating with this base, identifying and  providing for their needs, maintaining a constant dialogue with those customers, and continuing to find ways to exceed their expectations.

Exceeding their expectations creates the buzz. Buzz marketing via positive customer comments and strong customer ratings have been our greatest tool. We consistently  achieve a 98-99% customer satisfaction rating.

Exceeding customers’ expectations of value service and delivery is our mission. I believe this mission is the key to our success.

The Results

We have solved our immediate problem of not being able to obtain healthy food for our dog.  Daisy is thriving and has access to a wide variety of super-premium natural foods.

K9Cuisine’s marketing success may be measured in a variety of ways. Traffic to our website, blog, high conversion conversion rates on that traffic, high customer ratings, and exceptional revenue growth rate over the last eighteen months is how we measure our success. 

K9 Cuisine excels on all of these measures. We get tons of traffic and we convert 6-8% of this traffic into orders. The first year our revenues grew at 50% per month the first year. We continue to show solid 10-20% month over month revenue growth. Our customer approval ratings are 98-99%.

Ultimately, the greatest measure is the extremely high rate of customers who return to our site for additional purchases.  Seventy five to eighty percent are repeat customers.

An internet store can sell anyone something once, and that is merely a transaction.  But by delivering on our promise of super premium quality products and unsurpassed customer service, we build those transactions into loyal customers.

Visit the K9 Cuisine store here. Remember, if you would like to be featured in our Online Marketing Success Stories, drop us an email to MarketingSuccess@invesp.com.