Filed under: animal rescue, dogs | Tags: 8 seconds, animal rescue, attention span, homeless animals, shady, shadytales, silver pop, TGTB, this good that bad, wikipedia
HSUS estimates that a cat or dog is put down in a shelter in the U.S. every 8 seconds. Do you think it is mere coincidence that marketing experts like SilverPop and Wikipedia alike report that the average continuous attention span for literate humans is also 8 seconds?
That’s over 10,000 animals a day. Looking at these facts alone it would seem that as soon as one lost animal is forgotten, we immediately repeat the process and another animal pays the price for our attention deficit. Of course, we insiders know that is not the case.
Those who are in the position of euthanizing animals are most often the very people trying to save them. Although tremendous progress has been made –from around 25 percent of American dogs and cats euthanized every year in the 1970s to about 3 percent now–the current estimated rate of 4 million dogs and cats put down per year has been flat for far too long. They need help to increase their success rate.
Every 8 seconds, we lose a sale. Would this be acceptable to the average business owner?
If you are selling a product, marketers are full of tips and tricks that tell you how to best use your 8 seconds. Sales trainers and consultants are making real money dispensing this advice. There are scores of books and articles about how we can entice our audience into giving us more time and how to find new prospects.
They have formulas and suggestions like visual effects and punchy headlines or subject lines to do the trick. How can we translate that information to give these animals more time with their audience? If we are maxed out now, with too many pets and no realistic way to attract a larger pool of people willing to adopt a pet, how will we entice a new audience?
We’d love to end here with a list of out-of-the-box marketing strategies for animal shelters to improve adoption rates and reduce surrender rates. Except that we just don’t know yet.
Instead we appeal to those of you out in the field, the fields of animal rescue and marketing to be exact, to make the list for us. How do we reach outside the inner circle of animal lovers and make more people care enough to do something?
Just to be clear, “something” is not always donating, volunteering, adopting or fostering an animal. There are plenty of other ways to make a real difference; spay/neuter pets and/or educate others on how and why to do so, report known dog fighting rings, hold your municipality and its residents accountable for its euth rate, don’t support pet shops or simply don’t give up so easily on your pets or try to trade them in for newer models just to name a few.
Have you taken the time to read this post for more than 8 seconds? If so, forget the animals for a moment and think like a business owner whose business is failing. You have a surplus and you need to move inventory or else your business is going to die.
Forget the success stories, the sob stories and the typical events, none of that is going to be enough. It is time to add to that script and read the latest business books, check the blogs and attend the free sales seminars. Put on your marketing hat, ask your friends and colleagues…or imagine you’ve hired the best consultant or strategist you can find.
We are all responsible for this overstock and in 8 seconds, another one of societies’ “unsold goods” is going to be put down. They will be destroyed for no good reason or end purpose and not before taxing the system of overall resource meant for many causes. This should not be acceptable to anyone, animal lover or not.
What is the best (tried or untried) idea or advice you have to find more buyers? Leave your comments here or tell us all about it here.
Note from Shady: This is a guest post by my people Mom. Mom already has a few ideas to share on this topic. Marketing is her “day job.” She would never pose questions like these without being willing to answer them herself and she will do just that in her follow up post. Her suggested tactics include methods employed on this very post, designed to make you keep reading. No suggestion is too run of the mill or too outlandish for this excercise…please send us your opinions so we can share and learn together.
1 Comment so far
Leave a comment
Very interesting post, Miss Shady and Miss Shady’s Mom. We can’t wait to hear more!
Barks & Wiggles,
Jackie and Mom
Comment by littlemissjackie June 15, 2011 @ 9:56 pm